(no subject)

[baloonworld]

elmyra made me watch coyote ugly over the weekend. She wanted something cheerful what with the moving and all. She claimed it was a romantic comedy with the moral "there are hot chicks dancing on the bar"

I didn't notice the comedy, but I did notice the essay on labor relations.

The coyotes are a group of interchangeable* dancing girls kept in order to profit from the proletariat's attempt to self-medicate their misery with hard liquor and lowest-common-denominator entertainment. Our (working class) heroine joins when one of them, dubbed (by me) "class traitor coyote" leaves to become a lawyer.

* They are essentially anonymous and therefor interchangeable, like any good piece of production line equipment

When not-boyfriend* gets girl (names, as always, escape me) a gig singing her songs, her employer makes use of her counter-revolutionary sense of loyalty to her place of work to make her not go. Later that evening, girl's non-relationship with not-boyfriend damages her apparent value as an employee and we are shown the value of "loyalty" between worker and employer; she is fired on the spot.

* Not-boyfriend's stated and achieved life's ambition is to become a member of the hardworking American proletariat. Truly, he is a class hero.

In economics, however, there are often too many factors to analyze correctly; the experiment of firing girl reveals that her value at the bar is higher than expected, and employer follows her to her new place of work to offer her her old job back. Girl however, has remembered her ambitions as a songwriter*. Bar-owner makes some essentially meaningless abasements in an attempt to win back girl's loyalty.

* Entertainers occupy an ambiguous place in the capitalist system. As an opiate to the masses they are counter-revolutionary, but they also contribute to the decadence of the bourgeoisie which weakens the apparatus of suppression.

Girl gets another gig, is successful*, getting a songwriting contract **. Bar-owner attends, catches father's eye by having henchwoman protect girl's honor***. For this small outlay of hired muscle, she gets a cut of the advertising money from the recording studio.

* On the way to this gig her stage nerves play up, but are crushed by a glorious display of Worker's Solidarity by her father's co-workers.****

** The recording industry, is too big a monster for the rather small stage of this drama and so is left off-screen.

*** A chauvinist, bourgeoisie idea, more often used to divide the proletariat along gender lines, here seen used as part of the apparatus of suppression.

**** As stage fright has been the only thing that made this film more than 20 minutes long, Solidarity is here shown to be a practical solution to most of life's problems.

Comments

[john-hobbit.livejournal.com]

We need to give you more movies, so many more movies.

You should watch brotherhood of the wolf. The cultural juxtapostion is enough to give the elder gods an anyeurism.

(For those who dont know, BotW features the joys of a french high society adventurer (with his native american indian cohort) as they battle against were wolves armed with Ivy (from soulcalibur) dogdey whippy bone sword Oh yes and theres a ninja prostitute sent by the pope. - so many levels of horror)