"Gels, you are the creme de la creme!"--
Maggie Smith in "The Prime Of Miss Jean
Brodie"
Let's get right to the point, darlings. Let us accept, for a second, that Life is "The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie." Which means we all know that Miss Jean is a hypocrite and a fascist. But that is not the real moral of the story.
The moral is that, unless you are Sandy, you end up being a loser, like Mary MacGregor, and look what happens to her! She gets carried away by Brodie's false ideas, and gets herself killed. For something she did not necessarily believe in in the first place.
This part of the story always angered me. I mean, if one is destined to be a Mary McGregor, what can one do?
Plenty!
If, early on in life, you detect any signs of Mary MacGergor in you, here are some remedies so that you do not end up like she.
Start reading VOGUE at an early age.
Learn the bus and train schedules, and go shopping to all the key stores-- Bergdorf's, Lord And Taylor, but not MACY's which, these days, is "distinctly middle class."
Get a makeover done! Half of Mary's problem was how she looked!
Had she looked better, someone like Brodie could never have taken advantage of her.
Of course, none of this guarantees you will look as glamorous as Pamela Franklin! But it does illustrate an important point in framing the moral of this tale.
Do not be mentored by false prophets. Be yourself all the time!!!!!!!!!!
My girls know this already! For those still struggling, keep reading this blog!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, please, I've been Mary MacGregor my whole life: running hither and yon, always in the wrong hotel corridor at the wrong time, following the dubious advice of people I foolishly assumed were my betters. Unlike poor Mary, however, I at least have had sense enough (so far) to exit my "hotels" the moment I smell smoke, instead of waiting in a stupor for the roof to cave in on me.
ReplyDelete"Brodie" was one of THE most influential films of my formative years: ABC's Movie Of The Week essentially made me who I am today. I've often wondered how many other young queens were secretly "activated" by premature exposure to such "adult" films being shown on network television (bowdlerized as they were).
Besides "Brodie" there was the annual airing of "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" (which no male child under the age of 30 should be exposed to unless his parents WANT him to be gay). Throw in The Late Show bi-annual airings of "Now Voyager" and my fate was sealed early on.
BTW I absolutely love the framing device and ending of the Muriel Spark novel, which unfortunately could not be made to work in movie guise. It had the Sandy character retire to a severely cloistered life in a nunnery immediately upon her defeat of Miss Brodie.
ReplyDelete"Sister Helena's" unconscious, desperate clutching of the iron bars between her and the journalist as she recounts her story is one of the most unforgettable images ever painted by an author.
ReplyDeleteI have got to reread the Spark novel. And you would never go off to some inane war, like Mary McGregor. I'd send you to Canada, first.
This said, Brodie is a role I have always wanted to play.
As for 'Viriginia Woolf', well there are some who maintain it is about two gay couples. But the Albee estate will not allow that theory to be tested!