After I wrote about The Music Man last month, I was thinking about Marian Paroo and Harold Hill again and realized that (excepting the fact that Hill is actually a fake) there are a number of contrasts between them as music teachers and that these differences may contribute to their initial antagonism.
As a piano teacher, Marian Paroo interacts with students individually (as is shown with Amaryllis), but Hill, as a band leader, deals with multiple musicians simultaneously. Paroo's piano is definitely a stationary instrument, but Hill's band is mobile. The piano is also fully polyphonic, but most (if not all) of the instruments in a marching band are monophonic.
Paroo and Hill are so different that even with respect to this one similarity (their positions as music teachers), they have very little in common.
A few months ago, I was thinking about the reaping scene in The Hunger Games (at the time, I was reading the reaping scene in Sunrise on the Reaping). I remembered a particular detail about it and realized its significance, and last week, I watched the movie again in order to pay closer attention to it.
When Effie Trinket announces, "Primrose Everdeen" as the girl tribute from District 12, the level on her microphone peaks because of the plosive P in Primrose. The ugliness of this sound matches the life-shattering nature of this moment, both for Prim herself and for her sister Katniss, who is the main character.
The same effect is also present when Effie announces Peeta Mellark as the boy tribute (the plosive P of Peeta causes the microphone level to peak), but it doesn't have nearly the same volume or intensity. For Katniss, Peeta's being selected as tribute isn't as disconcerting because (at this point, anyway) the relationship between them isn't as strong as the one between Katniss and Prim.
I was also able to confirm a suspicion I had about the film's look. Especially during the reaping, the shots in District 12 are rather de-saturated, with a minimal number of colors:
This palette heightens the contrast between District 12 and the Capitol, which has both a larger variety of colors and a greater vividness of them. Here's a shot from the tribute parade:
I also saw something I hadn't noticed before. When Katniss is under the effects of the tracker jacker venom and hallucinates about the mining accident that killed her father, there's one shot where every miner has her father's face:
While this shows the disorienting nature of the venom, it also illustrates the profound effect that Katniss's father's death had (and continues to have) on her. In the hallucination, it's literally amplified.
A couple weeks ago, I realized that the title of the show Bones has a sort of dual meaning. Primarily, it refers to the physical remains that the scientists examine in the lab in order to solve murders (and it also signifies Dr. Temperance Brennan, whom Special Agent Seeley Booth calls Bones because she deals with these remains), but it could also have a more figurative application. In an-other sense, bones can mean "the basic design or framework," and this matches the aim of the characters in a crime procedural: they sift through the evidence and suspects, eliminate irrelevant data, and ultimately discover the bare truth.
Recently, I watched the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Code of Honor" (S1E3). The next day, I was thinking about the names of a couple of the characters and realized that in a small way, they mirror how the characters relate to each other.
As Captain Picard explains at the beginning of the episode, the Enterprise has come to Ligon II to negotiate a treaty to receive a vaccine from its ruler Lutan. During a tour of the vessel, Lutan becomes impressed by Lieutenant Natasha Yar, the security officer, and when he leaves, he abducts her. The Enterprise crew are wary of doing anything to insult the Ligonians or jeopardize the exchange of the vaccine, but when Captain Picard does ask for the return of Lieutenant Yar, Lutan refuses, explaining that he loves Yar and wants her to become his "first one." Lutan's wife Yareena takes offense at this and challenges Yar to "a struggle to the death," which is the primary concern during the second half of the episode.
The names Yar and Yareena resemble each other, drawing attention to the somewhat parallel positions of the two women in the same way that the plot has narrowed its focus to the conflict between them. There's a significant difference, however, in that Yareena seems to be a diminutive form of Yar (using something like the Italian suffix -ina, audibly, if not orthographically). This indicates an inequality between the two. In a meeting with Yareena prior to the fight, Yar tells her that "there is no physical training anywhere that matches Starfleet, especially its security people," and she eventually does best Yareena in combat.
I was recently reminded of The Music Man and remembered a number of realizations I'd previously had about Harold Hill's character.
It's clear from Hill's interactions with his friend Marcellus Washburn that the name Harold Hill is actually a pseudonym that he uses as a fraudulent salesman (Washburn calls him Gregory or just Greg a number of times). Significantly, the name Harold Hill alliterates. This quality illustrates his artifice and also draws attention to him, almost acting like a lure. The "Hill" part may even be meant to evoke a sort of beacon to which people are drawn.
Near the end of "Ya Got Trouble," Hill stands in front of a statue of Henry Madison, an important philanthropist for the town, and exhorts the crowd, "Remember, my friends: listen to me because I pass this way but once." When he says that he "pass[es] this way but once," he means it genuinely, unlike some of his other claims, but even this is twisted to his own advantage. By the time he leaves, the townspeople will know he's a fake, so he wouldn't dare return, but he casts his temporary presence in a positive light and advertises it as a valuable exclusivity instead.
At the end of his address, he winds up in nearly the same posture as the statue of Madison:
Here's a video from Turner Classic Movies of the full song:
It's a great visual gag, but it may also indicate an-other facet of Hill's savvy. Possibly, he's hoping that mirroring Madison's pose will transfer some of Madison's influence to him, making it easier for him to deceive the citizens of River City.
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When I re-watched the movie earlier this week, I also noticed some specific elements that seem to attract Marian Paroo to Hill. In "Being in Love," Paroo describes her ideal man, and one characteristic is an interest in the classics, specifically Shakespeare and Beethoven: "And if occasionally he'd ponder / What makes Shakespeare and Beethoven great, / Him I could love till I die." While Hill is far from meeting her ideal in most respects, he does demonstrate at least a passing familiarity with both Shakespeare and Beethoven. In the candy kitchen, after Marian tells him, "I think it was wonderful of you sticking up for Tommy Djilas the way you did," he replies, "Well, a man can't go back on his principles merely because a little personal risk is involved. What does the poet say? 'A coward dies a thousand deaths; a brave man only five hundred.'" He seems to be referencing lines from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once" (II.ii.32-33). Meanwhile, as per Hill's instructions, the band is practicing Beethoven's Minuet in G (WoO 10, No. 2) using his "think system." While Hill's interest in Shakespeare and Beethoven may not be quite as Paroo had envisioned, it does exist.
In "Breaking Ranks," Ezra poses as cadet Dev Morgan in order to infiltrate the Imperial facility on Lothal and acquire a device that will allow The Ghost crew to locate an Imperial shipment containing a Kyber crystal. During his time there, he befriends fellow cadets Jai Kell and Zare Leonis. These three contrast with Oleg in superficial ways that mirror deeper differences in their characters.
Ezra Bridger (even undercover as Dev Morgan), Jai Kell, and Zare Leonis all have first and last names, and their last names highlight their familial connections: although he's separated from them, Ezra has a strong attachment to his parents, and he recently joined his Rebels family; Jai mentions that his family consists of just him and his mother; and Zare is looking for his sister, who disappeared from the academy. Oleg's single name seems to indicate that he lacks a family; all he has is the Empire.
Throughout the episode, Ezra, Jai, and Zare frequently take off their helmets or at least open the face panel, but Oleg is never seen without his. That Oleg remains faceless illustrates that his individuality is being subsumed as he becomes part of the standardized Empire.
Both of these contrasts also match the difference in the characters' ties to the Empire. Ezra was never truly a cadet; he was only working undercover at the academy. Jai defects at the end of the episode, after Ezra and Zare explain the true nature of the Empire to him. While Zare does stay at the academy, he does so only to continue searching for his sister, not because of any true allegiance. Oleg, on the other hand, was always loyal to the Empire.
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In re-watching the episode, I noticed some small significance in one of the Inquisitor's statements. Upon reviewing the events at the academy, he looks at images of Jai and Ezra and says, "I do not know this boy [Jai], but this one [Ezra] I know." His comment has a chiastic structure, which emphasizes these opposites:
Earlier this month, I was thinking about The Terminal again, and I re-watched it in order to look into a couple points (also because I've been watching a lot of Steven Spielberg movies recently).
The second time that Viktor Navorski meets Amelia Warren, he lends her his handkerchief. When she returns it, she asks him, "What's BH?" mistaking the Cyrillic letters of his monogram for Latin letters (in full, his name is something like Виктор Наворски in Cyrillic). In a small way, her assumption that the letters are Latin matches what she says about herself shortly before this: "I always see men the way I wanna see 'em."
Later, the two meet by chance in Borders, where Amelia is buying a book about Napoleon. She tells Viktor that Napoleon is "one of my favorites," and Viktor subsequently develops his own interest in Napoleon. His primary motivation seems to be a desire to have something in common with Amelia, but he may also identify with Napoleon because their situations are similar. Amelia tells him, "After he loses the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon isolates himself on the tiny island of St. Helena." (According to Britannica, Napoleon became a recluse while he was exiled there, so this is isolation even within confinement.) To some degree, Viktor is also isolated because he's stuck in the terminal.
[The Terminal is my favorite movie, and I've written about it multiple times now. Click here for all of my posts about it.]
