Lost weekend?
Nov. 22nd, 2004 05:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSomething I'm reading turned up a reference with a possible Buffy connection, which seemed interesting to me even though I'm not sure what if anything to make of it.
Buffy: I don't care from private! I care from dead guys attacking us. I care from you lost weekending in your apartment.
Transcript, The Dark Age
'Lost Weekend' is not listed in the Watchers Guide as a pop culture reference. But the entry for this episode has one big glaring mistake in, and the pop culture refs are often oddly incomplete. So, I figure it could still be a film reference. I haven't seen the film but between internet and library I found interesting information.
***
The Lost Weekend IMDb entry
Plot Outline: The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four day drinking bout.
Don Birnam, long-time alcoholic, has been 'on the wagon' for ten days and seems to be over the worst; but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother Wick and girlfriend Helen, he begins a four-day bender. In flashbacks we see past events, all gone wrong because of the bottle. But this bout looks like being his last...one way or the other.
***
That fits in a couple of ways. Buffy is concerned about Giles drinking. And on another level, The Dark Age is all about persistent addictions.
But I found another reference that makes it look a bit more complicated.
***
The Celluloid Closet
Vito Russo
'Triangle Classics, Illuminating the gay and lesbian experience'
p96-97
The view of the homosexual as being alien to his own society was also present in the constant deletion of specific homosexuality from the screen adaptations of literary works int he Forties. In 1945, Billy Wilder brought Charles Jackson's novel The Lost Weekend to the screen with Ray Milland as the alcoholic writer Don Birnam. In Jackson's novel, Birnam's alcoholism stems froma complex variety of reasons that includes a father fixation and a false accusation of his having had a homosexual relationship with a college fraternity brother. (Other Jackson books had had gay themes; a subplot in The Fall of Valor involved a marine anda married man.) In Wilder's version of The Lost Weekend, however, the motivation for Birnam's drinking became a simple case of writer's block. Seemingly a victim of the same problems that would later beset Tom Lee in Tea and Sympathy, Jackson's Don Birnam is also 'saved' by the love of a good woman. But in the film, Jane Wyman saves Ray Milland from his alcoholism, not from the cause of it. Paramount studio boss Buddy DeSylva stated the reason for the script changes: "If the drunk isn't an extremely attractive fellow who, apart from being a drunk, could be a hell of a nice guy, the audiences won't go for it."
Thus Milland's Don Birnam became as simplistically one dimensional as Hurd Hatfield's stoic Dorian Gray. Indeed, two little old ladies shopping on Third Avenue in The Lost Weekend point to Birnam on the street and cluck sympathetically, "Oh, there's that nice young man who drinks." But Birnam also becomes coyly and cruelly entertaining when drunk, and Millard's mannerisms suggest vaguely that his whispered problems might be rooted in greater psychological depths than the typewriter he keeps in his closet would indicate. A further hint that his closet might contain more than a typewriter comes with his mocking proposal of marriage to Nat the bartender. On being rebuked for his perversity, he says feyly, "Now, Nat. One more word and I shall have to consult our lawyer about a divorce." The scene is all the more disquieting when the viewer recognises Milland's sissy voice from 'If Men Played Cards Like Women Do' in Star Spangled Rhythm
An undertone of unnaturalness is retained in the film through Frank Faylen's caustic, sneering portrait of Bim, the male nurse who attends Birnam in the drunk tank during his delirium. Bim is lewdly homosexual and terrorizes Birnam with ambiguous suggestion. "Good morning, Mary Sunshine!" he intones sarcastically when they meet. "I'm a nurse. Name of Nolan, but my friends call me Bim. You can call me Bim." He asks for "honeyboy's name" so that he can notify the folks, and he takes the time to lovingly remind Birnam that "delirium is the disease of the night" before departing the darkened ward with a too sweet "good night". The inspired gothic innuendo of Faylen's performance left little doubt as to what Jane Wyman was really saving the hero from, and it was not writer's block.
***
A lot of that makes more sense in context, like the references to other films.
Summary- in the film the problem that drives the guy to drink is textually writers block but subtextually homosexuality. In the book it is textually having been falsely accused of homosexuality.
And the alcoholic is saved from his drinking, and subtextually from his homosexuality, by love of a good woman.
How does this apply to The Dark Age?
Well, Giles is not having writers block.
And we have presence of Ethan, and Jenny.
I'm... entirely unsure if/how that all sticks together.
Of course what actually saves Giles isn't sexual love at all (sticking with text). Buffy and Willow save him, despite himself. The girlfriend, the text representation of sexual love, gets into trouble by her association with Giles. And the subtext association Giles has with Ethan is trouble personified. I guess if sexuality is presented as a problem it is being rather equal opportunity. Which clearly fits season 2.
I don't know if this connection was even intended, but it caught my attention and spun up some interesting ideas, so I share here.
Buffy: I don't care from private! I care from dead guys attacking us. I care from you lost weekending in your apartment.
Transcript, The Dark Age
'Lost Weekend' is not listed in the Watchers Guide as a pop culture reference. But the entry for this episode has one big glaring mistake in, and the pop culture refs are often oddly incomplete. So, I figure it could still be a film reference. I haven't seen the film but between internet and library I found interesting information.
***
The Lost Weekend IMDb entry
Plot Outline: The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four day drinking bout.
Don Birnam, long-time alcoholic, has been 'on the wagon' for ten days and seems to be over the worst; but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother Wick and girlfriend Helen, he begins a four-day bender. In flashbacks we see past events, all gone wrong because of the bottle. But this bout looks like being his last...one way or the other.
***
That fits in a couple of ways. Buffy is concerned about Giles drinking. And on another level, The Dark Age is all about persistent addictions.
But I found another reference that makes it look a bit more complicated.
***
The Celluloid Closet
Vito Russo
'Triangle Classics, Illuminating the gay and lesbian experience'
p96-97
The view of the homosexual as being alien to his own society was also present in the constant deletion of specific homosexuality from the screen adaptations of literary works int he Forties. In 1945, Billy Wilder brought Charles Jackson's novel The Lost Weekend to the screen with Ray Milland as the alcoholic writer Don Birnam. In Jackson's novel, Birnam's alcoholism stems froma complex variety of reasons that includes a father fixation and a false accusation of his having had a homosexual relationship with a college fraternity brother. (Other Jackson books had had gay themes; a subplot in The Fall of Valor involved a marine anda married man.) In Wilder's version of The Lost Weekend, however, the motivation for Birnam's drinking became a simple case of writer's block. Seemingly a victim of the same problems that would later beset Tom Lee in Tea and Sympathy, Jackson's Don Birnam is also 'saved' by the love of a good woman. But in the film, Jane Wyman saves Ray Milland from his alcoholism, not from the cause of it. Paramount studio boss Buddy DeSylva stated the reason for the script changes: "If the drunk isn't an extremely attractive fellow who, apart from being a drunk, could be a hell of a nice guy, the audiences won't go for it."
Thus Milland's Don Birnam became as simplistically one dimensional as Hurd Hatfield's stoic Dorian Gray. Indeed, two little old ladies shopping on Third Avenue in The Lost Weekend point to Birnam on the street and cluck sympathetically, "Oh, there's that nice young man who drinks." But Birnam also becomes coyly and cruelly entertaining when drunk, and Millard's mannerisms suggest vaguely that his whispered problems might be rooted in greater psychological depths than the typewriter he keeps in his closet would indicate. A further hint that his closet might contain more than a typewriter comes with his mocking proposal of marriage to Nat the bartender. On being rebuked for his perversity, he says feyly, "Now, Nat. One more word and I shall have to consult our lawyer about a divorce." The scene is all the more disquieting when the viewer recognises Milland's sissy voice from 'If Men Played Cards Like Women Do' in Star Spangled Rhythm
An undertone of unnaturalness is retained in the film through Frank Faylen's caustic, sneering portrait of Bim, the male nurse who attends Birnam in the drunk tank during his delirium. Bim is lewdly homosexual and terrorizes Birnam with ambiguous suggestion. "Good morning, Mary Sunshine!" he intones sarcastically when they meet. "I'm a nurse. Name of Nolan, but my friends call me Bim. You can call me Bim." He asks for "honeyboy's name" so that he can notify the folks, and he takes the time to lovingly remind Birnam that "delirium is the disease of the night" before departing the darkened ward with a too sweet "good night". The inspired gothic innuendo of Faylen's performance left little doubt as to what Jane Wyman was really saving the hero from, and it was not writer's block.
***
A lot of that makes more sense in context, like the references to other films.
Summary- in the film the problem that drives the guy to drink is textually writers block but subtextually homosexuality. In the book it is textually having been falsely accused of homosexuality.
And the alcoholic is saved from his drinking, and subtextually from his homosexuality, by love of a good woman.
How does this apply to The Dark Age?
Well, Giles is not having writers block.
And we have presence of Ethan, and Jenny.
I'm... entirely unsure if/how that all sticks together.
Of course what actually saves Giles isn't sexual love at all (sticking with text). Buffy and Willow save him, despite himself. The girlfriend, the text representation of sexual love, gets into trouble by her association with Giles. And the subtext association Giles has with Ethan is trouble personified. I guess if sexuality is presented as a problem it is being rather equal opportunity. Which clearly fits season 2.
I don't know if this connection was even intended, but it caught my attention and spun up some interesting ideas, so I share here.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-11-21 10:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-21 11:24 pm (UTC):)
no subject
Date: 2004-11-21 10:37 pm (UTC)If that makes sense....
no subject
Date: 2004-11-21 11:24 pm (UTC)I hadn't heard the phrase myself (and I think still haven't outside of Buffy), but my culture is... odd and limited. Almost all F&SF Cult stuff, RPG players for a social group. There are amazing numbers of phrases I come across now I listen to the radio on the way in to college or talking to people at college that I just hadn't heard at all before, despite living in the same geography as the people using them.
While B is obviously referring to Giles shutting himself away, to understand that it also refers to the drinking is a cultural reference I think.
And it wasn't so much I started watching Buffy and wondered what the ref meant as I read the book and remembered the phrase in Buffy, which then made me think. Possibly useless thoughts, but think.