Dressing Properly

Twitter Sonnet #176

Disney's dagger draws an inky liquid.
Bad water bubbles from the goblin frog.
The Lampshade's shouts are always insipid.
Blinding bulbs crack the criminal lost dog.
Contaminated green eyes see bright grey.
Strange olive oil salesmen garrotte God.
Voyeur drops leap from dramatic sea spray.
So salt streams send aloft a frenzied cod.
Golden faerie fish find fermenting corn.
Weak bourbon weeps for the want of water.
Fake angles defy geometry's scorn.
Biangle married the merman's daughter.
Venus invites violent screens of milk shake.
Icy sheets of nourishment wash cheap steak.

I watched Viridiana last night, a 1961 Luis Brunuel film, a very pessimistic and insightful film about human nature.

I kept trying to think of who Francisco Rabal, who played the character called Jorge in the movie, reminded me of;



Finally I realised it was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Obviously the movie was made long before anyone heard of Ahmadinejad, but apart from some physical resemblance, Jorge has the similar style and manner of a rich, powerful, self-serving and secular gentleman, which is fitting as his character is set up as a contrast to the title character, Viridiana, his deeply religious cousin who's about to become a nun at the beginning of the movie.



I have a feeling Jorge may have been inspired by another dictator, Francisco Franco, the dictator whose rise to power had prompted Brunuel to flee Spain. But the movie doesn't quite break down into a right versus left mentality, rather it seems intent on showing how inappropriate it is to put human beings in either mould. Classes are clearly portrayed by the film--the family to which Viridiana and Jorge belong is very rich, and the patriarch, Don Jaime, Jorge's father and Viridiana's uncle, is a man shown to have been driven somewhat mad by the isolation caused by his wealth, position, and death of his wife. The pious Viridiana works somewhat as the audience avatar as Jaime's wretched behaviour seems partially responsible for her idea to open his large house to beggars after Jaime's suicide. Jorge moves in as well, and his insensitive and cool behaviour immediately makes him less sympathetic that the physically and mentally ill poor that Viridiana takes in.



However, the movie puts together a series of events, not unlikely in themselves but perhaps implausibly unlucky cumulatively, that show the lower class to be at least as vile as Jorge's class, with Jorge having the advantage of social refinement and tact. The end of the film is sexy, funny, and bleakly insightful in its implications about the mode of living required by human need. That's not a combination you find in movies very often, and it's one of the things that makes this one quite brilliant.