HomeschoolrsRUs
06-13-2005, 01:14 PM
The Honeymooners
By James Bowman (editor@spectator.org)
Published 6/13/2005 12:02:42 AM
As we look back at him, Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden in "The Honeymooners" looks more and more like a tragic figure. At least he was like King Lear or Othello or Oedipus in not knowing something about himself that the audience did know. In his case, what he didn't know was that his self-presentation was transparent to them, and that everyone could see through his bluster to the weak, vain, greedy, petty self that he thought to keep hidden. But where the essential information withheld from the tragic heroes would lead to their irretrievable ruin, Jackie's Ralph was like the Warner Brothers' immortal Wile E. Coyote: blown up, shot or dismembered on every encounter with his nemesis, usually by a combination of bad luck and his own foolishness, he would be back next week for more. Like the coyote too, the other thing that he didn't know and that the audience did is that he could never win the contest of wits in which he was engaged.
What the roadrunner was to the coyote, of course, his wife Alice (Audrey Meadows) was to Ralph. It was vital to the whole set-up that he should believe himself to be the king in his own tenement castle, according to the patriarchal assumptions which could in the 1950s still be taken for granted, while even the dimmest of the TV audience could see that it was really Alice who ruled the roost. But perhaps the greater genius of the original conception lay in the character of Ed Norton (Art Carney), the goofball sewer-worker and friend to whom Ralph always felt effortlessly superior but who was in reality another road runner, always one step ahead of him. Ralph was the original lovable loser, and the more lovable for believing himself to be a success, or pretending to believe it.
All this overlong preamble to a discussion of John Schultz's movie version of The Honeymooners is necessary, I think, because we have to understand the immense cultural significance of the archetype that Schultz and company are taking on. From Fred Flintstone to Homer Simpson, the popular culture's images of the great American patriarch have owed an enormous, an irreplaceable debt to Gleason's Ralph Kramden. It is also important to understand this because -- although there is one postmodern joke when the movie's Ralph (Cedric the Entertainer) mentions "the Lodge" and Alice (Gabrielle Union) replies "The Lodge? What are you, Fred Flintstone?" -- there is little evidence that Schultz's movie does. Putting Cedric into the Jackie Gleason part looks like not a bad idea on the face of it, and Mike Epps as Norton is also promising. But neither of them proves to be quite up to the semi-mythic roles they have taken on.
The rest of this movie review found here: The American Spectator (http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8292)
By James Bowman (editor@spectator.org)
Published 6/13/2005 12:02:42 AM
As we look back at him, Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden in "The Honeymooners" looks more and more like a tragic figure. At least he was like King Lear or Othello or Oedipus in not knowing something about himself that the audience did know. In his case, what he didn't know was that his self-presentation was transparent to them, and that everyone could see through his bluster to the weak, vain, greedy, petty self that he thought to keep hidden. But where the essential information withheld from the tragic heroes would lead to their irretrievable ruin, Jackie's Ralph was like the Warner Brothers' immortal Wile E. Coyote: blown up, shot or dismembered on every encounter with his nemesis, usually by a combination of bad luck and his own foolishness, he would be back next week for more. Like the coyote too, the other thing that he didn't know and that the audience did is that he could never win the contest of wits in which he was engaged.
What the roadrunner was to the coyote, of course, his wife Alice (Audrey Meadows) was to Ralph. It was vital to the whole set-up that he should believe himself to be the king in his own tenement castle, according to the patriarchal assumptions which could in the 1950s still be taken for granted, while even the dimmest of the TV audience could see that it was really Alice who ruled the roost. But perhaps the greater genius of the original conception lay in the character of Ed Norton (Art Carney), the goofball sewer-worker and friend to whom Ralph always felt effortlessly superior but who was in reality another road runner, always one step ahead of him. Ralph was the original lovable loser, and the more lovable for believing himself to be a success, or pretending to believe it.
All this overlong preamble to a discussion of John Schultz's movie version of The Honeymooners is necessary, I think, because we have to understand the immense cultural significance of the archetype that Schultz and company are taking on. From Fred Flintstone to Homer Simpson, the popular culture's images of the great American patriarch have owed an enormous, an irreplaceable debt to Gleason's Ralph Kramden. It is also important to understand this because -- although there is one postmodern joke when the movie's Ralph (Cedric the Entertainer) mentions "the Lodge" and Alice (Gabrielle Union) replies "The Lodge? What are you, Fred Flintstone?" -- there is little evidence that Schultz's movie does. Putting Cedric into the Jackie Gleason part looks like not a bad idea on the face of it, and Mike Epps as Norton is also promising. But neither of them proves to be quite up to the semi-mythic roles they have taken on.
The rest of this movie review found here: The American Spectator (http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8292)