Word: scarlette
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Amanda (Scarlett Johansson) and Laurel (Aleksa Palladino), according to convention hereafter referred to as "Manny" and "Lo," survive through shoplifting, house-breaking-and-sleeping-in, and the liberal use of their deceased mother's station wagon. When Lo gets undeniably pregnant, the spunky pair adds a bigger crime to their misdemeanors and kidnap a staid ex-nurse (Mary Kay Place) incongruously behind the counter at one of those sickeningly precious baby supplies stores. They then hole up at an abandoned country house. Barring some frenzied running around at the end, most of the film takes place there amidst woodsy surroundings...
...York Times theater critic noticed "the extraordinary artistry of a high-stepping, little dusky creature who describes herself as Butterfly McQueen." Two years later, the world saw McQueen as Prissy, the comically incompetent slave in the film classic Gone With the Wind. Her panicked "Lawdy, Miz Scarlett. I don't know nothing about birthing babies!" became one of the most quoted lines in movie history--and in later years, a focus of criticism for fitting an "Uncle Thomasina" stereotype. Ironically, McQueen herself fought to humanize the role, refusing to perform even greater indignities like a watermelon-eating scene...
...AFTER COLIN POWELL DECLINED TO enter the presidential race, many Americans felt an irritated deflation, followed by a wave of what might be called Scarlett O'Hara syndrome--a pining for the Ashley Wilkes we cannot have...
...American electorate's psychology that Powell should be the Ashley Wilkes in this piece, the unavailable paragon. (Pursuing the analogy too far is tough, since it involves transforming either Bob Dole or Bill Clinton into Rhett Butler.) As Powell's case shows, the romance of the withheld is powerful. Scarlett wanted Ashley because she could not have him. Human nature yearns for--idealizes--what is placed out of reach: Lycidas, the hero who dies in youth; Camelot, the bright, magic might-have-been. A politics of Zen--the most powerful presence is someone who isn't there...
Anyone past adolescence knows what moral to draw from the Scarlett and Ashley Wilkes story: Keep your dreams if you like (though Ashley may turn out to be to be a jerk when deprived of his chivalric mystique), but work with what you have--which Scarlett, God knows, did. Americans get the Presidents they exert themselves to deserve. That may or may not be a good thing; it is a mistake to get prissy about it. Selflessness shades into self-righteousness. If Presidents are chosen by the exertions of selfless zealots, the process may prove dangerously unrepresentative...