November 3 redux

“I'm calm. I'm completely calm. You can leave me alone now”

– Margot

Someone is given something special for Giving Tuesday (USA)

 

Just before leaving home for a business trip, a father asks his three daughters what he can bring them as a return gift. The eldest two ask for silly, extravagant things. A monkey! A parrot! The youngest simply wishes the most beautiful flower which the father finds in an enchanted garden, guarded by a terrible beast. And will pay for with his life unless he gives his youngest away to the beast, to die in his place.

– Can such miracles really happen? – You and I are living proof.

#Cocteau and Clément's La Belle et la Bête is of course based on Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's fairy-tale, which on its turn was based on the classic myth of Cupid and Psyche.

Shopping online on Cyber Monday

 

In the soul crushing future of 1999, one heroic nuclear family bravely fulfils their gender-specific duties. While Father Mike works in his computer-aided office, Son Jamie fails at computer homeschool and Mother Karen slavishly shops, cooks, and cleans as if the 70s never happened.

 

Thankfully, the future turned out to be even bleaker.

“This we do for pleasure, so that we may shortly be at the mercy of venomous snakes and poisonous ants. How foolish can human creatures be.”

– Miss McCraw

A koala for World Lewis Day

 

It's not possible to be in nature, one can only be absorbed by it.

“The vicinity is reknowned for its venomous snakes and poisonous ants of various species. It is, however, a geological marvel.”

– Mrs. Appleyard

Someone protects a woman on White Ribbon Day

 

Leave it to popular media to create a fashion for helplessness. In the 110 years that have passed since William Randolph Hearst's titular heroine fought her way to #emancipation in The Perils of Pauline (1914), “the damsel in distress” is still very much the go-to trope for movie writers. Sadly, instead of debunking the belief that women need to be protected by men from men, it's now embraced by third wave feminism. Just yesterday – November 25, 2023 – I saw a call to arms from a leftwing feminist group to “protect girls” from the primal evil that is manhood. Oh how we did better once.

“I don't know what to do with her Highness. Say right and she'll go left, say left and she'll go right. And though she is a girl, she has never shown me a tear.”

– old lady-in-waiting

In Kurosawa's 隠し砦の三悪人, a couple of greedy peasants escort a man and woman across enemy lines after the man has promised them a share of the gold they're carrying. Unknowingly, the fools not only protect their bounty, but a general and princess trying to escape an enemy clan so they can rebuild their kingdom. And also unbeknownst to the tricksters, Makabe and Yuki are not as helpless as they may seem.

Holiday shopping on Black Friday (once just the USA, now this pest is everywhere)

 

A little boy takes in the magic of pre-Christmas, while the adults rush and worry about all that must to be bought.