As part of our seasonal entertainment, we went to see a play at the community theater titled The Christmas Story. It’s supposed to be a Midwestern Christmas tradition, and it’s a story of castrated masculinity that starts in childhood and lasts all the way to adulthood. It’s kind of disturbing with all the beaten down, squashed masculinity.
N was repeating “what horror” all through the play.
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” titled The Christmas Story.”
Articles! Are you sure it’s not “A Christmas Story”? Very different…
“N was repeating “what horror”
But he does that during “Mister Rogers”, so…..
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It has to be A Christmas Story. A Christmas movie was made based on it, the only Christmas movie/play I tolerate besides Le père Noël eat une ordure. If so, I wonder how different the theatrical version (the original?) is different than the movie version. I do not see much castrated masculinity in the movie.
Is there a leg lamp in the play?
If indeed it is A Christmas Story, don’t watch the sequel, which, yes, is super castrating!
Ol.
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Yes, the one with the ugly lamp! There was a raffle in the intermission where people could win the lamp. We didn’t participate because I will be tortured in hell with something this hideous.
The only nice part of the play was when a little girl taught the older woman about the nature of love. That if you love a person, you’ll love their ugly lamp just because it gives them joy.
The rest of the play was kind of disturbing.
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” only nice part of the play was when a little girl taught the older woman about the nature of love”
There’s nothing remotely like that in the movie…. which is based on bits and pieces of various semi-autobiographical stories by Jean Shepherd (a man despite the spelling).
The movie was not a financial success when released but gathered a devoted following over the years. It is funny and refreshingly unsentimental… and I don’t remember anything that could be called castrating… Ralphie’s hope for a gun keeps getting shot down (so to speak) by men and women alike…. and the relationship between the parents is generally very solid (despite the incident with the lamp, a one off event and not a pattern).
While it’s set amorphously around 1940 (a lot of it rings true for growing up male in post WWII America up until the ending of the Great Compression. It’s also uncannily describes the exaltation of receiving a wanted gift that had been given up on and the almost immediate disappointment that comes from that.
Apparently it’s been adapted for the stage twice (once a plain play and once as a musical). I suspect it was sentimentalized and demasculinized for the stage. The movie doesn’t talk about love at all but it shows familial love in very concrete terms.
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The nature of manhood is that men fall in love with crazy projects that women see as unnecessary and dangerous. This is the central conflict between manhood and womanhood. Women want to be safe and men want to do risky things. A castrating womanhood is the kind that shoots down the husband’s “crazy” plans and crushes boys’ rambunctious, risky play as unhealthy and in need of being medicated out of existence. This kind of womanhood wants men to be a version of women and boys to be a version of girls. We see it everywhere in the education system, for example.
A fruitful coexistence between women and men involves both sides accepting the other’s difference. Women should respect the men’s risk-taking and men should respect the women’s need for safety.
As for the play, the man routinely grabs a stick and runs to poke it violently into a heater after which the wife gives him a blue bowling ball for Christmas. You don’t need to be Freud to notice the imagery.
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“nature of manhood … and womanhood”
In the movie you get the idea she could have maybe learned to live with the lamp but he insists on placing it in a front window so passers by can see it (an assault on her role as keeper of the family’s public reputation).
Other than that the relationship is very solid and she either ignores or plays along with his many weird pursuits.
The play sounds like something to miss….
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I don’t recall any little girls from the movie. It’s essentially about boys.
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The main character, a little boy, gave a toy spider as a Christmas gift to a girl he likes. She normally hates spiders but she liked this one because it’s from the boy she likes. The older woman who has been mocking her husband for liking the ugly lamp realized she was being a douche. The lamp was important to him, and age broke it out of meanness. It’s a good message.
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