And what's nonsensical about 'reef worms'? I've eaten reef worms. Not bad, although an awful lot bluer than you expect food to be.
are you saying landmines are just too over the top? Or what? I think it's fairly sound, tactically.
Odd that that article spells it "yeg" as well.
It's "yegg"! It was in the title of a Bugs Bunny cartoon! It shows up again and again in "Miller's Crossing"!
I can't believe so many people have never heard the word "yegg".
w-lfs-n, I didn't even know the slang in Brick was anachronistic, but I feel that this supports my view of the movie as parody.
You would.
But you're still wrong.
Thanks Cryp! I was trying to remember the Looney Tunes reference.
How can one interpret the Tolkien reference as anything other than parody?
That's what I was saying, ac, but Ben would have none of it.
pls tag any spoilers (preemptive note to any who may be inclined toward indiscretion errors)
Sorry Matt, thought it was oblique enough as it was.
Oh it was, I just thought I should preempt since it seemed like you guys could be heading toward discussion of the plot.
Are you encouraging indiscretions? Indiscretions that Matt specifically asked us all to avoid? What are you, man, cruel?
Ok, er, I was agreeing with Tia that there was a certain broadness of caricature (and corresponding bigness of laughs) that suggested parody. I could see it being a straight but broadly-played crime film, a la Tarantino, but to the extent that it was referring to noir, it was often mocking that tone rather than copying it. Not the whole time, perhaps, but frequently enough to seriously undercut the hardboiled elements.
I am in weird frame of mind today. Latent cruelty vielleicht.
Obviously, i would not want you to actually commit those indescretions.
Yeah, and there were all these elements that just didn't jibe with the characters' actual world, but to classic noir, and so mark it as parody, like the slang, and, as I pointed out to Ben, costumes like Laura's feathered headress in the final scene that clearly belonged the 40's, and not to an OC high school student.
It's OK, I merely asked that you warn us of them. For instance, I have read the first paragraph but not the second of comment 17.
wait, I think I was right the first time. Spelling is hard.
You were and I thank you for it. "Jive with" grates on me almost as badly as "hone in on".
Yeah, and there were all these elements that just didn't jibe with the characters' actual world, but to classic noir, and so mark it as parody, like the slang, and, as I pointed out to Ben, costumes like Laura's feathered headress in the final scene that clearly belonged the 40's, and not to an OC high school student.
I don't see how those discrepancies make it parodic. For one thing, it's not at all clear that the slang doesn't belong to the characters' actual world. Sure, go to an actual OC high school, people won't be talking like that. But we're clearly being invited to imagine that talking that way is the norm in the movie, and no one gives the least bit of indication that it's a put-on—the director was apparently quite concerned that all the lines sound natural. That doesn't make it a parody.
And I didn't see it as mocking the tone. If I thought it were, I could see it more easily as being parodic, but as it stands, nope.
While there is humor in classic noir, it is mildly ironic and reflective of absurdity in the existential sense. Are all the shots focusing on the mother's pitcher like that? I don't think so.
Are they, therefore, mocking noir?
A parody doesn't have to be mocking. It can just be imitative for comic effect.
It's not purely imitative, I would say, but deliberately exaggerated, in such scenes, which yes, I would describe as mocking.
Which is to say that the two of you seem to be disagreeing on how to interpret pure imitation in an absurd context, whereas I'm saying that in a few key places it went far enough beyond pure imitation that there is no question of it not being parody.
The Pin is Julian Sanchez to a T, for the record.