Tuesday, December 6, 2011
FROM THE ALOTT5MA PROBABLY-UNNECESSARY ADAPTATIONS DESK: A new musical version A Christmas Story is proving fairly popular on the road, except that they've kept the scene with the waiters singing "Deck the Halls" in the Chinese restaurant, and, come on, people, it's 2011, and as the show's original composer said (he's been let go for "artistic differences"), “I had a very strong feeling that I didn’t want an Asian kid taken to a musical and saying to his parents, ‘Why are they making fun of us?’".
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My parents (born 1936 and 1937) swear by that movie. It is, to them, the perfect period piece of being a grade schooler in mid 1940s. I've never understood the need for the detail of bad singing by the Chinese waiters. It probably was perfectly acceptable humor in the 1940s -- and I suppose one could justify it that way -- but the movie is not written to be the humor of the 1940s, but the humor of the 1980s looking back on the 1940s. I suppose I should be bothered by the scene because it's inappropriate by the standards of today (or the 1980s (but see Long Duc Dong, et al)). But what bothers me about that scene is that it's not something Ralphie would have remembered from that Christmas. Ralphie has a great eye for what happened in the Christmas of 1947(?), but only for those things that a 10 year old would have seen and remembered: the bully. The rabbit suit. The Red Rider BB Gun with a compass in the stock. The Christmas tree lot. No 10 year old would have given the bad singing in a Chinese restaurant much thought, since he would have already been traumatized (or at least resigned) to eating Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant at all.
ReplyDeleteIt may be inappropriate by our standards today, but I'd disagree that it wouldn't have stood out to Ralphie. A kid growing up in Indiana aound the time of WWII (the director said he was aiming for a late-30s, early-40s setting) probably would not have run into a lot of asian people and very well might have been fascinated by the way that they tried/struggled to sing Christmas carols.
ReplyDeleteIt seemed to me that introducing the notion of Ralphie's Judaism at that point in the movie did nothing to advance the narrative.
ReplyDeleteMy extended family through marriage is from China. To a person, they love the Chinese restaurant scene and the "fa-ra-ras". I guess seeing it live may be a different story, or its only funny because it is a remembered part of a beloved movie. But no one is offended by it at all.
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