Artigo Revisado por pares

The Thing: <i>My Crazy Family</i>

2008; Volume: 38; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/flm.0.0041

ISSN

1548-9922

Autores

Susanna Rich,

Tópico(s)

Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research

Resumo

The Thing: My Crazy Family Susanna Rich —Poisonous ideals … Robert Haas and Brenda Hillman Who needs a Pillsbury-Dough-Boy daddy nice-nice-ing sunshine up your assets? Or a doo doo doodoo Martha Stewart mom making you Snap! Snap! to her will, double-sticking it to you about her doo doo doodoo goody-goody good things? The Addams Family taught memy crazy family had it right! We live in dungeon dreams of Brady-Bunch belonging. Better to Snap! Snap! off the reeky rose heads of a Hallmark Card life— all that Father Knows Best doo doo doodoo others televise they have. Caress, instead, like Morticia, the thorns— those lush dependable claws of lust, sloth, greed, envy, hate, and grief that last, unlike petals, and last. Snap!Snap! out of your float-down-the-River Denial and be free. Confess! Surreal and funereal is realer than real. Your doo doo doodoo grandmama is Snap! Snap!-ing daggers at her son, her daughter-in-law, her grandchildren. Daddy would rather stay home sucking a doo doo doodoo Cubanito rolled in stocks. Your uncle is a festering conduit of charges—a remake of Betty’s boop-oop-a-doop Grampy flashing— light bulbs. Are you saying “my crazy family is going to make me Snap! Snap!”? Then, you are, as I am in my crazy family, the official Thing T. Thing, this give-us-a-hand jane- or jack-in-the-box, dismemberment—this member meant for delivering doo doo doodoo ego rubs, for dusting secrets off the table? Come dirty! Fess up! It’s a Snap! Snap! to make-wrong, to back-scratch only to be back-scratched (with a two-handed back-scratcher), to bitch and snarl my crazy family. Harder to be, as I am, as thing as Thing. But I have no skittering (dee dee de) Itt; no Lurch intoning You rang? You rang? and being that someone to turn pages for, to play for me, pay for me. To secure your place in the family all you need to doodoo doodoo is make a face irrelevant, a voice— Snap! Snap! Unnamed and unnameable. Be the one hand doo doo doodoo-ing them on. But keep the other to yourself—out of the boxed-in, dangling a dervish spin-spinning yourself into the beloved, the beloved. Conduct yourself, as I do, one hand firmly on the Bible of my crazyfamily, the other a floating cursor on my PC, an illusionist detached, prestidigitating my crazy family to appear and then, doo doo doodoo . . . . [End Page 112] Susanna Rich Kean University susanna@rtonline.net Copyright © 2008 Center for the Study of Film and History

Referência(s)
Altmetric
PlumX