Mark's Pages

July 24, 2005:

Reviewers who try to understand the work as a "romantic comedy" are missing its thematic depth. Thematically it's a morality play, in which Jesus (Flor) and Satan (Debra) struggle over a soul in peril (Christina).

Jesus' victory is not assured. Satan's charisma is compelling, and Satan knows the forms of corruption that most tempt this particular mortal. A vision of elitehood: elite private beaches, elite private schools, elite methods of commanding others, so that she sees her own circumstances as subservient, and is ashamed.

Part of the fun lies in exactly this kind of layering. On the surface, the thing is a romance and you can interact with it by falling for the heroine, or wondering how the boy-meets-girl machinery will play, or what will happen after the inevitable boy-loses-girl. (In this instance, boy-loses-girl is not an interlude before boy-gets-girl-back; which seems to be one site of the most intense reviewer confusion.) Yet if you want to you can dip below that surface into the intriguing manipulation of a long mythical tradition. This is sometimes the fun of well-done pop. Below the glitz there's something serious going on.

Naturally not everyone chooses to leave the surface. I suppose that's a little amusing sometimes, for instance when reviewers miss the wicked-sharp social satire revolving gracefully around class, race, and gender: topics which Americans sometimes dislike thinking about. But it can also be alarming, for instance when one reviewer suggests that Bernice doesn't seem to be too much the worse for wear and tear. You respond by thinking how remarkable it is that such a sharp little work of art can leave people room for that kind of response. And how glad you are not to live in that person's home.