Excuse me?

[selenak]

Reading the the review of the latest David Cronenberg movie, I stumbled across the following sentence:

Agatha is at the centre of the film for another reason: she is a personal assistant, or, in the cynical slang, a "chore whore", someone very different from the gallant courtiers that attend Gloria Swanson in Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd.

"Gallant courtiers"? In Sunset Boulevard?!? Gallant courtiers?????? Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian, you must have watched a different Billy Wilder movie. One where Joe Gillis isn't Norma's paid boy toy, and Max von Mayerling isn't her former-husband-turned-her-butler-who-writes-all-her-fanmail. The only person in Sunset Boulevard who acts in a manner which can be described as "gallant" towards Norma Desmond/Gloria Swanson is Cecil B. De Mille when she visits his set, and that's an improvisation because he didn't expect her and doesn't have the heart to tell her his flunkies are only interested in her car.

I haven't been so bemused since an article called Milton's Satan a "gleeful devil". (This for the king of Byronic gloom and daddy issues; if you want gleeful devils, check out Goethe's Mephistopheles, is all I'm saying.)

Comments

[thirdblindmouse]

o_O ...I wonder if the writer had originally planned a different sentence than one where "whore" and "personal assistants as represented in Sunset Boulevard" were contrasted. If I don't proofread my work I often end up with two different thoughts merged into nonsensical results.

[selenak]

That's possible, but still, one would hope the Guardian can afford to have their articles proofread. I strongly suspect, however, that the author might not have watched Sunset Boulevard at all and instead knows of it only via cultural osmosis, i.e. he knows it's the one where Gloria Swanson portrays an excentric silent movie star, and he's seen the concluding scene as a clip somewhere, but he doesn't know anything else...

[thirdblindmouse]

I have less and less faith in any proofreading being done even on professionally published writing. I would think that Sunset Boulevard even through cultural osmosis would not give the impression of glamor. My attempt at testing this, however, got as far as asking, "Have you seen Sunset Boulevard?" and getting the puzzled response, "...The place?" My respondent did eventually recognize the quote about the close-up, so maybe you're right that "eccentric silent movie star" is the only thing people know about it. Still, the same logic that says The Guardian can afford to have articles proofread says The Guardian can afford to hire a film critic who knows the movies he's voluntarily referencing...

[havocthecat]

I just want to know what kind of idiot is trying to popularize assistant work with slang like "chore whore." Mostly so I can write them cranky letters.

[selenak]

David Cronenberg's scriptwriter(s), presumably, though for all I know they picked up an actual in use expression...

[havocthecat]

Either way, ew. Especially as an administrative assistant I say that, because I know first hand the kind of power imbalance that goes with assistant jobs and how you can't actually say "no" to most of those personal requests. Just. People.

I hope it's not an expression already in use. I am not as familiar with UK slang as I am with US, naturally.

[muccamukk]

Always interesting when a male reviewer manages to call a female character a whore (I'm hoping he's at least quoting movie dialogue), then call non-glamorous male characters in the same job "gallant." By interesting, I mean...

[selenak]

Quite. The impression I got from the review was that it's quoting movie dialogue, but it says a lot of the reviewer that while doing so he comes up with an (utterly inaccurate)contrast to Sunset Boulevard which frames the male character's occupations there in such flatterng terms at the same time.

...remember when the Musketeers episode broadcast where we saw Aramis and Porthos solving their cash problem via rich women and part of the viewers, including some reviewers who apparantly never read Dumas, were omg SHOCKED in a way they had not beein by Constance pretending to be a prostitute in the pilot, or for that matter actual subsequent (female) prostitutes) in the show?

[lizvogel]

Perhaps the reviewer was being sarcastic? One can hope.