PLAGUE DIARY 5: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Caged 1950
I knew this movie was very relevant to our situation, so I went to find it on youtube, even though I always mix it up with Snake Pit (with Olivia de Havilland). Well this one has Eleanor Parker — who just does breathy acting for the whole first part until she gets tough and coarse at the end, when she’s better, but — it’s hard to forget all that unconvincing breathy innocence. Well, the movie does have Agnes Moorehead. She is doing something, I’m not quite sure what. She’s a great actress and she always has a plan. As the ‘good’ warden who is trying to improve conditions for prisoners she is, I think, at the very least, attempting something very difficult, trying to play a slightly maddening, clinical, obsessed, exacting person. Which is great, because otherwise the character would be simply a boring saint. And then there’s the amazing Evelyn Harper who plays ‘Matron.’ Evalyn Harper was six foot three and weighed in at two hundred and fifty pounds. She started out in vaudeville as a kid, and graduated into being a strong lady in the circus. Wow. And she’s really good, really mean, got an Oscar nomination for it. But then there is this situation (CAGED!!!) which is far, far too close to our own. Some of the quotes are super applicable. Such as this, from the rich girl who think she’s too privileged to be in prison: ‘Let me out of here! I don’t belong here! I’m Georgia Harrison!’ This quote I reserve for all the middle class hipster ladies who are ostensibly utilising the tremendously life-affirming opportunity of Coronavirus social distancing to exploring yoga, new quinoa recipes, online guitar lessons, and bonding with their children, during this ‘trying time.’ But really they just want to scream: ‘Let me out of here! I don’t belong here! I’m Georgia Harrison!” And then there’s: ‘I’m not like the others” which I think we should give to the virtue-signalling overweight Star Trek nerd who is sitting at home stuffing his face and getting high, no, not on dope, but on all the good he is doing for all the senior citizens in nursing homes — by doing exactly what he’s always wanted to do, block out all social obligations and get fat. And finally, there’s Eleanor Parker pacing by herself in solitary confinement, acting very badly, but offering us this precious gem: “Nothing to be scared of, being alone isn’t so tough! Stop thinking about it!” Is that the key? Should I just stop thinking about it? It sounds so easy. But then I go to my TV and some pinched-faced public health official seems to be giving herself a quiet orgasm, simply by saying, with a Nazi do-gooder fervour: ‘You’d better prepare for this to go on for months and months!’  One of my best female friends said ‘What a bitch, just because you can’t work out  a) the science to solve this or b) a way to get more medical equipment and hospital space — we have to stay at home until we starting eating our own hands?' There is the moment in Caged though, one that even Eleanor Parker can’t ruin (she later went on to play the fabulous Countess or Empress or whatever she was — the bad lady — a foil to all Julie Andrews’ syrupy sweetness in The Sound of Music, so maybe her acting did become at least useful in later years) she finds a cat in the snow, an adorable, triangle-faced calico that is all eyes, and hides it in the prison chest at the foot of her bed. But, tragically —it meows — and Matron hears it, and grabs it away from Eleanor, who promptly initiates a prison riot -- and before you know the cat is a stiff but adorable corpse, and Eleanor moans, tearfully: “All I wanted was the kitten.” Well that’s the way I feel. Jesus — all I wanted was the goddamn kitten. Just to see my friends and get drunk and have sex and see a play and go to a party and just bond with the friggin’ world. Which is what I generally try to do. Small price to pay, eh? Giving all that up, for the good of others? One of the inmates says “In this cage, you get tough, or you get killed.” I guess I better wise up.