"He Loved Big Brother"

[poliphilo]

In Peter Mullan's terrific movie about institutionalised abuse, The Magdalene Sisters, an archbishop treats the imprisoned girls to a Christmas showing of The Bells of St Mary's and the sadistic, power-mad sister in charge stands up and gives a cooing and ingratiating little speech about how she used to go to the movies with her father and how she liked the westerns best.

And the realisation dawns that not only does this terrible woman believe that God is on her side, she also, God help us, believes that she's cute.

Monsters never think of themselves as monstrous. Stalin loved drinking games. Hitler was fond of children and dogs. Mao went among his people with a great big silly grin on his face.

I won't (because I'm a bit of a fraidy cat) mention the names of any grinners, smirkers and jokers who are still alive and in power.

Sister makes her twee little jokes and the girls laugh at them.

The self-delusion of the ruler is perfectly matched to the self-abasement of the ruled.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That does sound interesting. I don't read a lot of fantasy, but I'm always up for something a little out of the ordinary.

The last fantasy series I read was Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. That really had me hooked.

[saskia139.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Pullman, but my teenage stepdaughter *loved* His Dark Materials, and that's a strong point in its favour.

I understand what you mean about Tolkien. Saruman had a bit of the seductive thing going, but not enough self-deception, you know? If you know the Harry Potter books, I'd like to point to the fact that Delores Umbridge, self-important bureaucrat, is much more scary and dangerous than Voldemort, self-styled Dark Lord, bwahahaha.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Saruman is more interesting than Sauron. I think one of the best things in the books is the Scouring of the Shire- where a cut-down-to-size Saruman reappears as Sharkey- and I was sorry they left it out of the film (though I understand it might have seemed anticlimactic.)

[saskia139.livejournal.com]

In one way I didn't miss the Scouring--it's always a painful part of the book for me--but I would like to have seen what Mr. Lee did with "Sharkey". I hope I'm that cool when I'm his age. *g*

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We didn't see nearly enough of Lee's Saruman. It was a shame that he got cut from the cinema release of ROTK

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

have you seen the extended version of ROTK? saruman's in that, although they completely change what happened in the book.

i would have liked to have seen the scouring of the shire as well, it's one of my favorite parts.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the extended ROTK. But I mean to. One can never have enough of Christopher Lee.