Last week, I woke up in the middle of the night and turned on Turner Movie Classics (TCM). The movie they were watching was from 1954. BrigadoonI’d heard of it, but never seen it. It’s about two guys who go on a hunting trip to Scotland and discover a place in mid-18th century Scotland that feels like the way people lived in the mid-18th century, but in reality it’s the mid-20th century. One of the characters, played by Gene Kelly, falls in love with Brigadoon, a townsman, who is a beautiful woman played by Cyd Charisse.
I know that it is a fantasy in the obvious sense, but it is a fantasy in another sense, a sense familiar to anyone familiar with the economic history of the past three centuries.
I only watched the last 20 minutes, during which I see Cyd Charisse in a beautiful dress looking as if she’d stepped out of a 1950s magazine. trend.
See the problem?
If the village was really the mid-18th century, she wouldn’t look like this, she wouldn’t be wearing beautiful clothes, and she probably has rotten teeth.
I once thought about writing an article for a think tank that highlighted “The Hockey Stick” – a graph showing modern world GDP per capita from 1000 AD to today. The think tank representative said that the majority of their readers knew about the hockey stick. My guess is that there are at least a significant number who don’t.
It’s OK to fantasize about Brigadoon, but understand that if you were Gene Kelly’s character, the real Brigadoon would not be attractive and you would likely not be attracted to the woman he fell in love with.
Don Boudreau explains it in more detail: 5 Minute Video.
Pictured above is Cyd Charisse.
