Master Index of Archived Threads


Dean+Jerry=America?

TheOldMole Jun 05 2007 01:23 PM

] The contrast between Martin and Lewis is usually described in sexual terms: the sleek womanizer versus the gawky adolescent ... But to borrow some terminology from Claude Levi-Strauss (one of the few French intellectuals, it seems, not known to have written about Mr. Lewis), their pairing reflects that cultural division Levi-Strauss hypothesized between the “raw” and the “cooked,” with Mr. Lewis representing natural man with all his animal instincts and complete lack of self-consciousness, and Martin representing the end product of civilization and socialization, polished and upholstered, distant and cool, self-possessed and vaguely duplicitous. If Martin was what America wanted to be — the young country suddenly pushed to the world stage, matching the Europeans and the Soviets with a manner and cunning of its own, a John F. Kennedy before the fact — then Mr. Lewis was what ’50s America was afraid it was, still a klutzy naïf, an overgrown child playing with dangerous toys. [URL=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/movies/homevideo/05dvds.html?ref=movies]source[/URL]

iramets Jun 10 2007 11:11 AM

You're posting in the wrong forum. This belongs in the "Cultural Artifacts that no one knows anything about anymore" Forum. Good luck. Seriously, that was interesting. I'll never think of Jerry Lewis again without thinking of the disorderly orderly with a finger on the button.

MFS62 Jun 10 2007 03:15 PM

Maybe Levi-Strauss should stick to making blue jeans. Later