Thursday, May 19, 2011

Maria and Arnold and, Oh Yeah, The Mildred

What I don’t get is why so many people are expressing their shock that Arnold would choose a Not Gorgeous woman for such a long-term schtupping assignment.

Are these people morons? Virgins? Naifs? Have they never had, or known others who’ve had, or even read the odd novel wherein certain characters have had crazy, schadenfreude-fueled, right-down-the-hall-from-my-stupid-wife sex?

Let me just bring up two points here: Willingness and Proximity.

Okay, four points: Perversity (Mildred evidently wants to be Maria, or at least wear her clothes, the better to mock her) and, oh yeah, Plantations. 

Remember plantations? Where the white slave-owners raped their slaves every minute and, being no more concerned with birth control than was Arnold, sired vast numbers of these slaves' children?

Well, they might have wiped out working plantations, but plantational thinking still rules the whole world—that’s what I said, Bub, the entire wide world—only now the Plantation is known as the Compound. 

Or, in some cases, like if you are French, the $3000 a night but oh-so-worth-it New York hotel room.  Just as rich (or poor) white men of old could do anything they liked to a slave without facing one single unpleasant consequence, rich white men of today can pretty much do the same thing. Maybe not with literal slaves, since we seem to have wiped out literal, that is to say legal, slavery, but certainly with women who, unlike Maria, enjoy neither money nor status, and especially woman of, no kidding, color.

Getting back to Mildred’s not looking like the young Ava Gardner, might I just point out how much money it takes to look any good after, say, forty? Do you know how much it costs to get those stupid streaks in your hair? To keep lifting your face off the ground and hiring surgeons to deal with those facial skeletal issues which, left unattended, will keep on making you look just like Eunice?

If you feel bad for Maria, let me just remind you that she knowingly married the son of a Nazi. I mean, really. Even the odious Joseph Kennedy might have chosen not to do that. Also, let’s ponder for just a moment her money. I dare say she will never have to work as a maid, nor will she ever have to live even one hour without squadrons of maids at her slightest command, washing her sheets and cleaning her toilets.

Is Mildred vile? Well, obviously. But she’s also Not All That Stupid. By making sure she had Arnold’s son, she’s achieved her own financial security (including a four-bedroom house with a pool, thanks) which should last her the rest of her ill-advised life. 

Which might be the best part about the death of literal slavery and the birth of the tests that prove DNA: Even a working woman of color can, if she’s lucky, get a hold of some kind of recourse. And I really hope that Jeffrey Shapiro gets to kick Monsieur Strauss-Kahn’s ass and win his client billions of dollars.  Dollars with which she too can hire squadrons of maids: all of them white, and of course male, and also completely, indelibly French.

6 comments:

  1. C'mon Ms. J., what's with the son of a Nazi jibe? Are you invoking the doctrine of original sin? If A is an A, well stick it to him, but not because his father was one.

    Love ya.

    Peter

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  2. Dear Peter,
    Oh my god, YES, I am TOTALLY invoking the Doctrine of Original Sin (which, as a former Catholic, is one of my favorites), but more to the point, I am invoking the doctrine that says that when one marries a PERSON, one also marries into said person's FAMILY. And if the Kennedys aren't all about families and heritage (I think now of Ethel who was never not pregnant), then, good god, who is? Founding the Peace Corps? Marching for Hitler? Cognitive dissonance? Happy Thanksgiving? I mean, really, Peter, what was she THINKING? Ah, yes, the muscles. She married a muscle.

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  3. Dear Jean,

    Well, since you've already stipulated that you are crazy, I'll just say, "you're crazy." If you're a former catholic, then you're not bound by their doctrines. Would you really drop your cowboy if you discovered his grandfather was a serial killer? I would have said Nazi, but then my timeline would be as crazy as you are. Haha. oh, you're quite right, she married a muscle, but he did make some funny movies. As a person? Jerk, jerk, jerk.

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  4. Dearest Anon (and how I wish I were too),
    Let me just clarify:
    I am as emotionally bound to my abandoned doctrines as Prometheus ever was to his rock.
    And I would not drop the cowboy if he HIMSELF was a serial killer. Not that he's mine to drop anyway since, in all truth, he belongs to his dog.
    As for The Muscle having made funny movies, I think surely not.
    Thanks for reading me.
    And for writing me.
    Your friend,
    Non-Anon

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  5. I can't believe you haven't checked in on Weinergate yet! My illusions are shattering.

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