There’s a new movie out today that seems to be of special interest to girls between the ages of 11 and 16. I’m not sure if you’ve heard about it, but it’s called New Moon. If it doesn’t ring a bell, here’s a short clip that’s been running on TV. (I just can’t see this too many times.)
There haven’t been so many young girls screaming so loud and so long at the same time since the historic day Justin Timberlake went solo.
Am I just grumpy, or has their screaming gotten shriller since the days of The Beatles? I’m anticipating that by the time the third movie of the Twilight series comes out, their youthful larynxes will combine with my aging eardrums to reach the effective pitch of a dog whistle.
And what’s there to say about the 50-year-old women who stand in with them and scream in solidarity for the bare-chested hunky young actors? They have more in common with John Leguizamo in To Wong Foo With Love Julie Newmar than Ann-Margret in Bye Bye Birdie. Other than that, and the fact that I’m glad they aren’t hanging out near my son’s school, I’m pretty much speechless.
The cast has about 9,000 young, attractive people in it. So as the pre-opening hype machine was working, you could tune into any talk show – morning, afternoon, evening or late-night – and be assured of seeing a different cast member with his own, personal shrieking harem. (In fact, if Turkish sultans had elicited this kind of audible reaction from young women, the word ‘harem’ would have a very different meaning today.) With every last cast member apparently booked onto every one of these shows, there hasn’t been a minute of spare airtime in the last two months for other important stuff like John and Kate’s divorce, Afghanistan war policy, or Lindsay Lohan’s VD.
At least the movie has started its run now, bringing the inevitable decline to the 9-and-a-half weeks of hysteria (until the Blu-Ray comes out – I’m guessing just in time for Valentine’s Day).
Finally, something really important that you may not have realized about this unheralded movie: Its release coincided exactly (give or take 36 hours) with the actual new moon in the lunar cycle.
Coincidence? Or proof that President Obama is a disciple of Satan?
It’s interesting that in describing how the shrillness of the teen screams affect your aging ears, you refer to the term “dog whistle”. A definition of “Dog Whistle Politics” is ‘a figurative device for something that cannot be heard or understood by everyone, or that surreptitiously compels people to come along.’ I suspect that most adults qualify for the first part of that definition and the kids, the latter. It was fun reading your comments.