Tumblr already has a personalization algorithm it’s called my beloved mutuals who have great taste and only wish to psychologically damage me sometimes
Gerard Way witnesses 9/11 and as a consequence, starts My Chemical Romance
Stephanie Meyer sees My Chemical Romance and becomes inspired to write Twilight
Somewhere in Rio de Janeiro, a man by the name of Felipe Neto is so outraged by the Twilight movies that he makes a hate video about them that goes so viral he becomes one of Brazil’s biggest YouTubers
His brother Luccas Neto rides off his fame and becomes a children’s YouTuber
Across the Atlantic, Portuguese children become obsessed with his videos. Like the lusophone Jake Paul
Portuguese children watch his videos so fucking much that they begin talking like they’re from Rio
Portuguese parents are horrified by the Brazilian Portuguese but can’t make it stop
Brazilian Portuguese slowly eats alive the European Portuguese dialect
there are literally social medias ive never even heard of in the list of the new “no promotion of the competition” rule on Twitter and yet Tumblr is not one of them like… those rumors that the website died post-porn really keep saving our asses over and over again huh
Ok Tumblr it’s your Elder here to remind you that yes, the Northern Hemisphere nights are dark and the cold is getting into your bones and maybe you think everything’s going to keep getting worse forever and you’ll just get older and older until everyone and everything you love is dead: but you’re only partly right.
Because yes sure we are all gonna die but in the meantime and maybe even because of that, there’s joy. Even if it’s only a bird half glimpsed from a moving vehicle, even if it’s only the warmth in a cup of coffee, even if it’s only the memory of someone who adored you as whole-chestedly and unconditionally as you deserve to be adored, joy is real in the world.
And tomorrow morning as I write this, the sun will shine along the passage at Newgrange and the sun daggers will frame the petroglyph in Chaco Canyon, and that is evidence that the long slow celestial mechanics of reversion to the mean will pull us inexorably back to springtime and the first green things growing out of the earth. The elders before me built these monuments to remind me to remind you that the sun will return.
And in the meantime let’s hold hands in the dark. Let’s tell the bleakest jokes we can think of at funerals to try and get the bereaved to laugh. Let’s hug each other to coregulate our tender nervous systems that are trying so hard to keep us safe and alive. Let’s watch how fast the efficiency of solar power is overtaking that of fossil fuels (effectively free energy by 2035: let’s live to see it.) Let’s revel in gods like pigeons and coyotes that can learn to coexist with humans.
Let’s remember that there are more ordinary people of goodwill than we can possibly imagine: people who observe stop signs and pull over to let fire engines pass and who pay their fucking taxes and never cross pocket lines: normal working people who are kind to animals and who love all children and who feel solidarity across race and class and gender lines. Let’s be those people and raise our children of blood and choice to be those people, the infrastructure of the world, the sunbeams shining into the dark.
I don’t know if I can contain my “The Muppet Christmas Carol has better costume design than most Oscar-nominated period dramas” rant until after Thanksgiving you guys, I have…so many Thoughts
Ok, buckle up kids.
Basically they did not have to go as hard as they did here. A Christmas Carol covers 60 years of fashion through flashbacks and they still manage to do nearly everything right.
I’m mainly going to be talking about the human actors here because it’s harder to judge Muppet costumes proportionally, but those costumes are still on point 90% of the time.
First off, A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, and anyone who knows me knows I love the absolute train wreck that was mid-19th century men’s fashion. Do you like plaid? GOOD, BECAUSE IT’S ALL PLAID. Mixed with whatever else your little Victorian heart desires, color schemes be damned. Go wild.
This of course means I absolutely love Fred.
This outfit is hideous and it is also 1000% on point.
We also get to see him in a different outfit the next day, along with his wife and some friends.
First off, MORE PLAID, good for you. Second, I can literally find near-identical images of both these ladies’ dresses just by googling “1843 fashion plate”, I shit you not. To the damned year.
A good part of the story involves travelling through Scrooge’s life, so we get to see the costumes varying wildly over the course of several scenes. This was a time when styles were changing rapidly, and you had to keep up if you wanted to be fashionable and keep up appearances. Fashion changed so fast that you can often pinpoint an outfit to within a year or two like the ones above.
First, we go to Scrooge’s childhood school. Given the timeline that’s normally put forward Michael Caine is definitely not old enough to play Scrooge, but ignore that for now. Let’s say if Scrooge is 75ish in 1843, it’s about 1783 when we see him leaving school and going off to be an apprentice. We actually see a few years of Little Scrooge fashion, but it’s fairly standard stuff. Scrooge doesn’t have a super childhood and his clothing is pretty plain, but it’s totally on par for the time. Why this haircut though? It makes me sad.
Then we jump ahead a few years and it’s about 1789. The whole group is attending the Fozziwig Christmas party and have gotten tarted up like they’re about the storm the Bastille, including Gonzo and Rizzo.
Again, they look absolutely ridiculous and it is absolutely accurate.
Now, this is super ostentatious and a lot of people would have considered it way too French for their taste in this time period. But it definitely did happen (I’ve seen stripey bubblegum pink menswear in person) and like. It’s the Muppets. So, Rule of Funny.
Scrooge and Belle are dressed way closer to average Londoners of the time, and it’s worth noting that both are supposed to be somewhat poor. Fozzy pays everyone well but Lil’ Scrooge is still a skinflint and Belle is just getting by. They’re both looking darn good but their clothes are much more understated than everyone else’s and maybe even on the verge of out of style.
Even their hair is pretty good. Including his. Also, holy shit does this guy look like he could be a young Michael Caine. Like, he doesn’t actually look how Michael Caine looked when he was that age, but if I didn’t know that I would totally buy it. Wow.
Then we jump ahead another ten to twelve years or so. This is the period I know the least about, especially when it comes to outerwear, so Jane Austen stans please comment. I don’t think it looks too bad though.
Here’s a couple of fashion plates from 1801 and 1803 for comparison.
I’d also like to point out that there is a wide variety of costumes based on social class that we get to see in the 1843 “present” that you wouldn’t really notice. So while the Scrooge family that’s doing alright for itself is wearing the latest looks, the rest of the town is not. A few of the women in the crowd dancing around Scrooge during “It Feels Like Christmas” are wearing dresses a couple of years out of date. Not too far, but you can see some looks from the tail end of the 1830s before women started shrink-wrapping their sleeves onto their arms.
You can see something similar to these outfits from 1839 in the crowd.
Contrast this with Mrs. Cratchit, who is living in poverty and has put on her absolute best dress for Christmas; it’s silk but it’s ten years out of style.
This would have been the height of fashion in the early-mid 1830s.
And that’s important for making a world look real. Fashion was super important back then, but even so average people weren’t necessarily chucking their clothing out every year to keep up with the latest fashions unless they could really afford to. You would get there eventually, but you don’t want everyone in your universe, rich and poor, to look like they just stepped out of the latest fashion magazine.
It’s absolutely astonishing to me that they put so much effort into this. I don’t tend to go down the rabbit hole of nitpicking historical costumes in movies as much as some, but when a movie that you never expected does it very right it just throws me for a loop.
Was everything perfect? No, I don’t think any movie is. But this is the damn Muppets. They were under no obligation to do this. Add to that the fact that it’s one of the more accurate renditions of the story, to the point of including a ton of the original dialogue, both through the characters and through the narration, and they just created a masterpiece.
Credit where credit is due! Ann Hollowood and Polly Smith were the Costume Designers!
And shawl collar waistcoats like they’re wearing start appearing in the 1790′s too, though you see more of them a bit later. They’ve even got wee little cockades on their hats!! If this was any other costume movie I’d complain about the shiny plastic wigs, but I can’t very well do that when muppets have plastic hair anyways, so it’s fine.
Scrooge’s suit in that late 18th century scene does have a very modern looking fit in the shoulders and sleeves, and shoulder pads (ugh!), but does have the shoulder seams nicely angled and set back so I think they were trying their best and were just not familiar with historical tailoring techniques. His waistcoat looks great though! And not a single shitty stacked lace bib to be seen, which makes this better than a tragically large proportion of 18th century movies.
Someone pointed out on another thread that Miss Piggy would have altered her dress to be more up to date, which is true, but still! Darn good costumes.
I’ve been thinking about this recently and it’s true! In the book
Mrs. Cratchit’s dress is referred to as “twice-turned,” meaning that she
had literally picked apart her dress and remade it into a more modern
style, likely turning it inside out in the process, twice, to
save money. This was very common in the period. Generally much older women were more likely to wear out-of-date fashion, because once you hit 80 you stop caring what people think. But it does beg the
question how much of this detail in the movie is for the benefit of the
few and how much of it is for the benefit of the general audience.
A
few historians of the internet variety have liked to point out similar
movies that really go above and beyond in costuming, to the point of
doing things like using outdated prints to denote a character of lower
status, which is what the obvious choice would be here. But I wonder if
anyone outside of the special interest bubble would realize that. If
Miss Piggy had worn that pattern in a more modern style, would your
average Muppet lover be able to say “ah yes, clearly that is an 1830s
plaid, what a wonderful detail?” But then for that matter, would an
average Muppet lover look at the current costuming and know what it is
telling us either?
It’s a very thin and wobbly line that
historians must take when making things for public consumption, where to
stretch a metaphor a bit more than one should in order to get a point
across, and where to hold back so the nerds can have a fun easter egg.
(I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer to this).
