Month: September 2017

Rosemary’s Baby

RORY (after being startled by Dean): God! You’re like Ruth Gordon just standing there with a tannis root. Make a noise.
DEAN: Rosemary’s Baby.
RORY: Yeah.
DEAN: Well, that’s a great movie. You’ve got good taste.

Rosemary’s Baby is a 1968 horror film directed by Roman Polanski, based on the 1967 best-seller of the same name by Ira Levin. In the film, a young housewife named Rosemary (played by Mia Farrow) discovers that a cult has tricked her into bearing a demonic child. Ruth Gordon (1896-1985) plays Rosemary’s elderly neighbour Minnie Castavet, who is a leader in the cult; Gordon won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.

Minnie gives Rosemary a pendant necklace filled with tannis root (a fictional herb), which the cult apparently deploys as an all-round demonic treatment. As Minnie hovers around handing Rosemary tannis root in food and drink as well, it is hard to know which exact moment in the film Rory has in mind – or if she is so startled that she doesn’t quite know herself what she is saying.

Rosemary’s Baby was the #8 film of 1968, was acclaimed by critics, and is regarded as a classic movie. Dean is right that Rory has good taste. Fans of Dean Forester (Jared Padalecki) can enjoy this time during Season 1 when Dean quickly picked up on old film references and seemed to be an intellectual equal for Rory. It won’t last.

Dean Forester (Jared Padalecki)

Dean Forester (Jared Padalecki) appears in the first episode of Gilmore Girls, and is immediately set up to be Rory’s boyfriend with a meet cute that involves books and a movie reference. Dean was written to be the perfect first boyfriend for a teenage girl, which seems to mean he has almost no life or personality apart from being in love with Rory, and an obsessive jealous streak. I guess those are things that inexperienced teenage girls might find endearing. However, it didn’t take long for cracks to begin showing in the perfect Dean facade, so perhaps even the writers got bored with this conceit.

Jared Padalecki was not the first choice to play Dean: in the original Pilot episode, he was played by Nathan Wetherington, who gave him a slightly more bashful, skater-boy feel. Interestingly, in a later episode Lorelai says that Dean reminds her of Christopher, Rory’s father, and while Padalecki doesn’t really resemble David Sutcliffe, Wetherington looks much more like him.

Nathan Wetherington was considered for the role of Anakin Skywalker in the Stars Wars prequels, but took himself out of the running when he learned he had the role of Dean on Gilmore Girls, and also missed out on playing Seth on teen drama series The OC, so he’s had some unlucky breaks.

Rory’s Locker Books

When Rory is cleaning out her locker at Stars Hollow High, the viewer can identify at least three of the books she has piled up in there.

One is The Second Sex by French philosopher Simone Beauvoir, a 1949 work which is a seminal text in modern feminism. The book speaks frankly about teenage girls and their sexuality, which could be important information for Rory. It is also very critical of marriage as an oppressive instution which leads women into domestic and emotional slavery: does this have any effect on Rory’s understanding of relationships? The book does seem to have informed Lorelai’s views, who is committment-shy, not interested in cooking and housework, and highly focused on her career. We may wonder if Rory borrowed the book from her mother: especially as the book discusses the difficulties of mother-daughter relationships.

Another is Mistress of Mellyn, a 1960 Gothic romance by popular British novelist Victoria Holt (pen name of Eleanor Hibbert). Set in Cornwall in the 19th century, a young governess finds romance with her employer, but there is some mystery over the fate of his first wife which the girl investigates. The book has a similar plot and themes to classics such as Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, and Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. This literary romance became an immediate bestseller upon publication. Could this choice of novel show Rory’s desire for romance?

You might be able to spot Chikara!: A Sweeping Novel of Japan and America by American author Robert Skimin, published in 1984 – the year that Rory was born. It’s an epic historical saga about a Japanese-American family, covering the years from the early twentieth century to the 1980s. It may be telling that the book involves multiple generations, and a man’s search for power for himself and his sons – but in the end it is his granddaughter who triumphs.

If nothing else, the books demonstrate the wide range of Rory’s reading.

Amish

RORY: And we get to wear uniforms. No more having people check you out to see what jeans you’re wearing ’cause everyone’s dressed alike in boring clothes and just there to learn.
LANE: Okay, there’s academic-minded and then there’s Amish.

The Amish are a group of traditional Christian churches, originating from Swiss Anabaptists, with a strong presence in Pennsylvania. They favour a simple, rural lifestyle with plain conformist dress and a rejection of modern technology and conveniences.

Friday Night Dinner

Along with her parents’ agreement to give her money to pay for Rory’s tuition at Chilton, Lorelai must in turn agree to have dinner with them every Friday, thus setting in place the pattern of the entire show. She also has to call them once a week to give an update on Rory’s schooling and her own life – this weekly phone call is not mentioned again, and although Lorelai seems to particularly hate talking to her mother on the phone, we never hear Emily (Kelly Bishop) complain that she has missed a phone call. We must assume that either Lorelai dutifully complied each week, or that Emily almost immediately accepted that she would not follow through. Neither sounds quite likely, knowing their personalities. Maybe Lorelai made Rory do the phone call.

The choice of Friday night for the family dinner fulfils at least three functions:

  1. Friday was the very next day of the week, so Emily was making sure that the dinners began straight away with no chance for Lorelai to change her mind or wriggle out of it
  2. Friday night is a popular night for social events, thus ensuring that plot-wise there was always the potential for conflict over the Friday Night Dinner and other responsibilities
  3. It brings to mind the Jewish Shabbat, with the holy day beginning at sunset on Friday evening, usually celebrated with a family dinner. This gives the Gilmores’ Friday Night Dinner a feeling of ritual and ceremony, and underscores the marking of cycles of time that each dinner symbolises. (I don’t believe this is a stretch, as Amy Sherman-Palladino is of Jewish heritage).

Business class

While Lorelai is visiting her parents in Hartford to ask them for money, she says that she just finished her business class. Later we learn that as well as working full-time, Lorelai also attends community college in Hartford two evenings a week to study business.

In real life, there is only one community college in Hartford – Capital Community College. This college offers a 4-semester associate degree in Management (Entrepreneurship), suitable for those wanting to improve their work qualifications, or equip them to start their own business. It sounds ideal for Lorelai’s needs.

Bridge

Lorelai and Emily

When Lorelai visits her parents, she makes conversation by asking about her mother’s bridge club. Contract bridge is a complicated card game played by two teams of two against each other, a variant of the older card game whist. The most common form in the United States is duplicate bridge, and it’s a card game which is more commonly played among older people. It is a game of skill involving strategy and tactics, which seems in line with Emily’s character: in fact she is just about to outplay her own daughter.

Zsa Zsa Gabor

SOOKIE: Where’s your paté?
LORELAI: At Zsa Zsa Gabor’s house.

Zsa Zsa Gabor (1917-2016) was a Hungarian-American film and television actress and socialite, known for her extravagant Hollywood lifestyle. During the show, Lorelai and Rory would routinely label any behaviour they considered overly fancy or pretentious as being like Zsa Zsa Gabor.