Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: Mom! You’re freaking out. I’ve never seen you freak out before.
EMILY: Yes, you have. You were twelve; it was the last time that horrible woman came to visit.
Richard’s mother hasn’t been back to Hartford for at least twenty years. It would have been 1980-1981 when Lorelai last saw her grandmother.
EMILY: I have to get out everything she’s [Richard’s mother] ever given us. Thirty-five years worth of fish lamps and dog statues, lion tables, and stupid naked angels with their … butts!
LORELAI: Whoa! Stupid naked angel butts? What, did David Mamet just stop by?
Lorelai is probably referring to David Mamet’s 1983 play Glengarry Glen Ross. It shows two days in the lives of four Chicago real estate agents prepared to do anything, no matter how illegal or unethical, to sell some undesirable real estate. It won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, and in 1992 was made into into a highly-acclaimed film, with the screenplay written by Mamet.
The play is notorious for its use of profanity, and Lorelai is teasing her mother for her uncharacteristic use of the word “butts”. Maybe the butt model conversation affected her.
David Mamet is one of Amy Sherman-Palladino’s own favourite playwrights.
Emily’s statement suggests that she and Richard have been married for thirty-five years, so since 1965-1966.
LORELAI: I still can’t get over that I’m related to God. It’s gonna make getting Madonna tickets so much easier.
Madonna (born Madonna Ciccone in 1958) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and businesswoman. Regarded as the first multi-media pop icon, she is is known as the Queen of Pop. Her debut album was released in 1983 to immediate success, and was followed by several best-selling albums; her 1998 album Ray of Light won Best Pop Album at the Grammys. Many of her songs have gone to #1 in the charts, including Like a Virgin, Papa Don’t Preach, Like a Prayer, and Vogue. She is the best-selling female recording artist of all time, and in the US is second only to Barbra Streisand. She is the most successful solo act of all time, and the highest-grossing solo touring artist of all time. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.
This is the third time that Lorelai has mentioned Madonna, and I think it is safe to assume that she is one of her favourite singers, especially as Madonna first became a star when Lorelai was a teenager.
Madonna had her Drowned World Tour tour in 2001; she was due to appear in New York at Madison Square Garden during July 25-31 that year. Lorelai’s comment suggests that she may have been trying to obtain tickets to the event. Gilmore Girls episodes didn’t cover this period of the year, so it’s possible that Lorelai and Rory did make it to the concert.
LORELAI: I was named after her [Richard’s mother, the first Lorelai).
RORY: I figured.
If Lorelai was named after her grandmother, and Rory is named after her mother, then surely Rory is named after her grandmother as well?
EMILY: You spoke to your mother?
RICHARD: Yes, I did. She’s fine, she sends her love and … she’s coming to visit.
In Kill Me Now, Richard spoke about his mother as if she was dead. Now we discover to our surprise that she’s alive and well and living in London (even though in Love and War and Snow Emily’s sister Hopie was said to be the family’s expatriate). Another retcon!
LORELAI: Do you know that butt models make $10,000 a day? [Rory chuckles]
EMILY: Camelot is truly dead.
Camelot is the name of King Arthur’s castle and court in Arthurian legend. Americans use the term to refer to the presidency of John F. Kennedy, which was first applied by his widow Jacqueline Kennedy after his assassination in 1963.
Jackie referenced a line from the 1960 stage musical Camelot: “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief, shining moment, that was known as Camelot”. Indicating that this was one of John F. Kennedy’s favourite lyrics from the musical, she added, “There will be great presidents again, but there’ll never be another Camelot again”.
I’m not sure where Lorelai received her information from, but butt models in the movies actually make about $500 a day, double that if they go nude. Outside the movies, it might be as little as $200 a day – they get paid by the hour, and let’s face it, hardly anybody wants to film a single butt all day. These days, a butt model could make as much as $5000 from just one Instagram post, but that isn’t the norm, and the option didn’t exist in 2001.
EMILY: Well, this is just ridiculous. Three intelligent women sitting here in complete silence. There must be something to talk about. Do you know that every night at dinner, the Kennedy clan would sit around the table having lively debates about everything under the sun? They would quiz each other about current events, historical facts, intellectual trivia. Now the Gilmore clan is just as smart and worldly as the Kennedys, so come on – somebody say something.
The Kennedy family have been prominent in American politics, business, and public life since the 1880s, with many of them elected to political office since the post-war era. Some of their most famous members include Joseph P. Kennedy, ambassador to the UK 1938-1940; John F. Kennedy, president from 1961-1963; Robert Kennedy, senator for New York from 1965-1968, and Ted Kennedy, senator for Massachussets from 1962-2009.
Emily is correct that the Kennedy family would quiz each other at the dinner table, but it was a far more competitive environment than she makes it sound. Joseph Kennedy would set one of his children a topic to study, and all the others would have to study it too so that they could quiz him or her to see how well they had learned and understood the topic. Joseph would sometimes enliven proceedings with dinner time lectures, complete with maps and notes.
Incidentally, one of the Kennedys is named Rory – Rory Kennedy (born 1968) is the daughter of Senator Robert Kennedy, born six months after his assassination; her name was chosen to sound like his (“Bobby”). She is a documentary film maker, and her first film was American Hollow in 1999, about life in an Appalachian valley (it bears little resemblance to Stars Hollow). I don’t know if Kennedy influenced the choice of Rory Gilmore’s name in any way.
EMILY: Everyone’s awfully quiet tonight.
LORELAI: Sorry Mom, I’m just tired.
RORY: Me too – school.
LORELAI: Work.
RORY: Life.
LORELAI: Dig it, man.
RORY: Peace out, Humphrey.
The audience knows why Lorelai and Rory are so quiet. Rory is depressed about breaking up with her boyfriend Dean, and Lorelai’s relationship with Max has hit an impasse: they reunited and both love each other, but the problems that ended their relationship are still there with no solutions in sight.
Lorelai says, “Dig it, man”, which is hippie slang from the 1960s meaning, “Get it, understand it, know it”. The hippies might have added the “man”, but “dig it” goes back at least to the 1930s as African-American slang, and even in the 19th century Americans spoke about “digging” in the sense of knowing or studying something.
Rory responds in a similarly counter-culture way by saying “Peace out, Humphrey”. “Peace out” is hippie slang meaning “Goodbye, go in peace”, influenced by the radio sign-off, “Over and out”.
Rory is possibly referring to Hubert Humphrey (1911-1978) who was the Vice President under President Lyndon Johnson from 1965 to 1969. The main author of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he introduced the initiative of the Peace Corps and the National Peace Agency. Sceptical of the war in Vietnam, he was forced to support it in loyalty to Johnson. He was the Democratic nominee in the 1968 presidential election but lost to Richard Nixon – you could say that he “peaced out”.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 