Footnotes to the TV series
M. Night Shyamalan (born Manoj Shyamalan in 1970) is an Indian-born American film director, known for making movies with supernatural plots and surprise endings. He often sets his films in and around Philadelphia, which is where he grew up.
It’s interesting that Lane likes the idea of hanging out with Shyamalan, because he is an Asian-American who has become successful in a popular genre and media – much as Lane wants to become successful in rock music.
As Rory and Lane walk down the street in Stars Hollow, we learn from their conversation that if Lane could live in any city in the world, she would pick Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While Rory longs for European capitals and Fez, Lane is content to remain in the United States, and only about 3-4 hours drive from Stars Hollow.
BABETTE: Cinnamon’s dyspeptic. So’s Morey. Too many clams.
To be dyspeptic means to suffer from indigestion.
Lorelai tells Max that her business classes are at Hartford State [College], a fictional institution.
MAX (looking at Lorelai’s table at the bake sale): Very Henry the Eighth.
Henry VIII (1491-1547) was King of England from 1509 until his death. He is known for his lavish feasts with every delicacy imaginable, as a demonstration of his wealth and power. It may have been Sookie’s swan carved out of watermelon that made Max think of Henry VIII – a centrepiece of the banquets was food made to look like something completely different, such as a peacock made from marzipan.
MICHEL: That is why I left France.
LORELAI: Huh. I thought it had something to do with the torches and the villagers.
Lorelai is most likely referring to the 1931 horror film Frankenstein, directed by James Whale and with Boris Karloff as the monster. It was based on a play inspired by the 1823 novel of the same name by Mary Shelley. Frankenstein was the #1 film of 1931, and is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.
In the movie, a group of peasants form a search party for the monster after it has killed, and use torches to set a windmill ablaze with the monster inside. Although similar scenes had occurred in earlier films, this seems to be the one everyone is talking about when they refer to villagers with torches.
MAN: Bonjour Monsieur. Vous êtes francais? Vous parlez francais? … Parlez vous fracais?
….
MICHEL: Bonjour messieurs. Je m’appelle Michel. Ce soir pour vous aider.
MAN: (laughs) Vous avez faît un blague. Très drole! Très drole Michel!
The man says, “Hello sir. You are French? You speak French? … Do you speak French?”. After pretending he doesn’t and arguing with Lorelai, Michel eventually replies, “Hello sirs. My name is Michel. I am here to assist you this evening”. The man says, “You have made a joke. Very funny! Very funny, Michel!”.
The fact that Michel loathes French people seems to be another hint that he is not actually from France – the actor playing Michel, Yanic Truesdale, is a Canadian-American from Montreal. Truesdale has noted that the accent he used on Gilmore Girls is certainly not French, although readily accepted as such by Americans.
Rory reads this 1929 book by Virginia Woolf on the bus to Hartford. A Room of One’s Own is a long essay based on a series of lectures that Woolf gave to female students at two women’s colleges at Cambridge University in 1928. It combines fiction and non-fiction to discuss a history of women’s writing, and to argue for a place for women within the literary tradition.
Woolf states that for a woman to write fiction, she must have a modest income, and a private place to write – a room of her own. This is another feminist text that Rory reads, and it seems that the aspiring journalist is already positioning herself as a woman writer. It is ironic that the book asks for women to be given a private space, as Dean intrudes on Rory’s privacy on the bus.
Rory gets on the bus to Hartford in order to go to school. In real life there is no 40 minute bus service from Washington Depot (the town which inspired Stars Hollow) to Hartford, or from Wallingford (the general position of where Stars Hollow seems to be) to Hartford. It is possible to get from Wallingford to Hartford by train, which takes around half an hour.
The bus that Rory catches is Connecticut Transit, Route 333. In real life, that bus service is in the city of Stamford.
BABETTE: Cinnamon’s not walking good these days but she still likes her passeggiatas. That’s Italian for “a nice walk.”
In Italian, passeggiata means “a leisurely walk, a stroll”. In southern Italian culture especially, the passeggiata is a tradition whereby people go for an evening stroll or promenade between 5 and 8 pm, perhaps through the main street of a town, the town square, or along the sea front. People dress up for the passeggiata, and it’s a social event, a chance to catch up with friends and the local gossip at the end of the day. Babette and Morey are taking their passeggiata early in the day after breakfast, rather than in the evening before dinner.
It is interesting that Morey knows a little Italian – could he be of part-Italian heritage, or have spent time travelling in Italy?
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 