Hindu Deities

LORELAI: Oh, Rory, quick, uh, what are the three major Hindu deities, because I’ve missed four questions in a row and if I miss another one, I don’t think I get dessert.

RORY: Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu.

Brahma: The Creator God in Hinduism, part of the trinity he forms with Shiva and Vishnu. He is associated with creation, knowledge, and the sacred texts of the Vedas. He is sometimes seen as the manifest divine presence of the Brahman, the ultimate metaphysical reality, whose name means “creative principle which lies realised in the whole world”. Brahma is commonly depicted as a red or gold-complexioned bearded man with four heads and hands, symbolising the four Vedas and four cardinal directions. He is seated on a lotus and his mount or vehicle is the swan, goose, or crane. Brahma is revered in the ancient texts, yet rarely worshipped as a primary deity in contemporary India, owing to the absence of any significant sect dedicated to his veneration.

Shiva: His name means “auspicious one” in Sanskrit, and he is known as the Destroyer within the trinity, although destruction isn’t his main attribute. His task is to propagate good, end evil, and bring everyone to knowledge of the divine, as he has all the knowledge of the universe. He is the patron god of yoga, meditation, and the arts. He may be shown with a serpent around his neck, a crescent moon, the holy river Ganges flowing from his hair, the third eye on his forehead, the trident as his weapon and the drum as his instrument. His origins are older than the Vedas, and he is worshipped widely by Hindus in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia (especially Java and Bali).

Vishnu: His name means “pervader” in Sanskrit, and he is known as the Preserver within the trinity, as he protects and transforms the universe. Whenever the world is threatened with evil, chaos and destructive forces, Vishnu descends as an incarnation to restore cosmic order and protect good. He is depicted as an omniscient being sleeping in the coils of a serpent which represents time, floating in the primeval ocean of milk which contains the immortal nectar of life.

“She’s okay with anything I do”

CAROL: So, tell me something, Harvard hair – how bad do you wanna please your parents?

RORY: My mom, and really bad, but it’s not hard to please my mom. She’s okay with anything I do. As long as I’m happy, she’s good.

Not really true – there’s plenty of times Lorelai hasn’t been okay with what Rory wants to do. She didn’t permit Rory to give up Chilton after she met Dean, she was furious when Rory told Emily about their financial problems, and she doesn’t approve of Rory’s attraction to Jess. In the future, Rory will discover that when it comes to her university education, Lorelai will not be “okay” with all of Rory’s decisions, and that Rory just being “happy” is not enough to satisfy her.

More accurately, Lorelai and Rory have plenty of fights and disagreements, some more serious than others, but they always find a way to resolve things, eventually.

Note that Rory repudiates Christopher as her father here – she is quick to say she only has one parent, her mother. She is seriously angry with him for what he did to Lorelai, and to her, and it is a rift which is never really healed. Rory will never go back to being the young girl who yearns for her father and gets excited at the thought of him making one of his all too rare visits.

Khakis

CAROL: If you were to tell either of my siblings that there was another life choice outside of the Ivy League, I think their khakis would wrinkle.

Khakis, another name for chinos, trousers made from a cotton twill (see Cotton Dockers). Developed in the mid-19th century for British and French military uniforms, it has since migrated into civilian wear. Trousers of such a fabric gained popularity in the US when Spanish–American War veterans returned from the Philippines with their twill military trousers. The fabric was originally made in khaki, and this is still the most popular colour.

Harry Potter

RORY: I’ve dreamt of going to Harvard since I was a little girl.

CAROL: Yeah, a lot of four year olds dream of that. It comes right after meeting Harry Potter.

Harry Potter, the schoolboy wizard who is the protagonist of the popular Harry Potter book and film series, the novels written by English author J.K. Rowling, previously mentioned. In the films, he is played by English actor Daniel Radcliffe.

Rory was four years old in 1988-1989, and the first Harry Potter book was published in 1997, so Rory could hardly have been interested in him as a toddler anyway. Presumably Carol is thinking of her young clients in the present day.

There’s a little mistake in the writing here. Rory never actually tells Carol that she’s been dreaming of Harvard since she was four – only that she was a little girl. We know she was four because Lorelai told Max in Season 1, but somehow Carol knows about it too.

“I’m not on the conveyor belt”

CAROL: My brother and sister got stuck on that conveyor belt. I, however, escaped somewhere around the eleventh grade, thank God … Oh, hey, but no offense. I mean, that’s just me. If you like being on the conveyor belt, then good for you.

RORY: I’m not on the conveyor belt.

Rory is definitely on the conveyor belt. Lorelai has been psychologically grooming her for Harvard since she was a toddler, and enrolled her at a private prep school that is a feeder school for Harvard.

Carol says she “escaped” the conveyor belt around eleventh grade, when she was sixteen or seventeen (about the same age Lorelai got pregnant and had to leave school). It’s not clear whether Carol means that she left school around that age to start working, or if she means she refused to begin applying to colleges, and made it clear she wasn’t going to attend university.

“Holed up in the Chelsea”

RORY: I don’t know. Your parents just made it sound like . . .

CAROL: Like I was holed up in the Chelsea with a needle sticking out of my arm screaming “Sid” at the top of my lungs?

A reference to Nancy Spungen (1958-1978), American girlfriend of English punk rocker Sid Vicious, and a figure of the 1970s punk rock scene. The two of them were habitutal heroin users, and eventually Nancy’s body was found in the bathroom of their room at the Hotel Chelsea in New York, stabbed to death. Sid Vicious died of an overdose before he could be brought to trial.

Their story is told in the film Sid and Nancy, previously discussed [pictured]. Carol seems to have all the same references as Lorelai as well.

Stalking Tom Waits

CAROL: I worship [Tom Waits]. I even mildly stalked him once … Last year, I heard he was staying at this hotel so I went there everyday and sat in the lobby, drinking massive amounts of coffee, waiting for him to walk by.

I can barely speculate which hotel Tom Waits could have been staying in the previous year. The only concert he had in 2001 was one in his home town of San Francisco, and he took a trip to Copenhagen in Denmark early in the year. He attended the ASCAP Awards at the Beverly Hilton in May, which might be what Carol is referring to (if so, she was in Los Angeles at the time for some reason – where the Palladinos live, probably not coincidentally).

Like Lorelai, Carol worships Tom Waits and drinks huge amounts of coffee. Her mild stalking of Waits at a hotel is replicated later by Lorelai, who stalks Bono at his hotel in exactly the same way.

Carol Springsteen

Rory meets Carol Springsteen, the middle daughter of the family who is a year older than Rory and Jennifer, when they run into each other on Rory’s trip back from the bathroom. Rory had earlier seen a photo of Carol and heard her name, but Darren said she was on her “own path” in life. Note that being the middle child is once again posited as being marked out for being “different” in Gilmore Girls.

Rory now discovers that being on her own path just means Carol isn’t attending university, like Jack is and Jennifer will be, but works at a variety of jobs, including waitressing and dressing up as a bunny for children’s parties. Rory says that Carol has a “cool” bedroom – despite not being academically inclined, Carol’s room is filled with serious-looking hardcover books.

It quickly becomes apparent that Carol is another version of Lorelai, who rebels against her upbringing and begins her working life as a teenager. Unlike Lorelai, she didn’t get pregnant in high school, and hasn’t moved out – Darren and Marie don’t really approve of her life choices, but they still support her financially, and she isn’t unhappy enough to run away from home.

Carol is portrayed by Tinsley Grimes (later Webster), who had most recently been on That 80s Show and had a small role in the film The Banger Sisters. Unlike her character here, Tinsley is highly educated. She has a BA in English from UCLA and a Masters of Education in Child Studies from Vanderbilt University. She is currently a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh, and plans to specialise in psychiatry.