does this association work for you?
This is a very short excerpt from Pajama Jones. It's Halloween, and Julia comes down to the shop where her employee Exa is getting ready to open. Exa is about sixty, a bit of a character.
My question: do you get the associations? Are you familiar with the movie that's mentioned? Or is this plain confusing?
When Julia came down to the shop to open at noon, Exa was already installed behind the counter and in costume. This year she was an aging southern belle straight out of Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte. In her youth, Exa liked to remind people, she had often been told that she looked like Bette Davis, especially around the eyes. That resemblance worked to her advantage now.
No doubt she had been working on her dress for weeks, and spent even longer tracking down exactly the right ash blond wig with slightly frowsy, very long sausage curls. Lipstick applied with a shaky hand completed the effect.
"I was going to carry around a decapitated head," Exa said in all seriousness. "Or at least a hand. You know, from a mannequin, with blood painted on? But I'm saving that for the after hours party."
Rosina:
Yes, I'd know what you were referring to. I don't think I've seen the actual movie, but once the title was mentioned my thoughts were, "isn't that the movie where Bette Davis kills someone?" Your description of the long ash ringlets confirmed it, and then again with the bloody head.
okay, so I didn't know the Bette Davis movie. BUT, even to a person who didn't see the movie (or know the reference at all), i think this is okay - you can't hit all the people w/all the references...I figured, okay, bette davis movie where there's some sort of severed body part. I don't know if this helps or not, and just in case it matters or helps you w/the demographics, i'm 25....
Works for me. But I'm 47 so I can see BD with the wonky lipstick torturing Joan Crawford and hear a raspy voice (Debbie Harry?) singing about Bette Davis eyes.
Dear Sara,
no, I don't know this movie at all, but reading this exerpt gives me a sense of it. I am familiar with Bette Davis, and you've incorporated enough description that I don't feel I need to know it to understand what Exa is trying to do and picture the scene in my head.
Are you kidding? I got the visual immediately, and would find it damned scary [g]. However, I disagree with the usage "aging Southern belle" She would be a "belle" Research has shown that there ARE no Yankee belles. (If there seem to be, they are actually Belles trapped in a Yankee's body.)
Looking forward to more!
I don't know the movie at all. I'd have been better off without the movie reference until after the description. I was trying to make the description fit into a movie with Hush Hush in the title, had no idea it was a horror flick. Was it? Anyway. I've only seen a couple of movies with BD in them, that What ever happened to baby doll (or Jane?) movie which was definitely creepy and something with an extremely happy little girl in it. I think. The shakily applied lipstick reference did it for me immediately. Excellent!
I didn't get the references at all, but I'm (a) in the UK and (b) was brought up in a house without a TV. The bit that was a tiny bit confusing is that to me the title 'Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte' sounds like a happy film, so then I didn't understand why there were references to gore. Oh, and I don't know what Bette Davis looked like. I do know she was a film-star, though. Because of that, I assumed that the 'Lipstick applied with a shaky han' (that must be 'hand', but I can't see the 'd'because the quotations look like they're missing two or three characters at the end of each line (at the right-hand side)) was being applied that way because Exa is old and frail, but from reading the comments I have to assume that she's doing it deliberately.
I got it, but I'm 48. The youngsters can rent the movie.
Charlotte: of course. How gauche of me to get my belles tangled up that way.
Thanks everybody, I think I'm okay with this. Most people get the reference directly, or understand it by inference.
I concur with what Norma said - and the youngsters can "google" the reference. (of course the mannequin's head should be male.)
It's been a very long time since the movie came out, but, yes, I got the references. Although Exa is showing a somewhat light-hearted attitude toward the Bette Davis character, I'd assume until proved otherwise, that the author, ahem, is saying, "Watch out for Exa. She's evil."