Saturday, October 1, 2011

Fridge Logic


Originally drawn for
I hate long weekends
There are some things that just leave you thinking. Take my Independence day post for example. Very nice, very poetic, but a couple of days after posting it, I started wondering if the clothes I had chosen had other implications.

These kinds of considerations have long been known in the movie industry, and in 1958, they were given the name "icebox logic" by Alfred Hitchcock. In his own words, it's a scene [that] hits you after you've gone home and start pulling cold chicken out of the icebox. Of course, few people today call it "the icebox", so modern terminology refers to it as "fridge logic".


I based the clothes for my avatar on a page in <i>Titanic: An Illustrated History</i>
that said "Passengers on the Titanic: Second Class" (my internet was misbehaving again and it was the only thing I had at hand). Although Titanic happened in 1912, and "God Bless America" was recorded in 1938, and I thought there would be no problem because, after all, clothing from 26 years ago is still acceptable, even in today's fast-moving world.

Except that it isn't.

Back in these relatively early days of radio, when people were invited to a radio station, they usually wore their best clothes (even though no one could see them). This means that the best clothes this incarnation of my character has available to him are these garments that are at least 26 years old.

The only possible conclusion is that the Crash of '29 hit him really, really hard. Which, considering that this character is supposed to be me and considering what I've had to go through, isn't really a bad thing.

4 comments:

  1. It's also possible Mouse Fashion is a few decades behind human trends. Or perhaps they're so far ahead of us, they're into retro fashion of the era when we still think of it as just being old.

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  2. Uh... bu--

    You know what? I actually like that explanation. I'm not sure if it contradicts my world's canon, though.

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  3. I couldn't get the independence day link to work, but maybe Hitchcock got his idea for the movie The Birds when he eating the cold chicken.
    :)

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  4. Oh, that was my bad. I forgot Blogger "fixes" links for you. It should work now.

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