Slighcarp and Grimshaw

Jeff and I watched a double-feature yesterday of Pippi Longstocking and Once. Fortunately, Once was only 84 minutes long because Pippi Longstocking feels like it could be a five hour movie. I don’t know how many of you have seen Pippi Longstocking, the original I mean, from Sweden in 1969. I remember seeing “The New Adventures . . .” with Mimi back in the day, but I’m pretty certain it is nothing compared to the plotless wonder that is the original.

Upon completion of the viewing, I was finally able to vocalize why I object to teaching plot to students as “a story needs a beginning, middle and end.” Beginning + middle + end does not a plot make. Pippi clearly had all three of those elements, but it did not have a plot, per se. Plot involves conflict. Plot involves that conflict developing through a series of incidents of rising intensity that culminates in a climax, a turning point after which nothing can be the same. Furthermore, the climax often comes at the very end of the “middle,” so the whole evenness of “beginning, middle, end” is but a lie we tell our students so we feel like they’ve learned something.

So, to sum up Pippi Longstocking using the inferior “beginning, middle, end” schema: 9-year-old Pippi comes to town to live in Villa Villekulla, her pastel colored house, with her horse and her monkey, but no parents. She meets Tommy and Annika, who conveniently live next door. Ms. Prysselius is scandalized and tries to get the police to put Pippi in a children’s home. They fail woefully, then seem to give up forever. Pippi gives away free candy to the local children, then free toys, all financed by her suitcase filled with solid gold coins. You see, her father is the Cannibal King of an island in the South Seas. The town’s local robbers catch wind that Pippi is loaded, and they try to rob her. They fail woefully as well, because Pippi is stronger than she looks: she can hold her horse above her head.

Umm, and then Pippi plays some more with Tommy and Annika. She ruins a coffee party. They play in a hollow tree. Pippi leads them in search of “spunk,” which no one knows the nature of. Tommy, Annika and Pippi take a balloon ride all along the coast of Sweden and frighten a drunk church custodian. Then Pippi’s father actually returns and Pippi beats him at arm wrestling. They have a large party where the person who eats the most will win a prize, though this prize is never seen nor mentioned again. Pippi’s father prepares to set sail again to return to the South Seas, and Pippi almost goes with him. But Annika is sobbing like a fool on the pier, so Pippi ends up staying.

Beginning: Pippi comes to town. Middle: Pippi plays, plays and plays some more. End: Pippi leaves–no, wait! She stays. What is most remarkable about the absence of conflict, and thus plot, is that there are two–two!–potential conflicts left almost untouched. Ms. Prysselius trying to get Pippi into a children’s home should be the kind of thing that can move an entire movie along, but Ms. P. seems a little preoccupied with, oh, I don’t know, coffee parties or something, to really pursue Pippi. And the two town robbers sweating to get ahold of Pippi’s pirate gold is also ripe for motivating a movie’s worth of plot, but they only try to steal her money twice and they are put off from the effort by nothing more than a cream cake in the face and a Pippi-doll falling from the sky (see above balloon ride).

The moral of the story: Do not F with Pippi Longstocking.

I will say this for the flick, though, I really liked it. Part of why I really liked it is because I imagined Lorelai and Rory Gilmore watching it (yes, I know they are ficitonal). The other part(s) of why I liked it are less clear, even in the sobering light of the day after. Jeff didn’t think he was going to be able to watch the entire hour and a half, but I knew I would make it and drag him along behind me. He pinpointed the nature of the film as “more compelling than interesting.” I agree. I felt compelled to watch the entire movie, yet not interested. Compelled by the erratic nature of what may happen next, not interest to find out what would happen next. Kind of like a horse being compelled to trot by a rider gently squeezing his flanks between her thighs. Yeah, I didn’t mention how often you get to see Pippi’s underwear. Let’s just leave it at that.