Skip to main content

CMFTMs (Christmas Made for TV Movies): Intro


It’s all the fault of A Christmas Memory. That was a wonderful adaptation of a short story by Truman Capote made for ABC Stage 67 before I was born. Every few years or so, they’d show it again on television. It was both magical and homely. It starred Geraldine Page, and the narration was done by Truman Capote himself. His voice was so high-pitched that they had to slow down his recordings in order to lower his voice. Such a beautiful, poignant, real, story, with Buddy and his elderly cousin Sook, and her marvelous fruitcakes, augmented during prohibition by the booze sold by Mr. HaHa Jones, and sent off to friends far and near, and even the president.

It was enough to make you want fruitcake.

This holiday touch of magic evidently imprinted itself upon me at a crucial age, like when you walk away from a duckling, and the baby duck decides it will follow you for life, no matter how clichéd, insipid, or commercial you are.

So, over the years, I've watched an awful lot of Made for TV Christmas Movies (MFTCMs). I've also watched an awful lot of awful MFTCMs.

What I've discovered is that they give us some alarming insight into what Hollywood thinks about women. Is it actually Hollywood, though? I think most of these must be made in some low-budget area   somewhere else. The big difference between theatre holiday movies and tv holiday movies are the budgets. TV movies are usually filmed in California, so they boast sunshiny Christmas days while theatre movies can spring for location shoots or better special effects, so they always happen someplace snowy. Also, theatre movies have actors like Jim Carrey or Kate Winslet, while tv movies feature “Oh, oh, I know this person … um … um … oh yeah, they were on Family Ties/Clueless/Beverly Hills 90210/are Fred Willard.”


Men apparently hate Christmas, as it is rare nowadays to find a Christmas Made For TV Movie (CMFTM) that is not explicitly targeted to women. Or children. Or a combination thereof. Or ... maybe the producers are conflating the two? 

Really, after watching so many of these CMFTMs, it seems that's a valid argument, that the producers think women are just like kids, only with more spending money. And shallower. And meaner.

But I'll talk about that in a later post.

Comments

  1. LilylouDecember 1, 2012 at 11:56 AM

    I love it that you're blogging as Rev Jo! I never watch Christmas movies anymore. Maybe I subconsciously picked up on what you're pointing out but didn't have the words to say it at the time.

    Carry on, my colleague!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hey, Vampire Slayer -- Who's Your "Watcher"?

I was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer* one day, like you do, and I thought, "Wow. I wish I had a Watcher." According to the Buffy Wiki , a Watcher is: a member of the Watchers Council, devoted to tracking and combating malevolent supernatural entities (and particularly vampires), primarily by locating individuals with the talents required to fight such beings and win. More specifically, Watchers were assigned to train and guide Slayers, girls that were part of a succession of mystically powered young women who were destined to face the forces of darkness. And then, quick as a vampire turns to dust when stabbed with a wooden stake, I realized, "Ohmygosh, I TOTALLY have a Watcher." My Watcher is named Ken, and he's an expert in Bowen Systems Theory, and he coaches me, teaching me about the vampires I encounter, and drilling me in how to slay them. No, the Vampires aren't people around me!  Far from it. The Vampires are my own responses to anxiety...
Post a Comment
Read more

Whole Church Worship

TL;dr -- Our church does "Whole Church Worship," or "All Ages Are Together for the Whole Service, Every Service, Every Week." I've been getting a lot of questions about this. Here are some answers. Preface: For some reason, I occasionally run into people from other churches who want to explain to me all the reasons this won't work at their church. Sure. I'm not trying to talk you into this. You do you, Bub. Whole Church Worship is working at our church, at this time. Live Oak is pretty special, and I don't know that there are many things we do that would work any other place, including our Chili, Chocolate, and Karaoke Party. But that's a post for another day.  Okay, then. So, I first got involved in Whole Church Worship as a result of a fit of pique - my own. This was before I was a minister. At my home congregation, we had "Children's Chapel," and we had reached the point where we couldn't get anyone signed up to coordin...
2 comments
Read more

Me and My Collar

You may run into me on a Friday, in my neighborhood, so it's time I let you know what you might see. When I was doing my required unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), my supervisor suggested that any of us who came from traditions where a clerical collar was an option, take one "collar week," to see how we were treated, as opposed to wearing regular professional clothes. After a couple of days, I joked to the Catholic priest, "How do you manage the power?" In regular clothes, I would walk into a patient's room, and it would take about 5 or so minutes of introductions and pleasantries before we could really get down to talking about their feelings, their fears, the deep stuff. With most people, as soon as that clerical collar walked in the room, with me attached, they began pouring out all the heavy stuff they were carrying. I was riding the bus back and forth every day, and though not quite so dramatic, the collar effect was alive there, to...
10 comments
Read more