Audrey Hepburn – Don't Gel Too Soon

Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck and Roman Holiday: a Political Lesson? No, Really.

It was a fairy tale about a princess on a journey. Doing her duty, kind of like Diana (but, since she was played by Audrey Hepburn, even classier,) she came to Rome, after Athens, London and Paris, to conclude her mission.

But she was young and beautiful and sick of receptions and parades. And so, in the middle of the night, she snuck out the embassy window and ventured across the Piazza di Spagna and into the Roman night.

If you know this movie at all, you remember with sweet nostalgia the way you felt the first time you saw it. The princess asleep near the Trevi Fountain on the Roman equivalent of a park bench is awakened, like Sleeping Beauty, by reporter Joe Bradley, played by Gregory Peck. ( If the film has a flaw, it’s that we know some of what will happen once we see him there. He’s a good guy and that’s who he plays. He is Atticus Finch, after all.)
The film was released in 1953, right in the middle of the 1950’s. Written by Dalton Trumbo, “Roman Holiday” was credited to a “front” named Ian McLellan Hunter, because Trumbo, blacklisted as a member of the Hollywood Ten, wasn’t permitted to write for movies any longer. It’s one of the darkest chapters in Hollywood history, very much a part of the image of the decade and a sad facet of a beloved film that won three Oscars and introduced the world to Audrey Hepburn.
There’s something else though. The people in this film behave well. There are things that they want, desperately, but there are principals at stake, and they honor them. When Peck meets Hepburn, he doesn’t recognize her but lets her crash at his apartment. Once he figures out who she is, he knows this “runaway” could be the story of his life. Even so, after a brief, idyllic tour of the city, (SPOILER ALERT) she honors her responsibilities and returns to her royal duties, and of course, he never writes the story. It was very much an artifact of the
“Greatest Generation” ideals, manifested with such courage during
WWII and very much the flip side of the jaundiced (and just as accurate) Mad Men view of the 50’s. Duty and honor trump romance and ambition.

Once again, I’m struck with admiration for the people of these times. Yes the 50’s did terrible damage and made it difficult to be eccentric or rebellious or even creative. But films like this one, or Now Voyager and similar films of the 40’s, sentimental as they may be, remind us of what else these people were. They’d lived through the Depression and the war and they had an elevated sense of responsibility. As we watch much of our government (and some of the rest of us) disintegrate into partisanship and self-interest, it makes a lot more sense than it did when we rose up against it all in the 1960’s. Doesn’t it?

FALL INTO THE GAP? ARE THOSE CUTE CLOTHES REALLY MADE BY ENSLAVED KIDS?

I am still trying to get my mind around these child labor stories surrounding the Gap. I understand about globalization and outsourcing or whatever we’re calling it now, but, for heaven’s sake, the Gap isn’t even CHEAP! What kind of markup is involved here? I also understand that the Gap says they didn’t know about the conditions these kids were facing, but with all the use of cheap labor in the developing world factories it seems to me extra vigilance is required- on the part of retailers AND consumers (that’s us.)

There are good arguments on both sides of the concept of paying less in countries where the whole economy requires less, but these children, if reports are to be believed, were all but completely enslaved. Slaves! There’s no economic relativism that’s going to justify that. Or any other ism.

Somehow it’s worse when it’s the Gap — of the cool clothes and commercials. And horribly ironic that they, who made such a splash with commercials by the late, wonderful UN child advocate Audrey Hepburn, are whether mindfully or just carelessly, part of what seems to be something that violates everything she (and we hope, most of us) stands for. At some point we are going to have to decide how much we’re willing to compromise. These stores have democratized taste and style but it may be that the tools to do that are, themselves, the most expensive thing of all.

AUDREY HEPBURN AT THE GAP

OK. I have six deadlines in the next week and I shouldn’t be writing this but I’m struggling with my loyalties here. I have loved Audrey Hepburn since I was a kid. As only a short, kind of rounded young woman can look up to a sleek icon with a heart. AND I love the Internet. And technology. And sampling. And now, I don’t know what to think.

The Gap has taken a scene from Funny Face, when Audrey Hepburn, the young existential book store clerk turned model, on her first trip to Paris, runs off to a smoky coffee house where her philosopher hero (of course he’s a fake and a bit of a cad) hangs out – and decides to dance. The Gap has taken this essentially sweet scene and sampled it, mashed it up, stuck it into hip hop and multiple-image edits and generally made a cute little commercial about black pants. It isn’t disrespectful to her – just jazzed up. And it isn’t in bad taste. Or anything. It’s even clever. It’s also the first time I’ve been this ambivalent about altered images. I hate colorized movies. I love sampling in music. I’ve heard Larry Lessig speak and think he’s right about a lot of his Remix theories. But this one seems to bring out all of the above. Here’s the link – what do you think?