The expectation was for Beowulf to be just another Bob Zemeckis potboiler, a plundering of the public domain, a maudlin mash-up of heavy-metal mythology. This critic, however, was pulled through the film's silver-gray patina and emotionally injected into the maw of the movie. The lusty language transported me to a time of yore, a bygone age when fair maidens could don simple garb and steal the breath of young squires.
I was transported to 1976, to be exact. Ms. Hotchkiss was leading our English Lit. class on a week-long slog through Beowulf. In a room full of big hair and bad skin, beauty took a back seat - literally. As each student rose and strode to the front of the class to read aloud a few pages, an awareness of something magical seeped into the air. The girls were wearing a brand of jeans called Dittos that flattered the female form in a way unseen before or since. The snug denim squeezed the round haunches and continued up to a high beltline proudly cinched just below the navel. Best of all, there were no pockets, no piping and no labels to litter the smooth topography of the female form.
The golden age of the gluteus was tragically short-lived, asphyxiated in 1980 by Calvin Klein when he seduced Brooke Shields into purring, “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.” Today a girl could type that motto into MySpace and thirty middle-aged pedophiles would respond, “kewl.” Back then, however, twenty five years before Dateline and Chris Hansen, flaunting a fifteen year old beauty - on her back, legs in the air, announcing to the world that she was going commando - was a legitimate marketing strategy.
Like Beowulf, Dittos have become the stuff of lore. Could a leader as noble as Beowulf actually have existed? Were jeans ever really that sexy? Today's world is so full of feeble politicians and ghastly True Religion jeans that it hurts to realize how we have turned our backs on our higher selves. But the romantic clings to the legends, less concerned with proving that these ideals did exist and more focused on the notion that they could and they should.
When not obsessing over the first two seasons of Charlie's Angels, Rocky Petralia can be found tackling the mysteries of life at HelloRocky.com.
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