Yes, yes, the Library of Congress announced its new inductees to the National Film Registry today. Everybody is talking about, oh, the Rocky Horror Picture Show and Toy Story, etc., etc.
The one that really got my attention, though, was Kroger Babb's important exploitation classic Mom and Dad, the "birth of a baby" roadshow attraction which toured around the country, carnival-style, for well over a decade. It's a fun reminder of the days when the only way you could see a vagina on film was if it was ejecting a gloppy baby and its sequel, the afterbirth*.
Go here and read Joe Bob Briggs' wonderful essay about Babb's movie, still one of the most profitable and successful films ever made, and marvel at the hoops the exhibitors had to jump through in order to show it. This is where exploitation, titillation and education collide head-on in a cultural pile-up which could only have happened in America.
Good for the Library of Congress! Maybe now it will get released on video or DVD. Here's hoping they add Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill! next year.
This has been a Princess Sparkle Pony Cultural Literacy Minute™.
*This is one of the reasons why your grandparents are so weird.
3 comments:
I feel more culturally literate already, and the Job Bob Briggs essay is good enough that I may go out and buy the book. Thanks, Princess.
All I know is, when I had to watch "The Miracle of Life" -- that giant wet watermelon squeezing through the unkept 80s bush of the skank giving birth -- I could have either joined the priesthood or gone gay at that moment and not looked back.
To think that it was on film and on tour all those years before warps my fragile little mind...even moreso than the fact that I started watching porn at 7.
I LOVE Joe Bob Briggs!
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