Love and Loneliness in “Arthur” (1981) – Part 2

It’s awful being alone, according to millionaire playboy Arthur Bach, and nobody should be alone. And so he forestalls this feeling by getting drunk, picking up prostitutes, and laughing at his own jokes. Yet love in its true form can be a lonely business, as his servant Hobson reminds him, because it involves growing up, getting serious, and taking care of someone other than oneself … only to lose them—in one way or another—to the inevitable advance of time. What is it about working class Linda Marolla, whom Arthur first encounters in the process of shoplifting a tie for her father’s birthday, that gets him beyond this impasse? Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Steve Gordon’s 1981 romantic comedy “Arthur,” and why, if you want to learn to become independent, sometimes the best that you can do is to fall in love. Upcoming Episodes: Medea (Euripides), A New Leaf (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt) Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:32 Wes: All right, welcome to part two of our discussion of Arthur. We had just got done talking about Arthur's first encounter with Linda and how he fell for her at first sight because she was committing the perfect crime and why it is that that interested him so much. So I had just said something about Hobson's and his family's misinterpretation of Arthur's capacity for love and in particular, his relationship with Linda and how it was important that Arthur show them it was something real in order to win the day. Ultimately. 1:06 Erin: Yeah, I'm thinking about that ending and how I know some people have problems with it. You know, the whole conflict of the plot dissolves instantly where the grandmother just changes her mind and decides to give Arthur the money anyway. But, yeah, it's interesting that it's framed in terms of his speaking with Linda about their children, like the possibility of future children. Right. And of those children being raised working class in addition to him having to get a job and doing various other things that the grandmother finds abhorrent. I think there's an explicit discussion of children in that last scene. And so that moment, I guess, for the grandmother hearing that this next generation is going to be raised working class is what makes her see Arthur as an adult, like someone who's capable of having children, which is interesting, considering how much she sleeps around, that now suddenly he's capable of having a child. Right. But I think you're right that this shows that he's signaling futurity in his capacity for sacrifice and in his love for Linda, and that therefore, he's capable of bearing a legacy, and therefore the family legacy has to be bestowed upon him now that he can be the torchbearer and pass it on to another generation. Right. 2:13 Wes: Yeah. So the grandmother saves him from being murdered. Don't mess with me or don't fuck with me, Bert. 2:21 Erin: Yeah, this is a crazy grandma. 2:24 Wes: Yeah, yeah. And then he goes out and. And, you know, onto the stage. What do you call it in a church? What is the stage? 2:34 Erin: The altar. 2:36 Wes: Because the whole thing is the altar. No. 2:40 Erin: Yeah. 2:42 Wes: All right, well, he's on the stage. Everyone's in their pews watching and in 2:49 Erin: their seats, in the orchestra. 2:50 Wes: Yeah, yeah. And tells him, you know, there's not going to be a wedding. Everyone's shocked. And then we get a fade out. Then he collapses and we get a fade to Linda. Helping him with his wounds and putting iodine on him. And that hurts. Stop it. You know, him being like a little boy. And the grandmother is watching from one of the pews in the middle of, you know, so. So the. It's empty except for her watching. And they're proceeding as if they don't know she's there. Almost. You know, it's almost like they get married right there. She says, you know, do you promise to love me and obey me and be a good boy? And right after she says that, the grandmother cuts to the grandmother and she's Martha, who's wonderful. And she's suddenly very, very alert. So I think it's a convincing transition. And then he says, do you promise never to put that stuff on my face again? And she says, I do. And so those are their vows. And the grandmother, as a witness to their little quasi wedding after he says, don't put that stuff in my face again. I do. And she gets up and he pushes off her head, yeah, just like, don't mess with me. And then he gets up to starts just soliloquizing and fantasizing about, oh, God, it's going to be great. We're going to be like one of those poor couples on the subway who hold hands, and then he's, I'll get a job. Just all these new possibilities that being poor opens up. And of course, that's realistic in a sense, right? Not being able to use the money as a crutch is an actual pathway to adulthood and independence. But when he says, I get a job, the grandmother, that's when she really perks up again. And so that, nominally, is what pushes her to say, no Bach has ever had a job. I'm going to make you take this money. But in reality, of course, she's just witnessed the authenticity of his love. He's willing to make the sacrifice, clearly. So if he's willing to make that sacrifice, there must be something true about it. And again, it's almost as if she's been the lone audience member to an actual wedding. 4:56 Erin: I like that a lot. Saying Bach kind of reminds me. I forgot to. I don't know, to just ponder this a little bit and make something of it. But I was just thinking about a job he could get as a concert pianist. He can make a killing that way, right? He has this. He has this musical last name. And the more I thought about it, the more he really reminded me so much of Mozart and Amadeus with the, you know, like, Mozart's kind of insane laughter and the, I Just wondered if there was something to be made of this connection between, you know, maybe not the piano playing, but something of. Not of genius per se, but something out of proportion to normal human life, like a gift that you have that makes you different. I just. I wonder about wealth making Arthur a kind of savant, you know, like if there's a parallel that could be drawn there between the type of person Mozart is in the film Amadeus. Of course. 5:51 Wes: Yeah. 5:52 Erin: And the same personality traits in Arthur. Being a little boy, being ebullient. Right. You know what I'm trying to say. I'm not sure how I can. You know, Amadeus came out after this. Like, I'm sure the play, I think, was probably happening around the same time because it was a play first. And of course, it has a long history of various adaptations of the story. Though what the film does with making Mozart into this really obnoxious, cackling little kid is maybe a bit different from what had been on the stage. I'm not sure. But they're near contemporaries, these two films. I think Amadeus is 84, I think. 6:27 Wes: Yeah. I mean, there are benefits to. Well, in this case, this is not a parallel exactly. But what I like about the film, as we discussed in the beginning, is it pointing to his wealth and his ability to rely on money and family and servants as something that's been stunting to his growth as a person. But it also points to the strengths of that. And there are real strengths. You know, he's had a good education. He's obviously had piano lessons. He's funny and witty. And of course, some of his. You know, he has other capacities which come from his interactions with servants. Especially Hobson. Right. Hobson calls him son, and he calls Hobson father, I think, and that's the truth of it. And it's a father. That interaction with a servant means he got to have a father who, despite being snobby and English, was not a rich person himself. Which, of course, one can say this is part of why Arthur would be attracted to someone like Linda. He has a strong enough identification with the servants. Right. Not just with the masters. He could be totally corrupt and spoiled and nasty, just someone who is all about himself and being served by other people. But he has somehow been able to develop this relatedness through his relationships with servants. I think. I think one could say that in general, this is a general theme in his psyche, but especially, of course, with a father figure like Hobson. So this may be the thing that ironically, has saved him in a relationship that is potentially purely Exploitative. He got some elements of character which allowed him to move beyond that, which is not something one can say. Right. For his father or Susan's father. These people are just portrayed as purely exploitative rich people. I don't know if that's what you're getting. I mean, you were getting at, I think the parallel to Mozart. You were talking about genius, Right. There's a genius. Arthur has a kind of genius. I think that's true as well. Yeah. 8:29 Erin: It's interesting when he does at the engagement party and you see him kind of command a room, it's like, oh, he could be a nightclub entertainer actually, you know, like the comedic genius and the, you know, I love his line about poets drinking. Something about, you know, very, very poetic construction of, of what he says about, you know, some of us drink because we're not poets. Right. 8:52 Wes: Oh yeah. 8:53 Erin: But in fact, he's as close to, to one as you can be probably without being a poet. Right. His one liners are pretty, pretty great. So yeah, there's something special about him. And I wonder too. Yeah. If the ability to handle the wealth so well as you're suggesting is also a kind of genius shifting a bit. I want to talk about the preponderance of father figures in the film and how the Linda and her father relationship is a pretty interesting one too. And I think the reason why I probably loved this, it took me watching this for the podcast and thinking it through to realize why I like this movie so much. And it's just because it could have been made in 1936. You know, this is basically just one of the movies that I really, really like where, you know, there's a high class people that drink all the time and have fun. And Linda, you know, there's this class crossing thing which happens in the Lady Eve and some of those romantic comedy films from that era. There's the, you know, the playfulness that unites central couple, which is really important to that couple's sort of concept as a couple that they have a sense of humor that unites them that other people can't access. So we know that, you know, Susan, because she doesn't get the joke or she doesn't get that Harold is a made up person that Linda was trying to cover with some improv. This marks Susan as being an unsuitable partner for Arthur. Right. Whenever someone is humorless, doesn't get the joke, that's supposed to signal that the main couple is right for each other and the alternatives are not right right for them. 10:26 Wes: And the upper class high Status is associated with humorlessness. 10:29 Erin: Exactly. Yeah. And there's usually like, even in the Awful Truth, you know, Irene Dunne becomes the low class fake sister of the Cary Grant character in order to basically, you know, burst the balloon of Cary Grant's wealthy fiance's pomposity and her family's pomposity. Right. There seems to be in these films a great. Even though there's a high premium put on leisure and things associated with being high class, there's a great deal of, I think of refreshment and reinvigoration that occurs with the sort of cross pollination between classes. And having the lower classes. Right. Mixed with the upper is really important to these films and to what makes the relationship kind of either stay sexy because the. Because the main couple is high class and they have. Have some infusion of more vivacity in this kind of role play of being lower class or whether it's like a very literal marriage between classes. 11:33 Wes: Yeah. The lower class isn't more in touch with reality. Right. 11:37 Erin: Yeah. 11:37 Wes: Because the reality principle is more a factor in their lives. They have to survive. So wealth detaches one from reality and it becomes a kind of psychosis inducing ultimately. And you need the lower class to bring you back down to. To earth to reintroduce reality, including relatedness, 11:55 Erin: including actual love and real ingenuity. Right. Like there's usually an association with almost a kind of atrophy, mental atrophy of the upper classes. Right. Whereas you have to be scrappy, you have to be quick on your feet. You have to be, you know, all these things that seem to make one also a good lover. Like a good, you know, a good romantic lead. Someone who can think quickly, can hit the ball back in the verbal exchanges. Right. You have to have a kind of mental flexibility and quickness and acuity in order to kind of play at the level of these couples. And I think Arthur and Linda are the same way. But I'm also thinking about the fact that another really obvious sign that this is part of that 30s family of romantic comedies is that Linda doesn't have a mom. You know, she just has the father. Like all these women in those movies are missing their mothers. 12:47 Wes: Yeah. And this is really interesting and maybe you can say more about this, but I thought of Pretty in Pink. I think that's a movie where Molly Ringwald is with her father and there's no mother in the picture. And I don't. This seems like a very, very 80s thing or this type of. And maybe again, I'm right. Correct me if I'm wrong. Or at least it's not after that. First of all, the two elements. So class plays a big role in 80s comedies, and it plays a big role in Pretty in Pink as well. Class differences in a way that I just don't see in contemporary or more recent films. But you can correct me if I'm wrong about that. But. But also the same thing with this scenario of a single father with a daughter and that relationship being highlighted. Isn't that relatively rare these days? You're saying it's. It's there in older movies, but am I wrong to think that that went away for the most part, or. 13:40 Erin: No, not at all. I mean, I think, you know, 80s movies are basically just operating in 30s and 40s, 40s tropes. Right. Like, we even have the return of 1940s fashion in the 80s. Right. So 30s and 40s are obsessed with class because of the sort of equalizing nature of the Depression. You know, I mean, in a way, I think we're trying to catch up to 20s and 30s notions of equality in our current culture. Right. 40s, we were set back, in my opinion, we were set back in terms of gender equality and various other things post World War II. But that sort of like dream period between the end of what's called pre code movies. So a burst of movies that are romantic comedies that have these class elements started being made in 1934 with the restrictions of the Hays Code, where they basically couldn't be as explicit in films about sex and various other things about relationships. It became very verbal, and the conflict and the sexiness had to come from other places. So that was kind of like the perfect conditions under which these highly verbal, intelligent comedies were being made. And then up until just about 44 and 45, when people started coming home is when that kind of fell apart. The latest, I think, example of this kind of film in the 40s era is Adam's Rib from 1949, where Hepburn and Tracy play lawyers. They're married lawyers that are trying opposite sides of a case. And that's a pretty rare film for a lot of the Tracy, Hepburn stuff. Kind of survived longer into the post war years because they had a sort of established team during the war years. So anyway, so then those films kind of went away, and then they had a resurgence in the 80s. I'm not sure why that. Maybe because of the depression in the 70s, right. And then people starting to. The economy starting to accelerate in the 80s. Maybe the conditions were just similar in the country. And literally, like the shoulder Pads. Everything from the 40s just came back just with brighter colors. 15:39 Wes: It's funny, you want to live in the 30s film and I want to live in the 70s and 80s and I already did live in the 70s and 80sie, so it makes no sense. 15:46 Erin: Well, women have a much better deal in the 30s than they do in 70s and 80s films. 15:51 Wes: Women do, yeah. 15:52 Erin: They're far more complex characters in the 30s. I think there's also just a richer pool of talent. These 30s and 40s actresses, you know, 70s and 80s post New Hollywood, where they kind of gutted the film industry of interesting women. You have exceptions to this, of course. Right. Diane Keaton in Woody Allen films, like basically any Woody Allen film, is an exception to this rule. That's one of the reasons why it was so, you know, it's so painful as a film industry to lose him as a mainstream talent because he was giving basically all the great. He was directing more women to Oscars than I think almost anybody else, certainly to Oscar nominations and giving women interesting roles. Right. But New Hollywood was about men and criminality and to a certain extent the exploitation of women. And I don't think we've really bounced back from that since the 80s were a bit more complex, but the roles just aren't there for women anymore. And then franchises exploded and now we are where we are. Actually the 90s had more interesting roles for women. There was a little bit of a resurgence in the 90s. 16:50 Wes: Yeah. In this movie. Linda, obviously strong female role by any standard. And nothing is made of this fact in the movie. Right. There's no explicit message about gender roles in the movie. She just happens to be that and he happens to be what he is. It's an interesting dynamic because. Yeah, there's no caricature there. She's the strong woman and he's the passive guy. They're both assertive and passive at different moments. Right. There's a nice complexity to that. 17:23 Erin: I assume you mean to place this in contrast to modern day movies in which this is more self conscious or something. 17:29 Wes: Yes. So for instance, in contemporary films even romance is kind of verboten because for women in films, unless it's explicitly a romantic comedy. So for instance in retellings of fairy tales, because it's supposedly demeaning for women to be interested in men in films. What is that test? 17:49 Erin: The Bechdel test. 17:51 Wes: So you see this a lot now where there are films now with no romantic subplot, which is extraordinary because there's supposed to be something demeaning about. Even though this is just a central part of human life, something demeaning for women about being interested in men. So that to me is an overreaction. 18:05 Erin: Yeah. 18:06 Wes: Or the portrayal of women as just kicking incredible amounts of ass in films, which is more forgivable because, you know, the portrayals of men kicking incredible amounts of ass in action films is also unrealistic. No one can do that. 18:21 Erin: Right. 18:21 Wes: Jason Bourne can't do that. And there are no Superman. 18:25 Erin: Well, there's Stallone. That I believe, but there's Stallone. But he always loses. 18:30 Wes: But anyway, this very. This very self conscious attempt to make women strong in a way that is very one dimensional and to me, just as, you know, not great for women either. So. Right. So Linda is what she is. She's a complex character. She's not just, oh, I'm the strong woman and you're the weak man. That is undermined control. It's a much more natural, dynamic relationship. Yeah. 18:55 Erin: Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's no. Yeah. There's no paradigm for that for decades. Yeah. This is why I don't really watch any contemporary films. So I don't have a. I just sequester myself from that kind of stuff and I get to live in a world where things are still normal, a world of my own creation. 19:11 Wes: She's tough as nails in a way. It's part of the class distinction. He's a bit soft because he's upper class, but there's, you know, there are pockets of toughness psychologically for him and pockets of softness psychologically for her. Their interaction is much more interesting than it would be if it were just pure caricature, which I do think contemporary movies are much closer to that in general because they're trying too hard. 19:35 Erin: I agree. Yeah. I mean, I think there are a lot of complicated reasons why that is, some of which is just a backlash from films in the. In the aughts. Right. And the preponderance of, you know, the teen movie tradition from back in the 80s and various other kinds of backlashes, and then just agendas also sort of confusingly mixed with that so that you end up getting some sort of denuded product that bears no relation to actual film. It's just been put together by a committee, you know. But back to what this has in common with 30s films and the lack of the mother character. You know, of course Cavell has a lot to say about this, but this is just a Shakespearean convention. Right. So the 30s films are really interested in Shakespearean comedy and romance. 80s films in drawing on these types of conventions are also, therefore, drawing on a kind of Shakespearean heritage in which we have, like Miranda and Prospero, we have Hero and her father. I can't remember his name in Much Ado. And Beatrice actually having. No. No parents. But Hero's father, her uncle is kind of a surrogate parent. And various other examples of this. Right. 20:40 Wes: Also King Lear. Right. Another absent mother. 20:43 Erin: Right, Right. Yeah. That's a little more complicated, I suppose. Yes, yes. But the idea in the 30s films, the way they sort of work this, is that the father is not an impediment to the daughter's desire for marriage and for romance. The signal of the ineligible man for the woman in 30s comedy is a man who has a mother who's overly involved. Right. We see this in all the Ralph Bellamy iterations. Right. Ralph Bellamy always has a MA who he's really attached to. And the idea is that when he marries the woman who's considering him as an option, that they're going to go live with his mother. So she's going to be highly involved, and this is going to be an impediment. You know, this is all unspoken, but this is going to be a great impediment to their sex life. So basically, we can't envision the main woman in these comedies having a truly adult relationship with one of these men that she's trying out as the alternative to the Cary Grant character or whoever it might be. We can imagine. We can't take it seriously because they don't seem like enough of an adult, this alternative man, because they're so attached to the mother. And this connection between a man and his mother is seen as. As something that's, you know, it's connected with tragedy more often than not when it is portrayed. It's not particularly healthy in theater and in film. It could be pretty unhealthy. There's something about the girl father dynamic that works. So you get some guidance. You get a loving parental figure who has an investment in a daughter's happiness, and it's not restricting. And it sort of signals her. Her availability to make a new life with a man because her mother isn't there, which, you know, I don't know what that says about. About mothers. It's unfortunate. Cavell has this idea that because women were so independent in the 30s, they latched onto the Shakespearean convention as a way to just do away with the obligations one might have to the previous generation, that these women could be totally independent, could have. Could make these marriages of love and that. That what the mother signaled, which was connection to a kind of shared past and a cultural past, could just be done away with entirely by eliminating mothers from these films. Fathers are more flexible in that way. And the fathers in the 30s films are always on the side of the young woman having the romantic relationship with the suitable man, with the Cary Grant with the romantic hero. In other words, they're not impediments to their daughters basically being like a romantic sexual being. And it's funny how in this film that's kind of used as a. I mean, that's certainly there. That trope is there, but the father is also, like, really, really stands to gain, too, from her marriage to Arthur. And his desire for her to be with him is. Yes. It's, of course, motivated by her happiness. And we kind of. We know that he's this. We sense that he's a wonderful guy in addition to being Jerry Seinfeld's dad. We sense he's a wonderful guy. Right. And that he actually has her best interest interests at heart. But also he's motivated by the wealth that Arthur can provide for her, which is a perfectly normal and natural thing to be motivated by. Right. So it's just funny that there's this element of class there as well. Like, it's quite different, you know, even from Charles Coburn's relationship with Barbara Stanwyck and the Lady Eve, in that he balks at her desire to actually go straight and marry Henry Fonda, even if that means financial independence for her because it will restrict the freedom of her spirit or something. Right. Linda's father is far less complex and far more accepting of this wealth for him and his daughter. 24:20 Wes: So, yeah, I was also going to say, I think with missing mothers. Right. So there's lots of psychological implications to that. And in the case of a daughter, a lone daughter with a father, there's the danger of the father not letting her go is a greater danger because she becomes a substitute for the mother and because there's no point of identification for the daughter. Not that there's no point, but the mother as a node of identification for the purposes of growing up, is not there. And so she could be left simply with her attachment to the father. So another way of having one's development arrested. And you can read like Shakespeare's Tempest, is all about the psychological dynamics of that and how it is that Prospero, right, when he abjures his rough magic and his sense of omnipotence and his grandiose sensibilities, it's also about his capacity to give up his daughter. In this case. Yeah. Linda's father. You get a sense of a very nice relationship between them. It's not a dynamic. And I think, in part probably because they've had to focus on survival. So that's a whole new third element. That, in a way, the mom is still in a picture, in a sense, if one is worried about meeting one's basic needs and they have to do that together. So the father, of course, is comically interested in Arthur's money. And in the she gets with a rich man, the scene where he's listening outside the door when they're having a fight. When he showed up to the apartment drunk and they're having a fight in the room and she's like. Like that. Turns down the $100,000. He just makes that noise and then bites his fist. It's great. 26:04 Erin: So great. 26:05 Wes: But I think it's also worth pointing out. So I guess Arthur's mom is not in the picture either. So we have two absent mothers and we never, of course, learn why or what's going on with that. Which is great. Right. I'm glad we don't get any backstory on that. And maybe Arthur is better off. Maybe Arthur is better off having had Hobson. You can really. If being a mama's boy is one of the dangers, then that could have been the nail in the coffin for Arthur. 26:34 Erin: Exactly. Yeah. It's interesting that so much of the film operates just on this innate feeling of goodwill we have towards the characters and the sense that these characters are good people. Because Linda's father's eagerness to get her married off that's something that actually can usually signal disaster in a Shakespeare production. Right. Like, this is a theory that some people have about Much Ado actually, is that Hero's father is actually too eager to get her married off. He's too eager to have Claudio take her. And then when her reputation is falsely trashed, Claudio somehow has this innate lack of confidence in Hero's own worth because of her father's willingness to marry her off without giving him a proper task. Right. And this is actually what undermines Claudio's belief in Hero's good character. So these things can actually be dangerous for a woman if their father is too willing to get rid of them. Right. It's, you know, the hasty goods gotten rid of, you know, too quickly is danger. That's discussed in Jane Austen novels as well. Right. What are you trying to get away with if you're trying to foist your daughter on somebody. And instead, like, because we just have this belief in Linda's father's goodness and in Linda's character, you know, when she says at some point, I think very early, when she's about to get on the bus, right after they've had the, you know, the little improv moment on the street, she says something like, you know, I'm a wonderful person. It's like, we absolutely believe that. You know, she definitely is. She's just been stealing a tie in Bergdorf's and then lied profusely. And we're like, yep, she is wonderful. 28:14 Wes: She. 28:15 Erin: She's Liza, you know, we get it. So that so much of the film is operating on these characters charm to cover up what might otherwise, you know, in a different casting situation, might have been disastrous. 28:27 Wes: Right. 28:28 Erin: I think it points just to what you said about Dudley Moore at the beginning and how adorable he is. Like, he gets away with everything in this film because he's so adorable. It's never obnoxious for me. 28:36 Wes: Yeah, same for me. 28:37 Erin: His laughter. It's. Yeah, it just. It works. 28:40 Wes: It's interesting, you know, in light of the missing mothers, this whole refrain in the film about being alone. Nobody should be alone. It's awful to be alone. Right. If we want to be psychologists about it, we would say, well, something happened to Arthur's mother. Something has happened to make him feel alone. And the drinking is a big part of how he deals with that. 29:01 Erin: Right. 29:02 Wes: And one that has also prevented him from finding, you know, real connection to a real person. In this case, there's got to be a kind of person who's going to break through that. And it turns out to be Linda, who is not quite in a similar predicament, but is also missing a mother. But not to make too much of that, but this concept of aloneness that is sort of repeated several times in 29:24 Erin: the movie, it's really noticeable when you have Arthur, Linda and Susan all missing a mother. So we have this grandmother who's this sort of like wellspring of the family. Right. She's at the root of the whole tree. So that seems to sort of balance things because Arthur has a good relationship with her. And I suppose because it's a grandmother, there isn't this danger of having this overly close relationship which might, I think, as you suggested, which might end up turning him into someone very spoiled or someone with a very different type of temperament. Right. Or personality, I should say. But, you know, where we have this interaction with Bert, Susan's father, that seems to be the locus of a lot of. Of the film's preoccupation with relationship to parents. And he seems like someone who is. He needs a wife to get him to stop murdering people or to calm down. I don't know. Like, what can we say about that? That disastrous lack of a feminine principle in his life. It's too much of a coincidence that neither point on the love triangle has a mother. 30:25 Wes: Yeah. Looking here, where this, you know, the idea of being alone pops up in the movie. And early on when he's in the bath, Arthur's in the bath and says to Hobson, who's in there, stay with me a minute, Hobson, you know I hate to be alone. And he says, yes, bathing is a lonely business. And Arthur says, except for the fish, but the fish tend to eat one another. So that's a great representation of the conflict around being with others versus isolating oneself. Being alone is terrible, but if you're with others, you have to subject yourself to their aggression as well. It's not all just love. It's not all just shits and giggles. It's all the bad stuff that comes with it. And at a certain point, right after Hobson, I guess it's still in the bath and Hobson takes off Arthur's hat and hits him with it and says, I don't want you to be alone. And Arthur says, I'll never be alone. I have you. Which is very sweet and, of course, untrue. And as we gradually learn during the movie, Hobson is dying. And so there's a really critical incentive for Arthur to actually find someone else. I think Hobson is the only person that Arthur really has in the sense, right, that without him, he really would be alone. And at dinner with Susan, she says, I know how alone you are. I know how I hate how alone you are. And then a little later, you're never going to be alone again because I'm never going to leave you. 31:56 Erin: It's like a horror film when it's said by the wrong person. 31:59 Wes: Yeah, yeah. It's not the right kind of togetherness. It's right after that that he says, you're such an asshole. Which is a really strange thing to say to someone like Susan. And then he says, some of us drink because we're not poets. As if he suspects that she's trivializing his drinking. This is the one moment where there is some suggestion, some real. And it's quite a poignant moment in between a bunch of really funny jokes like, will you take my hand? That would leave you without Leave you with one. Which, when I saw this, these were like. I was laughing to the point of pain in my stomach when I was a kid watching every one of these lines hit with me. But in between, there's this real one poignant moment where he's trying to convey to her the fact that the drinking is not trivial and she cannot solve it just by being in proximity to him or for them to have this institutional arrangement to say, okay, we're married, therefore I'm not alone. It doesn't work like that. And she doesn't get that. So he knows something about himself. He knows he needs something. Something authentic. And he knows that because he's had it with Hobson. He's had a real relationship. And it's when Hobson dies that he's going to have to truly confront aloneness in its most real sense. Hobson will say, I'm sorry, Arthur. And Arthur says, for what? And he says, for leaving you. Arthur says, you're not leaving anyone. And then he gives them the basketball. So starts to treat Hobson as if he's a child giving him a bunch of toys, including a toy like a basketball which you can make a pun on the word dribble. Right. If I feel the urge to dribble, I can always call the nurse. So Arthur is moving into this parental role. And what you get from all of this is that the key to not being alone is not to be taken care of. Not to have this completely giving person like Susan, just, I accept all your flaws. I'm going to be here for you no matter what. That's not the cure for loneliness. The cure for lo. Loneliness is to care about someone else and to take care of someone else and to have the urge to do that because they need to be taken care of. Which someone like Susan, you get the sense she doesn't need that, right? At the level of financially. Of course she doesn't. You get the sense psychologically, she doesn't either. She's not looking for that. She's looking for someone to baby. He's a baby. And she's looking for someone to baby. And with another spoiled rich kid that might have been a perfect match for him. There's something else going on that makes him allergic to that. 34:39 Erin: Well, there's my favorite joke in that dinner with Susan which, just thinking about it was making me laugh a little bit. I'm like, author. Sometimes I just think funny things is when she says, a real woman would stop you from drinking or something like that. And he says it would have to be a real big woman. And, you know, that's such a cringe moment, Right. Because it's like, God, like, you know, it's not. It's not your responsibility to fix him. Right. It relies on this kind of, you know, just really infantilizing view of where, like, the man is the one who has to be taken care of, rather than that the man can be changed by a woman in a romantic relationship in which she has some sort of, like, mothering influence on him. Right. This is extremely distasteful to me and I think to most. Right. And it's operating on this really just sick idea. And she said something relatively benign, but we can see how there's this babying element to it, which is interesting because she doesn't seem to be, you know, she seems to be someone who has been babied herself. Right. So it's interesting that she does have this desire to extend that to someone else. But, you know, babying is good for babies, but. And it's not good for adults. She could maybe get someone to baby, but. Yeah, it shouldn't be Arthur, but she's spoken of by the father. Like, I love. Another thing that always gets me, that makes me laugh so hard, is when he's talking with the father in the study and he says, where's the rest of this moose? That one. And when he goes to attack them, he takes a knife out of the cheese and he's like. Like he's taking my father the cheese. You think he wants some cheese? 36:22 Wes: You think he wants some cheese? Yeah, absolutely. 36:27 Erin: Oh, my gosh. Such a good line. 36:30 Wes: And every line delivered perfectly. And. 36:32 Erin: Yeah. So good. 36:34 Wes: But, so. But imagine Al Pacino saying, that could have been Al Pacino. 36:39 Erin: Well, you know, and. And lest we forget, like, Liza's delivery is amazing in this. 36:44 Wes: Of course. 36:45 Erin: So underrated. I mean, she's. 36:47 Wes: Yeah, who else could. I mean, another. Again. Yeah. Perfectly cast. It's just. 36:52 Erin: Yeah, it's a role. I love that. Arguing with the guy. Anyway, the scene with Bert where he talks about, like, killing that guy. Like, I. I thought we would make so much hay out of this. Maybe it's a little too obvious, right? Killing off one's childhood at 11. You know, he made his first million by the time he was 18. So this is a guy who is lower class, right. Who's transcended his earlier circumstances to become this super wealthy guy who's now making almost like a feudal or royal kind of connection between households in this match of his daughter to Arthur. 37:27 Wes: Well, he's taken the path of ruthlessness, which in a way is, I think, the opposite of the path of love, even more than hate, in a weird way, because ruthlessness is really ultimately about the willingness to do anything for. Well, nominally for survival, but really ultimately for status. So I recently read Hitler's Mein Kampf, which is a weird association to make, but if you want the psychology of ruthlessness and the philosophy of ruthlessness, that was preeminently the Nazi ideology, and it was. It was celebrated as something that is protective. If you let down your guard, you're going to get screwed in the way that the Treaty of Versailles screwed Germany. You're going to get taken advantage of, and you can't give in to softer emotions. You can't get into sympathy and empathy. Mein Kampf, he says, Hitler means many things by struggle, but one of the struggles was to overcome his sympathy, empathy for other people. He treats it as a triumph of the will that he's able to get to the point where he's no longer capable of empathy. So that's one. So if you're in a position of privation and need, which, by the way, motherlessness is representative of that, one reaction to that is to deny love, but not just in the sense of going to hate, but in the sense of putting oneself in a place where you eliminate empathy within yourself for the sake of some very narcissistic goal, a greatness, admiration, money, status, all of that stuff. So I think that's really spot on to point to that scene in this concept. And the word ruthless is used. It's used by Arthur's father and it's displayed in that scene with Susan's father. But critical, I just think, psychologically spot on to put that in opposition to love, but go ahead. 39:27 Erin: Yeah. Well, you're perfectly contextualizing Bert's discussion of Susan in which she becomes his possession. Right. He says, she's my gold, she's my treasure. Right. And he says, I protect what's mine in an ugly way. Right. So it's about like, she is, in a sense, not a daughter, but kind of a status symbol for him. And he. He is ruthless in his protection of that. So where we might, you know, that's really helpful because where we might locate soft feelings that he has for her, instead they're these, like, highly guarded, like, attack dog type type feelings that have to do with preserving the status that she seems to lend him. Scary stuff. Yeah. 40:11 Wes: We don't learn a lot about why the parents are so keen on those two getting married. 40:16 Erin: Good for business. Something about business at the beginning, I 40:19 Wes: can't remember, I was thinking, I mean, yeah, if this was royalty a few hundred years ago, it might make sense, unite the two houses or whatever. But I don't know what practical purpose it serves. 40:35 Erin: Right. That's what's so funny about this in a way. Any kind of American joining of families. It's always a bit of an aping anyway of European convention. And so we have this Dudley Moore as this actual little English prince in the sort of more genteel, plays the piano. I mean, he has, you know, he's a little aesthete in a way. He has those baser interests and attractions. Right. But you know, he's this little pawn in the parents kind of cosplay of European aristocracy. There's no there there. Ultimately the whole constraint that is the primary conflict of the plot is a false one ultimately. Right. As I think I suggested in part one, really that's just about Arthur overcoming his own kind of psychological impediments towards maturation. Right. It's presented as this external constraint, but really it's about him being willing to give that up and to say, okay, I'm going to take responsibility for myself and be an adult. So it's sort of strangely externalized, but it's really entirely about Arthur's own. His own desire to stay a little kid in a way. And as false as that constraint is, or as flimsy as it is, or as much of a kind of faux constraint as it is, there's also like this even more false ideology undermining it, which is just the fact that these two families uniting is some sort of play at being. Being aristocratic. And it's as though Arthur, by giving up the money is putting the lie to the whole idea that in America there is anything that separates us ultimately from each other. Right. Like there's a sort of like beautiful undermining of any kind of faux class distinction in the marriage, which is like this really American ideal of marriage across those types of boundaries or that erases those types of boundaries. In other words, like a kind of meritocracy marriage. But I don't know, I don't want to make too fine a point of that. 42:38 Wes: Yeah, I mean, I got the sense that Susan is daddy's little girl and she wants what she wants. And so her dad is going to get that for her. And then Arthur's father, Arthur is a problem for him. And so in a way they can. It's like price fixing or corporate corruption. In this case, it's not Right. Where two businessmen get together to fix something and not let market forces work the way they're supposed to work. But in each case, they're solving a problem for each other. And, yeah, that scene where. The scene where Mr. Johnson, Susan's father, is threatening Arthur, is so perfect because the moose head on the wall is, of course, standing for Arthur. And Mr. Johnson, right, a certain point, is putting away a rifle as he talks to Arthur. 43:29 Erin: And he mimics killing the guy who's coming in to steal their food. 43:33 Wes: And Arthur is trying to use humor, which in this case, this is the place where humor goes to die. And that's made clear from the very beginning of the scene when he's trying to even be funny with the very slow and humorless butler. So in a way, Arthur's trying to do a standup routine through all of it, and he can't get any laughs. He says to the butler at one point, are you sure you want to be a nightclub comic? And so at the point where he sees the moose and he says, where's the rest of this moose? And the father says, arthur, I think it's time we got to know one another. And Arthur tries to make a joke. I do, too. That's why I had you come over today. And then he says that this is a tough room because the father, of course, Mr. Johnson, doesn't laugh. And then Arthur says, this is a tough room. Then looks at the moose and says, I don't have to tell you that. Looks at the father and says, you must have hated this moose. So just. 44:27 Erin: Just because the father doesn't drink, he 44:29 Wes: doesn't know how to have fun, but all. Just a perfect, you know, everything. Everything visual and circumstantial. Right. It's not just there in the dialogue, but that's why I think it's such a great screenplay. There's a lot of this where apart from all the really funny gags and lines, visually, everything is set up so wonderfully. Arthur's identification with the movie. And then the hunter, ruthless hunter father, who just basically sets up a threat that Arthur is going to get killed by him. And of course, as you pointed out, it's set up further by the account of killing someone when he is 11 years old. 45:05 Erin: Yeah, I'm thinking, you know, there's something to be made over the fact that he pulls the knife out of the cheese. You know, there's a lot of food going on. I'm thinking of when he's at dinner with Susan, and Susan isn't drinking either. Right. Because as, as Bert says, no one in my family drinks. I think at one point, he orders another drink. This is when he tells the waiter, I think that he has a medical condition that he has to drink every hour. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, so to keep it coming. And so he says he'll have another drink. And then he asks Susan if she wants another fish. Because she's gotten. She's gotten fish. Yeah. There's something a little bit too. Or something about the way that Susan and her father are. And this, you know, they've too much food, too much security or food is tied to violence in this, you know, explicitly by the father and then with the cheese knife going after him. Right. I don't know. I don't know what that is, but there seems to be something there. 45:59 Wes: And humorlessness and living in a world that's very literal. 46:04 Erin: Yeah. 46:04 Wes: Right. Which is why, even at the end, she hasn't put two and two together about Linda's fake. What's his name? Harold. 46:14 Erin: Yeah, Harold and the kids. That's great. 46:17 Wes: Her fake husband. Yeah. 46:19 Erin: The butler in Susan's house. That's the Thin man reference. I think it's also used in Young Frankenstein, you know, the Walk this Way with Igor following him into the castle. But, yeah. When Arthur imitates the butler's loping walk, which he doesn't seem to be doing consciously, it seems to be because of his state of drunkenness. 46:38 Wes: The butler says, follow me. Yeah, walk. I think in Young Frankenstein, it's like, walk this way. 46:44 Erin: Walk this way. Yeah. This is a similar. This is a joke from the Thin man, one of the Thin man movies. 46:51 Wes: Oh, it is. 46:51 Erin: Nick Charles. Yeah. Does imitates the walk of a very slow moving butler. And this is, I think, the nod to that film, the screenplay is, you know, it's so smart about those 30s conventions. And, I mean, it's such a tragedy that Steve Gordon died so young. 47:07 Wes: Yeah. So the only film he directed, and I think he died in 47 or 48. 47:11 Erin: Right. I think it was 44. 47:12 Wes: Oh, even earlier. 47:14 Erin: Yeah. Died of a heart attack. 47:15 Wes: So you get the impression he could have done. Yeah. Made many great films. And then Dudley Moore himself developed a neurodegenerative condition which, strangely enough, the symptoms, the early symptoms kind of mimicked drunkenness. 47:32 Erin: Yeah. And so people thought he was like his character. Right. And. Yeah. And he actually wasn't a drinker at all. 47:38 Wes: Yeah. 47:38 Erin: Yeah. Too tragic. 47:41 Wes: Well, on that happy note. 47:45 Erin: Well, we do have to transition to something less than happiness, seeing as we're gonna Talk about Medea next week or next time. But after that, I wanted to cover A New Leaf, which is Elaine May's film from 1971, so a decade earlier than this film. You know, I think this film is indebted. I think Arthur is indebted to A New Leaf a bit. There's nothing about drunkenness in that film. But the main character is rich. He's played by Walter Matthau. He's rich. He loses his fortune through his own profligacy, and then he finds himself having to marry a woman that he doesn't love in order to get her money. But it's all about, like, his favorite hobby. His whole raison d' etre is his wealth. He says to his butler, and he has a trusty butler, and he says to his butler, at some point, I have no skills, no resources, no ambitions. All I am or was is rich. And that's all I ever wanted to be. So wealth for wealth's sake is the theme of the string of movies. 48:42 Wes: Yeah. I love the scene in Arthur where the florist asks him what it's like to have how it feels to have all that money. And he's like, really good. It feels great. 48:52 Erin: Stupid question. 48:54 Wes: I mean, the florist is like, yeah, that's a stupid question. 48:56 Erin: Yeah. 48:57 Wes: What did I expect from this? But you expect, of course, someone say, oh, money's not everything, and it's not the key to happiness. So another nice touch in this film that it does not simply try to go that route in a very caricature, ish sort of way. And at the end. Right. It's also acknowledged that, yeah, it would be crazy to turn down the $750 million. Yeah. So we'll be doing that Elaine May movie after that. We'll do Wyatt, right? 49:27 Erin: Yes. So Euripides. Elaine May Wyatt. Clear trajectory. 49:33 Wes: Your talk of the butler made me think, should we read Wodehouse at some point? 49:37 Erin: Oh, of course. Yeah, that would be great. 49:39 Wes: Some Jeeves action. 49:41 Erin: That'll be a great treat when I'm done with my exam. Let's make that, like, the first thing I read once I'm done with my exams and hopefully in November or December. Read some more Wodehouse. 49:50 Wes: Okay, thank you. 49:52 Erin: Thank you. And thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast. Please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook subtextpodcast and on Twitter enjoysubtext.