Gift Vid: Her Cold Metal Hands - for Cara Marie

[chaila]

Title:Her Cold Metal Hands
Recipient: Cara Marie
Vidder: seekingferret
Music: "Che Gelida Manina" by Puccini, performed by East Village Opera Company
Summary: John/Cameron as Rodolfo/Mimi. Is it possible to objectify an object?
Notes: There are versions without subtitles, with English subtitles, and with Italian subtitles. If you're new to La Boheme, I'd recommend starting with the English subtitles. [Ed. Note: The English subtitled version is embedded here. There are links to view the others after the embed]. Unfortunately, vimeo doesn't support accessible subtitles so I hardcoded them into the video, but I can also make the .srt files available if people need them for accessibility reasons.

Thanks to sabaceanbabe for beta help.

Link: Link to signed vid post.

Comments

[chaila]

I was coming to say that this is a beautiful piece of music, and I love the casting of John as the poet and writer. But the first comment just makes me think that I missed the joke. :)

[sanguinity]

At the risk of overexplaining the joke...

I take it you are not familiar with La Boheme? It's the one wherein Mimi, the delicate young lover who is too sweet and innocent to live, dies of consumption at the closing curtain, giving pathetic little coughs all throughout a diseased-lungs-could-never-produce-THAT aria of gorgeousness. (It's the opera that Cher cries over in Moonstruck!) Boheme is simultaneously heartbreakingly romantic and utterly ridiculous.

The music the vidder chose is (iirc) the first private conversation between the young lovers. The candle has blown out, she has dropped her room key, and the two of them are groping around in the dark for it. He bumps up against her "poor, frozen" hand, clutches it to himself, promptly abandons all pretense of being helpful, and macks on her with this ridiculous song that's all, "You don't know me, but I'm awesome."

(He's not awesome. I've never been entirely clear on whether we're supposed to suspend disbelief about his not-awesomeness.)

So THAT'S the joke: the vidder has cast John and Cameron as Rodolfo and Mimi, of all people. It ought to be COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY WRONG (Cameron's hands are cold not because she is frail and delicate and dying of consumption! they are cold because she is an unstoppable killer robot!) but yet it works, somehow. (John and his Eyeliner of Emo Earnestness is surprisingly effective as Rodolfo!) And to make it worse (better?) the vidder is unabashedly pushing the wrongness of it at every opportunity -- the eyes! the hope! the way John keeps carrying that laptop around like a hipster at a coffeeshop! -- and yet... it never stops working in this TERRIBLY WRONG sort of way.

[chaila]

Heeee okay, yes, that is very helpful context! Though, um, now I'm mentally casting John as Mimi because HE IS SO HUMAN AND WEAK. And Cameron really is awesome so we wouldn't even have to suspend disbelief!

[sanguinity]

Granted, the show has a tendency to treat John as a princess in a garret tower. (And oh, the weeping and beating of breasts, if he were to prettily perish of consumption!)

But... he makes such a lovely Rodolfo. And Cameron does die at the end. And despite all the last minute rushing about, they are too late with the medicine to save her. And John!Rodolfo is BESIDE HIMSELF WITH GRIEF HAHAHA.

(Whoops, we're not supposed to laugh at Boheme. We are supposed to cry.)

See, if we agree to keep John as Rodolfo, and then ask very nicely, perhaps the vidder will give us an encore? Cameron!Mimi's death scene yes yes.

[seekingferret]

Awww... sanguinity's comment explains the joke better than I could, but I wanted to say, the fact that you could very easily miss the joke IS the joke. So you're not wrong to read this as a vid about John as a poet and writer, with feelings overflowing all over the place, to beautiful music. That is the point of the vid. It's just, for him to be this particular poet is kind of ridiculous.