Don't let a scrunt near that bleedin' narf!
The ferocious topiary bear-like creatures who inflict near-fatal superficial wounds on a narf in M. Night Shyamalan's "The Lady in the Water" are called "scrunts." (I think there's only one of them in the movie, but it's hard to tell.) Shyamalan, who improvised this tale for his young daughters before he released it as a movie and a children's book, may have some explaining to do. According to the Urban Dictionary, a "scrunt" is nasty filthy slang for a ... dirty lady and her parts. If you want to learn more, beware: the vulgarism contained in the word "scrunt" (aka the c-word) is part of the definition. According to MSN Encarta, however, "scrunt" is Caribbean slang, an intransitive verb meaning "financially strapped: to be in a poor financial situation." Like the wolf at the door, if you catch my drift.
You're in safer waters with narf, which is said to be "a substitute word, does not need to be for a curse word, can be used in any circumstance," from the TV show "Pinky and the Bean Brain." BTW, "Tartutic" and "Eatlon" are undefined.
(Thanks, I think, to Jeff Shannon)
I think you meant "Pinky & the Brain." Pinky & the Bean was the show about the egomaniacal mouse who attempts to conquer Mexico.
JE: I think you're right, Matt. I misread that -- not being familiar with either show. Maybe I was inadvertently thinking of "Freebie and the Bean" (1974) with Alan Arkin and James Caan...
Scrunts, narfs. It reminds me of the famous "squonks," mythical night creatures of Shyamalan's home state of Pa. who shed tears as a fear mechanism. The famous line in Steely Dan's ANY MAJOR DUDE could probably be sung/sang by Night himself after this weekend's box office numbers come in: "Have you seen a squonk's tears, well, look at mine."
JE: Oh, how I love Steely Dan language, too, TLRHB! There's this line from "Cousin Dupree" (about which a post coming soon): "She said maybe its the skeevy look in your eyes / Or that your mind has turned to applesauce." And, of course, the magnificently rococo linguistic edifice that is "Gaucho":
Who is the gaucho amigo
Why is he standing
In your spangled leather poncho
And your elevator shoes
Bodacious cowboys
Such as your friend
Will never be welcome here
High in the custerdome
"...amphibious Al Gores..."
What a great line. Maybe if "The Lady in the Water" had included his Vice-Presidential Action Rangers, the movie would have turned differently. Or, alternately, ManBearPig.
JE: Thanks, Ali. I almost mentioned Manbearpig in connection with the scrunts. But I figured I'd already gone on and on and on with my customary ramblings and parentheticals (What can I say? My brain is all about tangents and references...) so I restrained myself (for one tiny moment) and took it out!
I can't wait to see your post on Steely Dan vs. Owen Wilson. I'm a huge Steely Dan fan myself, but even I can't tell if they're being serious or not about getting riled up over the use of a character named "Dupree." Maybe they still believe in their old lyrics: "Showbiz kids, making movies of themselves, you know they don't give a f___ about anybody else."
The Lady in the Water: a reaction
Michael Mitchell
“… in my opinion, despite the sometimes misleading strangeness of his works, it is difficult for an unprejudiced and knowledgeable viewer to deny or question the naive truthfulness of his art ...his continual search for the essential sign of each thing, a thousand significant details undeniably assert his profound and almost childlike sincerity.� The Isolated Ones: Vincent van Gogh by Albert Aurier
This was perhaps the first kind review of Van Gogh’s work; it was published six months before his death. Reviews of Lady in the Water find it “far fetched,� “cock and bull,� “alienating� and “incomprehensible.� Some call it among the worst of the year. It affected me, like a van Gogh.
A bedtime story, like water, is clear, simple and transparent. It is often heard in numerous iterations and piece meal, only reaching its conclusion when sleep comes too slowly.
Like building superintendent Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), we can only receive this story once we have regressed to a milk-and-cookies simplicity, preferably letting the story roll over us in consciousness’ twilight. Little wonder reviewers are having such trouble with it.
Bedtime stories are filled with unequivocal characters and tidy, spoon-fed plots: angels, demons, heroes and heroines. The stories, originally oral history, are handed down generation to generation, culture to culture; they survive on the strength of some archetypal familiarity. The Lady In the Water struck profound chords amongst the group I brought back with me for a second viewing. Luckily half the group didn’t know Shyamalan on sight or that he played a character in the movie. Their experience was so different from the reviews I’ve read that I found myself writing.
The central intellectual question of The Lady in the Water spoken by the-man-whose-opinion-we-respect, Mr. Leeds played by Bill Irwin: “Is man worthy of saving?� The emotional core of the film is Cleveland’s absence from home when his world was destroyed. Cleveland’s role in this story, his openness to the Narf and his healing power sources from grief and guilt.
To save the Queen Narf--and perhaps the world--a cross section of mankind residing at The Cove must discover their powers and their true places in the unfolding story. Add to this the film’s heart-beat background of war coverage and its final message delivered directly to the subconscious by Bob Dylan’s lyrics (If your time to you Is worth savin' Then you better start swimmin' Or you'll sink like a stone, For the times they are a-changin') and it is easy to see this film as a cautionary tale exhorting us to “be home,� listen to nature, find our powers and help save our world from destruction because, like it or not, the times they are a-changin’.
There is something new in the water we drink. Perhaps it is newly arrived, trickled-down melt from beneath our poles, something both antediluvian and prediluvian that’s seeped into us while attempting to quench a spiritual drought. But we are writing movies like The Lady in the Water and (when not dissuaded from even being present by a hostile, critical world) we are hearing voices from the water.
Many may not yet fully understand, authors and audiences can feel a truth without giving it a name, but this leads, hopefully, to an awakening. In these changing times if we do not awake to our power and our roles in that which is unfolding, our story will end badly. Time is running out for a happy ending. See Lady in the Water, feel the inconvenient truths you may not be willing to hear and please awake.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
Bob Dylan