Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

WARNING!!!! THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS AN EXCESSIVE AMOUNT OF EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!!!!!!!!

I like most musicals! I like Doris Day! I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I was just kind of burnt out on Doris Day movies. Or maybe this wasn’t a typical Doris Day film. Lots of Day’s films have songs in them but this was an actual full blown musical based on Richard Bissel’s book “7 ½ cents.”

It’s touted as an amazing piece of Americana and an entertaining commentary on the class war. I liked several of the songs, especially “I Would Trust Her” sung by a man with a serious jealousy problem. I thought intoxicated Carol Haney was hilarious! I read they kept giving her more lines because she was so funny!

Granted I hated other songs but that’s not why this film just rubbed me the wrong way.

It might be the fact that this is counted as an amazing representation of American culture and it’s just the whitest of white mayonnaise on white bread on a white paper plate in a snowstorm I’ve ever seen. I’m not a fan of tokenism, and at the same time I won’t advocate that everyone must be represented in all things at all times. If it’s a small cast, everyone being white might be a typical situation. Family Matters was about a black family. It made sense the majority of that small cast was black. But The Pajama Game was a cast of 40 and centered around a wage war at an Iowa factory in the 1950’s! You mean to tell me there was no ethnic diversity there? Well, in the 1950’s maybe there wasn’t but c’mon! Even Shirley Temple films had more diversity! Granted the roles were usually demeaning but the performers were spectacular! This film could have been an amazing and timeless mix of cultures and talent but frankly I think it should be swept under the rug and remade but better.