Oxenberg was suggested by Loren from Las Vegas and Alexandra from Denver. And here's the British succession list from back in 2001.. Fascinatingly obsessive.
OK. Now you’ve got me thinking – as I remember Dynasty (I didn’t watch it, but it was so big that it spilled over into popular culture at large) – it was all about American “bluebloods,” as the title implies. In part, I think, it was an answer to Dallas, which began the big-TV metaphor of our oil-igarchs as the American answer to British royalty.
Dallas spun the in-and-out of it all in the way you describe the real British royals. Everybody hated J.R., who was more cold-blooded than blue-blooded, and everyone rooted for Bobby, played by the Irish-Catholic Patrick Duffy. That is, I’m guessing in retrospect, that part of Bobby’s appeal was that he looked the part of someone who’d be disinherited in a dynastic selection.
Dynasty was bigger, in the sense of bigger hair and perhaps other dimensions as well. I didn’t have a clear idea of who was screwing whom – in either sense of the term – but I did get the impression that the Linda Evans character was the outsider, the blonde beauty who didn’t quite fit in the rarified world of inherited privilege.
…and who represented that privilege? John Forsythe and Joan Collins, each of whom – with a Jewish parent – would merit (I presume) a 3 on the I score. With Emma Samms and, now, Catherine Oxenberg that’s at least two more of the major cast members in the same boat. Coincidence or, with the show written by Jews and produced by Jews, was there something else in the air, some sense that it took a Jew to represent the air of familiar grandeur that it would take to depict an American royal? (Collins was British, of course, which only added to that grandeur.)
OK. Now you’ve got me thinking – as I remember Dynasty (I didn’t watch it, but it was so big that it spilled over into popular culture at large) – it was all about American “bluebloods,” as the title implies. In part, I think, it was an answer to Dallas, which began the big-TV metaphor of our oil-igarchs as the American answer to British royalty.
ReplyDeleteDallas spun the in-and-out of it all in the way you describe the real British royals. Everybody hated J.R., who was more cold-blooded than blue-blooded, and everyone rooted for Bobby, played by the Irish-Catholic Patrick Duffy. That is, I’m guessing in retrospect, that part of Bobby’s appeal was that he looked the part of someone who’d be disinherited in a dynastic selection.
Dynasty was bigger, in the sense of bigger hair and perhaps other dimensions as well. I didn’t have a clear idea of who was screwing whom – in either sense of the term – but I did get the impression that the Linda Evans character was the outsider, the blonde beauty who didn’t quite fit in the rarified world of inherited privilege.
…and who represented that privilege? John Forsythe and Joan Collins, each of whom – with a Jewish parent – would merit (I presume) a 3 on the I score. With Emma Samms and, now, Catherine Oxenberg that’s at least two more of the major cast members in the same boat. Coincidence or, with the show written by Jews and produced by Jews, was there something else in the air, some sense that it took a Jew to represent the air of familiar grandeur that it would take to depict an American royal? (Collins was British, of course, which only added to that grandeur.)
John Forsythe didn't have one Jewish parent. Both of his parents were Jewish.
ReplyDeleteIf John Forsythe's mother's maiden name is correct in his Wikipedia profile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forsythe
ReplyDeletethen he's 100% Jewish! I smell a future JONJ profile....