I move we censor bagpipes. Like touchdown celebrations, the use of the once understandable, even appropriate, piping had become uncontained, unbridled in its fervor. I refer in particular to the sound of bagpipes being used in cinema and television as the theme for the beautiful-warlike-melancholy-male. It is as if the instrument can only play mournful war ballads.
The sound is now used as a convenient way to elicit the aforementioned Braveheart emotion. Why bother writing decent dialogue or presenting moving imagery when Hamish McHamish can set his bag to “archetype” and bring on the tears for a lot less capital?
The problem is that this doesn’t work. Despite the best efforts of the entertainment industry, we haven’t yet become Pavloved enough to paint ourselves blue every time some red-haired cannibal breathes into a Hoover. So stop it. Enough already. Save it for something actually Scottish.
One reply on “We get it.”
I had the same thought watching Ladder 49 on the way to Las Vegas.
Joaquim (sp) Phoenix, looking as deranged and homicidal as ever, manages to creepy his way into the heart of a beautiful young woman and lives a charmed life as a fireman where his only domestic conflict is over how much he and his wife love each other. Then he gets himself into a fatal situation saving his buddies, speaks a sonnet into his walkie talkie before biting it and out come the pipes for a money-shot dusky funeral involving fire engines roaring into the sunset bearing the “hero’s” remains while everyone cries.
We should all be so lucky to work at our childhood fantasy job, mary a supermodel way out of our league and go out like a G, revered as a local legend. ‘Hero’ my ass, this guy got it all handed to him on a silver platter. I flipped off the screen for the credits.