-----Original Message-----
From: Kettil Bruun Society [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ron Roizen
Sent: 29 January 2006 18:04
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Dear Frankie

Watched the Scottish movie, Dear Frankie, last night.  It’s a story about a deaf nine-year-old boy (Frankie) who lives with his mother and grandmother.  They’ve recently arrived in a new apartment in Glasgow.  The movie is set in the present time.  I won’t go into the whole plot, but there were some scenes that struck me as interesting from a cross-cultural perspective on alcohol and cigarettes.  For the record, I’m a great believer in the power of small and chance observations in furthering if not our knowledge at least our sense of the complexity of cross-cultural differences and similarities.

1.      Soon after the little family arrives in its new digs, mom sends Frankie down to the nearby fish & chips shot to get dinner.  Grandma, a chain smoker, signals to Frankie to get her some cigarettes.  Frankie asks for the smokes (by putting the V of his fingers up to his lips and pretend puffing out) in the shop and is denied by the clerk, who asks how old he is.  In a few minutes, the mother comes down to the shop to get the cigarettes.  She asks the same clerk if the boy could not make himself understood.  The clerk says no, he made his meaning clear.  What’s so striking about this scene is that the boy and his mother are newcomers to the neighborhood and the shop, and therefore must have been relying on a generalized norm of the availability of cigarettes to children – either from the town from which they came or in blue collar Glasgow.  The clerk invokes an age rule in not selling to the child (she asks the boy his age) but this was not expected by boy, mother, and grandma.  The grandma, on learning that the boy couldn’t get the cigarettes actually threatens to go down to the shop and teach the clerk a thing or two.  I don’t think there is a venue in the U.S. at this point, even a strongly ethnic one, where sending a nine-year-old down for smokes is plausible.  Even in a shop where the boy and his chain-smoking grandma were well known, this element is unlikely.  Maybe a small town and a disabled grandma would work in the U.S., but even then the shopkeeper would be exposed to not inconsiderable risk, and reluctant.  Since both Scotland and the U.S. have age laws for cigarette purchase, I take the “Dear Frankie” scene to suggest that there is a stronger set of folk norms that parallel the official rules in Scotland than there is in the U.S.  Would this be a good interpretation?

2.      There is a late-night scene where the mother is walking along the waterfront bank with a stranger she has hired to play the role of Frankie’s father for one day.  Frankie is also in the scene; he is walking with another couple about 40 yards ahead of his mom and her companion.  The man in this other couple, and perhaps the woman as well, are quite drunk.  They are clumsily dancing for one another as they walk with the boy, who is imitating their dancing as well.  This scene, with mom enjoying a casual conversation, would strike most U.S. watchers as a bit too rough I think.  The boy’s co-presence with drunken adults, the clumsy dancing, and the nearby threat of the sea would have put a U.S. mom closer to the boy or perhaps placed the boy with the mom and away from the other couple entirely.

3.      Earlier, the other couple, Frankie, mom, and hired companion are at a dance club.  Companion brings drinks back to their table, and he places a very large beer in front of mom.  She demurs, saying she can’t drink all that, and the man in the other couple says:  “Well I know a man who can.”  The same man ends up with the big beer and mom gets a much smaller glass.  The scene interests me in what the presentation of the very big beer to the mom means in the Scottish cultural context if, at the same time, her demurring response is quite predictable and expectable.  BTW, there is a very close shot of the big beer in the scene when it arrives at the table – suggesting that this is something of an event in the symbolic progress of the story.  I’d be interested in interpretations from a British angle.

4.      Mom and grandma share a “wee dram” of whiskey (whisky?) for no particular reason when mom suggests that she simply needs a drink.  They both drink about an ounce-and-half or two ounces, straight, from small glasses.  This scene, too, would have been a difficult sell in a film set in the U.S.  Even in a blue-collar household, I suspect, the scene would have played truer in the U.S. if a bottle of wine hand been opened and a glass or two shared—maybe a beer or two.  Comments?  Remember, we’re talking about a grandma and mom alone.

5.      Finally, there is a sweet scene where grandma, mom, and the woman from the other couple are getting pleasantly soused and singing old songs – sitting on a couch together.  Mom sings her favorite song – a romantic Buck Owens fantasy tune.  Frankie, unobserved, watches the scene wistfully through a door window.  His sense of the activity is seemingly sentimentally positive – seeing his long-suffering mom enjoy herself for once is a good thing.  The scene, with Frankie observing, however, and once again, would play a little rough in a U.S. storyline.  There is a strong norm about exposure of children to intoxication – if you will, a deep separation between the world of attributed innocence of the child and the grittier non-innocence of adulthood – that would have made the scene, in a U.S. movie, evoke just a little unease for a U.S. audience I think.  Again, comments welcome.

Where is Bruce Ritson when I need him!

Am taking the liberty of posting this to both the KBS and the ADHS lists.

Ron Roizen