All three meet as adult women in Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s X-rated graphic novel, Lost Girls (above). Moore, the genius author of Watchmen, From Hell, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – the film versions of which he uniformly disowns – attempts here to explore the erotic subtexts of the aforementioned adventures. Not surprisingly, he finds them all to be metaphors for sexual awakening of one kind or another. But Moore (and Gebbie’s) ambitions are not strictly limited to the erotic. As Wikipedia notes, “The erotic adventures are set against the backdrop of cultural and historic events of the period, such as the debut of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.” The real subject of Lost Girls is revolution, sexual, political, and cultural.
And then there’s Coraline, the 3-D stop-motion film by Henry Sellick, based on a novella by Neil Gaiman, which opens this weekend. My expectations for this project couldn’t be higher, and I hope to report to you on it shortly.
In the meantime, I have a question for anyone reading this post. In the late ’50s, approximately 1957 or 1958, there was a live-action childrens’ show broadcast on Saturday morning network television about a little girl who journeyed to Outer Space and other fantastic locales accompanied by a table. Let me repeat that – A TABLE – a magical table that flew and talked to the little girl while making gestures with its wooden legs. It was one of the most surrealistic things I have ever seen.
If anyone out there remembers the title of this program – or anything else about it – could you please let me know?
