098 • Once Bonnie
So – why do our mem’ries replay
That film-clip of beauteous decay
In which Clyde, once a sweetie
Becomes less up-Beatty
And Bonnie is Fadun’ Away?
Puns feel inexcusably trite; yet the arch wordplay here seeks to point up cinema’s pollutive complicity in our culture’s collective angst. When The New Hollywood temporarily massacres charismatic stars, its consumers become the life-long victims, haunted and taunted by unshiftable visions of desperate beauty defaced.
4 thoughts on “098 • Once Bonnie”
Alternate line 4:
Gets worn and down-Beatty
Hi Adina,
Thanks, a good suggestion: I’m sure if I’d thought of it like that I would have used it. On the other hand I like the line-end I did come up with, because it suggests the previously-upbeat nature of the Clyde character. If anything ‘becomes’ is the weak word, failing to reflect the horrible energy of death by gunfire.
Hope you’ll visit and comment again.
Rick
I’m assuming you did make the “worn” and “Warren” connection.😄 Thanks for replying.
Indeed I did! But part of me reasoned that, having positioned ‘Faye’ and ‘Dunaway’ together, it would have been nice to juxtapose ‘Warren’ and ‘Beatty’ in a similar manner.
RL