Way back when I was a student at Northside High School in Warner Robins, GA I had a friend named Perry who had recently transferred from another high school. He regaled us with his stories about the characters at his old school, including a loquacious special needs student who was either mentally handicapped or had a serious speech impediment.
Now this was around the time the Clarence Thomas hearings were going on and Anita Hill, if you recall, had accused him of sexual harassment, including that he had referred to himself as "Long Dong Silver". For reasons unknown, the aforementioned special ed student was pretty enthralled with this whole saga, and was often heard talking about "Long Dong Silver". Except that his pronunciation was such that it came out, "Laawk Doike Shee", or at least that's how Perry described it to us, and how it came to be spelled among my circle of friends.
As you might imagine, words like "Laawk", "Doike", and "Shee" have great appeal, and unsurprisingly became a very popular in-joke with my friends and me. We used it as a greeting ("Doike!"), as an exclamation ("Oh, Laawk!"), and as a sort of multi-purpose linguistic catch-all: ("Take a laawk at the next light, then an immediate doike.") Try saying "Laawk Doike Shee" out loud without smiling. Even better, try saying it to your boss. It's a phrase like "supercalifragilistic..." in that it transcends cultures and has the power to right wrongs and brighten horizons upon utterance.
We even invented a character named Lt. Col. Laawk Doike Shee, though his adventures were confined mostly to late night conversations within a small circle of friends who shared a real love for all things Laawk. Until the day Laawk ran for President of the Sr. Class.
I happened to be campaigning myself, so I came to school early one day to hang up signs, when lo and behold, Lt. Col. Laawk Doike Shee had beat me to the punch. There on the wall was a sign that said "Lt. Col. Lawwk Doike Shee for Sr. Class President". I was surprised, but to my chagrin I discoved that the whole school (and the vocational/ROTC hall in particular) was littered with campaign posters for the Colonel.
Anyway, he didn't end up winning the election, but he did put a stamp on that school. Everybody was talking about this Laawk character and was he real and did he have a chance to win. Walking down the hall, I'd overhear conversations like, "Have you met this Colonel Lock guy? I heard he's taking Holly Watson to the prom." Later in life, I received some mail addressed to the Colonel. But I never did find out who was running his campaign.
And that's the legend of Lt. Col. Laawk Doike Shee.
wow. there's a great discussion going on over here at this blog. a friend just forwarded it to me (i only know the poster known as "firf") and it's now getting really interesting. i may regret getting involved.
Maphet has a couple interesting posts on The Passion of the Christ. He raises an interesting question about the reviews, and the sensitive nature of this film that makes it hard to evaluate objectively. It does seem like many reviews carry a hostile undercurrent that precedes critical evaluation of the film.
I think it's a reminder of just how divisive Christ (was and) still is. We all have seen people roll their eyes at fundamentalist Christians. I roll my eyes whenever Pat Robertson makes another proclamations. In our culture--and by that I primarily refer to liberal urban semi-sophisticates that generally control secular media outlets--the born-again bumpkin is an easy target.
I haven't seen the movie, so I can't comment on whether it's any good, but much of the stuff I've read seems unhappy with the story itself or the Main Character, not the quality of the film. The review at salon was a great example of this. Unabashedly liberal as they are, I expected it. But to be so snide in your review betrays a knee-jerk bias that runs deeper than your reaction to the presentation.
It seems that Gibson has tapped into a pretty deep well of resentment, and I think the fact that he has 'come out of the closet' and said that he actually believes it has opened him up to this criticism. It would have been very different if the film were merely an academic or speculative artistic venture. Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, for example, was greeted much more warmly by the media.
And of course the core offense is Christ himself. Nobody likes to be told that He is the only way, and so when someone appears to do this, we all get self-protectively dismissive. But it's awfully hard to get around Christ's words, which I suppose is why He was crucified in the first place.