VMI: Village Mostly Invisible, an investigation of Brigadoon
A LONG TIME AGO IN THE 1954 MGM MUSICAL BRIGADOON:
New York City gents Gene Kelly and Van Johnson are lost in the Scottish Highlands! They want to shoot some birds, but instead stumble upon a village that’s not on the map… Brigadoon!
Everyone’s dancing around the town and preparing for a wedding that evening; meanwhile, sister of the bride Cyd Charisse gets to fall in love with Gene Kelly on the heathery hillsides.
But something’s weird, and it’s not just the fake Scottish accents, the very tight tartan trousers, the two-dimensional mountains and all the day-drinking: it’s that the village is under an enchantment whereby it only appears on one day every hundred years, and it will disappear forever if anyone tries to leave.
Then someone tries to leave!
Then Gene Kelly and Van Johnson have to leave before the village goes sleepy-byes for another hundred years. But Gene left his heart behind...
Lucky for him, there’s a special wake-up-Brigadoon-early clause buried deep in the small print of the enchantment, because of course there is.
Join Jenny Owen Youngs and Helen Zaltzman to investigate the 1954 MGM musical Brigadoon and its many, many mysteries, such as why choose an enchantment with SO many downsides, how Logan Echolls might have seen this, seriously why such a self-owning enchantment, whether the village's crops and foods stay fresh during the 100-year sleeps, and COME ON THINK THIS ENCHANTMENT THROUGH BEFORE CONDEMNING YOUR WHOLE VILLAGE TO IT.
LISTEN:
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Hear more Jenny Owen Youngs on Buffering the Vampire Slayer podcast, and in the form of song at jennyowenyoungs.com. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @JennyOwenYoungs.
Hear more Helen Zaltzman on the linguistic entertainment show The Allusionist. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @HelenZaltzman.
This episode was edited and mixed by Helen Zaltzman. Thanks to Ian Steadman for transcript help.
The music is by Martin Austwick of Pale Bird Music and Jenny Owen Youngs of Jenny Owen Youngs.
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The show will be back mid-2022; to stay updated with all VMI things, and what we’ll investigate when we return, follow @VMIpod on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. - JOY & HZ.
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