Bye Bye, Life/Goodbye, Happiness/Hello Loneliness/I Think I'm Gonna Die

This is from the other Roy Scheider movie people are likely to
have seen, ALL THAT JAZZ. ATJ was Bob Fosse's tribute to his favourite
artist, Bob Fosse [1]. In it, we see episodes from the life of protagonist
Joe Gideon as he literally flirts with Death (played by Jessica Lange). 	

	I'm torn between using this to talk about Death as a seductive
or at least sympathetic creature or self-destructive artists. Ah, the
artists can wait and if they can't wait, they should know better than
to mix booze and pills with amateur bomb-disarming: that's a bit of 
Jackson Pollock art you only get to make once per lifetime.

	I don't really understand where the idea of death as seductive
comes from. I've never seen a dead body that looked happy, even the ones
that did it to themselves. Nevertheless, Neil Gaiman's perky gothchick
Death is popular amongst readers and so is Pratchett's more traditional
Death. 

	

	

	
	
	

1: Which isn't to say that Fosse felt any need to make his analog a 
heroic figure. Joe Gideon has personal flaws the way I have scars. 
His flaws don't matter because Joe Gideon is very good at the one
thing he is supposed to be good at, which is being Joe Gideon, 
talented and doomed choreographer and director.  
-- 
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll
(For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-****rt, cup and tote-bag needs)