Marie-Antoinette by Sofia Coppola (movie)

[Sava]

I believe her comments about "Let them eat cake" were taken completely out of context. You have to understand that France was experiencing food supply problems (actually, an effect of the 'little ice age'). The people just didn't understand the difficulties in managing a nation. The French people were stubborn and didn't want to accept the potato as a source of food due to cultural objections. They felt the food was "dirty". Just like the French... even the starving peasants, eh?

So when the people started *****ing and moaning about wanting food, Antoinette grew increasingly frustrated because the solutions being presented just weren't "acceptable" to teh people... those uppity, pompous peasant bastards.

So she makes one comment in frustration and it gets taken out of context and blown completely out of proportion (probably by communists). And you guys know the rest.


communists

spiffor

nudity

Ted Striker

[Imran Siddiqui]

Commies

[Nostromo]

I agree with Spiffor... what is this with putting French people in a good light?!

If Marie-Antoinette was French, Coppola would have put her in a bad light. That's just what you have to do. Its common courtesy. Fortunately for Marie-Antoinette, she was Austrian. Thou shall not diss Ostereich!

[Nostromo]

One thing I like about Coppola is her choice of songs. Just Like Honey... I read there's a Siouxsie Sioux song somewhere in the movie. Why not God save the Queen?

[Kassiopeia]

I don't think there's a record of who really said the cake thing, if it ever even happened. Voltaire attributed it to a generic princess called Marie but at the time of writing, Marie Antoinette was a child (or not even born yet, not sure).

[Nostromo]

Silly Kassiopeia! Didn't you know that Sava was Apolyton's Grand *****in' Lore Master? He's never wrong. If the facts say otherwise, the facts are wrong! Fact!

According to the straight dope:

Dear Cecil:

Did the French queen, Marie Antoinette, ever actually utter the phrase, "Let them eat cake"? I have a friend who claims that Crazy Marie actually said something in French that, in phonetic spelling, merely sounded like "Let them eat cake." Is the line in a class with Humphrey Bogart's "Play it again, Sam"--i.e., bogus? --Willie H., Chicago

Dear Willie:

I have a dream that someday one of these alleged facts of history is actually going to pan out. However, today is not the day. While Marie Antoinette was certainly enough of a bubblehead to have said the phrase in question, there is no evidence that she actually did so, and in any case she did not originate it. The peasants-have-no-bread story was in common currency at least since the 1760s as an illustration of the decadence of the aristocracy. The political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions it in his Confessions in connection with an incident that occurred in 1740. (He stole wine while working as a tutor in Lyons and then had problems trying to scrounge up something to eat along with it.) He concludes thusly: "Finally I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: 'Well, let them eat cake.'"

Now, J.-J. may have been embroidering this yarn with a line he had really heard many years later. But even so, at the time he was writing--early 1766--Marie Antoinette was only ten years old and still four years away from her marriage to the future Louis XVI. Writer Alphonse Karr in 1843 claimed that the line originated with a certain Duchess of Tuscany in 1760 or earlier, and that it was attributed to Marie Antoinette in 1789 by radical agitators who were trying to turn the populace against her.

As for your friend's suggestion, I suppose it's possible that one day, while under the influence of powerful hallucinogens, Marie said Le theme est quete ("The theme is quest"), and was overheard by an English-speaking tourist--thus giving rise, as your friend suggests, to the "Let them eat cake" legend. But frankly I doubt it.

So they must be wrong. Sava knows best.

[Kassiopeia]

Sava

Oh and Rousseau, Voltaire, dead French philosophers the lot of 'em!

[Colon™]

But she's not put in positive light. She's presented as spendthrift, careless, world-strange and frivolous, but she's also not dehumanized: that's exactly the whole point of the movie. This is probably not where commie propaganda would like to put her though.
In fact, I think the movie very effectively shows that the problem was not so much the people who were in charge, but that it was the whole institution itself, which puts people in charge who are not up to the task.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Colon™
This is probably not where commie propaganda would like to put her though.

We want to put her in hell.

Oh wait, we did.

[Drake Tungsten]

If this movie is as boring as Lost in Translation was, then I have no desire to see it.

[LordShiva]

Commies

[Colon™]

Frenchies putting teenagers in charge of a country.

Commies killing a mother of 2.

Sensitive, subtle movies like Lost In Translation.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Lost in Translation

Commies

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Colon™
Commies killing a mother of 2.

...who wanted our neighbours to declare war on us, and actually tried to go abroad to that effect.

Beinbg a mother of two isn't a magical "get out of trouble, free" card when you try to instigate war, and when your extravagant useless expanses put a significant extra weight on the life standards of an impoverished peasantry.

[Arrian]

Commies

Lost in Translation Meh.

Kirsten Dunst

Sava

-Arrian