So I was sitting at home tonight and I thought to myself, this is ridiculous. I'm young, I'm carefree, I'm attractive – as attractive as I'll ever get without the aid of implants or that stuff they shoot into your lips to make it look like a bee just stung you in the face, anyway – why am I just lounging on the couch when I could be doing something much more exciting with my life? So I decided to take action. That's right, I did what any normal twenty-something American woman with disposable income would do. I rented Pippi Longstocking .
I love Pippi Longstocking. There was a time in my life (September 1988-April 1989) when my dream was to become a Swedish orphan with the strength of ten men and red pigtails that stuck out of my head like propellers. I have since revised my goals, but should the opportunity present itself, should someone approach me and say, "Hey Claire, how would you like to live in a Victorian mansion and clean the floors by tying hairbrushes to your feet and skating around to your own theme song?" I'd accept their offer in a heartbeat. Pippi Longstocking was my biggest hero in elementary school, after Martin Luther King Jr. and Hulk Hogan, of course. She could beat up boys, she didn't have to wear dresses, her parents weren't around to tell her what to do, she had a pet monkey and a pet horse, and her dad was a pirate. Sometimes she even went on pirate adventures with him. The most my dad ever let me do was visit his office and photocopy my face.
I know now that I would make a horrible pirate. Pirates engage in extremely rugged and physically taxing activities such as swashbuckling and sailing to remote islands not yet equipped with indoor plumbing. I'm not really into that. Plus, I believe it is against my family's values to do anything outdoorsy. When my Polish great-grandfather immigrated to this country, he worked long hours in a factory to provide for his family. He saved enough money to send my grandmother to nursing school, she saved to send my mother to college, and my mother saved to send to me to grad school. Each generation has lived a better life than the one before. So why would I want to reverse all of that progress and run around in the woods without access central heat and air? By staying at home and eating snacks out of the refrigerator, I am not being lazy; I'm just respecting the wishes of my ancestors.
So I watched Pippi Longstocking, and I noticed something. Well, first I noticed that I was watching the wrong movie. Apparently there are two Pippi Longstocking movies, the 1988 American version, and the original 1969 Swedish version that I accidentally rented from Netflix. I know, I know, I should have read the pop-up summary when I added the movie to my "queue," but how was I supposed to know there were two Pippi Longstocking movies? I didn't even know Sweden made movies. I thought they just ate a lot of fish-shaped candy and called each other Bjorn.
So I watched the Swedish version and then I tracked down the American version, because the whole point of childhood nostalgia is to watch movies from your childhood. And besides, the Swedish version was seriously lacking in the theme song sing-along department.
Once I started watching the right movie, I noticed something: never once do people question why Pippi's braids stick out. Or why a 10-year-old girl can lift a horse. Or why the town's merchants accept her gold coins when they're clearly not legal tender in the area and the merchants have no way of determining their value. Pippi just waltzes into a candy store and buys up half the inventory, but if I tried to pay for a 12-pack of toilet paper with a gold bar at Wal-Mart, I'm pretty sure I'd have to take it up with the store manager. This movie is not as realistic than I previously thought.
When the movie ended, I felt unsatisfied. I want to know what happened to Pippi when she grew up. Pippi was clearly an artistic child, one who liked to sing and dance and wear interesting clothes. She probably hung out with the theater kids in high school. You know, the ones who sat around reciting monologues from Our Town in the lunch room and wore too much eyeliner – sorry, "stage makeup" – to class. But what happened after high school? Pippi wasn't into formal education, she probably didn't get very good grades, so did she even go to college? Maybe she moved out to LA to become an actress, snagging small rolls as the loudmouthed neighbor or obnoxious coworker on television sitcoms. Or maybe she joined a band, did some drugs and spent the next ten years sleeping on friends' couches. Maybe she moved to Brooklyn and turned into one of those latte-drinking forty-somethings who takes yoga, dresses her toddler in Frank Zappa shirts, and writes about her urban lifestyle on her personal blog. But Pippi Longstocking is supposed to be a success story – the story of a girl who went against society's expectations and still came out on top. Maybe she became a performance artist, like that Christo guy who wraps monuments in fabric. "You can't wrap the Reichstag in bed sheets!" the adults told young Christo, and then tried to steal his gold treasure and send him to an orphanage. Maybe Pippi experienced the same thing. Maybe she made a name for herself by painting elaborate mustaches on famous works of art, and ended up the curator for the Guggeinheim Museum in New York. Or maybe she evaded all expectations and became a tax accountant.
And what was her love life like? Did she have a long string of empty love affairs that failed to fill the void in her heart left by her absent father? Or did she marry the neighbor boy Tommy and raise children with him in Villa Vilakoola? Did they live happily ever after, or did he leave her after 15 years of marriage and run off with his secretary? Did she stand by him during his gambling addiction, even when he lost Sir Nilsson the monkey on a bad poker hand in Reno? Maybe Pippi never got married. Maybe she considered herself too important to be tied down to any one man. If you ask me, I think she's a lesbian.
I want someone to make an updated Pippi Longstocking movie, detailing her adult life and career. Personally, I think we should do it right, John Hughes 80s style. She'd have a nice suburban home with vinyl siding, a Volvo station wagon, and her teenage son would look like Tom Cruise. Underwear Dancing Tom Cruise, not Unhinged Nutjob Tom Cruise. Pippi would have a brief mental breakdown caused by the overwhelming feeling that her cushy suburban life was empty and meaningless, but then the Guggenheim would call and announce that her moustache series had been accepted, and she would feel artistically validated once again. And then she'd have enough money to buy her daughter Molly Ringwald a dress for the prom. Tom Cruise would grow up to be a fighter pilot, Molly Ringwald would become a powerful working woman in a man's world, and Pippi would rest comfortably in the knowledge that her life had turned out okay after all. Then she would clean the entire house with hairbrushes strapped to her feet.
