They think I'm Paper Mooning them...

I feel as though I was handed the moon and I don't know what to do with it.




Anne of Green Gables









I was watching the Gilmore Girls series this past week and I started pondering the way words are creatively changed -specifically how the word "paper moon" undergoes a transformation. If you've never watched the series or just don't remember, Rory says "They think I'm paper mooning them" to Lorelai when she is persuaded to return a shirt for a third time to the same store. I appreciate inter-textual references and the layered feeling of deftly handled language. This led me on a journey... first, I had to look up criticism about the series, to locate any references to the phrase. I found that some fans tried to watch the movie, Paper Moon, and were put off by the 1970's style filming, which is strange because it is set in the 1930s. If you clicked on the GG link above you may have read some offensive criticism about the show. I write "offensive" but only to those of you who are serious GG watchers. (I know I may be speaking only to myself here.)

I like the show in part because it nostalgically reminds me of the twenty or so years I lived and worked in a little village town in Coronado, California. I admit, I am also highly critical of the inconsistencies or false historical (story-wise not the anachronisms, which can be funny) references in plot, the way a character is changed by whim and perhaps discarded (Lane's first boyfriend), and the occasional (or frequent) bad acting of a couple (here unnamed) characters. But enough!! I've heard the collective sigh surging from the depths of the OWL family, and I'm well aware of my reader's lack of interest in the dead-put -another-nail-in-the- coffin series. (Just to let you know-it's still alive for me. You certainly can argue your points in the comment section and I will engage!)


After my search that lead to the linked above Chicago Tribune articles and another to their GG series blog, I knew it was time to watch Paper Moon. I had seen it in the 70s and remember trying to understand what the big deal was about...I was a teenager and couldn't fully appreciate the black and white style filming. Caution: as a mother and thereby conditioned to be responsible person, it's shocking to see a nine year old Tatum O'Neal (smoking and inhaling!) a cigarette.

In sum, the film is about a young motherless girl and her mother's former "boyfriend" (Ryan O'Neal) who end up taking a road trip together to deliver the girl to her conservative aunt-who strongly disapproved of her now dead 'floozy' sister. Along the trip, it turns out that the young girl is a protege in the art of scamming people out of their money. Consequently,"they think I'm paper mooning them" is a creative evolution of the meaning "they suspect I'm tricking them," in the Gilmore Girls series.


Paper Moon the movie (clips)




Ella Fitzgerald's lyrics to Paper Moon...

I never feel a thing is real
When I'm away from you
Out of your embrace
The world's a temporary parking place
A bubble for a minute
You smile, the bubble has a rainbow in it

Say, its only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Yes, it's only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Without your love
It's a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade

It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Naturally, I remembered this song and searched YouTube for the familiar Nat King Cole rendition but I realized that we have a father/daughter theme going here with Ryan and Tatum O'Neal. Why not keep it going with another father/daughter pair, Nat King and Natalie Cole, in honor of the approaching Father's Day?

The Dapper Dad:




The Lovely Lady:




The next phase of my research took a philosophical turn as I looked into the Persian mystic, Omar Khayyam's, Rubaiyat:

Ah, Moon of my Delight who know'st no wane,


The Moon of Heav'n is rising once again;


How oft hereafter rising shall she look


Through this same Garden after me-in vain!


Paramahansa Yogananda writes in Autobiography of a Yogi that the Moon of Delight is God or one who is eternally free and that the Garden is earth or ordinary life. Hence, there is no more rebirth for this seer. (346) So I'm thinking about the paper moon as a symbol of the transient body except the song keeps plowing it way through my brain...another association:


What do you want? You...you want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey! That's a pretty good idea! I'll give you the moon, Mary. ... Then you can swallow it, and it'll all dissolve see, and the moonbeams would shoot out of your fingers and your toes and the ends of you hair ... am I talking too much?"(George)
"Why don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death?" (man on porch)





















Nate again, this time "Fly me to the Moon"...





These far reaching (too?) associations could continue towards infinity (or at least Jupiter and Mars) so here, I must stop.

Enjoy swooning to the June moon...