8,347
edits
Breaking Bad News Gently: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
m (revise quote template spacing) |
No edit summary |
||
Line 35:
* The police officers of ''[[Law and Order]]'' frequently asked relatives of victims to sit down.
* In ''[[Off Centre]]'', Chau says that bad news can be softened by ending it with making your voice high and making it seem like a question. Later, Mike's girlfriend breaks up with him trying the same thing.
== Music ==
* ''Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise'' (by Ray Ventura, lyrics from Paul Misraki). The lady calls her estate and her hireling reports there's a small problem… her horse died, but other than that, all is well. It turns out to be the last and least significant part of [[Disaster Dominoes]], which she had to wring out of him step by step that her husband committed suicide upon receiving news they are broke, knocked over a candle, the entire estate got burned down, including the barn, in which that poor horse was at the time. But other than that, "all is well"!
** It descended from a earlier version in ''Botenart'' (''[//en.wikisource.org/wiki/Once_a_Week_(magazine)/Series_1/Volume_8/Tidings Tidings]'') by Anastasius Grün; there the first bad news servant tells the master is that his favourite dog is dead… because his horse kicked him in panic… etc. The end is much the same —-
{{quote|Fate me alone hath spared to tell,
In gentle words, how all befel.}}
*** …and that comes from "The Lazy Servant Maimund" in ''[//archive.org/details/cu31924026493514 Disciplina Clericalis]'' by Petrus Alfonsi (born Moses Sephardi) — much the same, though the dog is killed by a mule rather than horse. That in turn may be a translation from Arabic.
** Well known in Russia thanks to Leonid Utesov singing a translation of ''Marquise'' by Alexander Besimensky.
*** [[Black Comedy]] being ever popular, it eventually inspired a [[filk]] song. In which it's a call to Soviet nuclear submarine on power trial from the deputy minister. He's told that the screwdriver got broken, but other than that all is well (and we still got a whole crate of alcohol!). Why, it got broken because it fell into a switchboard and got incinerated… It turns out that their radar spontaneously shut down at the start of missile launch test, so they tried to aim manually, sank their own supply ship, the commander angrily hurled a still-burning cigarette butt into the open hatch, then ammunition went off, stern took water, the submarine began to sink, reactor didn't take excessive trim difference well, an engineer decided he's going to be a hero and save everyone, but got a screwdriver knocked out of his hand by a spark — so expecting the reactor to go boom very soon, they escaped in a liferaft, and are rather close to a NATO base by the way. But other than that, "all is well"!
** ''[[Tintin]]'' had [//lachansonfrancaise.net/2014/06/08/tout-va-tres-bien-madame-la-marquise/ a drunk character sing] a fragment of ''Marquise''.
== [[New Media]] ==
| |||