Did you watch The Ten Commandments? I couldn’t help myself. It’s such a memory. I recall seeing it in a movie theater as a kid (not for the original 1956 release, ahem). My favorite part was when Pharaoh leads his army in pursuit of the Israelites as they march off into the desert. It ends up with the Egyptians being drowned when the parted Red Sea engulfs it as the restrained waters are unleashed upon them. I recall reenacting the spectacle in the bath tub.
And who can forget the incredible scene with Edward G. Robinson biblically overacting and extras lusciously and lustfully writhing a la Twyla Tharp in their lasciviousness before the Golden Calf? (The Republicans reenacted that at their recent CPAC with a golden effigy of a fat pig). I don’t recall having noticed it at the time of my first viewing, but there’s a brief, albeit unsubtle, homoerotic moment in which one male reveler sticks a leek into the gaping mouth of another guy. The one with the leek then carries off a woman. I suppose that was a symbolic nod to bisexuality, or maybe just one of those “man, we were really drunk last night” moments. It’s 1956, after all. Of course, Moses, as daddy-downer, appears and shuts the orgy down. The whole sequence set the standard for the decades of Hollywood spring break or house-party-when–the-parents-are-away movies that followed.
Beyond the obligatory Ten Commandments viewing, the Easter-Passover season is full of such rituals, religious or otherwise. There’s the Catholic Easter Vigil, a wonderful experience, especially for a kid, with all the dramatic trappings a good liturgy should have. I used to go with my mom who sang in the choir and left me to my own devices among the congregation. I loved it—at some point the church was blacked out and the Paschal candle came through and everyone lit small tapers from it. And there was incense, lots of incense. The priest, in full array, would come through with a censer suspended on a chain, billowing clouds of it (which reminds of that infamous anecdote in which, speaking of bisexuality and excessive partying, actress Tallulah Bankhead was said to have once quipped to a priest under similar circumstances, “love your gown, darling, but your handbag is on fire.”)
Then there are the Seders, sundry other services and, best of all, baskets of chocolate bunnies and cream eggs. The day after, like Boxing Day sales, the rush is on for half-price Marshmallow Peeps and other seasonal confections. I always loved peeps. I remember the glee I felt if I found a package of them in my Easter basket and the disappointment if I didn’t. One of those Facebook memory things popped up on my feed the other day. It was a photo I posted 11 years ago of a gateau aux peeps I baked. It was camp enough, I suppose. I dyed the frosting pink and tastefully arranged alternating blue and white peeps around the top on a bed of green tinted shredded. I tried adding dots to the white peeps using food coloring for additional effect. However inadvertently, they appeared more afflicted with a plague of Moses than like proper Great British Baking Show show-stopper worthy sugar work.
Anyway, speaking of which, the Racine Art Museum 12th Annual Peep Show… sorry, PEEPS Art Exhibition, runs until April 10. There’s still time. If anything imitates life, peeps do.
