#he was a trendsetter he was kinda Thee trendsetter

[leapinarmadillo]

mj moved things in an androgynous direction. is a thought i'm having. there were other stars doing more "extreme" genderbending and presentation.... Michael Jackson was a megastar and he was Accepted. VERY broadly.

musing on the Bad video.... "you ain't bad, you ain't nothin! I'M bad." so he presents a different way of being bad, and a different way of being a black man. visually, his way is stylized and made up. he debuted Bad looking more feminine than he ever had (imo). and it's presented as GOOD. "You're doin wrong... that's your brother, that's your mother, that's your sister, that's me" [that you're hurting]. you're not bad til you're good, and he's good, and he looks like that. HE'S tough.

[naivesilver]

top six pinocchio adaptations? idek if there are 6 🤷‍♂️

Hollie, my buddy, my pal, my dearest, not only there are like twice that number that I personally watched/read/experienced, but there are many more that I still have to get to. So have no fear, I have plenty of material to draw from

Also thank you 💓💓💓 I know at this point I’ve flooded everyone’s dash with this kinda stuff but I so love talking about it and y’all keep saying I shouldn’t stop so here I am

Ask me my top 6 anything

So the thing is, I’ve already listed my top 5 adaptations here, but as it goes I have multiple different rankings when it comes to Pinocchio stuff, so there is no shortage of lists I could make. I could rank going by the amount of screentime the thrice-damned Cricket gets, or how much the Fairy irks me, but since this is a lovely day and I have no wish to ruin it by talking about characters I would personally take on in a fistfight, I will instead use another discriminator.

That is, the Lampwick factor.

Lampwick gets an astonishing amount of hate considering he is a) a child b) Pinocchio without the plot armor c) someone the story’s system failed, along all those other boys, but I love him dearly and I will defend him sword in hand. Some adaptations forgo him entirely (looking at you, German-Japanese cartoon who would have been perfect otherwise) but most of those who leave him in make him memorable, for good and for bad.

So, without further ado:

(Actual list under the cut because I got carried away with number 4 and it got LONG)

1) Luigi Comencini’s Le avventure di Pinocchio (1972)

This miniseries’ Lampwick is just *chef’s kiss *. Not only does he get the funkiest introductory scene, laying under THEE boat (a trendsetter, that boy), but the way he behaves is consistently amazing and depicts the friendship between him and Pinocchio aside from the more famous Land of Toys (?) escapade. Also, SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK STORY, but cutting off his death scene, leaving his fate ambiguous and having Pinocchio snap at his father for suggesting Lampwick might have gotten “what he deserved” was a balm for my heart. Plus, he got a sweet sweet character theme that also served as title track for the miniseries.

(Fun fact, I found out while looking up the theme that his actor and Pinocchio’s starred as brothers in another movie shortly after, which is a nice little piece of trivia to know :D )

2) Matteo Garrone’s Pinocchio (2020)

YOUR HONOR, HE’S BABY! I want to protect him at all costs. The actor plays the part of Pinocchio’s shenanigan partner perfectly, and this movie takes a more realistic approach when it comes to depicting life in a poor maritime town in XIX century Italy, instead of showing Lampwick as someone who rebels against nothing. They cut out the final part of his story here as well, of which I could never be more grateful, for all that I’m a Pinocchio purist in most other cases. If you ask for my opinion, he deserves to be alive and happy somewhere else, and that’s that on that :)))))

3) Pinocchio miniseries (2009)

When I tell you that 11yo me was infatuated with him...Learning that Thomas Brodie-Sangster was already 18 when this aired was one of the biggest shocks of my life. He looked 15 at best, and only in the right light.

Still, what a good Lampwick. He’s snarky, he’s a bad influence, but he's a good friend, too, so it’s a win-win situation, isn’t it? He may be a bastard, but at least he will try to fix your sorrows in the most bothersome ways possible - remember kids, running off to a magical land is not a good way to cope with grief, but if you do it, at least stick to someone older than you who will do his best to keep you alive and distracted.

(Come to think of it, I’m still not convinced that Robbie Kay wasn’t influenced by this when he went on to portray Peter Pan.)

4) Roberto Benigni’s Pinocchio (2002)

LISTEN. Listen. This movie is a problem. I can’t speak of this movie without having to wrack my mind to find the right words. Benigni single-handedly ruined my chance at credibility by making this both the weirdest AND closest-to-text adaptation currently in existence.

(Aside from a sequence of excessive Cricket presence towards the end, but I digress.)

So, Benigni made a peculiar choice when filming this movie; that is, he had all the child characters be played by adults while retaining somewhat childish behaviors. Now, if it was merely a humorous parody I’d be less concerned, but if it was that easy to reduce it to such a stereotype, I wouldn’t have watched it in the first place, because there are too many Pinocchio parodies in the world and I despise most of them.

No, once you gather enough suspension of disbelief to see through the comedy factor of this movie, you soon have to realize that it’s, in fact, very well made. So you have to come to terms with the reality that this perfectly in-character Pinocchio with a Tuscanian accent who lifts paragraphs straight from the book was played by a 50yo man, and that the Fairy was played by his wife. There are things I don’t want to deal with when I’m watching a Pinocchio adaptation and Benigni’s supposed mommy issues is definitely one of them.

“So what does Lampwick have to do with any of this?”, you may ask. Well, my friend, Lampwick is by far the oddest casting choice in this case.

Picture this: you’re watching this movie where there are no kids, only adults playing kids. It’s weird, but it’s kinda funny, because the way they’re dressed and the way they act makes it clear that you’re supposed to laugh at them. Then a new character, well-known jackass Lampwick, is herded in, and you expect another 40something comedian to pair well with Benigni.

Instead, what you see is Kim Rossi Stuart.

Kim Rossi Stuart was a heartthrob of late 90/early 2000s Italy. He’s still quite good-looking - in fact, he might have even gotten better with age and with a beard, but that’s my personal taste chiming in - but back then he was at the height of his career. He was in Fantaghirò, for God’s sake. And here he comes sauntering by, as though it was nothing at all, eating lollipops and playing at darts with a floreal-pattern-clad Roberto Benigni.

It drives me nuts. I’ve honestly never been more appalled by an actor choice in my life. But that’s precisely the reason why it ranks so high - I’ll be 80 and grey and STILL I’ll be wondering what the fuck Benigni was thinking when he picked him. It leaves a mark, that kind of thing.

5) Enzo D’Alò’s Pinocchio (2012)

(By this point you should have realized the reason I put director names and dates in is because they all have the same fucking title. Also, enjoy this unflattering screenshot I had to make myself)

This movie is sweet. Not memorable, but sweet. It’s more whimsical and cartoonish than most, and the target age group is clearly younger than the one for say, Garrone’s movie, but Lucio Dalla wrote great songs for it so I appreciate it.

I’m more of the school of thought of  “Lampwick as a kid Pinocchio’s age” than “Lampwick as an older mentor of sorts”, and this Lampwick was voiced by Paolo Ruffini, who has the right accent but which I find annoying, but still, I like him. I love older brother figures, and Lampwick in this movie takes the time to comfort a sad kid he doesn’t know and humor him all throughout their journey. They’re good together, and that’s enough for me. #justicefor2012lampwick

6) Disney’s Pinocchio (1940)

Cue great stupor from everyone involved. Yes, I hate this movie with every fiber of my being, but this is the stereotypical Lampwick. Not putting him in would have been nearly blasphemous. Also, so many adaptations ignored his existence completely that I have to make concessions sometimes.

In addition to that, his character is tied to a little traumatic memory of my own. I watched this movie when I was like, 5 or 6, and as opposed to my classmates and sister who got frightened by most of it I was pretty unfazed, since I already knew the real story had WAY worse scenes.

But I also have a pretty vivid auditory memory, so what stuck with me was not the kids being turned into donkeys as much as Lampwick screaming like “Help! Call your cricket! Call who you want!” with the most horrifying voice ever. Was part of my nightmares for a long while, nearly as much as other movie scenes I watched in the same time period and of which I’m still scared, like ET’s freezer sequence or Dumbo’s Pink Elephants.