Sounds #2
an intermittent series about sounds from the author’s life
There was a show on MTV about 10 years ago called “Undressed.” Pictured above is Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks, who had an early-career appearance on the show.
It was a program that followed various young people staggering blankly through various romantic entanglements; kind of like a Robert Altman movie, except nothing at all like a Robert Altman movie. It was shot and staged like a soap opera, but also with the clinical eye of a hard-core pornographic film - but in this case the acts depicted were that of nonchalantly stripping to skivvies.
It was, at its core, a program about young people’s underwear.
A person who appeared on the show on their way to a bigger and better career (or perhaps instead to a wakeup call and Jesus and five kids in the suburbs) would expect to have a week or so’s worth of story (the show ran daily, astonishingly), punctuated by some chaste making out, and 2 or 3 narrative mandates to disrobe.
I had a friend who appeared on the show during its run (the show ran for six seasons, astonishingly). She threw a big party at her parents’ house to watch the first episode. It was the summertime, so she was staying with them between semesters at college.
There were twenty or so of us in the front room watching the program on television. There were appetizers and soda pops. Her mother and father were watching the program in the other room; I didn’t understand why at first.
She appeared onscreen a few minutes in, impeccably dressed and made up. I think there was conversation with her scene partner about a boy of some kind. Then, the other person left and she needed to change her clothes, for some reason, and so the camera cut to a wide shot, previously all closeups and two-shots - creepier still as the camera was set too high and looking down, like a surveillance camera -and she took off her dress out of nowhere.
It was a sudden, shocking strip, I remember. It was like, “Whoa, where did this come from?” It was silly and stupid. She had a great body. Still does. There were catcalls and roars of encouragement from us as her friends.
Our roar died down, but then we heard her father’s voice in the other room, watching the same program as us, watching his daughter disrobe on the television, and he yelled out, “Nooooooo!” and then he yelled it again, this time with an anguished “ah” sound preceding, “Ahhh noooooo!”
It was a ragged and surprised cry of disbelief and pain, and it was passed off in the moment as a joke but it was not. I have never forgotten the sound of that voice in that moment, nor do I suspect I ever will.
(via epic)
