[Ads-l] locomotives as female

[Joel Berson]

Well, I sent my previous message too soon.  What I had remembered was Leslie Nielson, but not the name of the movie.

There is a scene in one of the Thin Man movies in a train on which two newly-weds plus Nick and Nora are traveling from New York to San Francisco.  I don't specifically remember a tunnel, however.

Joel

 

     From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
 To: Joel Berson <berson at att.net> 
Cc: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> 
 Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2015 8:50 PM
 Subject: Re: locomotives as female
   

> On Apr 18, 2015, at 4:52 PM, Joel Berson <berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
> 
> "North by Northwest", 1959.
> 

I was thinking Hitchcock, but probably just remembering that one.  "The Lady Eve" is another according to this page:

http://whitecitycinema.com/2014/07/14/adventures-in-early-movies-a-kiss-in-the-tunnel/

Shots of trains entering tunnels would, after all, eventually become the crudest and most obvious sexual metaphor in all of cinema (as seen in The Lady Eve, North By Northwest, The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear and countless other movies). 

(Naked Gun and Monty Python etc. don't really count; what we're looking for are serious, although not necessarily creative, uses of the metaphor/trope.)  If there are countless ones, that implies more than two.  I think there may have been a semi-serious (or at least non-spoofing) use in one of the Nick 'n' Nora Thin Man mysteries, but I may be misremembering.

LH

> I think some well-known spoof movie spoofing other movies has a "train entering a tunnel" scene, together with several other metaphors.  It's so well known that, as Yogi might say, everyone, including me, has forgotten its name.
> But are those the only two?
> Joel
>      From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
> Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2015 4:09 PM
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] locomotives as female
> 
> Could you give the titles of some of those movies, Larry?
> 
> I've often wondered just how true that claim was.
> 
> BTW, engineer George Alley, in "The Wreck on the C&O Road"  (ca1895)  says,
> "I want to die with the engine I love,/ One hundred and forty-three."
> 
> JL
> 
> 
> JL
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 10:40 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:      American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:      Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: locomotives as female
>> 
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> Right, you just have to make sure it's not a locomotif.
>> 
>> (Of course the younger generations haven't been raised on all those old =
>> movies in which love scenes pan to shots of trains entering tunnels.)=20
>> 
>> LH
>> 
>>> On Apr 17, 2015, at 11:19 AM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM> =
>> wrote:
>>> =20
>>> My nephew, who is a great train buff, the other day referred to a
>>> locomotive as "her."  I asked about the gender, and he said it's
>>> conventional to refer to locomotives as feminine.
>>> =20
>>> New one for me.
>>> =20
>>> Herb
>>> =20
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