Friday, June 13, 2014

#LongestDay Ranger Rupert vs real McCoy

In the Longest Day film about the Normandy landings during World War II, there was a clip showing Rupert the diversionary parachute dummy @ 0:30  :


As the wikipedia entry on paradummy already illustrates, the manikin movie prop, displayed at Airborne Museum St. Mere Eglise - France:


Looks nothing like the real ragdoll decoy actually used in combat displayed at Merville D-Day Bunker Museum - France:


As illustrated in the PBS documentary on Kenneth W. Rendell's "The International Museum of World War II"  "World War II: Saving the Reality" @0:08   





Rupert ragdoll dummy also on display @5:30 of this clip:



Entire "World War II: Saving the Reality" from hulu:





The actual Rupert looks like the muslin ghost described in the Marianne Moore poem "Pedantic Literalist"

PEDANTIC LITERALIST

Prince Rupert's drop, paper muslin ghost,
white torch-"with power to say unkind
things with kindness, and the most
irritating things in the midst of love and
tears," you invite destruction.
You are like the meditative man
with the perfunctory heart; its
carved cordiality ran
to and fro at first like an inlaid and royal
immutable production;
then afterward "neglected to be
painful, deluding him with
loitering formality,"
"doing its duty as if it did it not,"
presenting an obstruction
to the motive that it served. What stood
erect in you has withered. A
little "palm tree of turned wood"
informs your once spontaneous core in it.
immutable production




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