16 pages • 32 minutes read
Video Blues
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Symbols & Motifs
Myrna Loy, Carole Lombard, Paulette Goddard, and Jean Arthur
Popular 1940s and 1950s actresses Myrna Loy, Carole Lombard, Paulette Goddard, and Jean Arthur are central figures in the poem. Though she wrote the poem in the 1990s, Salter intentionally references classic Hollywood actresses from the past to symbolize the romanticization, fondness, and nostalgia many people feel toward this era in American history and the past in general.
Myrna Loy, one of the central figures referenced in the poem, was known for her ability to adapt her acting ability to match her partner’s style. Loy functions as a foil for the speaker, as she is unable to embody Loy’s flexibility and agility and match her husband’s interests. On the other hand, Carole Lombard, Paulette Goddard, and Jean Arthur were all known for their beauty but also for their wit and humor, two qualities that the speaker does demonstrate having throughout the poem. Distilling this era down to iconic actresses represents how the husband is longing for a bygone time in ways that the speaker is unable to fulfill, yet his attraction to women known for their comedic prowess may also suggest a desire to connect with his wife on some level, even if vicariously through inaccessible actresses.
Lack of Agency
There are two critical moments that raise the issue of agency—or lack thereof—in the poem. The first is with the mention of the husband as “slave” (Line 5) to a long list of actresses. This is a word loaded with history and meaning, and its use conveys an intentional lack of agency on the husband’s part. To describe the husband as a “slave” (Line 5) to these actresses removes his active role in the situation and places him at the whim of others’ interest and affection. This represents the ways in which the husband’s crushes appear to the speaker as demonstrating a lack of control over his desire for other women, seemingly without a care for how the speaker might be affected by his admissions. The second moment in the poem where the question of agency arises is in the final stanza with the line “I guess, though, we were destined not to meet” (Line 17). The use of “destiny” in this case signifies how the speaker is similarly lacking agency in her own fantasies and in her own marriage to her husband—with his many crushes and video rentals.
“It makes some evenings harder to enjoy”
The speaker repeats two lines throughout the poem, one of them being “My husband has a crush on Myrna Loy” (Lines 1, 6, 12, 18), which is a true description of the speaker’s current dilemma with her husband. The other repeated line, “It makes some evenings harder to enjoy” (Lines 3, 9, 19), given how affected the speaker is by her husband’s crushes and the knowledge that she “can’t compete” (Line 11) with them, represents the speaker’s tendency to use humor and sarcasm rather than address the issue in her marriage head on.
The speaker describes how her husband “confesses all this” (Line 10), referring to his stated list of crushes on beautiful, witty women, and yet her repeated reply to the situation is merely that some evenings become less enjoyable than they could be, a sarcastic response that appears to downplay the extent of her true feelings. As she returns to this snappy humor throughout the poem—“I could certainly enjoy / two hours with Cary Grant as my own toy” (Lines 15-16)—which is interlaced with her brief confessions of insecurity, the repeated refrain of some evenings being harder to enjoy than others underscores the truth of just how enjoyable such evenings are likely to be: much more unpleasant than the speaker is willing to let on.
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