Alex Massie Alex Massie

Oliver Goldsmith Refashioned for the 21st Century

A stunt on Spanish TV goes horribly wrong and ends in tragedy as the innocent party here bites off more than it can chew and perishes in short order. The snake makes the mistake of feasting upon one of Israeli model Orit Fox’s improbable breasts only to discover that where once lurked flesh there’s now a super-sized bag of silicone. Silicone is not good for snakes.Not good at all. End of snake.

It is, as Kieran Healy says, yet another example of Everything New Being Very Old. Recall, as you will, Oliver Goldsmith’s* Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog:

Good people all, of every sort, Give ear unto my song; And if you find it wondrous short, It cannot hold you long. In Islington there was a man, Of whom the world might say That still a godly race he ran, Whene’er he went to pray. A kind and gentle heart he had, To comfort friends and foes; The naked every day he clad, When he put on his clothes. And in that town a dog was found, As many dogs there be, Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound, And curs of low degree. This dog and man at first were friends; But when a pique began, The dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad and bit the man. Around from all the neighbouring streets The wondering neighbours ran, And swore the dog had lost his wits, To bite so good a man. The wound it seemed both sore and sad To every Christian eye; And while they swore the dog was mad, They swore the man would die. But soon a wonder came to light, That showed the rogues they lied: The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that died.

True, something seems to have been lost in the time-travelling since, by rights of the times, it should probably be the model biting the snake and dying herself but, look, you can’t have everything. Not even some of the time.

*A good Trinity fellow, of course.

[Also hat-tipped: SM]

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