Bad Niles

A professional chef once told me that even though Ratatouille is an excellent movie, there is an egregious factual transgression in the movie. Apparently, the movie refers to Rosemary as a spice, when it is technically an herb.

This chef felt bothered by the error. At the time, I thought they were being too hard on such a whimsical movie about a rodent and his love of cooking. Personally, I don’t know the difference between a spice and an herb, and I thought such a fact was superfluous to one’s enjoyment of the movie.

But now, after seeing an episode of “Frasier,” I better understand the chef’s perspective.

The episode entitled “The Proposal,” two friends are chatting about the scripted proposal words. The character Niles is describing his prepared speech:

"Oh, well this is where I describe my life before I met her. See, and then comes the part where she comes along and the meter changes to a more sprightly iambic: 'Now my life has meaning.'"

Let me first say that I love “Frasier,” and it is one of my favorite, if not my favorite, sitcoms.

This television program prides itself on its slightly esoteric references to art, opera, wine, science, and poetry. What other show could get away with reciting the last third of Tennyson’s “Ulysses” on the series finale?

In the following paragraphs, I refer to formal elements of poetry. If you'd like to know more about prosody, click here for a quick crash course.

My problem is with the “iambic” line “Now my life has meaning.” In the most conservative scanning, the line looks like this:

.../..x.../...x..../...x
Now my life has meaning
This is imperfect trochaic or a catalectic line—the line ends on an imperfect foot.

On a more liberal scan, trying to force the iambic meter, the line could be:

..x.../...x.../...(x).../
Now my life has meaning
This is an iambic line with a syncopation, but stressing the “ing” is simply wrong in formal poetry. Check any dictionary!

There’s simply no way this line could be considered iambic. My only hope, the only way I can sleep at night, is that Niles took this quotation out of metrical context.

In context, perhaps the line was:
..x.../...x.../....x..../...x....../...x...../
And now my life has meaning, Daphne Moon.

That’s much better. Perfect iambic pentameter. That’s it. That’s what happened. Niles took the line out of context. The writers that pride themselves on high culture simply misquoted their own poem they wrote for the episode.

But I can’t afford being that naïve. Nothing is perfect. Of course, the average person wouldn’t even notice. But for that instant, my mind was taken away from the scene, and it affected my overall enjoyment of the show. The joy of “Frasier,” and really anything meant to entertain, is the appeal to a specific type of cerebral activity. I can’t simply turn a blind eye to the error, and neither could the chef.

I apologize, chef, for thinking you overly critical. Now I understand: we are all held captive by our knowledge.