As two of my friends and I spent an hour or so avoiding work and pretending to be happy with our careers, one posed an interesting set of questions regarding the world’s premier golfer, Tiger Woods. His queries were as follows:

1. How is it possible that a person who is this famous was banging this many chicks for the past 15 years and no one ever said a single word about it?
2. How in the world does a guy who is married with children pull off simultaneously carrying-on multiple extra-marital affairs – some of which apparently carried on for multiple years – without his wife having any clue whatsoever?
3. Why would Tiger seemingly choose only the dirtiest of skanks (many of which are borderline attractive at best) with whom to cheat on his wife?
4. What will ultimately be the fallout of this whole fiasco?
5. Why do serial philanderers ever get married in the first place?

After reviewing these questions, an obvious correlation came to mind: The hit 80s film ‘Mannequin’.

And here’s why. I was watching the film “Mannequin”, which was downloaded from DirecTV On Demand. For those of you familiar with DirecTV, you can rest assured it is of their standard quality for a service offering: poorly planned, badly supported, and inadequate when compared to the products from their peers. That said, I realize how hyperbolic everyone talks in this day and age. We constantly hear people making claims about things being the “greatest/worst of all time” “best ever”, etc. After watching just enough “Mannequin” to be comfortable enough to convince myself it is not good, yet stay interested long enough to avoid doing any work, I have arrived at the following hypothesis: The plot of Mannequin is the most poorly constructed idea that has ever made it far enough to become a movie. I’m not even referring to the fact that a mannequin (played by a younger, not as hot version of Kim Cattrell) comes to life; that I’m okay with. The central theme of the movie tends to be that the clothing displays the protagonist in the movie assembles in a downtown New York City department store are so riveting, that he becomes one of the most heralded employees in Manhattan. This is taken to such an extreme that other fashion companies actually perform covert espionage in order to find blackmail on him, not to end his high profile career, but to convince him that he must come and work for their company or else. As preposterous as it seems that Andrew McCarthy would actually strap a mannequin to the back of his two seater moped to ride around town, it seems equally, if not even more preposterous that this movie ever had a strong enough script to be released. How does this tie in? Tiger Woods is the fashion designer in this story. Kim Cattrell is the realization of the idea that you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Everyone trying to blackmail Woods and try to take his mannequin girlfriend are the skanks coming out of the wood work trying to get a six figure lump sum of hush money. Elin Woods is the Estelle Getty character who always believed in Tiger and will be there with him forever, so long as he remains popular and profitable.

After reviewing my theory, my friend raised a valid concern:
Please keep in mind that I am intimately familiar with the film “Mannequin” – in fact I’m pretty sure that Jefferson Starship’s “We Built this City” is the theme song for it. But – despite the fact that I both enjoyed reading and agree wholeheartedly with your analysis of the movie – I would disagree slightly with your analysis.

I would contend that Tiger Woods is the Kim Cattrell character (the mannequin, if you will) who is both beautiful and mysterious at the same time. Always giving you just enough of himself to draw you in and then freezing in an instant to leave you wondering about the “real” person underneath. Andrew McCarthy would be the Elin character – with a heart of gold and just enough naivety to allow us to believe that he could fall in love with a mannequin (or, in the case of Elin, not realize that her husband was the male equivalent of Linda Lovelace). I do agree, however, that the blackmailers in the movie are indeed a parallel for the parade-o-skanks who have now begun taking numbers and forming a line awaiting payment from Tiger to avoid telling what they know about him.

So the question is: will Elin/Andrew McCarthy’s love be strong enough to will Tiger/Kim back to life on a full-time basis, or will she/he turn her back on him/her, thus rendering she/he lifelessly frozen in a department store window, sentenced to an eternity of gawking passersby and common street-folk?

Now, this is a cogent turning of events. I had to reconsider my initial idea and then re-review his response. I had realized the fatal flow: incorrectly identification of the Jefferson Starship song in the movie had knocked both of our ideas off kilter.

While your logic contains no flaws, my assertion that Woods more closely resembles the McCarthy character in this discussion is due to the fact that the prominent talent which resulted in the fame/controversy comes from both of them. Perhaps Mannequin is a precursor to the Woods drama and actually a more accurate depiction of John Daly’s life, while Estelle Getty moonlighting between the production of Mannequin and the immensely popular 80’s sitcom “The Golden Girls”. This works for both scenarios: McCarthy’s instant notoriety and assumed riches were too much for him to handle, and led to an addiction. Daly also was victim to uncontrollable personality traits, where his vices of gambling and alcohol, as opposed to befriending and even making love in public places to a wooden mannequin. Why Woods may more adequately parallel Getty’s real life persona, is that at the time, she was Sophia Petrillo to all TV watching citizens. This was her bread and butter, and she would win out the rest of her life staying put as that. Unfortunate as it is with all competitive spirits, she could not stay out of her own way. While she would always be Sophia, who would in this conversation symbolize not only Elin Woods but the success Tiger has as a golfer, she cannot help but accept the roles of department store manager in ignorant, mind fucks of a movie like Mannequin. This would obviously represent Woods’ being bored with his seemingly storybook life and the lower-middle class restaurant hostesses coming out of the woodwork for cash prizes. While I’m impressed with the Jefferson Starship response, it was actually their “Nothing’s Going To Stop Us Now”, not “We Built This City” song that was the primary them of the “Mannequin” film. I believe this error is what led both of us down our first and incorrect assumption. Thank you for being a friend.

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