Movies
I especially want to apologize to the Trochman family in Detroit... I never delivered a baby before, and I just thought that ice tongs were the way to do it.
— Leonard Zelig · Zelig
Behind the line May contain spoilers.
Our reading
An editorial interpretation.
The speaker apologizes for using ice tongs during a delivery and explains it through inexperience. The explanation is alarming precisely because it sounds so matter-of-fact. Read as absurd comedy, it exposes a gulf between confident improvisation and the knowledge needed for the task being described.
Context reviewed