there is always one that does not sit well within our literary comfort
so which would you say is your least popular and why?
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there is always one that does not sit well within our literary comfort
so which would you say is your least popular and why?
ah the mature comedies!! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by pastandprologue
are you able to quote one or two as a point of reference?
Measure for Measure - I don't know why, I just can't find much love for it.
Contrast Two Gents with Midsummer’s Night Dream. In both case we have two pairs of young lovers where at one point both boys fancy the same girl. In neither case is there deep personal psychology at work.Quote:
Originally Posted by cacian
But in Two Gentsit is a comic formula (and rather uncomfortable and unconvincing) whereas in Midsummer’s Night it is, well, magic….
''the problem play'' comes to mind.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poetaster
was not there a similar idea with the nazis when referring to jews??
cant' remember.....
and
''some rise by sin and some by virtue fall''??
not sure how much truth is in there.
Formula is indeed the correct word. The formula is there, too, in A Midsummer's Night Dream, but the Ovid-esque, Apuleius-esque, and Elizabethan/Shakespearian myth and magic keep it from becoming trite and conventional. But beyond even that, A Midsummer's Dream captures and preserves something unique in the human experience. The four lovers are mawkish children when they enter the brightly haunted and utterly confusing woods of their teenage years--where even the spirits don't really know what they're doing. They emerge adults (and is it me or were they more likable as mixed-up kids?) There is a wonderful and usually ignored moment near the story's end, in which Hippolyta catches sight of the young people from a distance, after they have emerged from the forest, and comments on what she sees them doing. It is a multiply layered but utterly effortless verse; one that comments on the dramatic action, the play itself, and the experience of youth: "It is," she says, "a sweet story." This is genius, you see--the other, mere convention.Quote:
Originally Posted by JonathanB
I read them all and Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, and Henry VIII were pretty horrible.
what was horrible about them?Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
I know the late plays are a bit weird, but Winter’s Tale has given me a lump in my throat (Thou looks’t on things adying, I on things new born) and Cymbeline has its moments (Fear no more the heat of the sun.)
I don’t care for Henry VIII, but that is in large part my catholic sympathies. I can’t really regard a husband dumping his faithful wife as sympathetic.
I was reading through Shakespeare’s plays, and I’ve got stuck at the prospect of having to read Love’s Labour’s Lost and Comedy of Errors but you never know I might enjoy them. At any rate they have individuality which is more than I can say for Henry VI, part 1. (2 & 3 have their moments.)
But the play which is much admired and on consideration I could happily do without is Richard III.
Hemyngs and Condell's least favourite was The Two Noble Kinsmen.
how do you write that in today's English?Quote:
Originally Posted by JonathanB
I am surprised at that. religion rakes marriage seriously we dont.Quote:
I don’t care for Henry VIII, but that is in large part my catholic sympathies. I can’t really regard a husband dumping his faithful wife as sympathetic.
i have feelings for neither but it better to be released then cooped up sympathies or not.
how do you meant by 'stuck'?Quote:
I was reading through Shakespeare’s plays, and I’ve got stuck at the prospect of having to read Love’s Labour’s Lost and Comedy of Errors but you never know I might enjoy them. At any rate they have individuality which is more than I can say for Henry VI, part 1. (2 & 3 have their moments.)
that the king in the car park?Quote:
But the play which is much admired and on consideration I could happily do without is Richard III.
Hemyngs and Condell's least favourite was The Two Noble Kinsmen.
I have not got on and read those two comedies yet. I am reluctant to do so. That's what I meant.
Richard III was indeed the king in the car park at Leicester.
There are two quite seperate reasons why I don't warm to Henry VIII. A It is protestant propaganda. B It shows Henry humiliating Katherine. I wouldn't warm to that even if I was a paid up member of the Richard Dawkins fan club.
I don't know.Quote:
Originally Posted by cacian
That is actually my favourite line from that play, I think there is a lot of truth in it.Quote:
Originally Posted by cacian
truth?Quote:
Originally Posted by Poetaster
could you elaborate with an example?
Well, some rise by sin and some by virtue fall. Some people seem to get ahead in life by awful means, crime, drugs ect, and some people who try to do good in this world get nothing but trouble and pain for their hard work. In short, life is cruel and random, and sometimes the bad guys win.Quote:
Originally Posted by cacian
I think all of these are bad-to-mediocre:
Taming of the Shrew
Henry VIII
Two Noble Kinsmen
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Comedy of Errors
Pericles
III Henry VI
I Henry VI
All's Well that Ends Well
Titus Andronicus
Merry Wives of Windsor
King John
WHAAAA?! That's in my Top 10 Shakespeare! Perhaps his most beautiful play outside The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
I wonder if it might also suggest that some who are striving for virtue end by destroying themselves and others--and sometimes even fall from virtue in trying to achieve it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poetaster
Henry had their marriage tossed out after 24 years of faithful marriage (on her part--not his); refused to let her return to her family in Spain, but placed her under de facto house arrest (albeit in a gilded cage) for the rest of her life; and had their daughter, who was a princess (and the closest thing at the time to an heir-presumptive) reduced to a royal b*stard. He did this partly because his wife was no longer fertile (and he wished for a male heir), and partly because he was deeply infatuated with another woman, whom he subsequently married, grew sick of, and beheaded after she, too, delivered no male child. This caused all sorts of turmoil in England and Europe at large. But feeling cooped up and needing out didn't have a lot to do with it.Quote:
Originally Posted by cacian
Thank you, pompey. We are not talking about modern Western society where a woman can have an independent social life with financial support apart from her husband. Shakespeare (or Fletcher) show Katherine as a tragic and sympathetic figure. But it still implies Henry is a hero.
Henry VIII as a play is a tribute to the recently deceased and formidable Queen Elizabeth and ends with Archbishop Cranmer prophesying the glories of her reign. It omits to even hint that a few years later Henry had Elizabeth's mother executed on trumped up charges of adultery. He then married four subsequent wives.
Morpheus! Great to see you posting here again!Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
So now we have Winter's Tale on one best list and one worst list. I've never seen or read this play. Could you both elaborate on what you love/hate about it?
Thanks for the welcome, Calidore. :)
As for The Winter's Tale, I think three elements combine to make it a remarkable play: the first is the psychological depth and complexity of middle-late period Shakespeare; the second is the "fantasy" element of A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest; the third is the shifting and ambiguous tonal quality and morality of the problem plays. To me, it feels like a slightly more realistic kin to The Tempest where the theme also revolves around a profound regret and there's this immense time gap between the event that caused it and the resolution (in The Tempest that time happened before the play; in The Winter's Tale it happens after Act III). Beyond these elements, I just think it's filled with some of Shakespeare's most luminously beautiful dramatic poetry and passages, and it shares a similar ephemeral wistfulness of many of the late plays and the sonnets. In the poignancy of the final reunion it reminds me tremendously of that other great theatrical reunion and reconciliation at the end of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.
It also has one of my favorite quotes in all Shakespeare:
“It is an heretic that makes the fire, not she which burns in it.”
A very funny play.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Another very funny play.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
The end of that play gives Richard every bit as good a monologue as he begins his own with.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I, that have neither pity, love, nor fear.
Indeed, 'tis true that Henry told me of;
For I have often heard my mother say
I came into the world with my legs forward:
Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste,
And seek their ruin that usurp'd our right?
The midwife wonder'd and the women cried
'O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!'
And so I was; which plainly signified
That I should snarl and bite and play the dog.
Then, since the heavens have shaped my body so,
Let hell make crook'd my mind to answer it.
I have no brother, I am like no brother;
And this word 'love,' which graybeards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another
And not in me: I am myself alone.
Great villain stuff, like Iago has in Othello or Aaron has in Titus Andronicus:
Lucius. Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?
Aaron. Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think, 2260
Few come within the compass of my curse,—
Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death,
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,
Accuse some innocent and forswear myself, 2265
Set deadly enmity between two friends,
Make poor men's cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves, 2270
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.' 2275
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.
I remember hearing that this was his first play and is considered early juvenilia, but I think it still shows moments of promise. Correct me if I'm wrong, it's been so many years since I saw it, but isn't this the one with Joan of Arc? I remember they claimed she was a witch and that was cool. Plus, I believe one of the Henry VI plays has a peasant revolt in it where the mob raises decapitated heads on pikes and makes them kiss. I thought those parts were interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
You simply have to see the Anthony Hopkins film Titus. It is amazing. 'O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide.'Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
This one was rushed and I think I heard once that it was written in six weeks for the queen, because she loved Falstaff so much. I have to agree. Falstaff is Shakespeare's greatest character, better than Hamlet. Plus, that scene where the husband is disguised paying Falstaff to cuckold him and Falstaff is openly mocking him since he doesn't know who's under the mask is just great. That scene is dramatically brilliant sort of like the disguised Henry V walking the battlefield talking to his soldiers, or the modern play Amadeus when the masked man asks Mozart to "Play Salieri." It's even a dramatically interesting scene since the husband is hiring a man to cuckold him, which is the opposite of our expectations. This brings to mind Richard III wooing a woman he's just made a widow. It's such a novel scene. Then there's the silly dueling scene which is quite like the one Sir Toby Belch instigated in Twelfth Night. Sure, the Merry Wives of Windsor doesn't have the best Falstaff moments like Henry IV parts I and II but it's still worth it to spend a little more time with such a likeable and entertaining rogue.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I could almost agree with this one were it not for the scene where the French and English kings arrive outside a city and find it disloyal to both sides. The city guards refuse to open the gates, and propose that the Kings fight it out between them and then the city will open for the victor. Quite comically, the offended kings decide to besiege it on both sides and whoever breaches the walls first shall be the owner of the disputed city. The two kings then even develop a spirit of camaraderie now that they have a common enemy, and are only broken apart when the Pope arrives.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Tempest and A+C are good, but for my money the best are Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, followed by Julius Caesar, Henry IV part I, Macbeth, A Midsummer Nights Dream, The Tempest, Richard III, Othello, etc. in about that order.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Henry IV
Yikes! I hope that's dyslexia, Sohel. :) Henry IV Parts One and Two are usually considered masterpieces, and Bloom sees Falstaff as Shakespeare's supreme creation. Are you sure you didn't mean Henry VI Part One, which is sometimes said to have been his greatest clunker? If not, well, you are certainly entitled to your opinion. Mine is that the two Henry IVs (and Lear) are Shakespeare's best plays. Or perhaps they are just the most meaningful to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by sohel24bd
I don't find gross misogyny funny.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
Which one? Shakespeare's early comedies are extremely light fair without the linguistic, psychological, and moral complexity of his later efforts. They can be entertaining enough, but not much more.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
I do agree that Richard has some really good bits in that one, most certainly written by Shakespeare in preparation for his first solo effort. The problem is the rest of it is the most lurid in Shakespeare's canon outside the probably half-satirical Titus Andronicus.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
That's the one. It's widely believed that the Henry VI trilogy was co-written by Shakespeare, though scholars disagree over which parts were. My gut instinct is that Shakespeare probably wrote somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of them, and I think that explains what I find so splotchy about them. They all have their moments, definitely some good drama and a lot of Machiavellian nastiness, but they definitely lack the artistry of the mature (solo) Shakespeare. I think II Henry VI stands out as the best, probably as it's the most psychologically interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
I have seen it. I think it's one of the rare instances of a film adaptation improving on the play. Taymor nailed the tricky tone of that play and found a remarkable visual correlative for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
I can't agree with the Falstaff > Hamlet part, but everything else is right on.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
King John is the one Shakespeare play that just left zero impression on me. I remember almost nothing of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
Ranking Shakespeare's best plays is a bit like ranking sex positions: they're all good, even if we disagree on the order. The Tempest is one of the most profound reflections on art and life in the history of the arts, filled with such beauty and wonder and formal mastery I'm in awe of it more and more with each revisit. A&C has Shakespeare's most ravishing language; it's very much a more mature follow-up to R&J, almost as if the latter two had grown-up to be rulers of countries but hadn't matured mentally. I've always found R&J and Othello a tad overrated; the biggest problem I have with the latter is I've never found Othello's "switch" believable, and the murder scene has always struck me as ludicrous (especially Desdemona's eloquence after being smothered nearly to death). Julius Caesar's first 3 acts are at the very top of Shakespeare's canon, but I think there's a major falling off at the end. The others I have almost nothing but good things to say about.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
I'm with MT. The Taming of the Shrew is one of the funniest plays ever written. It concerns me that politically prescribed thought seems to be eroding our appreciation of literature--not to mention our senses of humor. Here are some of my thoughts on the play (from another thread):Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pompey Bum
Once again I agree with MT--sort of. I'm not really concerned about who Shakespeare's greatest character is (although it's Falstaff :-P); but I consider both the Henry IVs to be at least Hamlet's equal. Once again, I cite a genuine authority: :)Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pompey Bum
That line may be in the Hopkins film, but I think it refers to Queen Margaret in Henry VI Part 2 (or possibly Part 3).Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
The theory I've heard is that Part 2 was Shakespeare's first great success (and that line is quoted by a contemporary) and he then wrote Part 3 as a sequel and given their immense success (mentioned in the epilogue to Henry V) he wrote Part 1 as what Hollywood now calls a prequel.
Shakespeare's greatest characters are Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth and Volumnia. Men just don't have a chance with those three.
Greatest characters...
Also Paulina in Winter's Tale - worth the price of admission to that play alone. Some would say Rosalind in As You Like It but for my taste she speaks all this boring convoluted prose.
That's your loss. It's one of the greatest sources of humor of all time. Humor comes from breaking taboos, defying conventional mores, shocking people, exposing hidden prejudices and fears. Racism, homophobia, sexism, violence, crudity, foolishness, insecurity, are the colors a comedian paints his canvas with. Humor is about men behaving badly, inappropriately, wish fulfillment, the Id, our deepest darkest desires. Those are the most raw and primal forms that humor comes in, and I would no sooner clean them up, and rob them of their beauty than I would ask Michelangelo or the ancient Greeks to cover their figures in clothes.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
The Comedy of Errors is a refinement of a classic play by the Roman playwright Plautus, who invented modern comedy! Can't you appreciate the amusing subtlety of a bloke in a dress? Or how a sane man ends up being beaten in a madhouse? If that weren't hilarious enough, you have his twin/doppleganger having the best day of his life at the same time his opposite number is having the worst day of his? The contrast makes things even funnier. The confusion, the senseless beatings, role reversal, society in an uproar, chaos and anarchy. It's fantastic. The jokes are very clever. Not all good writing is poetry, and there's a lot to be said for a good pratfall. I think you are underrating Shakespeare's comedies because you are looking for the same things in them that made his tragedies so delightful. Different genres have different rules, different strengths.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
But why should the play being lurid be seen as a defect? There are many lurid masterpieces, and Shakespeare himself frequently wallows in the stuff. Macbeth is a bloody play full of witches and ghosts. I don't know if you've ever seen the Royal Shakespeare Comapany's film version of A Midsummer Nights Dream, but their take on it was that it was more of a nightmare. The elves are more like vampires, the forest is more a bog or swamp, and a man is transformed into a half-donkey monstrosity! In The Tempest, you have a sorcerer who commands spirits, and a cannibal. Shakespeare is full of decapitation, infanticide, incest. Where do you draw the line and say one thing is lurid and in bad taste but another isn't? There are executions, people jumping into graves, playing with skulls, suicide, rape, pirates, bear attacks, sexual innuendo, poisoning, domestic violence, racism. The whole thing is lurid. That's part of the fun.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
The Henry VI plays feel episodic, sequential, and a bit overlong, like the chronicle they were based on more than a play. But I did like that scene in the garden when the nobles pick the flowers white or red, and thus begin the Wars of the Roses.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
He's such a beautifully tragicomic character, so human, so flawed, but noble in his way, ideal after a fashion. He has too much depth and complexity to be an archetype fat clown soldier like his ancestor the Miles Gloriosis. He transcends all that to be a truly unique, intelligent, pathetic, heroic, comic character like Don Quixote.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Part of what I remember best are all the bastard jokes Philip the Bastard made.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
First Citizen
In brief, we are the king of England's subjects:
For him, and in his right, we hold this town.
KING JOHN
Acknowledge then the king, and let me in.
First Citizen
That can we not; but he that proves the king,
To him will we prove loyal: till that time
Have we ramm'd up our gates against the world.
KING JOHN
Doth not the crown of England prove the king?
And if not that, I bring you witnesses,
Twice fifteen thousand hearts of England's breed,--
BASTARD
Bastards, and else.
KING JOHN
To verify our title with their lives.
KING PHILIP
As many and as well-born bloods as those,--
BASTARD
Some bastards too.
KING PHILIP
Stand in his face to contradict his claim.
First Citizen
Till you compound whose right is worthiest,
We for the worthiest hold the right from both.
I'd say that they are mostly good but I don't feel a pressing need to revisit some of them. How badly do we really need to re-read Timon of Athens or Pericles?Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
The play is hilarious when Katherina and Petruchio are on a level playing field. If anything, the play becomes utterly dull (as well as offensive) once we go from their banter to Petruchio's torture and the ridiculous conclusion that everyone's happier when women know their places. Combined with the "drunken man is fooled into thinking he's king" prologue, I half suspect this was intentional on Shakespeare's part. It wouldn't be the first time he's pulled of the trick of playing into and against his times' expectations simultaneously (The Merchant of Venice being the other), especially since we know Shakespeare had a thing for strong female characters anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pompey Bum
I don't object to anyone considering the Henry IV plays masterpieces, but, personally, they're plays I admire intellectually more than plays that move me emotionally. Hamlet was (and remains) the second most profound experience I've ever had with fiction.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pompey Bum
The problem is that the play doesn't break any taboos: it reinforces the misogynistic notion that everyone is happier when women know their place. Breaking taboos would've been suggesting that things are actually better when men and women are considered equals. Shakespeare was capable of this, and, as I suggested above, he may have been subliminally suggesting this in Taming of the Shrew. It all depends on whether we read it straight or ironically.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
I enjoy Comedy of Errors just fine, but it's not the (near)-masterpiece Twelfth Night is.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
Because if that's all a work has going for it then it might as well be sold as a dime novel. Shakespeare's other "lurid" efforts (like Macbeth) have much more going for it than just that aspect. Lurid matter can be elevated to high art, absolutely, and Shakespeare did that frequently in the later plays.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
And it's because of how sympathetic and human he is that Hal's betrayal at the end of II Henry IV may be the single most devastating moment in all Shakespeare. It's very close with the final scene in Lear, anyway. Others might object, but I feel that Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight is probably superior to the two plays taken straight.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
Pericles is certainly flawed (probably because, again, it was a collaboration), but I always feel like Timon is better than I remember it. It's certainly Shakepseare's bleakest play as it pertains to the nature of humanity.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
Oh I certainly think the part you take offense at is toungue-in-cheek--and more to the point, a lampoon of dumb-*ss male attitudes about women. Do what you will, but my advice is to relax a little and join the fun. The battle for women's well being is not to be won (or even fought) here; and taking offense at a comedy like The Taming of the Shrew only identifies one as another balloon to be pricked.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
My experience has been just opposite, but to each his own.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I agree with both of those statements. And the loss of bad mentors, fallen idols, insufficient father figures--even just drinking buddies--with the onset of adult responsibilities is such a universal experience that the scene truly captures something heartbreakingly human.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I'm not sure how to take a play by Shakespeare straight. I read them out loud myself (with my own characterizations--my wife thinks I'm nuts); and I always have pictures in my mind. I like the Welles' movie, but like most movies (and almost all audiobooks), it pales before art shared with an artist on such a personal level. Give me a book any day.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Now the case where an adaption of Shakespeare is far better then the original is Verdi's Falstaff, based on The Merry Wives of Windsor and a considerable improvement. Mind you I've just been to a wonderful production. Arrigo Boito who adapted it (and also Othello) was a genius.
Congratulations as always on your access to London's rich cultural provender. :) The Merry Wives of Windsor is fun, but it's not real. Henry IV One & Two are funnier, and as real as it gets. What more can you say?
In a sense Verdi is Italy's answer to Shakespeare (on the basis that although Dante is the great poet, it's all symbolic). Actually Verdi and Dickens were exact contemporaries and in many ways parallel - boys with no higher education who became National Treasures.
But what is wonderful about Falstaff is that Verdi composed it when he was over 80 and not thought to write another opera. In fact it was his first comic opera for fifty years. And technically it is like nothing else: the music matches the words and situations without stopping for big solos until you get to the magical scene in Windsor Great Park at the end. It make me feel young.
Where does one draw the line, though? Should we just "relax and join the fun" when the Klu Klux Klan rides to the rescue in Birth of a Nation? I mean, I do think some art reaches a point where we are morally obligated to denounce its content even if we praise its artistry.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pompey Bum
Not quite sure what you mean here; there are a great many films that are very personal, and a great many books that are very impersonal. I wouldn't even call Shakespeare a highly personal author as far as that goes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pompey Bum
When WH Auden taught his classes on Shakespeare, in which he delivered lengthy, in-depth lectures on every play, during his lecture for The Merry Wives of Windsor he simply turned on a recording of Verdi's Falstaff.Quote:
Originally Posted by JonathanB
Sounds like a slippery slope argument to me, but I'll give you my best answer in any case. A riotous comedy like The Taming of the Shrew is not comparable to a (supposedly) historical epic film like Birth of a Nation because there is no question of historicity involved. There is, of course, plenty of art in which one is able to learn and teach from despicable content (the traditions of Jew-hatred behind Fagin in Oliver Twist come to mind). But denouncing (as long as slippery slopes are cool) is way too much like proscribing content, and proscribing content is way too much like burning books for my tastes. Of course, anyone is free to learn and teach about sexism from The Taming of the Shrew (and many do). Perhaps it can do women some good; I truly hope so. It's bound to give me a big laugh in any case. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Sure, what I mean is that the connection between a reader and a writer is personal--even an intimate. The actual experience of the art is made in that interaction. With movies and audiobooks, the experience is mediated through directors, actors, cinematographers, or readers (not that movies aren't potentially worthwhile in other ways). Audiobooks in which the author is also the reader are a happy exception. Unfortunately they are not very common now.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I certainly wouldn't endorse any kind of banning or censorship, but part of free speech is the ability to denounce the content of what free speech we find morally repugnant.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pompey Bum
Obviously BOAN is on the opposite end of the spectrum in just about every way, but that was part of my point about asking where, exactly, to draw the line. Very recently there's been a lot of controversy over the morality of comedians telling rape jokes, so I don't think it's a simple manner of "serious historical drama" VS "frivolous comedy" since even comedy is usually promoting some perspective while making fun of another (though some comedy tries to mock every perspective). Traditionally, though, comedy has been aimed at the powerful, establishments and privilege, as they're the ones that benefit the most and suffer the least through existing social structures. It gets very tricky when you start making light of groups that aren't privileged.
I'm not saying it's morally wrong to laugh at Taming of the Shrew, but I do think it's important to be aware of where the laughter is coming from; namely to guard against it coming from a place of agreeing with the misogynistic aspect. One shouldn't be laughing and saying to themselves: "Yeah, that ***** Katherina is getting what's coming to her!"
On a tangential note, this entire conversation is eerily echoing a recent poem I wrote on this very subject (taking Browning's My Last Duchess as a reference).
Well, all I can say is that I can feel the same intimate connection with some filmmakers as you feel with writers. It always depends for me on the particular author/filmmaker. I always said that the film Eraserhead is as close as one can come to observing someone else's nightmarish psyche.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pompey Bum
Oh so we're not doing slippery slope? Cool! The Taming of the Shrew has nothing to do with Birth of a Nation (or rape jokes). And of course you have the right to say anything you like. Who said otherwise?Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
You misunderstand me or are intentionally misrepresenting my position, but I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I made no comparison between the serious and the frivolous. What I said was that the two works could not be well compared because the issue of HISTORICITY does not pertain to both. Historicity is the underlying kernel of historical authenticity within a work of art (among other things). Birth of a Nation makes a claim to the authenticity a certain version of history. The Taming of the Shrew does not. It is a raucous comedy lampooning courtship, which never even considers issues of historiography. My opinion is that idiot male attitudes toward women are especially skewered and that the "sexist" aspects should not be taken seriously. You are free to disagree.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Again, I don't think you understood my point. A reader (or this reader in any case) provides vocal characterizations and narrative voice, and brings an author's colors and pictures to life in my mind as I read. One who views a film does not have to do that because others have already done it for her. But it is not important to me whether you understand what I meant, so it would probably be best to drop it.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman