your least favourite shakespeare play ?

[Jackson Richardson]

Is that final speech a joke Petruchio and Kate are playing on everyone else? She's putting it on to help him win his bet?

[Pompey Bum]

When did any wife beater ever stop the abuse when the woman submits? They tend to choose women who are submissive to them in the first place, and the abuse only becomes worse the more submissive they are.

This is an interesting point, Mona. Bullies are highly selective about their victims (I believe that is the current psychiatric consensus) and Kate doesn't seem like anyone to mess with two me. As for the argumentum ad nauseam this thread has produced, dead horse abuse is an ugly thing.

[MorpheusSandman]

Please, films with color and sound are way better. There are hardly any films from that time which are as good as films today.

No. All this does is tell you really don't care for the art of film. Nobody who does says such things.

And if you think we haven't bettered Murnau, Dreyer, and Eisenstein, then you should go see a film by Fellini, Kubrick, Bergman, or Kurosawa.

I've seen every Kurosawa and Kubrick film, 33 films from Bergman, 16 films from Fellini, all (available) Hitchcocks, 24 from Ozu, 21 from Bunuel, 32 from Ford, every film from Bresson, 23 from Godard, 16 from Mizoguchi, every film from Angelopoulos, Hou, and Kieslowski, 15 from Satyajit Ray... need I go on? (FYI, I keep such numbers on a film list that I keep, so it's easy to look up; I'm not just guessing)

None of those filmmakers bettered Murnau, Dreyer, and Eisenstein in terms of cinematic artistry. Some may have equaled them and created their own unique artistry, but none bettered. If they "bettered" them at all it was solely because of their more prodigious output, a good reason one might prefer, say, Shakespeare to Marlowe. Again, the fundamental art of cinema is images and time. Murnau, Dreyer, and Eisenstein reached the pinnacle of what film is capable of in both aspects. Eisenstein theories of editing were so thorough that nobody has been able to innovate since him.

I'm pretty sure that those are the two ways of making people uncomfortable...

Well, let me come over and starve you and deprive you of sleep for a few days and let's see if you're "uncomfortable" enough to classify it as torture.

So how do you suggest we discipline unruly elements in society? I suppose prison and time outs are torture too?

WTF are you talking about? What did Katherine do that was against the law? How did she violate anyone's rights? Did she steal? Kill? Assault? Damage property? Is she an arsonist? Is she selling national secrets to the enemy? Last I checked, she didn't want to get married and be subjugated. That's "unruly?"

You really think Shylock isn't a villain for striking such a bargain?

I think Antonio is a dumbass for accepting it. In general, I think the desire for revenge for wrongs done against you is far less "villainous" than those wrongs were to begin with. Certainly I think Shylock overstepped the bounds of what "fair" revenge would be, but that's the only part where his villainy comes in and, again, even that is more sympathetic and understandable than what's done to Katherine or what Iago does to Othello.

However, there are other women in that society which are not called shrewish. Katherine's sister for instance is better thought of than Katherine.

Bianca is willing to be the patriarchal feminine ideal; of course she's "thought highly of." Care to name another strong-willed female character in the play who isn't called a shrew?

When she reforms, she stops being corrected.

She didn't deserve "correcting" in the first place is the entire point.

The play is a comedy, so it's not all meant to be taken at face value, but you overstate things when you call it torture. The moral of the play is that you should be a good person so that others will be nice to you back.

It's torture. Starvation and sleep deprivation are torture.

The moral of the play is spelled out in Katherine's closing monologue. It has nothing to do with "being a good person," it has everything to do with being the "ideal woman" according to the patriarchal society's ideals.

Well, they definitely should be paid less to do some jobs. Take that soccer stuff recently.

Revenue based jobs are not what I'm talking about. There, what you make is equivalent to the money you bring in. That would be a meritocracy, which would be fine, but it's not what we have.

Personally, I'm more concerned that women divorce men and take his kids, everything he's ever earned, or ever will earn, and how they get ten years more LIFE than us men.

Parental laws definitely need to be addressed, as I agree with you it's unfair that mothers tend to get custody with all else being equal. However, divorce is a 50/50 split; who gets the better end of it will depend on who was making more/less in the relationship. If the man was making less, then he'd get more than he earned in the divorce. Alimony can go both ways too. Can't do much about the "life gap," except better medicine. When we talk about equality it's really about things that we can do as a society to make things more equal.

I got no problem with profiling either.

You should.

They've had the vote now for about a century. They outnumber male voters too, so any laws they don't like are on them at this point. Don't like how congress is full of old white guys? Well, how about you vote for a couple of women for once, ladies?

Yes, because money and power has nothing to do with who gets elected in politics.

Yeah, I'm not really looking to read any feminist or communist propaganda today.

Translation: "I'll ignore the evidence so I don't have to cede the point."

The code isn't law anymore but it is still followed as tradition.

Yeah, because it's not like there's gratuitous nudity, sex, and violence in modern films.

And we do still have the FCC, MPAA, standards and practices etc.

TV is regulated because kids watch it. They don't worry about it on any of the "pay" channels. Rating systems aren't censorship, they're just informational.

It tells us that violence against men is acceptable, but that violence against women is unacceptable, which has been your position in this argument.

When did I ever say violence against men was acceptable? That's not my position at all!

So it's okay to hit women, just don't tear their dress or take away their food until they act nice?

All of the Family Guy clips are not one person knowingly torturing another person to get them to change their attitude. Two of them are exaggerated conflicts over everyday occurrences (a family dispute, trying to use the bathroom first) that aren't violent in real life (or, at least, not in remotely the same way). There's also no "moral" at the end about how it's good to abuse your wife if it makes your baby laugh or whatever. Again, these ARE NOT EQUIVALENT EXAMPLES. None of them are remotely suggesting that the kind of domestic violence/abuse that occurs in reality on a daily basis is OK, and they're certainly not advocating the kind of torturous "taming" we see in TOTS.

How do you feel about Falstaff being beaten in the laundry basket in The Merry Wives of Windsor? Or the pranks against Malvolio in Twelfth Night?

I don't remember much of TMWOW, but I always thought the Malvolio prank pretty mean-spirited.

It cushions the blow.

There shouldn't be a blow to cushion.

He says in the opening lines that he served Othello for some time in a number of battles, that other men had noticed his abilities and suggested making him a lieutenant, but Othello chose to pass over him for a man with no experience.

Then Iago should go serve someone else. Not getting a promotion you feel you deserve is hardly getting constantly derided for being a certain race or religion.

I see as much evidence for her being a spoiled little rich girl as you do of her living in a patriarchy.

This really shouldn't even be a debate. Katherina's closing monologue reveals the patriarchal feminine ideal; if that's the ideal, then NOT abiding by that ideal (doing the opposite) was precisely what made her a shrew. It's really simple.

[MorpheusSandman]

When did any wife beater ever stop the abuse when the woman submits?

I didn't say they did; I said that's what they'd say, as in "well, if she just did what I wanted and didn't piss me off I wouldn't beat her/would stop beating her." Obviously that's not usually the truth, and pretty despicable even if was the truth.

Petruchio chooses Kate because of the laws of natural attraction (her dowry may have helped, but that couldn't have been the only reason).

Petruchio only shows any interest once he finds out about the dowry. And if he wanted a strong-willed woman then why did he go through all that to "tame" her? I completely disagree about her being a "better person;" again, her closing monologue is entirely about being a "patriarchal better woman," there's nothing in there that's about being a better person that would apply to both sexes.

Welcome back, by the way! I've missed you.

Thank you!

[MorpheusSandman]

Is that final speech a joke Petruchio and Kate are playing on everyone else? She's putting it on to help him win his bet?

That's something I never considered, though it reeks of a fanwank given that there's no real evidence for it.

[MorpheusSandman]

Really, women are paid less for working the same hours, at the same job, and with equivalent seniority?

Yes: http://www.payscale.com/gender-lifetime-earnings-gap

Isn't it curious then that businesses don't mass hire women to cut costs?

1. They have done this. http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/31/news...source=cnn_bin

2. It's not as if all businesses are consciously, knowingly paying women less money. The 4-5% gap that the first link quotes would be accounting for the same job across a lot of different businesses, many of them probably wouldn't be offering a pay difference and the ones that were probably wouldn't be knowingly doing it.

The wage gap statistics are a totally bogus myth

Except they're not. They get much worse when we consider jobs dominated by men VS those dominated women. Why do you think it is that most women-dominated professions just happen to be those that pay less?

My female coworkers also do not earn less than me for the same position; I know this for a fact.

And one anecdotal example > Actual studies.

The fact that women are overwhelmingly more likely to work in childcare and men are overwhelmingly more likely to work labour jobs on the oil patch is not evidence of gender based wage discrimination. It's evidence of different jobs carrying different market values.

And the market just happens to overwhelmingly favor the jobs that men do?

Here are some simple video for you.

I love that you ask me for credible studies while posting a Youtube clip of a random guy who cites his own webpage as his source. First one might be worth watching. I'll give it a go later.

[Clopin]

Morph you are the one making a claim here so you're the one who needs a real source to verify it. I'm just explaining to you that market forces would absolutely destroy any huge pay gap between men and women (for the same work) because all businesses would prioritize hiring women to save money. All of them, not just one Morph.

Though I wouldn't expect someone who posts the "make privilege checklist" as a serious citation in an argument to be able to reason or think clearly so I understand that you won't be able to understand what I'm saying.

Why do you think it is that most women-dominated professions just happen to be those that pay less?

This is a totally different argument. The pay gap myth implies that men and women are paid different salaries for the exact same work. Otherwise the statistics are meaningless. As far as male vs female dominated positions, frankly a lot of the higher paying jobs which are dominated by men are extremely dangerous, carry with them long term health risks (labour positions) and a very low level of job satisfaction. I don't think a female elementary school teacher would be happier making a higher salary in Fort Mac as a rig driver for the oil patch, working a Godawful, dangerous job and doing Godawful shifts.

[Clopin]

By the way, I believe women live longer and happier lives and tend to report enjoying their jobs much more when surveyed. Sounds like a good deal to me. I would much rather take on a career which would reward me with a happier and longer life than a stressful, unpleasant job which pays a bit better.

Also standards and what not go both ways. I've said before that my dream job would be running a home daycare. This is basically impossible for me entirely because of my gender since people are very reluctant to accept male childcare workers. There is a rather pervasive notion that men are more likely to be pedophiles or to molest children, or that men are unfit for the work. A woman my age who wanted to take on the business of a daycare would be commended as a self starter and a hard, competent worker doing a pretty difficult job; I would be considered very weird and would get no business. That's unfortunate but how it is. When women defy gender roles or take on a career in a field dominated by men they are showered with praise and plaudits. It would be nice to receive the same treatment.

[ennison]

The women I work with always enjoy their jobs more when I survey them! (So they tell me)

[mortalterror]

No. All this does is tell you really don't care for the art of film. Nobody who does says such things.

Well, I do and I did.

I've seen every Kurosawa and Kubrick film, 33 films from Bergman, 16 films from Fellini, all (available) Hitchcocks, 24 from Ozu, 21 from Bunuel, 32 from Ford, every film from Bresson, 23 from Godard, 16 from Mizoguchi, every film from Angelopoulos, Hou, and Kieslowski, 15 from Satyajit Ray... need I go on? (FYI, I keep such numbers on a film list that I keep, so it's easy to look up; I'm not just guessing)

None of those filmmakers bettered Murnau, Dreyer, and Eisenstein in terms of cinematic artistry. Some may have equaled them and created their own unique artistry, but none bettered. If they "bettered" them at all it was solely because of their more prodigious output, a good reason one might prefer, say, Shakespeare to Marlowe. Again, the fundamental art of cinema is images and time. Murnau, Dreyer, and Eisenstein reached the pinnacle of what film is capable of in both aspects. Eisenstein theories of editing were so thorough that nobody has been able to innovate since him.

If you think Kubrick, Fellini, Bergman, and Kurosawa aren't better than Murnau, Dreyer, and Eisenstein perhaps you either like weird stuff or have bad taste. As I recall, you like Stan Brakhage, Bela Tarr, and other crazy avante garde stuff. How can you like film while disdaining narrative, color, and sound? If I don't like the early beginnings of film, it sounds like you don't like the majority of film production, ie mass market films, blockbusters, narratives, or commercial films.

Well, let me come over and starve you and deprive you of sleep for a few days and let's see if you're "uncomfortable" enough to classify it as torture.

Beat you too it. I'm already on a diet, which is all being hungry but not starving enough to die is.

WTF are you talking about? What did Katherine do that was against the law? How did she violate anyone's rights? Did she steal? Kill? Assault? Damage property? Is she an arsonist? Is she selling national secrets to the enemy? Last I checked, she didn't want to get married and be subjugated. That's "unruly?"

I'm talking about the nature of justice and how we punish people or maintain order in this country, from the felon or terrorist, which you have frequently mentioned, to the pet or child as I have frequently mentioned.

I think Antonio is a dumbass for accepting it. In general, I think the desire for revenge for wrongs done against you is far less "villainous" than those wrongs were to begin with. Certainly I think Shylock overstepped the bounds of what "fair" revenge would be, but that's the only part where his villainy comes in and, again, even that is more sympathetic and understandable than what's done to Katherine or what Iago does to Othello.

Fair revenge in Shylock's case would be insulting Antonio back, charging him high interest on his loan, or not loaning to him at all. Tricking him into a bargain that endangers his life, and then insisting on his blood instead of cash repayment is villainous. Besides, maybe Antonio and others said mean things about Shylock because he wasn't a nice person to begin with, because he has it in him to murder his fellow man, maybe that's why they don't like him. Even the dude's own daughter doesn't like him. He's clearly a representative of the stock character The Miser, who hoards money and doesn't care about people.

Bianca is willing to be the patriarchal feminine ideal; of course she's "thought highly of." Care to name another strong-willed female character in the play who isn't called a shrew?

But she's subjected to the same societal pressures as Katherine while maintaining a good attitude. She has a "strong will" which she uses to help orchestrate Katherine's marriage as a means to facilitate her own. Also, if you would recall, Bianca does not come at her husband's call. Then again, there is the Widow, Hortensio's wife. She doesn't come when called either.

She didn't deserve "correcting" in the first place is the entire point.

Then neither did Falstaff or Malvolio.

It's torture. Starvation and sleep deprivation are torture.

The moral of the play is spelled out in Katherine's closing monologue. It has nothing to do with "being a good person," it has everything to do with being the "ideal woman" according to the patriarchal society's ideals.

dart not scornful glances...she is forward, peevish, sullen, sour,...To bandy word for word and frown for frown;...craves no other tribute at thy hands But love...

Revenue based jobs are not what I'm talking about. There, what you make is equivalent to the money you bring in. That would be a meritocracy, which would be fine, but it's not what we have.

Clopin made a very good point about male/female equality in the job market with those videos showing how the wage gap is actually about 5-7% and not 23% when adjusted for various factors. The videos Clopin posted also made an interesting point that the 5-7% wage gap may be due to men being more willing to ask for a raise.

Parental laws definitely need to be addressed, as I agree with you it's unfair that mothers tend to get custody with all else being equal. However, divorce is a 50/50 split; who gets the better end of it will depend on who was making more/less in the relationship. If the man was making less, then he'd get more than he earned in the divorce. Alimony can go both ways too. Can't do much about the "life gap," except better medicine. When we talk about equality it's really about things that we can do as a society to make things more equal.

That life one really gnaws at me though. Money don't mean anything if you aren't around to spend it. All these guys die and then their widows spend their money. Maybe, that's how they get to financial equality. I was recently driving past a dairy farm with my mother in the car and noticing all of the cows and calves, but no bulls. "Well you only need one bull to breed with," my mother said. "Bulls don't make milk so they all get turned into hamburger." "Well that certainly seems fair," I replied. Men get the short stick in this society all over the place, like Clopin showed with that list on the last page. The draft! Are you kidding me? All us men gotta die so the women can stay home and do their nails. Uh uh. No. You want that wage equality and the vote you pick up a gun. Gonna' leave everything on our shoulders? You gotta be kidding me. Israel's got it right.

You should.

Idealism needs to give way to pragmatism in the real world. Here we do what works, not what we wish worked.

Yes, because money and power has nothing to do with who gets elected in politics.

Lot of rich women out there.

Translation: "I'll ignore the evidence so I don't have to cede the point."

Or I'm highly skeptical of the source of that information, and think it would be a waste of my time to read it.

Yeah, because it's not like there's gratuitous nudity, sex, and violence in modern films.

Not nearly as much as I'd like. Not nearly.

TV is regulated because kids watch it. They don't worry about it on any of the "pay" channels. Rating systems aren't censorship, they're just informational.

Tell that to Howard Stern, George Carlin, or Opie and Anthony.

When did I ever say violence against men was acceptable? That's not my position at all!

You said that you enjoyed the romcoms where men were abused. Then you said that it's okay to abuse men because they are a privileged class.

All of the Family Guy clips are not one person knowingly torturing another person to get them to change their attitude. Two of them are exaggerated conflicts over everyday occurrences (a family dispute, trying to use the bathroom first) that aren't violent in real life (or, at least, not in remotely the same way). There's also no "moral" at the end about how it's good to abuse your wife if it makes your baby laugh or whatever. Again, these ARE NOT EQUIVALENT EXAMPLES. None of them are remotely suggesting that the kind of domestic violence/abuse that occurs in reality on a daily basis is OK, and they're certainly not advocating the kind of torturous "taming" we see in TOTS.

So you don't have a problem with violence. You have a problem with compulsion or patriarchy.

I don't remember much of TMWOW, but I always thought the Malvolio prank pretty mean-spirited.

I guess you don't like prank comedy.

There shouldn't be a blow to cushion.

Maybe not.

Then Iago should go serve someone else. Not getting a promotion you feel you deserve is hardly getting constantly derided for being a certain race or religion.

You don't know what kind of options he had to leave Othello's employ. He mentions at one point that creditors are eating him to death. He has a wife to consider. He might have some real financial problems. Remember back in those days, there was no social safety net. You couldn't pay your debts you'd go to debtor's prison, or become a beggar. Also, with the patron system of the time Iago probably needed a good reference from Othello to change employment. Personally, I think poverty and classism can sting as much as racism, or sexism.

This really shouldn't even be a debate. Katherina's closing monologue reveals the patriarchal feminine ideal; if that's the ideal, then NOT abiding by that ideal (doing the opposite) was precisely what made her a shrew. It's really simple.

I don't think it is. I think Kate spells out an obligation to love one's husband, and as a natural consequence of that love you will want to serve him, just as he in his turn will want to serve his wife, for love. The language may be couched in feudal terms of lords and vassals but it's just as true today. We gladly serve those whom we love and a house divided against itself cannot stand.

[Clopin]

No Mortal you don't understand. Men are all over privileged patriarchs who can't possibly face any problems, and who honestly can't even walk down the street without being showered with unequal pay or being offered high powered jobs and political positions of power!

I... oh wait...

Underground, Cape Breton coal miners like Matthius "Tius" Tutty worked in dangerous, primitive conditions.

"I had a lot of accidents. Theres no question about it ... I had this hand smashed ... I had that skull fracture(d)" remembered Tutty. "I got to make a living and there's no other place to go. I said, I'm not a coward. If I die down there well I'll die down there."

Tutty starting working in the Glace Bay coal mines when he was 14 years old. His father had drowned and Tutty became the first in five generations to leave the sea.

Tutty drove horses that hauled boxes of coal along the underground tracks. He worked six days a week, surrounded by other child miners, some as young as nine.

Here's how one of them remembers life in the mine:

"We had been ... working 12 hours a day loading in a low seam on our hands, being cursed at from morning to night by a greedy boss and seeing daylight only on Sundays ... We faced the prospects of a dismal and unhappy existence."

Sounds like fun!

Soldiers in the trenches did not get much sleep. When they did, it was in the afternoon during daylight and at night only for an hour at a time. They were woken up at different times, either to complete one of their daily chores or to fight. During rest time, they wrote letters and sometimes played card games.


The trenches could be very muddy and smelly. There were many dead bodies buried nearby and the latrines (toilets) sometimes overflowed into the trenches. Millions of rats infested the trenches and some grew as big as cats. There was also a big problem with lice that tormented the soldiers on a daily basis.

Huh, I wonder where this fits into the male privilege checklist?



You know you really don't see too many female homeless! Hey I wonder if they experience a difference in the amount of money people give them? Do you think female beggars only get 77 cents on the dollar?



I would hate to be tortured and/or killed while serving a prison term. Luckily as a male I am privileged to be 11 times (not percent, multiples) more likely to be imprisoned!

[Clopin]

Men can be raped too, only it's usually funny to people, or not really a big deal. Here's an ad which threatens men who drink and drive with being raped. Is rape the punishment for drinking and driving? (or for anything?). Nope! but who cares about male rape victims anyway?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HLURvkC1HuM

And here are the suicide stats. Men are three to five (or more) times more likely to commit suicide than women all over the world. I guess with so much privilege it's hard to find a reason to keep living. I mean when everything is handed to you so easily you can get bored right?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gend...ces_in_suicide

Suicide is also the leading cause of death for men under the age of thirty five in the UK now! Who cares? Nobody. Where's the widespread public outrage over this gender disparity? Or is the fact that men are losing their lives somehow to be considered less important than women not being interested in playing video games or chess? Or pursuing careers in STEM subjects.

[mona amon]

I didn't say they did; I said that's what they'd say, as in "well, if she just did what I wanted and didn't piss me off I wouldn't beat her/would stop beating her." Obviously that's not usually the truth, and pretty despicable even if was the truth.

My point is that Petruchio does not continue the 'abuse' after she plays along, so he cannot be compared to a wife beater. I just re-read the play, and all he's doing is giving her a dose of her own medicine, and then some. She has a filthy temper and beats people up. His strategy to make her behave more reasonably is to echo, and perhaps exaggerate, her own shrewishness, ranting at the servants, throwing the food about and so on. In other words he out-shrews her, and if she goes hungry and sleepless for one night, too bad.

Petruchio only shows any interest once he finds out about the dowry. And if he wanted a strong-willed woman then why did he go through all that to "tame" her? I completely disagree about her being a "better person;" again, her closing monologue is entirely about being a "patriarchal better woman," there's nothing in there that's about being a better person that would apply to both sexes.

You seem to be equating 'strong willed woman' with 'shrew'. Yes, Kate is a strong willed, spirited and witty woman (could Shakespeare create anything less?) but she's also bad tempered, throws tantrums, and beats up people. When Petruchio starts acting shrewish, she quickly realizes that there's never going to be any peace in the house if people behave like that, so yes, it applies to both sexes. Her final speech, I feel, is merely a continuation of her earlier plan to agree with whatever Petruchio says, even when he declares that the sun is the moon. Once Petruchio goes back to normal, so will all these new strategies to maintain domestic peace.

Now I'm not saying all this is not sexist, but what isn't? We live in a sexist world, and as Clopin points out, not everything works out to the advantage of the male. I thought it was a lot of fun, and there's an excellent chemistry between Petrucchio and Kate.

As for the argumentum ad nauseam this thread has produced, dead horse abuse is an ugly thing.

Heh heh yes, and here I go doing it again, but I just re-read the play, so couldn't resist.

[Pompey Bum]

Heh heh yes, and here I go doing it again, but I just re-read the play, so couldn't resist.

Doing it again? You're the only one who's even (really) talking about the play, Mona. Everyone else is just beating his own dead-horse-shaped political drum.

[Eiseabhal]

Boom-boom as Basil Brush would ventriloquise.