Blog 2: “The Play’s the Thing…kinda.”

“The Play’s the Thing…kinda.”

I recently participated in a very interesting conversation regarding the intricate nature of literary adaptations, a conversation made even better by a delightful nutty-honey-pastry-thingy (thanks Maria!) that was concurrently consumed. It made me ponder the peculiar nature of Shakespearean adaptations (the conversation, not the pastry).[1]

Adapting Shakespeare is often an ungrateful task in which the artist can catch flack for remaining too loyal to the original text as much as for departing from it too radically. I have likes (Joss Whedon, Julie Taymor) and dislikes (Roland Emmerich) on both sides of the spectrum, but what is more interesting is the transference that occurs between the director/writer/artist and the play he or she seeks to adapt. Thinking back to Shakespeare in his adjectival form, it seems to me that Shakespearean adaptation inevitably morphs into appropriation. We talk of Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet or even The Beatles’ Midsummer Night’s Dream (whaaaat? Yup, check it out on YouTube). There are countless adaptations of Shakespearean drama attesting to its inscription as a touchstone of cultural appropriation that can be translated into all or any desired format (Manga Shakespeare, Detective short stories Shakespeare, Claymation Shakespeare, etc.).

Such adaptive strategies echo within early modernity, where the absence of copyright as we know it allowed playwrights to adapt popular literary works within an incredibly timely frame. Hence, an English translation of Don Quixote, published in 1612, could yield the play The History of Cardenio within the same calendar year. Indeed, going the anachronistic route for a moment, a similar buzz was likely to manifest itself during the Renaissance concerning which playwright was revising which work (Did you hear? Marlowe is working on a Doctor Faustus. Have you heard of Gl'ingannati? I wish Will Shakespeare adapted that bawdy farce). This remains wishful speculation, except that, for all purposes, adaptation was Shakespeare`s game. The bard, who never met a story that he didn’t like, borrowed from countless works in fashioning his own. Much in the way that we can refer to Kenneth Brannagh’s Hamlet, we can think of The Winter’s Tale as Shakespeare’s Pandosto, the history plays as Shakespeare’s vision of Holinshed’s chronicles, etc. One of the elements that fascinates me the most about Shakespeare is the way in which he seemingly reads everything and anything with a keen adaptive eye, from a medical treatise on melancholy, through Ovid, to Roman comedy. Unlike many of his adapters, however, Shakespeare rarely got it wrong when he transposed something onto the stage.                     

There are likely as many extraordinary revisions of Shakespeare as there are appalling turkeys. Personal taste factors in considerably in the matter. I am deeply ambivalent about certain adaptations of Shakespeare. I cringe when encountering an overused adaptive vein (let’s transpose Macbeth in a 1930's gangster power struggle in Chicago) or a misguided attempt at refreshing that deconstructs a play for the sake of shocking originality… and don’t get me started on the movie Anonymous. My anxiety admittedly, stems from my own view of what constitutes “Shakespearean drama” and, conversely, how it should be reworked. Adaptations hit us hardest when it tackles something that reached us, a story that touched us and left an indelible emotional mark. We become, in a way, protector of what we perceive to be its sanctity against sacrilegious interpretations.

This does not mean that I cannot enjoy a lighthearted revision. The Simpsons’ Hamlet remains one of my favourite Shakespearean adaptations, and it is one I have used in class as a companion to the play itself. It is hilarious, but it also provides a stunningly accurate overview of the play’s themes concerns in less than seven minutes. Moreover, the reverse casting, where characters from the show are attributed roles in the play (Moe as Claudius, The father and son Wiggums as Polonius and Laertes, even RosenCarl and GuildenLenny) offers up a surprising point of access into a complex and iconic play. For my money, this is adaptation done right: it offers something new that remains grounded firmly in its source. It pokes fun at the play while displaying an impressive understanding of its underpinnings.

Much like discussions of the plays themselves, their adaptations will carry on and continue to surprise us. I was skeptical of the comics Kill Shakespeare, and though I still have some reservation, I found the series thoroughly enjoyable. If anything, it led me to reconsider certain plays or characters and rethink my interpretations of them. At the very least, adaptations should confirm your love for a given text and at its best, make you question it.  

RANDOM EXCITEMENT OF THE WEEK:

I am re-reading Montaigne’s Essays this week and am thoroughly enjoying it. The masterful oscillation between articulate sociocultural analysis and dry witticism leaves me in awe every time. Who else could write essays on Cannibals and the metaphysics of the human soul as easily as on thumbs and carriages? Also, if you are ever at an academic conference and are having a rotten time, find yourself a panel on Montaigne and listen to non-francophone scholars trying to pronounce his name. Hilarity guaranteed (for the record, my white whale of scholarly pronunciation: Ludwig Wittgenstein.)

RANDOM SMOOSHY FACE OF THE WEEK:

People that talk at the movies or in the theater. I realize I am probably fighting a losing battle with this one as it seems to be a widespread phenomenon …but I can’t help it. People chatting at the movies brings us back to the early days of television, where people used to dress up for the person reading the news in the tiny box that stood in their living room. It shows a lack of social awareness that infuriates as much as it puzzles. I can tolerate it in certain contexts. Indeed, I’ll expect a degree of noise when seeing The Avengers opening night in a jam-packed room at the Paramount,[2]  but I really don’t need someone sitting behind me to mention how sad the movie Amour is as we are watching it (or worse, trying to predict the ending: it’s a harrowing tale of love in the face of old age and degeneration, not a Nancy Drew whodunit). When faced with such a situation, I remember Feste’s words in Twelfth Night: “some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some WOULD YOU SHUT UP. I KNOW IT’S TOM HANKS PRETENDING TO BE SHIP CAPTAIN ! WE ALL KNOW IT! THAT’S WHY THEY’VE PUT HIS FACE ON THE POSTER! Ok, rant over. 

RANDOM SHOUT OUT:

There are many, many reasons to like Tom Hiddleston, but this might just be the best. Listen to him breathe life and passion into an all-too familiar sonnet. It is the auditory equivalent of wrapping yourself in a velvet comforter full of puppies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Q_Ioj6AhQ  

That’s it for now. Hope you enjoyed!

 We are the stuff dreams are made of… and hope never to be the stuff hot dogs are made of…

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[1] Though, a pastry is kinda like a Shakespeare… forget it, even this academic can’t stretch that metaphor.  

[2] I realize it is now called the Scotia Bank Theater, but I’m old and a curmudgeon, and don’t like change. The Paramount is the Paramount, there should only be five best picture nominees at the Oscar every year, and cauliflower should never be purple.    

Blog 1: Shakespearean, by any other name...

Fresh off my PhD defense in June and facing the gloomy job market, I decided to take the plunge, as it were, into the digital world and blog (better late than never in conquering my technological demons) about Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature more generally. I cannot promise that such exercise will be free of tangents extolling the virtues of baseball, Bruce Springsteen, or my manifold attempts to kick my addiction to Law and Order SVU (where have you gone, B. D. Wong?). I am merely aiming to put to paper (to keyboard? To binary code? I need to update my metaphors software) the literary musings that punctuate my daily life. Some of it will include work in progress (or rather, the seeds of work in progress), some if it will attempt anecdotal humour, and some it will be classified as inevitable venting (I should preemptively address my difficult relationship with Ben Jonson). I hope it will prove enjoyable to whoever is out there.

“Shakespearean, by any other name”

Over the course of last year, two of my relatives used the word “Shakespearean” in conversations with me, within contexts that had little to do with Shakespeare or any of his plays. One, recounting an experience at a Madonna concert, described her stage presence as Shakespearean, while the other, trying to sell me on the merits of Battlestar Galactica, explained that I was sure to enjoy the show since its characters often faced Shakespearean dilemmas.

At the core, I believe that both comments were trying to pique my interest by using an analogy that would connect with my passion for Shakespeare. Yet, thinking about it more closely, I began wondering what each statement implied for my interlocutors, beyond a baiting of my interest? What does a “Shakespearean” stage presence or dilemma entail? To be frank, I am not the biggest Madonna fan out there, though I have been known to randomly sing “Ring, ring, ring, goes the telephone” because of its Wordsworthian undertones. Likewise, I have yet to watch Battlestar Galactica. What proved most interesting to me in considering these two exchanges was that, without being able to clearly envision what each person had meant, I understood what they were going for on a broader level; each used “Shakespearean” as an adjective inferring some sort of gravitas. Madonna’s presence on stage suggests an array of qualities (compelling, commanding, captivating) that can be connected, to an extent, to a description of characterial quandaries in Battlestar as serious, complex, thought-provoking, etc. For each person, this complex set of impressions could be summed up as Shakespearean.  

This is far from ground-breaking theorizing, but it did get me thinking about the iconographic power of Shakespeare in its adjectival form. “Shakespearean” can and does inflect a virtual cornucopia of terms and concepts, the overwhelmingly majority of which relies on such association for enhancement or validation. This process extends well-beyond musical or screenwriting ventures. One routinely hears of Shakespearean motifs, poetry, diction, style, even of scholars and critics (we happy few, we Shakespeareans!). This is actually a popular trend in academia that can be tailored to most subject matters (Oxfordian, Baconian, Dickensian, the seldom-known groups of critics interested in former Buffalo Sabres’ coach, Lindy Ruff, the Ruffians, har, har...). Yet, I believe the qualitative nature of “Shakespeare” stands apart from most in its sheer longevity and malleability. To that effect, Michael Bristol’s claim in Big-Time Shakespeare that Shakespeare retains “extraordinary currency in contemporary culture” continues to resonate partly because the of the ease with which the grammatical field of Shakespeare permeates modern discourse.

This modularity extends beyond the meritorious. To someone with an aversion to Shakespeare, the term “Shakespearean” might end up meaning very little. Conversely, someone that has never read any of his works will think of the adjectives as channelling a yellowed and antiquated relic.

Straddling a four-century gap “Shakespearean” reach a level of personal opinion where acts as somewhat of a glass prism, transforming incoming light into an array of colored spectrum (wow, that’s enough science, I have a headache). This idea is potentially self-sabotaging to a Shakespearean scholar (see what I did there) whose book project focuses on the concept “Shakespearean melancholy,” but I think the point stands that Shakespeare’s iconography resembles a double-edged sword in this regard. It speaks to the challenge of introducing students to Shakespeare, when the name continues to morph and be disseminated in everyday conversation, culture, and technologies.

In the end—and this is where my romantic view of literature swoops in—this messy lexical situation attests to intrinsic value of works by Shakespeare, whatever that word truly means. A few years ago, an undergrad student, having asked the topic of my dissertation, had coyly remarked that it must have been difficult to write on Shakespeare since everything had already been written. My reply had been that my fascination with Shakespeare was rooted that the incredible staying power of thirty-seven plays that survived countless technological innovations, the rise of literary theory, and a veritable cultural explosion. Shakespearean, by any other name, carries on in a multiplicity of incarnations, providing perhaps the most interesting forum in which Madonna and a Cylon can interact.     

RANDOM EXCITEMENT OF THE WEEK:

I’m very eager to hear Gail Kern Paster speak on Monday, as part of an initiative from McGill University’s Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas (IPLAI). Her work has been instrumental to my own in many ways, and I will do my best to resist my inner academic groupie when meeting her.

RANDOM SMOOSHY FACE OF THE WEEK:

I should quickly explain my personal etymology of “smooshy face”: a smooshy face refers to an expression of mild annoyance, disappointment, or anger at everyday occurrences. It was created and coined by Emily,[1] and has been part of our relationship vernacular ever since.

My smooshy face of the week goes to the lack of light. Though I was very grateful to gain an extra hour of sleep on time change day, I cannot but think that such ephemeral bliss is of no avail against the increasingly dim afternoons that November inevitably ushers in. I remember thinking, while working away at my dissertation on Shakespearean melancholy, that grey November afternoons were the hardest during which to read and write on sorrow, bleakness and idleness. It also makes running harder (then again, I don’t need lack of light to find running hard). When jogging in the dark at five o’clock, I cannot help but think of the lines “by the clock, 'tis day, / And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp” in Macbeth. So, November, you get my very first smooshy face!       

RANDOM SHOUT OUT:

Emily[2] and I watched Longtime Companion this week. I hadn’t seen it in over fifteen years. It is a powerful, gut-wrenching film that is worth seeing if only for Bruce Davison and Mark Lamos’ performances. It offers a brilliant sketch of the advent of the AIDS epidemic throughout the American homosexual communities of the 1980s. It’s a very moving story that simultaneously act as a testament to the progress made in AIDS awareness and the search for a cure, but also, of the disease’s prejudicial phantoms that still persist today It was also very interesting to contemplate its treatment of the social and communal ramifications of an epidemic disease (I could not help but think of Susan Sontag’s seminal work on the subject while watching). There will be much more on this topic in an upcoming blog, since I am very interested in Shakespeare’s treatment and contagious diseases on the renaissance stage. 

That’s it for now. I hope this first post was enjoyable. I will try and post regularly and continue unpacking thoughts, rambles and general musings that punctuate my views on Renaissance literature.

And the rest and silence… and the crunching of Doritos.

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[1] DISCLAIMER: Emily is my wife, best friend, and the single-most scintillating aspect of my life. She will make several appearances in this blog, until she eventually gains more popularity, takes over its publication, and goes on to host a syndicated talk-show with a monkey co-host.   

[2] See, she’s already back!