I'm with you on this one.
However, after looking at the cast list, part of me wishes this was an actual Shakespearean production of Romeo and Juliet:
James McAvoy - Gnomeo (Sure, why not?)
Emily Blunt - Juliet (Sounds good)
Michael Caine - Lord Redbrick (Awesome, whoever Lord Redbrick is.)
Maggie Smith - Lady Blueberry (I don't know who Lady Blueberry is either, but Maggie Smith...pretty awesome)
Patrick Stewart - Bill Shakespeare (Maybe Julie Taymor was a consultant?)
I must admit, these aren't the reasons why I want this to be an actual production. The main reasons:
Hulk Hogan - Terrafirmenator
(O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou brother?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I'll no longer be a Capulet because Hogan knows best!)
Ozzy Osbourne - Fawn (Why not throw him into the mix, too?)
Maybe I'm a bit jaded - when I studied this play in high school, the teacher made us read the modern English version and not the Shakespearean. Since then, I've always considered Romeo and Juliet to be one of Shakespeare's "lesser" plays (Surely not lesser than Coriolanus? Yes, lesser than Coriolanus).The fact that a modern English version even exists is the true crime against humanity here; anything done to it after that is an improvement. When you dance with the devil, you get burned. Even though you lather on countless tubes of aloe-vera laced with holy water, you'll never be able to soothe the pain of that initial burn. You'll be haunted. The scar tissue will forever serve as a reminder of your fall from grace.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Crimes Against Humanity...: Garden Gnome Death Wish
I think my latest post on my personal blog is whingey enough for the T.A.S.K., so I thought I'd share. Enjoy.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Crimes Against Humanity - The Tempest (2010 Film Adaptation)
Okay...my issues:
1. Prospero is now Prospera - almost didn't see it because of this. This change is really no different than the Huck Finn issue. I'm pretty sure there's a reason why Shakespeare wrote this as a MALE role.
Evidence: Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare - there's something biographically to be said about the father/daughter relationship (another fascinating read, Jonathan Bate's The Genius of Shakespeare). Written towards the end of his career, Shakespeare returned to his home in Stratford-upon-Avon to be with his beloved daughter, Susanna, and her family. Just as Prospero returns home in good faith with his daughter, Shakespeare returned as a rich man, whose family would be provided for after he died. He was also able to bestow a coat of arms on his family, something his father John had failed to do. Prospero had a prosperous (HA!) life, was cast aside only to regain prosperity for himself and his family - no different than Shakespeare's life. (So many parallels!)
Then again, the film is an ADAPTATION...I guess that's how Ms. Taymor can sleep at night.
2. Zoolander being cast as Ariel. I'm glad this connection wasn't pointed out to me until after the movie. How was anyone in the theatre able to keep it together when he ran through the air? Or really when he did anything? No...just no.
3. I don't usually like Shakespeare's comedies - this was no different. Taymor's adaptation of Titus was AMAZING; understandably, I had high hopes for this. I think there's just too much happening in the comedies. Everything eventually comes together, but by that point I'm long lost. It almost seems like the comedic characters are being played way over the top, too.
4. Prospero is now Prospera - if you want to toot your feminist horn, fine...but make a movie about Gloria Steinem. Leave Shakespeare off of your agenda!
That's all for now. Please, feel free to add to this list. I know I can't be alone on numbers 1 and 4.
1. Prospero is now Prospera - almost didn't see it because of this. This change is really no different than the Huck Finn issue. I'm pretty sure there's a reason why Shakespeare wrote this as a MALE role.
Evidence: Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare - there's something biographically to be said about the father/daughter relationship (another fascinating read, Jonathan Bate's The Genius of Shakespeare). Written towards the end of his career, Shakespeare returned to his home in Stratford-upon-Avon to be with his beloved daughter, Susanna, and her family. Just as Prospero returns home in good faith with his daughter, Shakespeare returned as a rich man, whose family would be provided for after he died. He was also able to bestow a coat of arms on his family, something his father John had failed to do. Prospero had a prosperous (HA!) life, was cast aside only to regain prosperity for himself and his family - no different than Shakespeare's life. (So many parallels!)
Then again, the film is an ADAPTATION...I guess that's how Ms. Taymor can sleep at night.
2. Zoolander being cast as Ariel. I'm glad this connection wasn't pointed out to me until after the movie. How was anyone in the theatre able to keep it together when he ran through the air? Or really when he did anything? No...just no.
3. I don't usually like Shakespeare's comedies - this was no different. Taymor's adaptation of Titus was AMAZING; understandably, I had high hopes for this. I think there's just too much happening in the comedies. Everything eventually comes together, but by that point I'm long lost. It almost seems like the comedic characters are being played way over the top, too.
4. Prospero is now Prospera - if you want to toot your feminist horn, fine...but make a movie about Gloria Steinem. Leave Shakespeare off of your agenda!
That's all for now. Please, feel free to add to this list. I know I can't be alone on numbers 1 and 4.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Crimes Against Humanity (or maybe just Literature...which is the same thing): Huck Finn
So they've just announced the publication of a new edition of Huckleberry Finn in which the "N" word will be censored and replaced by the word "slave." Of course every major website with two brain cells to rub together has commented on the news (as you can tell, I've only read the ones against the censorship...I'm sure there are those in favor of it, but just the thought of them make me scared for the state of humanity.)
The Faster Times had this to say:
"This edition alters the original text, changing the word “nigger” to “slave,” which, we guess, teaches children the important false lesson that Southerners once owned slaves but didn’t call them by mean dehumanizing names, which apparently is worse on the moral relativity scale, or something..."
And I must say I wholeheartedly agree. Everyone's argument against the censorship so far seems to be that the book is actually meant to discourage racism, not encourage the use of the N word - children should read it and learn how not to be racist. This is definitely great, and a valid reason not to censor the book in this way. But, while I appreciate anyone willing to speak out against literary censorship, this is not the reason the book should stay in it's original form. That would be um...because that's the ORIGINAL FREAKING FORM of the text. You can't just change an author's writing 115 years after it's been published because it doesn't suit the times anymore.
Books are time capsules - proof of times past, moments frozen in time for the memory of society as a whole. Just because society has finally got on the whole black-people-are-people-too bandwagon doesn't mean that 115 years ago people didn't use the N word.
We all know I'm a literature nerd and so text is sacred to me, so it's no surprise I'm against censorship like this. (Since when are the thoughts occurring inside an author's mind subject to changes and edits simply because those thoughts were born 100 years ago? It's misrepresentation of the author and his or her intent.) But it's not just literature that's being threatened with something like this, it's history itself. As shameful as it is, those words were said. Changing Huckleberry Finn doesn't change that fact...it's simply a way of running away from it.
Now I don't want to attack the scholars who have come out with this book too much because I don't think they're actually trying to be the big bad wolves of this situation. They told NPR that the reason for the new edition is so that the book won't be banned in schools and more children can be expose to Mark Twain's masterpiece. But my question is, what are they really being exposed to? It's not Mark Twain's work, but merely these scholars' version of it. It should be slapped with their names as author, since Mark Twain probably wouldn't claim the rights to it.
Wouldn't it be more helpful to read this book with children and then discuss why using the N word is wrong? Why slavery and prejudice is wrong? How can you have this discussion when the blunt ugliness of the situation is softened by taking the word out?
And finally I will close with a literary nerd rant:
NPR says:
"One of the scholars, Alan Gribben of Auburn University, tells PW that 'this is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind. ... Race matters in these books. It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.'"
What I have to say to this scholar is...Are you freaking serious?? How you express it in the 21st century? Write a book about it. Don't change a book written in the 19th century to express the 21st century's tastes. Does that make sense to anyone? I mean, really??
We might as well change all of the Jane Austen novels - and the Brontes' for that matter - to reflect that women can, in fact, own property and hold jobs. Why not let everyone marry for love without impediments as well? I mean that's not fair or very 21st century of those books to be putting women down like that, right?
Let's change every single Dickens book because poor people shouldn't be put in prison simply because they don't have the means to survive. That's wrong!! Oh wait, now Little Dorrit doesn't exist.
And poor little Holden Caufield is losing pieces of his story because we all know the whole male-mentor-hitting-on-him scene has to go from The Catcher in the Rye. If we just take that part out, maybe the schools will allow it and all those children can be exposed to the joys of Salinger. Except it won't be Salinger anymore.
It is at the very least re-writing and destroying the purity author's work. At the very worst, it would be a crime against humanity (or maybe just literature...which to me is the same thing).
The Faster Times had this to say:
"This edition alters the original text, changing the word “nigger” to “slave,” which, we guess, teaches children the important false lesson that Southerners once owned slaves but didn’t call them by mean dehumanizing names, which apparently is worse on the moral relativity scale, or something..."
And I must say I wholeheartedly agree. Everyone's argument against the censorship so far seems to be that the book is actually meant to discourage racism, not encourage the use of the N word - children should read it and learn how not to be racist. This is definitely great, and a valid reason not to censor the book in this way. But, while I appreciate anyone willing to speak out against literary censorship, this is not the reason the book should stay in it's original form. That would be um...because that's the ORIGINAL FREAKING FORM of the text. You can't just change an author's writing 115 years after it's been published because it doesn't suit the times anymore.
Books are time capsules - proof of times past, moments frozen in time for the memory of society as a whole. Just because society has finally got on the whole black-people-are-people-too bandwagon doesn't mean that 115 years ago people didn't use the N word.
We all know I'm a literature nerd and so text is sacred to me, so it's no surprise I'm against censorship like this. (Since when are the thoughts occurring inside an author's mind subject to changes and edits simply because those thoughts were born 100 years ago? It's misrepresentation of the author and his or her intent.) But it's not just literature that's being threatened with something like this, it's history itself. As shameful as it is, those words were said. Changing Huckleberry Finn doesn't change that fact...it's simply a way of running away from it.
Now I don't want to attack the scholars who have come out with this book too much because I don't think they're actually trying to be the big bad wolves of this situation. They told NPR that the reason for the new edition is so that the book won't be banned in schools and more children can be expose to Mark Twain's masterpiece. But my question is, what are they really being exposed to? It's not Mark Twain's work, but merely these scholars' version of it. It should be slapped with their names as author, since Mark Twain probably wouldn't claim the rights to it.
Wouldn't it be more helpful to read this book with children and then discuss why using the N word is wrong? Why slavery and prejudice is wrong? How can you have this discussion when the blunt ugliness of the situation is softened by taking the word out?
And finally I will close with a literary nerd rant:
NPR says:
"One of the scholars, Alan Gribben of Auburn University, tells PW that 'this is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind. ... Race matters in these books. It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.'"
What I have to say to this scholar is...Are you freaking serious?? How you express it in the 21st century? Write a book about it. Don't change a book written in the 19th century to express the 21st century's tastes. Does that make sense to anyone? I mean, really??
We might as well change all of the Jane Austen novels - and the Brontes' for that matter - to reflect that women can, in fact, own property and hold jobs. Why not let everyone marry for love without impediments as well? I mean that's not fair or very 21st century of those books to be putting women down like that, right?
Let's change every single Dickens book because poor people shouldn't be put in prison simply because they don't have the means to survive. That's wrong!! Oh wait, now Little Dorrit doesn't exist.
And poor little Holden Caufield is losing pieces of his story because we all know the whole male-mentor-hitting-on-him scene has to go from The Catcher in the Rye. If we just take that part out, maybe the schools will allow it and all those children can be exposed to the joys of Salinger. Except it won't be Salinger anymore.
It is at the very least re-writing and destroying the purity author's work. At the very worst, it would be a crime against humanity (or maybe just literature...which to me is the same thing).
Monday, January 3, 2011
Comment: Crocs (The Rant Moves on to Tivas and Obscenity)
Disneyland is the happiest place on earth. Disneyworld is just a place on earth that wishes it were Disneyland but isn't on the right side of the country so they made themselves bigger to compensate.
Yeah Crocs on kids are almost as disturbing as Tevas on kids. Have you ever noticed that Tevas are a family thing? Like you never see one person in a family wearing a pair of Tevas while the rest are in decent shoes. It's always the entire freaking family decked out in those weird, uncomfortably revealing shoes. Like if I wanted to see exactly how many hairs you have on your big toe sir (or sometimes madam, if we're honest), I would have found a way to get you barefooted. I don't want to see that while I'm riding the train though, you know? They're totally a cult thing because even the kids are forced to wear them. Like I bet if you see a pregnant Teva wearer, that fetus has probably got Teva's on.
Maybe Crocs are the modest-man's answer to Tevas. For those who aren't feet exhibitionists, you know? It's still wrong!!!!
And don't get me started on these:
THESE ARE NOT OK. Have you seen these? I saw someone who wore these. I was sitting across the room from him and suddenly saw some wiggling out of the corner of my eye. He was WIGGLING HIS TOES in these. I have never in my life seen something so disturbing. I wanted to cry. I almost did.
Yeah Crocs on kids are almost as disturbing as Tevas on kids. Have you ever noticed that Tevas are a family thing? Like you never see one person in a family wearing a pair of Tevas while the rest are in decent shoes. It's always the entire freaking family decked out in those weird, uncomfortably revealing shoes. Like if I wanted to see exactly how many hairs you have on your big toe sir (or sometimes madam, if we're honest), I would have found a way to get you barefooted. I don't want to see that while I'm riding the train though, you know? They're totally a cult thing because even the kids are forced to wear them. Like I bet if you see a pregnant Teva wearer, that fetus has probably got Teva's on.
Maybe Crocs are the modest-man's answer to Tevas. For those who aren't feet exhibitionists, you know? It's still wrong!!!!
And don't get me started on these:
THESE ARE NOT OK. Have you seen these? I saw someone who wore these. I was sitting across the room from him and suddenly saw some wiggling out of the corner of my eye. He was WIGGLING HIS TOES in these. I have never in my life seen something so disturbing. I wanted to cry. I almost did.
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