We're STILL Teaching Shakespeare Wrong

     I was approached by a friend for Leader commentary on the upcoming Macbeth movie starring Michael Fassbender, which was shortlisted for this year's Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, asking if I felt that film adaptations of Shakespeare were doing justice to the material, or the concept of translating it to film is inherently wrong. I was surprised to hear that there is controversy brewing over even this from Shakespeare purists and novices alike, before I realized, wait, we're human beings, of course there will be controversy. Duh. My first inclination was, hey, Shakespeare is one of those few miraculous English writers who is somehow simultaneously lauded to infinity due to their place in the 'canon', yet criminally under-appreciated. All of this, I feel, because we are still teaching Shakespeare wrong.

  Lets start with what Shakespeare is seen as: One of the most talented playwrights of the language, placed so high on the literary pedestal that the average person in the US has probably read two or three of his plays, understood none of any, and still parrots the common perception that Shakespeare is the greatest writer ever to have lived, because he writes in fancy Pentameter and makes up words like Zounds!.

   What Shakespeare actually was? It's more complicated. He's a fiendishly talented playwright who ripped and retreaded common narrative plots that had been around since Antiquity and breathed fresh, hilarious, gorgeous, sexy, horrific life into many of his plays. Play at his time were not just performed by all-male casts, but were written for them as well and, more to the point, for entertainment foremost. He has comedy after comedy with the most ridiculous slapstick and sex that could be found in the era, with many of his comedies (Looking at you, Twelfth Night and Comedy of Errors) having almost criminally similar plots revolving around mistaken identities and the guffaws that ensue. He capital-D Definitely Wrote most of his plays, Maybe Wrote some outliers, but was undoubtedly one of the best crafters of performance-pieces at his time.

    I think the critical point to get in teaching Shakespeare is this: Shakespeare is not taught, Shakespeare is experienced. Much like Theatre can not be taught, only experienced. We read his works in class with language so archaic we can barely grasp at what is being said. Sometimes students are asked to read out loud or perform the words in class to better emulate their true power, but even this is a farce. If students do not understand what they're reading (which they should NOT be reading for the first time in high-school, but that could be a completely different post), they certainly will not understand how to speak it. Imagine watching a foreign drama without subtitles; you would likely not grasp the subtleties of the situation, but a powerful, studied, and considerate performer can transcend that barrier and allow you to grasp at the characters heart even if their words could be any arrangement of sound. Shakespeare, arcane as we may joke about it being, is still our beautiful language, and this only further lends itself to performance.

   All of this leads to students encountering Romeo and Juliet just as they are old enough to find the whole situation insane and rushed into, without the maturity to understand the forces at work beneath them. It leads to students being frustrated, and turned off from Shakespeare for the rest of their lives. They may still have a reference for The Bard, parroting a hereditary belief that he is an amazing and enduring artist, but never going to contribute to the artists who give life to his verse, or striving to understand him on anything but a surface level.

   It's for all these reasons, and more, that I am completely for films like Fassbender's Macbeth giving a wider audience an opportunity to get reacquainted with the material. A class on Breaking Bad that involved reading over each individual screenplay with no accompaniment would be about as successful as most introductory education on Shakespeare, but perhaps the video of the material itself would remedy the latter as well as it would the former. Either way, please let me know if you disagree, or want to elucidate a point, or offer any sort of feedback, because I definitely still have learning to do and am open to changing my opinion. How did you first get to know Shakespeare? What would you change? What did you like?

Writing to Save the World

Last month, I flew to NYC to attend SUNYCON, the SUNY System's annual conference with academics and business representatives from all around the world. This was a time to merge ideas, listen to panelists, and come together as a think tank for the future of higher education. 

While I was there, I had the pleasure to meet and talk to Alan Alda (Yes, the guy from M.A.S.H.) from the Alda Center for Communicating Science. This wasn't just a pleasure because of how decorated he is or because he a world renowned actor, but because his work out of Stony Brook is based around getting people to understand science in a meaningful way. 

There has been a plethora of articles calling for the marriage of STEM and the humanities, but I've never found anything as simple and effective as Mr. Alda's improv workshops. While we were there, we had the opportunity to go to his workshops and take a look into the future for STEM, the humanities, and the world. 

You're probably wondering why I am rambling about Communicating Science instead of Critical Theory, but the point may be just as important as any other thing we've discussed so far. 

In June I was appointed as the SUNY Student Assembly's Chair of Sustainability, where it has been my goal to create a "sustainable" culture change. The intentions behind this change were to create a way for the science and policies to be easily digested so they can be easily executed. 

It hasn't been an easy transition, but we based our paradigm shift off of the Sustainable Development Goals created by the United Nations. The SDGs are a part of The 2030 Agenda that will be negotiated within the next two weeks, a treaty that will determine how the work addressed climate, poverty, pollution, etc. 

You've all probably suspected or heard of the covering up of climate science by Big Oil. With the release of this "scandal," there has been many follow up articles linking the Koch Brothers to climate denial, misinformation, and the funding of law makers. 

What does this mean for English? This means that the sciences have a lot of work to do. A LOT. 

In this article from The Atlantic:

   Some people might not be aware of what scientists think. In the Pew report, 37 percent of people        said they didn’t think scientists agreed on climate change, and 67 percent thought scientists don’t        have a clear understanding of GMOs’ health effects. Or, they think the scientists actually support        their beliefs. This is particularly true of climate change, Kahan says.

It is a PR issue, a science issue, and most importantly a writing issue. We need to figure out how to market, rewrite the science to people can understand it, and then distribute it in a sleek and sexy format that makes people want to read it.

That is what my job is in the Paris negotiations. On the 28th of November, I am heading to Paris for the COP 21, where I will be a reporter for what ever comes out of the deliberation room. I will blog, I will make talking points, and I will interview the officials— put it all into the blender and output a smoothie of easy to read climate policy.

The United Nations has gotten it; I've had weekly calls about this exact problem for the past few months. Now we need our scientists to get it, our campuses to get it, and our lawmakers to get it.
 

Trauma and Netflix's 'Jessica Jones'

Over the Thanksgiving break, I’ve been watching the new Netflix Original, Jessica Jones, which is amazing and you should all go and watch it! (If you aren’t running to watch it right now, we can’t be friends.) (I’m joking. Let’s be friends.)

Although what Jessica Jones ultimately centers around is her battle with the season’s “Big Bad” Kilgrave, there is also an overwhelming presence of trauma in the show as well. For the first few episodes, the audience is not told much about Jessica’s background except through the flashbacks that she gets and how she avoids certain things (situations and sleep being the most prominent ones). Through those first episodes, her character is shaped by how we see her doing her investigations as well as how we see her alcoholism. A few times, we see her finishing her investigative work, debating sleep, and instead of sleeping, grabbing her camera as well as alcohol and when we see her sleeping it’s after drinking herself to sleep – it’s a pattern that continues through the season. If Jessica sleeps, it’s after drinking heavily or from sleep deprivation. When it is from sleep deprivation, we see her having nightmares very similar to her flashbacks. These nightmares and flashbacks begin to piece together exactly what happened in Jessica’s past, but the audience doesn’t begin to get the full story until she picks up a case that turns out to be the same man doing exactly what he did to her with a different girl.

Jessica spends the season trying to stop Kilgrave from controlling and brainwashing the human population, but through that, her own trauma with him comes through. We see how she was controlled by him herself and forced to be in a relationship with him. Right after the halfway point in the season, she is asked to voluntarily live with him, and when she does, Kilgrave brings up their relationship. Jessica’s response lays out exactly what the audience has been piecing together since the beginning of the season:

Kilgrave: We used to do a lot more than just touch hands.   
Jessica: Yeah, it’s called rape.
K: What? Which part of staying in five-star hotels, eating in all the best places, doing
whatever the hell you wanted, is rape?
J: The part where I didn’t want to do any of it! Not only did you physically rape me, but you
violated every cell in my body and every thought in my goddamn head.
K: That is not what I was trying to do.
J: It doesn’t matter what you were trying to do! You raped me. Again and again and again!*

Unlike other shows that have come out recently, Jessica Jones doesn’t turn away from portraying sexual assault and a characters reaction to it. Many times throughout the season we see Jessica grounding herself with her personal mantra of repeating the three streets that surrounded her childhood home. We also see Jessica and other characters removing the blame from themselves. “Not your fault” is a continuous theme. While most Marvel shows and movies want the audience to focus on the action and less on the characters, Jessica Jones takes it that one step further, digging into her subconscious and the trauma that is present there. 

*This conversation takes place in Episode 8 of Jessica Jones, AKA WWJD?

Holly McLaughlin

Critical Reading

Blog Post

November 24, 2015

In Super Sad True Love Story we see a very altered perception towards language and communication.  We see language being perceived as an unimportant aspect of culture.  Characters within the story look down on the use of linguistics and the appreciation of literature.  Structuralism is a method of analysis, which looks at systems within a text, linguistics, signs, oppositions, and the study of narrative.  It is also important to note that Structuralism derives both historically and logically from Formalism. 

“Introduction: The Implied Order Structuralism” by: Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan states, “Culture, like language, is a system characterized by an internal order of interconnected parts that obey certain rules of operation” (53).  We see this in Super Sad True Love Story through the emphasis on language and the importance of it within the society.  Without language or the äppärät, which assists those who are incapable of communicating on their own, the society begins to fall apart.  There are certain rules that people within the society follow, once these roles are diminished through the rapture the society begins to crumble.  “Knowledge and perception always occur through the mediation of language.  We would not be able to know anything if we were not able to order the world linguistically in certain ways” (54).  This quote is also very relevant in describing Super Sad True Love Story because without their äppärät, people cannot function; their everyday lives become unable to continue because they rely solely on these devices because they cannot order the world linguistically on their own.    

Within the culture of Super Sad True Love Story, a system of parts lies language, which is also a system of interconnected parts that obey certain rules of operation.  The characters obey, don’t obey, or are outside of these rules within the system of language.  Within this narrative lies a hierarchy of language.  We see this through those who feel that they can’t communicate without their äppärät, as these people seem to “obey” the societal norms.  The äppärät seems to be the only acceptable method of communication in Shteyngart’s dystopian world.  People care about the äppärät and the abstract relationships it makes possible more than the concrete relationships they are capable of forming independently. We also have people who feel comfortable communicating without the äppärät, forming their own thoughts and ideas, and enjoying things like literature and art which seem to have been left in the past by many.  These people can be considered as not following or “obeying” societal norms.  When the äppärät temporarily stops functioning Lenny realizes its importance in their lives, to the extent that its rupture causes a feeling of disconnection. In his diary, Lenny writes: “I can’t connect in any meaningful way to anyone” (270). Their utter dependence on the äppärät diminishes these individuals ability to understand and make sense of their world on their own.  Additionally, the absence of the preliminary information the äppärät provided made forming and maintaining meaningful relationships problematic. This dependence on the äppärät caused them to lose their ability to understand emotions and connect emotionally with people, a skill that is essential in maintaining meaningful relationships within the actual world.

"The 100" and Colonialism

As of recently, I have been watching a television series called, “The 100”. It is a science fiction series about the post nuclear war that destroyed the entirety of Earth. Since then, twelve nations have established a space station that hovers about Earth’s radiation soaked land. Because the spaceship known as “the Ark” is old since it’s birth, it can no longer serve as a safe place to live. Due to this malfunction, the people of the Ark must send 100 of its young offenders down to Earth, to see if it is survivable. Luckily enough for these 100 criminals, the ground is safe, and the radiation has subsided over 97 years. Unfortunately for those who found refuge on Earth, there were those who managed to live on Earth post nuclear war and they are referred to as “grounders”. The majority of the first season is spent showing the brutal and violent conflict between those 100 young offenders, and the grounders. While watching this, I found myself analyzing the story, and how the series takes an interesting perspective on colonialism. It is interesting because whenever colonialism is discussed, we are reminded of history of different races taking over another race’s land. But with “The 100” it is not about race, it is about who came from the sky, and who was already on the ground.

The series takes an interesting perspective on language as well as colonialism. The language that the grounders use to communicate with one another is not English, nor any other detectable language. If the viewer listens closely however, grounder language resembles that of English. (The series takes place in post nuclear war Washington D.C. area, so the language sounding similar to English would make sense). The language that they have created as their own derives from English and in class I was reading over how the language of Creole was formed. It was said that a number of cultures become mixed together, and suddenly people are blending their original culture with a new one. In “The 100”, the indigenous people that have lived on Earth through the radiation have created their own culture, traditions and language based on ways that people used to exist pre-nuclear war.

Another cultural aspect of the series that I was curious about was that the culture of the grounders is completely established from the remnants of what Earth was once like. The main chamber where the leader of the grounders is an old subway system, and it is old and damaged. There are small pieces of what life once was.

The series portrays those 100 who once lived in space as invaders to those who live on the ground. It is interesting though because, these people aren’t trying to take over the land to claim it as theirs, they are merely trying to settle into the territory because they happened to land there and literally have nowhere else to go. The show does an excellent job of not portraying one group of people as the enemy, they both are seen as victims of the situation. I just thought it was interesting that two groups of people are fighting over the right to a land, but they are both victims of a horrible existence on an Earth that is cruel and destroyed. This show is an excellent representation of how language and culture are formed due to colonization. The way societies form comes from the blending of two cultures.

Shteyngart's "millennial problem" problem

The dystopian genre of fiction, as I see it, has a few rules that tend to guide how a writer writes and a reader reads. One of the biggest is a matter of content and, even though it’s a dirty word, authorial intent. From the writer’s perspective, dystopian fiction offers social commentary on the time during which it’s written; the reader draws parallels from contemporary society (regardless of if the book is brand new or published decades earlier) and, in judging the writer’s vision, ultimately judges how the writer’s prophecies stack up – are they possible, are they dangerous, should we be worried? There are other rules, of course, but I think this author-reader relationship is central to the genre. Something else that’s central is the matter of blame.

At the heart of any reading of 1984 or Brave New World or any bad future scenario is the sinking question, “how did things get this bad?” In the most celebrated works of dystopian literature (see previous sentence) the criticisms levied against government or society are so intense and at their core that they transform fiction into out-and-out polemic. Even if the divergences that sent humanity into another direction are vague, though, the feeling that something somehow went wrong lingers. This was a feeling I experienced as I read Super Sad True Love Story, but it was one that ultimately may have soured me a little.

The future of SSTLS has some defining qualities that make it distinct from other bad futures. While the angles of mass surveillance, government overreach and a little bit of authoritarian rule are all there, a lot of the stuff we’re supposed to guffaw at is a lot more social. People spend their entire lives plugged into machines, and not speaking face to face about how they might really feel. They’re overly sexualized and downright pornographic. They don’t read, and they certainly don’t respect or value older generations at all. More abstractly, it seems like nothing of value is being done by anybody at their jobs, even if you have a pretty loose definition of “value.” My question now is, who does that sound like?

SSTLS is the state of the world if (and when) the millennials take over, or at least, if the stereotypes do. A generation raised by iPhones and Internet porn who shy away from “real work” getting into the driver’s seat leads us all to a hideously transformed society, to an intensely negatively-altered state of being, to the brink of annihilation at our own hands. But the youth and tech obsession has to go hand in hand with the political critique for the novel to have any sense of cohesion, so not only will the revolution be pornographed, but nobody will give it a damn about it either. The Orwellian state Shteyngart presents is the product of a vain and social-media-minded generation maturing into power more than anything else.

I am incredibly skeptical of the arguments against millennials that are put on the cover of esteemed publications like Time Magazine with baiting headlines, and not just because everybody else is, either. That kind of respect-your-elders grandstanding is just so old hat that it’s hard to take seriously. Time may want to argue that my generation is a bunch of rotten assholes, but here’s the thing: so was everybody else. (Not included there is a hilariously bad story from Time in the late 1960s on why hippies are dirty and therefore worth your contempt.) It’s a debate that can attract eye-rolls and an orchestra of “ugh” like no other, but one people (usually elders -- but plenty of my classmates try pull “when I was a high school…” at an alarming and surprising rate) can’t seem to stay away from. Shteyngart is guilty of engaging in it, and I don’t think he comes out from the battle victorious.

SSTLS is not just a book of one topic, so to disparage it on the basis of this quality might be a little much, if it weren’t also the premise of the entire novel. It’s a book that asks us to look inside ourselves and ask “how did we fuck it up?” and has a potent and powerful (and predictable, but neither here nor there) message about mortality, youth and love. But it also has a message about why you shouldn’t use Facebook too much, and why reading old books is good for you, dammit, and I cannot quite excuse it for that. 

Why not live forever?

Immortality is often the focus of many novels, stories and intrigues. All through time stories from the Epic of Gilgamesh to The Picture of Dorian Gray have focused on immortality and one trying (and failing) to achieve such a grandiose fate. But I sincerely wonder why is it does everyone fail? Sure there are some cases i'm sure where immortality is successfully achieved but for the most part it’s not every hero who seeks it that gets it. Perhaps this speaks to our own beliefs and longings that if we cannot achieve such great things our protagonists can’t either.

Whether someone willingly sacrifices there obtained immortality or just can’t seem to fully achieve it, our protagonists seem to fail in their occasional ultimate goal to live forever. Gilgamesh nearly gets there twice, each time failing either because he drops the fruit that would let him live forever or, when given a second chance he quite literally falls asleep. It is after a failed second attempt we get a sappy realization from the great king of Uruk that he just wasn’t meant to live forever and in an extremely humanizing move, he dies. In this earliest work of literature we have to examine, the focus seems to lay on legacy as the only path for ourselves to take if we want to come close to immortality. I believe that Gilgamesh died for the comfort of the authors, maybe in a sort of jealous way, maybe in a comforting way, but in the end because they knew it as their fate it was to be Gilgamesh’s as well.  

In Oscar Wilde’s take on immortality, the main character, Dorian, ends his own life over the ugliness of his immoral actions. He cannot take the things he's done because he suffers no conceivable consequence and as such must take retribution into his own hands. Certainly a different approach than that of the king of Uruk but still ending with immortality sitting there their own hands and failing to keep it in them.   

Today we have many, countless companies researching everything from Cryogenics to uploading the human mind to a computer. Renowned scientists who focus solely on reverse aging research and seeking to end the disease known to us as “aging”. We funnel lifetimes of research and work and money to see the ultimate goal of keeping it going forever while many argue it would end the human race. Some take a spiritual approach to the whole, the New Testament promises life eternal to all who follow the teachings of Jesus while the Tao Te Ching seeks to achieve immortality through a “Oneness with nature”.

All in all I think it’s all very interesting the many different approaches to achieving the same end result and how through time there has always been this focus. Even the first words in our novel Super Sad True Love Story revoke the immortalist Dylan Thomas poem “Do not go gentle into that good night”. I think this culture-pervading focus highlights the importance to each individual of the idea of immortality and is something worth researching.