"T Paine and Lil Hamlet"

Rarely posting now, but decided to put this up. Hilarious. Class agreed. (Just finished teaching Hamlet again. FYI. Since of course you would no doubt be wondering about that).

Recently put a site meter up. Happy to report people are finding this site from as far away as Turkey, Israel, India, Australia, Hong Kong, Spain, Venezuela, Argentina. Someone recently used google-translate to read the "memento mori" post in Dutch.

Polonius

R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet + Hamlet = "Polonius in the Closet." Posted on youtube by "poloniuscloset." This in fact hits key plot points/subtext and is freaking hilarious. Class loved it.

Country Hamlet

Country songs from Hamlet:

It Is Most Retrograde to Our Desire (I.ii.114) , modern translation = Honey Don't
Grapple Them to Thy Soul With Hoops of Steel (I.iii.66) = Never Let 'Em Go
Hot Love on the Wing (II.ii136) = Hot Love on the Wing
Bisson Rheum (II.ii.496) = Tears
His Occulted Guilt (III.ii.76) = The Guilt He's Hidin' Away
She'll Tax Him Home (III.iii.31) = She's Gonna Get Him
Do Not Spread Compost O'er the Weeds/
To Make Them Ranker (III.iv.175-58) = Don't You Be Spreadin Shit on Shit
Country Matters (III.ii.110) = Fuckin

Hamlet is back and he is not happy.

"To be or not to be...."
(pause, light a cigar, explosion in background)
"Not to be."

Yorick for kids.

Read about the Animaniacs. Thanks to the bard blog for this.

B or not a B.

Thanks to the bard blog for this.

Of our time...For our time.

Wow. I was doing a random Hamlet image search and found this. From 1969. I'm netflixing this. Looks like Hamlet is a vampire, like this could've been a poster for a Hammer film--Hammer studios in England churned out lots of vampire flicks in the 60s & the women were always shagadelic-Brit-chicks in diaphanous wench-type-dresses. With cleavage for days. Like in this poster.

I found one review through imdb, from Time Magazine. The review is hilariously gushing.

On Williamson: "His eyes sear the viewer. He is not speaking to the air; he is speaking to you. As far as Williamson is concerned, elocution be damned. Poetry be damned. Meaning is all. Never has Hamlet been rendered with more clarity or more biting timeliness, and that includes Gielgud, Olivier and Burton. Shakespeare held the mirror up to nature. Williamson holds a mirror up to the soul."

On Marianne: "Marianne Faithfull's Ophelia is remarkably affecting. She is ethereal, vulnerable, and in some strange way purer than the infancy of truth." (ed. note: ummmmmmm)

I have to say, though, I love the opening paragraph of the review. The guy who wrote it obviously just loves Hamlet and is effusive from the start. This is lovely:

"Hamlet has obsessed the Western mind for 369 years. Why? It is not because most people love great works of art. On the contrary, most people find great works of art oppressive, since such works invariably center on the nature of human destiny, and that destiny is tragic. Quite simply, Hamlet is a world, and like the world, it cannot be ignored. Every man has lived some part of the play, and to be a man is to be inextricably involved in the play. Hamlet probes and grips the profound themes of existence—death, love, time, fidelity, friendship, family, the relationships of a man and a woman, a son and father, a mother and son, murder and madness. Above all, it probes the value of existence, man's most anguishing question put in the form that every man knows from the time he first hears and ponders it—to be or not to be."

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern = players

So I'm re-reading Hamlet. Shakespeare's language is scraping a crust off my brain.

I've been trying to pay attention to a number of things, including what phrases in Hamlet survive today (so many). I came across one I hadn't expected—the use of the word "play" in the same slang sense we use it today. As in, I got played. I have no idea about the etymology of this particular use of "play." But there it was, in Hamlet.

A little set-up: everyone has finished watching The Mousetrap, the play Hamlet has on-the-sly arranged to reenact his father's murder (the idea being to watch King Claudius watching The Mousetrap, in order to figure out if he is in fact guilty). Sure enough, Claudius gets really upset, says stop the play (Give me some light: away!) and storms off.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern approach Hamlet, telling him his mother wants to "to speak with you in her closet" (uh-oh). Hamlet believes, rightly, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are working for Claudius, keeping an eye on Hamlet/getting in his shit. Hamlet asks Guildenstern, "will you play upon/this pipe?" referring to a recorder. Guildenstern is puzzled, and repeatedly tells him, no, I can't, I don't know how. But Hamlet is insistent. (III.ii.337-353)

HAMLET
I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN
I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET
'Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with
your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your
mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music.
Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN
But these cannot I command to any
utterance of harmony; I have not the skill.

HAMLET
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
the top of my compass: and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot
you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am
easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
cannot play upon me.

As in, you're trying to play me asshole but you can't.

The pic above: "Rosenberg and Goldstein," neighbors of Harold & Kumar in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Hamlet references in stoner flicks = love.

Graphic Hamlet

Two pages from No Fear Shakespeare's graphic novelization of Hamlet. Very cool art by Neil Babra. The second page is the beginning of Hamlet's famous "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I" (II.ii.535) speech -- would have much preferred to see this in its original language:

Is it not monstrous that this player here...
instead of
Look how this player here...
etc.

Why not use the original language? Plenty of room in a project like this to allow visuals to flesh out meaning (and in that way make the language more accessible, as opposed to "translating" the language into present-day English).

But, love the art.

Yorick.

From the Brothers Brick,"a LEGO blog for adult fans of LEGO." Caption above the pic:

“Alas, poor Yorick…”
Legohaulic created a cool looking skeleton for yesterdays Halloween.

Yorick.

From Corbis. Caption: David Bowie sings in concert during his Serious Moonlight Tour in 1983. He is holding a skull while singing, a reference to the "Alas, poor Yorick" scene of Hamlet.

taH pagh taHbe'

Hamlet is available in Klingon.

Reviewed at Siskoid's Blog of Geekery. Available through Amazon.

Hamlet, Grant Morrison, Superman

From Act II, one of Hamlet's famous speeches:

“What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god—the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!” (II.ii.293–297)

The sentiment in the speech (according to falling-apart Shakespeare books crammed into the bookcase near my desk on campus) is based upon one of "the major texts of the Italian humanists," Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man. I just found it online.

I found a related interview with comics writer Grant Morrison (who I fucking love); seems he based his All Star Superman on the same text.

Morrison on the Doctrine:

"I see Superman in this series as an Enlightenment figure, a Renaissance idea of the ideal man, perfect in mind, body and intention.

A key text in all of this is Pico’s ‘Oration On The Dignity of Man’ (15c), generally regarded as the ‘manifesto’ of Renaissance thought, in which Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola laid out the fundamentals of what we tend to refer to as ’Humanist’ thinking.

(The ‘Oratorio’ also turns up in my British superhero series Zenith from 1987, which may indicate how long I’ve been working towards a Pico/Superman team-up!)

At its most basic, the ‘Oratorio’ is telling us that human beings have the unique ability, even the responsibility, to live up to their ‘ideals’. It would be unusual for a dog to aspire to be a horse, a bird to bark like a dog, or a horse to want to wear a diving suit and explore the Barrier Reef, but people have a particular gift for and inclination towards imitation, mimicry and self-transformation. We fly by watching birds and then making metal carriers that can outdo birds, we travel underwater by imitating fish, we constantly look to role models and behavioral templates for guidance, even when those role models are fictional TV or, comic, novel or movie heroes, just like the soft, quick, shapeshifty little things we are. We can alter the clothes we wear, the temperature around us, and change even our own bodies, in order to colonize or occupy previously hostile environments. We are, in short, a distinctively malleable and adaptable bunch.

So, Pico is saying, if we live by imitation, does it not make sense that we might choose to imitate the angels, the gods, the very highest form of being that we can imagine? Instead of indulging the most brutish, vicious, greedy and ignorant aspects of the human experience, we can, with a little applied effort, elevate the better part of our natures and work to express those elements through our behavior. To do so would probably make us all feel a whole lot better too. Doing good deeds and making other people happy makes you feel totally brilliant, let’s face it."

Bill Viola & Hamlet 2000

I google-booked A Concise Companion to Shakespeare on Screen and found that someone named Bill Viola, a video/multi-media artist, was thanked in the closing credits of Hamlet 2000. Bill Viola, according to the book, was a big influence on the aesthetic of the film, which has lots of pixelated home video footage, security camera shots (we first see the ghost through a security camera), reflections in glass, etc.

Apparently part of the "To be or not to be" speech was going to be filmed at a Viola retrospective at the Whitney, but it didn't wind up working out. At any rate, turns out Viola is heavily influenced by Buddhism, and the projections, etc., in his art are often cited (including by Viola himself) as having to do with the ephemerality of the self & its interconnectedness to the world, etc.

Innnnteresting, since one might expect the aesthetic in Hamlet 2000 would have to do with dislocation/fragmentation in late-capitalist consumer culture blah blah etc, considering the film's setting: global-corporate, a sterile world of limos, high rises, glass, logos, all buoyed by technology that feels intentionally cold (why is that always the case? I mean zzzzzzzzz seen it), faxes, answering machines, video, video surveillance, etc. Amazing how dated the tech looks in the film--no cell phones, no digital cameras, answering machines instead of voicemail, etc.

To be or to inter-be

More on Hamlet 2000: Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist teacher, showed up in the film.

I recognized Hanh, as I've been taking a beginner "Hardcore Dharma" class at a place called The Interdependence Project. I became interested in Buddhist philosophy last year after a cancer diagnosis. A cancer diagnosis is fucking terrifying, especially at first, when you don't know how aggressive it is, if it's spread, etc. So my interest: call it foxhole spirituality. Like getting "saved" on death row or something. Though
I'm not saved and not a Buddhist (but, interested) and not on death row; I'm cancer free and consider myself very fucking lucky.

Hearing "you have cancer" brings to mind what you'd likely expect. The meaning of life, one's own mortality. Forces your face right in there. No amount of Law & Order reruns and Ativan is gonna keep you from thinking oh shit, cancer, surgery, chemo, people die from cancer, I don't want to die, etc.

Anyway.

At one point in the film, we see that Hamlet has various video devices around his room, and on one a video is playing in which Hanh is talking about "being" — "We have the word to 'be,' but what I propose is the word to 'interbe.' Because it's not possible to be alone, to be by yourself. You need other people in order to be." (Am thinking about Hamlet paper topics--maybe something interbeing-ish? How Hamlet changes according the the constellation of people around him?)

I found another Hanh clip on youtube in which he talks about the Holy Trinity as representative of interbeing--the father is in the the son, the son is in the father, the father in the holy ghost etc. I thought of Hamlet, mourning his father, also named Hamlet, and interacting with his father's ghost.

Shortly after Hanh appears, Hamlet delivers his "to be or not to be" speech in which he contemplates death.

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:

...

But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

So the rub is the fact we don't know "what dreams may come."
The dread of the unknown, death; they thought about it 400 years ago,
and the "undiscover'd country" is still this great terrifying puzzle.

Though Hanh says it's impossible to "be" alone, and I understand in theory, a cancer diagnosis certainly felt isolating. I did feel I was "interbeing" with people at the cancer center, though, quietly united with other people who were also facing this disease, thinking (or trying hard not to think) about shuffling off this mortal coil.

Gertrude = Kardashian

Today we finished the rest of Hamlet 2000, then discussed.

In order to view the film, we had to walk from the classroom to the basement of the library, which is a five second walk. The class is at 8 AM. The second we step outside, this one student, I'll call him Daniel, has a cigarette in his mouth. During class he keeps a cigarette on his desk. He's 19. He's awesome. As we're walking, "You know what I can't believe? I can't believe people fucking dress up to come to school. Like last spring semester I saw this guy wearing a fucking chinchilla coat."

The class hated the movie. General consensus: Julia-Stiles-as-Ophelia was boring as hell. Nobody could figure out why, if she's a photographer in NYC, she was so blah, such an utter pushover, and why she went crazy--since in the scenes with her father, she either stares out into space, or is quietly crying. And what were her feelings towards her brother, exactly? Who the fuck knows.

Daniel thought Laertes-by-Liev Shrieber was "a perv," and believable. Students agreed.

He said that Gertrude, played by Diane Venora, "reminds me of the Kardashian mother." I could see that perfectly. He also thought the film was ridiculous because there were murders, and no cops. "You can't spit on the floor in New York without getting arrested."

After class, as he's walking out, he comes up to me: "GOD I fucking hate that old English. Can you imagine someone talking like that on the fucking subway? I mean, right?"

Casting Hamlet

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