Edwin Landseer,(1848)
I spend a lot of time thinking about Shakespeare.
One of the reasons I spend a lot of time thinking about Shakespeare is that, like everything I enjoy, Shakespeare, or, to be more precise, the things we do with Shakespeare, often pulls me in conflicting directions. Attending a performance of Elizabethan or Jacobean theatre brings me genuine pleasure. At the same time, however, I also recognise that the cult of Shakespeare arose in concert with the colonial agenda of the British Empire. Today Shakespeare remains the archetypal dead white man who continues to dominate the literary canon and the reverence with which he is routinely treated, I believe, is less to do with his literary brilliance and more to do with the repackaging of the colonial myth of Western artistic dominance. I love watching Shakespeare, but I also love seeing people thumb their nose at Shakespeare in clever ways.
I do not like to see Shakespeare reduced. When I encounter Shakespeare adaptations or reinterpretations in the wild I recognise that the fact that I am familiar with something does not give me any authority over how it is used. Shakespeare belongs to everyone equally and I have no right to tell someone else what to do with his works. At the same time, I do not like the idea that Shakespeare needs to be reinvented, particularly when the reinvention occurs on the ground of ‘accessibility’.
One of the reasons why making Shakespeare ‘accessible’ irks me is that I feel it demeans the audience. Last year, while living in Indonesia, I taught A Midsummer Night’s Dream to both of my English Literature classes. Most of my students were born and raised in Jakarta and spoke Indonesian (or in a small minority of cases Dutch or Chinese) at home. They were all in their mid-teens. We spent several months working our way through the play. We stomped our way around the classroom to understand meter, we wrote messages to each other in early modern English, we performed short scenes, memorised monologues, watched sections from films, summarised readings of the play, wrote essays, flew to Singapore to watch Shakespeare’s Globe perform and, finally, performed a full version of the play as our annual school production. (Over the course of the year I made sure we challenged the myth of Shakespeare as being without peer, and I also made sure that female authors and writers of colour were well-represented in the rest of the syllabus.)
They loved it. In fact, they loved Dream more than any other text we looked at. They struggled with the language but they were up to the challenge. I was extremely proud of all they accomplished. The experience left me convinced that my love of Shakespeare was transmissible, and that teenagers are often a lot smarter than some would give them credit for.
It is because of this experience that I can empathise with those such as James Shapiro, Bitter Gertrude, or the numerous scholars on the listservs to which I subscribe, who have voiced concerns over the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On project to ‘translate’ all of Shakespeare’s plays (at least, all which are available and currently considered a part of the canon) into modern English. The grounds for this reinvention, it seems, is to make the works more readily understandable for actors and audiences. The idea that Shakespeare needs to be ‘translated’ conjures for me images of audiences who want to feel cultured, but also don’t want to have to work as hard as my students and I did.
My objections are, of course, horribly presentist. Those who, like me, hold that OFS are giving in to lazy audiences tend to see this as a departure from the ways in which we have always approached Shakespeare. We are wrong. There is good reason to assume that, during his lifetime and beyond, Shakespeare’s plays have been subject to revision, rewriting, and shifting fashions in theatre based upon audience tastes. Until the early eighteenth century the idea of textual fidelity as we understand it today simply did not exist. Companies frequently added to, edited, and completely reinvented Shakespeare’s plays. During a large part of its performance history, King Lear, for example, was played with a happy ending. Our modern way of giving Shakespeare (even with Elizabethan dress on the stage at The Globe and with original pronunciation) is not a pure transmission from the Elizabethan stage, but the product of editing, shifting fashions in performance, convention, and guesswork. So much of Elizabethan and Jacobean stagecraft has been lost to history that even when we deliberately seek to present ‘authentic’ Shakespeare today, we are at a loss as to what, exactly, that would look like.
Historically Shakespeare’s editors have altered the plays in ways which would seem somewhat daring, if not profane, today. To cite just a few pertinent examples, in 1807 James Bowlder published the first volume of The Family Shakespeare which omitted and rewrote words and passages which, in Bowlder’s view, were unsuitable for young minds. In the same year Charles and Mary Lamb published Tales from Shakespeare which used very little language from Shakespeare and, similarly, was aimed at children. Significantly, both of these volumes were instrumental in disseminating Shakespeare and elevating him to his modern standing. Modernising and rewriting Shakespeare in print, clearly, is not a new phenomena. In modern times Shakespeare-inspired films such as Scotland PA, and the No Fear Shakespeare study texts have continued to be popular. Indeed, the possibility of adapting Shakespeare has given rise to texts which seek to challenge the myth of Anglophone cultural dominance perpetuated through Shakespeare. Suzuki Tadashi’s King Lear, for example, forges an intercultural space which draws liberally upon both Shakespeare and Asian theatrical traditions without feeling the need to adhere completely to either. We might also note Inoue Hidenori’s overtly irreverent pop adaptations of Shakespeare or the intercultural texts Kathkali King Lear or Welcome Msomi’s uMabatha.
I would argue, then, that the question is not why we (I) do not like to see Shakespeare being ‘translated’ to suit audience tastes, but why now? What makes OFS’s departure from modern conventions around Shakespeare particularly repugnant? When we consider all that has been done to Shakespeare over the centuries we have had his works, the idea that a particular fashion of modern performance needs to be protected is, if anything, an aberration. After centuries of reinvention, we can safely assume that Shakespeare and Shakespeare adaptation is not a zero sum game.
If my apparently ill-founded annoyance at the idea of Shakespeare being adapted to suit audience tastes is to hold any legitimacy then perhaps the question I need to ask, then, is not if we should rewrite Shakespeare, but why? OFS write ‘[i]t is our hope and expectation that these translations will inspire audience members to return to Shakespeare’s original words, ideally with even greater understanding and enjoyment’ and as I read these words, even with history against me, I cannot help but feel uncomfortable. Will these modern translations be a bridge to the ‘original’? Or will they, for certain audience members, be a substitute? Will OFS deprive audiences of the pleasure and sense of accomplishment my tenth and eleventh graders felt? Given that Shakespeare’s plots were, themselves, almost entirely borrowed, if we take away his language then what we are left with is not what he created but what he preserved. OFS’s Play On project might, then, be effectively described using Dennis Kennedy’s eminently applicable term ‘Shakespeare without Shakespeare’; the final version of the Play On plays may be infused with the plots that made Shakespeare famous but empty of his language to the point that they constitute little more than an extended Shakespeare reference. To rid Shakespeare of Shakespeare for the sake of ‘understanding and enjoyment’, I still think, is an insult to one’s audience.
Don’t you think that the OFS project will have absolutely no effect on how Shakespeare is received or perceived in general. An insignificant project? Surely the biggest trend in modern Shakespeare performances (as to be almost the norm at the movies) is abridgment. What are your feelings on experiencing only half of what Shakespeare wrote? That is to reduce Shakespeare for the sake of enjoyment and education? I understand that the Globe brought a 2.5 hour version of Hamlet to Singapore recently.
Oh boy, there’s a lot to talk about here. Let’s start with the main topic.
I’d say translating Shakespeare into modern English is at this point a distinction without a difference. Our teachers and directors already tell students and audiences that Prospero is a colonialist (and Caliban is Nat Turner), Rosalind a traitor to the sisterhood and/or queer community, etc (I know, I was one of those students), etc, and our actors already try to make his verse sound like casual modern speech. (The only thing that really gets through in the way we perform and teach him today is his dramatic structures, which is of course also the one thing that comes through translation unaltered.) Philip Smith talks about insulting the audience, but the audience is already being flagrantly insulted and evidently doesn’t mind. (Nor does Smith seem to mind the insults already standing.) I see no problem with dropping the last pretense that we care about what Shakespeare actually wrote. If anything, it would be a bit more honest.
But I think that maybe what’s really worrying Smith is exactly the status of “the myth of Shakespeare as being without peer” that he claims to “challenge” (sincerely, no doubt). Because the very existence of English literature classes depends on the claim that they’re giving the students something they can’t just as well get by watching TV – which in turn depends on implicitly continuing to uphold the high culture criteria that everybody now explicitly disowns (everybody except a few paleoconservative losers, and a few even more totally insignificant people on the left – hi!) – criteria by which Shakespeare really is peerless in the English language. So as long as you’re technically teaching Shakespeare’s words, no matter how much you mangle them, the whole elaborate charade can continue, maybe. But if you replace his words with other words, then the implicit claim that’s been holding up the profession collapses, and English literature goes the way of logic, rhetoric, Greek, Latin, and French.
Maybe for the sake of Philip Smith we should hope that that doesn’t happen until he’s ready to retire. That aside, I say the end can’t come soon enough.
Side notes:
1. “[T]he cult of Shakespeare arose in concert with the colonial agenda of the British Empire” – no it didn’t (let’s just pass over the question of why some people [i]want[/i] that to be the way it happened), and like many such claims, all that’s necessary to dispose of this is basically for somebody to be rude enough to mention that Europe contains more than one country (unforgivable sin against finance, socialism, and identity politics alike). The cult of Shakespeare outside of the Anglo-Saxon world first arose through the promotion of his works by continental artists and critics such as Goethe, Schiller, and Victor Hugo, neither subjects of nor stakeholders in the British empire.
2. “The experience left me convinced that… teenagers are often a lot smarter than some would give them credit for.” Whatever it takes, I guess. Personally, I knew that because I remember being a teenager.
I guess I’m missing why it’s some sort of insult to Shakespeare to point out that the Tempest was influenced by the European experience in the Americas? is it also an insult to Shakespeare to say that Merchant of Venice is anti-Semitic? (It’s not just anti-Semitic, of course, but anti-Semitic is certainly one thing it is.)
I don’t think you insult artists by interpreting or reinterpreting them, so I think Philip’s fears are largely misplaced. Shakespeare’s as firmly ensconced as any author can be. The Play On project isn’t going to dislodge regular old versions of Shakespeare, I’m pretty certain. As Philip says, we’re a lot more reverent towards the original text now than they were in the 1800s (and there were plenty of folks back then who did what Graham is doing and rent their garments because Shakespeare was too populist. Nothing new under the Shakespeare…)
It wouldn’t be if it stopped there, but as you know, it never stops anywhere near there.
No, because it is anti-Semitic (except that that phrase is an anachronism).
“A said B about C in D and was wrong, so when X says B about C in Y, X must be wrong!”
Yeah, that one never goes wrong!
Also, the equivalent to what you’re talking about here would be the people circa 1800 who didn’t merely defend Shakespeare, but at the same time had no problem with forgetting all about Alexander Pope or Jean Racine – which was pretty stupid! Not as stupid as forgetting about Shakespeare’s words in favor of words written by somebody today, though, because Shakespeare is as good as or better than Pope or Racine, but nobody today is as good as Shakespeare.
Well, so much for that. The above should of course have been “A, B, C, D”; “X, B, Y, Z.”
Anyway, you know what I mean. (You knew better than to write what you wrote before you wrote it.)
” (You knew better than to write what you wrote before you wrote it.)”
No…your mind-reading has led you astray. I still think the analogy holds fine.
“Also, the equivalent to what you’re talking about here would be the people circa 1800 who didn’t merely defend Shakespeare, but at the same time had no problem with forgetting all about Alexander Pope or Jean Racine”
??? I don’t see why that follows at all. And I’m not sure who’s forgetting Shakespeare’s words…? Pretty sure they’re the most memorized words in the language.
I like Shakespeare a lot (better than Pope…can’t speak to Racine, since I don’t think I’ve read him.) He’s so central to the canon that it’s almost meaningless to compare people today to him; who could be better than Shakespeare, when Shakespeare is so much of what we use to decide what goodness means?
There’s a great riff about the virtues of not reading Hamlet in Pierre Bayard’s How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. Shakespeare’s really the pre-eminent example of an author you don’t have to read; he’s everywhere already. Reading him almost makes you know less about him; the specific individual Shakespeare is a lot less important culturally than Shakespeare the omnipresent touchstone who pops up in everybody else’s writing. So, yeah, the translations of Shakespeare are probably more Shakespeare than Shakespeare rally. You’re better off not reading the copy than the original, probably.
Or, shorter…I have trouble taking cultural moral panics all that seriously. But Shakespeare seems to be doing well, even though (or rather especially because) there’s no way to read him except from our present perspective and present concerns.
I think you’re smarter than that. Even if you really think the analogy holds in this case, you know the logic in nonsense. (Here, let’s see if I can paraphrase without screwing up this time: “Because somebody complained about the dumbing down of culture and was wrong once, everybody who complains about the dumbing down of culture is always wrong.”)
So, in short, you already don’t care about the words Shakespeare wrote.
You know, admiting the other guy is right with a big smile on your face doesn’t change the fact that you’re admitting the other guy is right.
I wish I could like Pope better than that proudly provincial, go-along-to-get-along show off, but the biggest shares of talent so rarely go to the people we wish they would.
I think it’s culture that you have trouble taking seriously. Somewhat understandably: I mean, if the work doesn’t really matter, then that means the only thing that really matters is the critic.
@Graham
Just out of curiosity, what is your definition of culture (I apologize in advance for potentially expanding this thread WAY beyond its original scope)? What is it, exactly that Noah has trouble taking seriously? What is their to dumb down? Because I find your commentary to have the same ring to it Bradbury’s ramblings about TV making everybody an illiterate idiot (an illiteridiot?), i.e. a snobbish cultural panic.
“The cult of Shakespeare outside of the Anglo-Saxon world first arose through the promotion of his works by continental artists and critics such as Goethe, Schiller, and Victor Hugo”
Ah, that’s interesting. I’ve long wondered (but not enough to actually look into it…) how highly Shakespeare was regarded outside the English-speaking world. I’ve certainly read allusions to Shakespeare in Continental literature, but it’s never been clear to me whether he’s held in the same idolatrous regard there (“cult” indeed).
And you’re being unfair to Noah’s “analogy” (Noah’s word — but it’s really just an instance of induction). It’s perfectly reasonable to infer defeasibly that, if past concerns about x (in this case: populist bowlderisations of Shakespeare, or something along those lines) look overblown in retrospect, then they might be overblown now. As a wise man once said: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me, you can’t get fooled again”.
You might worry that there’s not enough instances to ground a reliable generalization that these kinds of concerns are generally overblown. But I take it that Noah also has in mind similar concerns in the past about other domains. So, yeah, Noah’s induction doesn’t look in principle wrong-headed, even though it might (or might not) fail in this instance. [Unless you have Hume/Goodman type worries about induction in general???]
@Petar
I’ve been using “culture” loosely here, meaning the same thing as “the humanities” (that is, art and philosophy, which is also an art, though we haven’t been talking about philosophy here). When I’m being precise, “culture” just means everything people do. But I wasn’t being precise.
And TV did make everybody an illiterate idiot – or rather, it made everybody who mattered an illiterate idiot. (You and I don’t matter.) The best thing about the internet and mobile devices is that they’ve made us a semi-literate people again.
Of course, Bradbury himself was an illiterate idiot BEFORE TV.
@Jones
The French are ambivalent (too barbaric) (on the other hand, besides Hugo, Romantic Stendhal used his example as a club to beat Classical Racine, and Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet “symphony” contains some of the best things he wrote, above all the “Scene d’amour”) (they perform him constantly, in any case). The Italians love him (Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff are perhaps the most adequate Shakespeare adaptations ever). The Germans love him so much they’ve made him an honorary compatriot (“unser Shakespeare”) (helped by the excellent “Shlegel-Tieck” translation, which should really be called “Schlegel-Tieck-Tieck-Baudissin”).
@Graham
Ok, but I still have a very hard time swallowing any kind of “culture is dumber now” argument, because literally every generation ever, has heard that argument. So unless the “intelligence” of culture has been on a downward trend since Socrates (who thought that books would render everybody a memory-less idiot, i.e. that they would dumb down culture), then that basic argument has almost certainly been wrong the vast majority of the times it has been asserted.
The biggest problem with any kind of “culture is dumber” argument now is that it is wonderful rhetoric, but its logically insupportable. Shakespeare (as far as I understand) was originally performed for illiterate peasants who had the equivalent of a 3rd-grade education at best. That was his apparent target audience. So there is no reason to believe those peasants were inherently dumber than modern audiences…but there’s also no reason to believe they were smarter. So what is the trend line? Where does Shakespeare start getting dumber? Are we a dumber/smarter audience nowadays than those illiterate peasants? Because it seems impossible to say. So the problem with your cultural panic argument is that it is unfalsifiable, even by the fuzzy standards of liberal arts discourse.
Or so I claim…
Graham, it’s refreshing to find someone who thinks I don’t take culture seriously enough. Generally I’m accused of the opposite sin.
In this case, though, I think it’s your argument I don’t take seriously. Sometimes you say things I agree with; sometimes you say things that annoy me; in this case, it just seems too foolish to get uptight about.
Bayard is wonderful though; you should check him out if you haven’t read him (or you know, read about him, if that wouldn’t violate your principles.)
Criticism definitely precedes art. Think of it this way. What is art? Is it Shakespeare’s plays? Or Shakespeare’s laundry lists? There has to be critical judgement to separate the first from the second…which means art doesn’t exist as a category without a critical judgement being made first.
Pope would certainly argue that criticism is art. Or at least, that Pope’s criticism is art.
Oh…and re people complaining about the dumbing down of culture. I didn’t say you were wrong, I’m pretty sure. I said that these complaints have come up about Shakespeare before. You may or may not be wrong, but you’re certainly part of a historical phenomenon of cultural panics. I’m historicizing you. A painful process, I know, which is why you’re yelping.
That’s not true. Or at least it’s demonstrably not always been the only argument going.
e.g. from Molière:
We get this in miniature today – Lester Bangs exalting the Troggs and damning James Taylor – but nobody thinks our artistic taste is suffering from an excess of refinement compared to 150 years ago.
Ah, silly old Socrates, thinking Classical Athens was on a rapid downward trend. That prediction sure didn’t come true!
“It’s getting better all the ti-i-ime…” I’d suggest asking the opinion of all the societies that have been wiped out over the centuries as opposed to the current winners (that is, the ones who made it to the present day), but, well…
I don’t know off the top of my head what the basic literacy rate was in England in 1600, but I know that for young men it seems to have reached about 75% only 40 years later (probably not coincidentally the time of the English revolution), so a fair number of the peasants in Shakespeare’s time weren’t illiterate.
Anyway, Shakespeare’s audience usually consisted of what we would now call the petit bourgeoisie and those better off than they.
Anyway anyway, Shakespeare wasn’t writing merely with an awareness of the least educated members of his audience, but also of the most educated members, just as the creators of movies, TV, and popular music do today. (And then sometimes he was writing entirely for the higher classes, as in his sonnets and The Tempest.
We – you and I – are among the most highly educated people in our country today. Our analogue isn’t the peasants who weren’t illiterate, but the most highly educated people of that time, and we are dumber in our artistic tastes than they were. And of course our artists are dumber. It’s a mutually reinforced development.
Gah, screwed up the last part. Sorry. Here it is again:
Oh yes, I forgot to mention: It’s not just that our liberal arts are getting dumber, it’s also that we hate them (which of course is probably part of the reason why they’re getting dumber), for which see the above as a case in point.
Re: dumbing down of culture. Not sure anyone cares, but I’ve sometimes wondered how much cultural dynamics are changed by (a) massive increase in population and (b) massive increase in literacy. The number of people who can read today is just exponentially higher than in Shakespeare’s time, both because there are so many more people and because so many more of them are minimally literate.
Maybe someone has talked about the effect of population growth on culture, but I haven’t seen it. It seems like it has to be pretty profound, though. There’s a hugely different dynamic in terms of what it means to be popular or successful if your audience has to be several times larger to even register, for one thing.
Wow; looks like according to some estimates world population is more than 5 times what it was in Shakespeare’s day. That’s crazy; I had no idea it was that much.
@Graham
“We get this in miniature today – Lester Bangs exalting the Troggs and damning James Taylor – but nobody thinks our artistic taste is suffering from an excess of refinement compared to 150 years ago.”
You’ve just reiterated my point. I was not using “argument” to refer to the debate in general, but to the specific idea that culture is getting dumber. And people have always been moaning about how culture is getting dumber because everybody thinks there’s some sort of Golden Age to return to. There isn’t.
“Ah, silly old Socrates, thinking Classical Athens was on a rapid downward trend. That prediction sure didn’t come true!”
““It’s getting better all the ti-i-ime…” I’d suggest asking the opinion of all the societies that have been wiped out over the centuries as opposed to the current winners.” First, I don’t think culture today is better today than it was back then either. I think the comparison is effectively meaningless. Second, you are connecting the political, economic, social, climatic, and sometimes epidemiological factors that lead to the rise and fall of civilizations with the quality of their art. That is, in short, an absurd simplification. Athens didn’t fall because books made people dumb.
“and we are dumber in our artistic tastes than they were. And of course our artists are dumber.”
Again, this is a completely meaningless statement. Despite your consistent demonstration of mind-reading abilities, even your incredible telepathy does not give you privileged knowledge of the state of popular culture in the 1600s. Neither you, nor I, nor anybody else living today will likely ever know the full breadth or depth of 17th century art, which means we will never know how stupid or smart it really was. Most modern art will likely be forgotten, and that is the likely fate of the vast majority of the output back then. Which means there is no meaningful comparison of quality to be made between such vastly distant societies as 17th century England and our own.
…except when it comes to the (relatively) easily known and measurable things, like standard of living and economic output and so on. You can obviously still like, appreciate, and criticize art from an older time. You just can’t make any meaningful statement about the overall comparative quality of that time’s art.
This is sophistry – “critical judgment” in the above sense can mean applause, imitation by other artists, and other things that aren’t “criticism” in the sense of your job and my hobby.
It’s also a fantasy of post-structuralists and egotistical critics. You don’t judge the work. You experience the work, and the work compels you to respond to it in a particular way.
No, you’re pop historicizing me. (C wut I did thar? I’m patronizing you.)
And not even doing that very well. Let’s dissect that “cultural panic.” First, this implies that the people who “panicked” were all wrong, and is thus complacent in the same way as Petar’s last comment: You reflexively think of history as a sequence of things getting better and better, and some people periodically getting hysterical because they’re just too dumb to see that it’s all for their own good – because you think that your side is winning history right now, and that it will go on winning. Second, “panic” implies urgency, but there’s nothing urgent about my comments here. I’m not saying “We have to do this now, or else.” I’m just telling you what you are.
Likewise, telling me I’m “yelping” looks more like a yelp than anything I’ve written here. Not to mention that those last three sentences all read a bit sadistic, not that I’m complaining.
“You reflexively think of history as a sequence of things getting better and better, and some people periodically getting hysterical because they’re just too dumb to see that it’s all for their own good…” I cannot reiterate enough that I demonstrably do think this. I also cannot reiterate enough that my actual point is that the whole comparison of the quality of the art in different eras is, in my view, a completely meaningless comparison. It’s like asking if the sun was prettier “back then.”
*****demonstrably DO NOT******
I really don’t think things always get better. A lot of times they get worse. I’m not convinced that Shakespeare is in any particular danger though—and I’m also not especially convinced that the status of Shakespeare has much to do with things getting better or worse. It seems to have to do with things staying the same. (Have you read Lawrence Levine’s Shakespeare book? Again, it’s excellent, and can perhaps give you useful historical context in a form that you won’t find condescending.)
Works of art demand certain things…but only in context. If they’re not recognized as art, they’re not art. Lots of art made about this; not exactly sure why it’s arrogant to talk about it in criticism (a form of art in itself.)
You’re still yelping!
Ways things are getting worse:
—climate change
—wealth inequality in the U.S.
—Daniel Craig James Bond films
@Petar
“The past wasn’t a Golden Age, which proves that the present isn’t worse than the past.”
I’m going to be bitching about your reductio ad absurdum further down, so remember: it’s not reductio ad absurdum when I’m just accurately paraphrasing you.
Oh, I knew we’d eventually get to the hipster fixation on quantity as opposed to quality.
We know the best art of the 17th century (or most of it, anyway), we know the best art of our time, and we know ours doesn’t measure up. The dross of either time is irrelevant.
Connecting politics, economics, etc with art is not “an absurd simplification.” (Though it’s probably safe to say that art is much more a symptom of society than it is able to immediately influence society.)
Implying that they aren’t connected, on the other hand, is an absurd simplification, even when hiding behind a reductio ad absurdum of the other side.
But I wasn’t even talking about art there. I was responding to your implication that prophets of doom are “wrong the vast majority of the times.”
@Noah
Well, this is easy to settle. Yes or no: Are the “cultural panic”kers ever right?
No, I haven’t read it. It sucks.
If they’re art, they force people to recognize them as art.
y u mad bro?
“Anyway anyway, Shakespeare wasn’t writing merely with an awareness of the least educated members of his audience, but also of the most educated members, just as the creators of movies, TV, and popular music do today.”
I think the creators of popular movies generally assume that all members of the audience are extremely uneducated/dumb. Almost every biopic or historical movie assumes that the audience knows nothing about the subject and requires instruction as to what to think and feel at all times. Almost every movie based on a book assumes that the audience either hasn’t read the book or can’t grasp any of its subtleties. I mean, just look at the adaptations of Alan Moore comics–he’s not exactly the most highbrow or esoteric writer out there, but the movies oversimplify him to the extent that they’re completely pointless.
By the way: I actually agree that Shakespeare isn’t going anywhere, though I wish he would and make an end of it. My point is, English literature teachers know they have to keep him around, because they depend on him. All the other dead white men can go (and are), but he’s the one they have to keep.
If anything, maybe English literature classes and/or theater productions will gradually fade away, despite his supporting them. And even then, we’ll probably still keep him around, like western Europe kept Virgil in the Middle Ages: the acknowledged greatest writer ever from the evil old days before the true religion, even if nobody actually reads him.
@Jack
Filmmakers want critics to say nice things about them. The ones who actually do something (so, not necessarily producers, executives) also want to think of themselves as artists in some sense.
“If they’re art, they force people to recognize them as art.”
That’s a lovely statement of faith. It’s not my church, though.
“No, I haven’t read it. It sucks.
There you go! That’s the spirit!
y u mad bro?
I have definitely been made at you in the past, but not this time.
“Well, this is easy to settle. Yes or no: Are the “cultural panic”kers ever right?”
Not sure this will do, but I definitely think genres or mediums can go to shit. Contemporary poetry is pretty much entirely crap, imo. Film romantic comedies are a mess too. Contemporary “serious” novels have problems, though maybe (?) somewhat better than they were 20 years ago. I don’t exactly know that television has gotten worse, but the claims that it’s gotten better are I think largely nonsense. I’m not especially excited about the future of comics either.
On the other hand, I generally quite like contemporary art (not all of it, but enough to make me generally happy when I go to a museum.) I think (contra you, is my suspicion) that’s it’s a quite exciting time for popular music (aesthetically; the business model is not so great.)
I’m skeptical of people who claim there’s some sort of sweeping cultural improvement, too. Claims that the internet is changing everything for the better are mostly silliness, and/or cynical hype.
The big, horrible example of things getting worse culturally is America post-Reconstruction, when the U.S. got much, much more racist—arguably in some ways more racist than it had been during slavery. We’re still living with the fall out from that in a lot of ways. The U.S. is less racist than it was in 1920 (imo)…but not so much less racist that future progress is assured, by any means.
Well of course not, it’s pretty much the negation of your church. It’s still true.
You do realize I’ve always wholeheartedly agreed with you about passing judgment on things I haven’t read, yes?
Well, I guess you’re saying you don’t think everything can get worse, so I’ll take that as a “No.” So I was right.
” It’s still true.”
I’ll wait for the ontological proof.
I don’t know if I think everything can get worse. Like, everything worldwide? I don’t think the earth is homogenous or united enough to have that question even make sense. But…again, I don’t think things get better either. You were accusing me of some sort of progressive teleology. I really don’t believe in that.
I didn’t realize you were on board with talking about things you haven’t read. Glad we agree on something!
I think you do. Maybe you don’t think material conditions get better, but you think ideas get better, or you act as if you do, which is effectively the same thing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you find a current liberal idea lacking compared to an older idea. Even when you defend Marston, you do it by showing him to be in some ways a better third waver than some of the third wavers.
@Graham
““The past wasn’t a Golden Age, which proves that the present isn’t worse than the past.””
Again, you are completely missing my point. My point is not that the past or present is or isn’t better, it’s that comparison cannot be computed. Again, like asking if the sun used to be prettier. It’s a meaningless question because it has no reachable answer. That’s my claim, so please stop misstating it.
“Oh, I knew we’d eventually get to the hipster fixation on quantity as opposed to quality.”
As per my previous point about the unknowability of the question, this isn’t about knowing who produced more art, this is just to say that there is an enormous quantity of art that you certainly don’t know about, so you cannot make any meaningful statement about whether the mass of all art made in 17th century England is better than all art made now in aggregate. You don’t know the shape of that aggregate, so you cannot make meaningful statements about it. It really has nothing to do with quantity being better than quality.
“Implying that they aren’t connected, on the other hand, is an absurd simplification, even when hiding behind a reductio ad absurdum of the other side.”
You missed my last sentence there, which clarified I was talking about the fact that art cannot be cited as a clear cause of societal decline. When Socrates bitches about books and basic literacy, he’s not making any meaningful statement about the health of Athenian democracy, he’s engaging in cultural panic. He may be talking about something that is connected to the health of the society overall, but he is not making a meaningful statement about it.
“But I wasn’t even talking about art there. I was responding to your implication that prophets of doom are “wrong the vast majority of the times.””
They are, because they make vacuous, unfalsifiable statements about things they physically cannot know enough about to make the claims that they do. Or perhaps it is more consistent for me to say that they cannot be right, because to be right, something they say has to be true, and the truth value of their statement is uncomputable because of the arbitrary claims they make (I am deliberately using computer science terminology here so as to be absolutely clear and rigorous as to what I mean).
“but you think ideas get better, or you act as if you do, which is effectively the same thing”
I…don’t really think this is the case. I quite admire Feyerabend, who basically argues the opposite of what you’re saying; that is, he says that ideas do not get better, and suggests that the earth going around the sun isn’t meaningfully better than the sun going around the earth. It depends on what the ideas are being used for. I pretty much agree with him on that (and Feyerabend himself is fairly old at this point.)
Most liberal ideas around now are fairly old too; nothing new under the sun and all that. I find Christianity pretty profound and moving and insightful often, and that’s fairly old. Like, is Christianity better than New Age nonsense? Sure, I believe that’s true.
I certainly don’t think all new art is better than all old art or anything like that. I’m curious what old ideas you see as better than new ideas, in your transcendent contrarianness. There are certainly lots of conservative opinions around…but they’re not any newer or older than liberal ideas, I don’t think. “You exist in the present, therefore you believe in progress!” That’s a weird argument.
You’re wrong, but that aside – if that’s all you were doing, then why bring in the “Golden Age” strawman?
Actually he is (or Plato is) – basically the same point Tocqueville made 2,200 years later about Americans’ dismissal of expert opinion, and which we’re now seeing confirmed in such phenomena as anti-vaxxers being disproportionately highly educated, and the most highly educated global warming skeptics being the least willing to change their opinions in the face of evidence.
@Graham
“if that’s all you were doing, then why bring in the “Golden Age” strawman?”
Because you cannot return to a Golden Age that cannot be found. If meaningful comparisons of overall art quality could be made between epochs, that implies there is a best such epoch. However, I reject that such comparisons even could be made, so a Golden Age cannot be found, and therefore, you cannot return to it. My point was poorly stated, but I believe it’s consistent.
^ And that – the idea that one of those ideas is no better or worse than the other – is a new(ish) idea. Which is clearly worse than the old idea, according to which that’s idiotic. Not that anyone should try to simply go back to the old idea. What’s needed is a newer idea that can kill the new one like the new one killed the old one.
Well…I don’t know that the idea that ideas are no better or worse is new, or even newish. Relativisms been around for a while.
And you want a new idea? Now you’re the one looking to progress to save you!
Of course I’m looking for progress to save me. That’s tautological. If you need saving and then you’re saved, that’s progress. The difference is, I don’t think I’m very saved right now. (And suddenly the conversation sounds religious.)
I think Steven Pinker is pretty convincing about humanity making moral progress in the sense that we’ve become less violent, although I guess that will be somewhat mitigated if we exterminate ourselves through global warming or nuclear war.
It may be progress, may even be desirable, but to call it “moral progress” when you’re paying other people to be violent for you (developed countries and companies from the same in the developing world today), or just saving the violence for when the state tells you (to, say, kill 17 million civilians in eastern Europe in 6 years) is… let’s call it a questionable use of the term.
Graham: nah, you could be saved by old ideas. Conservative salvation rather than progressive.
I wrote a long piece about my Pinker skepticism here.
Conservatives want new ideas to get back the power they lost when their old ideas lost to the liberals. Read Corey Robin.
That piece on Pinker is excellent.
“Relativisms been around for a while.”
Yeah, people in history of philosophy often attribute relativistic ideas as far back as Protagoras. (Though, to be sure, these attributions are about as plausible as any attempts to interpret guys known mostly through disses from Plato…)
Also, Noah, you asked about work on “the effect of population growth on culture”. I haven’t read any of that, but I have read at least one paper about the effect of population decline on culture. Joe Henrich argued (from memory — I read the paper eight years ago!) that the reason there were no Australian Aborigines still extant on (the island of) Tasmania at the time of European contact was that earlier populations there had got too small to reliably sustain the cultural knowledge needed for survival…sorry, that’s a badly-worded, verbose way of putting it — too distracted to say it better. Anyway, I’m absolutely sure there’s a lot more work like that in that area of evolutionary anthropology and cognitive anthropology. I knew a student of Dan Sperber* who was working on children’s cultural traditions, and argued that the high turn-over in membership of children’s cultural groups ensured that any traditions that stuck around would stick around for an especially long time (thus explaining why you find particular schoolyard rhymes and games going back a long way)
(* Sperber is the guy whose work is ultimately responsible for the “minimal counterintuitiveness” stuff that Chris Gavaler was talking about in a superhero post a few months back)
Whatever the merits of either, Protagoras’ (or “Protagoras'”) relativism is not Post-Modernism. You both know this.
Hmm, I’m rarely never sure what specific claims people have in mind when they talk about Post-Modernism. But if we take Noah’s Feyerabend, the view Noah ascribes to him is that e.g. heliocentrism is no “better” an “idea” than geocentrism. Which I’ll gloss as the denial that one view is true and the other false — and, generalising, the denial that any claims are true or false without qualification. (I’ve skipped the intermediate steps in this interpretive chain)
And that is, I gather, exactly the view that people attribute to Plato’s Protagoras; and the view that people think Plato attributed to him. (Which does seem on sturdier ground, at least) And Plato’s response — that Protagoras’ view is self-refuting — is precisely the kind of objection that I’ve seen raised against views like Feyerabends and other post-modernists.
Which suggests to me that they’re not as different as you say we both know they are.
Post-Modernism is concerned with refuting particular claims to objectivity by Modernism and the Enlightenment – which of course don’t exist in Plato.
That just sounds like you.
Yeah, and until somebody comes up with something better than that, they’re not going away.
^ Meaning this sentence is going to end in an insult but you don’t want to admit that that’s what it is.
It’s funny because he wrote what I wrote but didn’t mean it!
“Which suggests to me” is just a way of saying I’m not sure about what I’m about to say — that is, I think the views in question aren’t as different as you reckon (a) they are and (b) that we *know* they are. But I’m signalling my uncertainty at the start. I’m really not picking a fight with you Graham!
(This exclamation mark is placatory good humour, not exasperation!)
Still not 100% sure I’m following yr distinction between Plato and the people to whom pmists are responding. Plato believed there were objectively true claims about the world e.g. that physical objects were imperfect instantiations of the forms, that all apparent development of knowledge is in fact anamnesis, that the good is not identical with what is desired by the gods etc. He claimed that protagoras denied that any such claims were any better than any others. That sounds awfully like the spectre of feyerabend that Noah invoked.
But I’m honestly open to the possibility that I’m being thick here in not seeing your point
“Whatever the merits of either, Protagoras’ (or “Protagoras’”) relativism is not Post-Modernism. ”
Sure, historically specific things are different. This is always the case. Yet, there are similarities as well. It’s almost like making a virtue of “newness” or “oldness” is silly.
@Noah
I said you like best the ideas that are new(ish) today – not sure how you get from there to me “making a virtue of newness.”
You’re making a virtue of oldness. Either one is silly.
I’m not making a virtue of oldness. I’m saying you have a bias toward the new. It’s not the same thing.
You say you’re not making a virtue of oldness. I say you are.
I’m not making a virtue of newness. You say I am.
Let’s call the whole thing off?
I’m not saying you make a “virtue of newness.” When and if something dethrones Post-Modernism, I expect you’ll go out defending the (by then) old guard.
I’m saying you always seem to think that (some of) the ideas that were new when you came in are better than (all) the ideas that weren’t.
Do you actually think that I all new ideas are worse than old ideas? I don’t think you do.
I’m saying that arguing with what you want me to say is maybe a pointless exercise after a certain point.
All y’all: take a Gadamer and call me in the morning.
Your essay on Pinker was really good, and I guess “moral progress” isn’t the right term.
Thanks!