The Real News

The Real News is getting more material. They report differently than I anticipated they would. For one thing, I thought of it as a leftist production, mostly because Jeff Cohen recommended it. But some of the commentators bill themselves as conservatives and voice conservative liberatarian ideas that I did not expect.

All the Real News reports have faces and voices attached, and the way this happens seems very different than Fox or CNN's kind of presentation. Most news items seem to start with a report that sounds built around the traditional journalistic questions "who, what, where, why, and how." But they include or link quickly to commentary by one or another person billed as an expert. Some of these experts are known to me and are people I recognize as experts; others I have never heard of, though perhaps they are known elsewhere or to a different community.

They had a pretty startling report yesterday. One of their reporters had apparently slipped a cell phone with a camara to a Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli prison on the Sinai Peninsula. The prisoner called out commentary and shots of limp bodies strewn over each other in a pile in the prison yard, bodies that may have been shot.

The bodies and other prison scenes went by pretty fast, and I have to say I found it hard to be certain what I was looking at or what the prisoner referred to, even in translation.

I can't recall when I ever had this kind of less mediated or differently mediates information from a news article. But I wonder how you-all feel about this kind of reporting. Does it need more mediation or different mediation? Is it actually mediated more, in a sense, because commentary is available?

To what extent and in what way should this information be edited or mediated?

Kate Chopin, "The Storm"

Those who like Kate Chopin's "The Storm" might want to get her novel, The Awakening, about a woman who leaves her wife and family "to find herself," as we used to say in bygone ages.

Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening and her short stories for money while she raised her kids. I'm a bit nervous about saying so, but she claimed she barely proofred her work.

Chopin wrote in the 1800's, but her stories can still raise a bit of a scandal in class discussions. I don't want to give away too much, since most students will not have read "The Storm," yet, but here are a few things that to me seem worth your comments.

• Why are or aren't things OK at the end of "The Storm"?


• If this kind of thing goes against the morés of the 1800's, why was Chopin so popular. What, if anything, does that tell us about the general practice of censorship?


• Kate Chopin's works became less known in the early 20th Century, but they have undergone fresh popularity after the 1970's.


• Are Chopin's writings useful in the way they would have been when they were written?

Franz Kafka

When Franz Kafka died, he ordered a friend to burn all his manuscripts, including "The Metamorphosis." Should his friend have burned them?

"The Metamorphosis" belongs to a genre that has since come to be known as "magical realism." Some other artists in this genre include Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the author of One Hundred Days of Solitude; Juan Rulfo, who wrote the short novel Pedro Paramo; José Donoso, who wrote of strange sexual liasons in works like The Obscene Bird of Night; the ever-dignified and amusing Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote "The Garden of Forking Paths;" and Julio Cortazar's wild novel Hopscotch, Rayuelas for you Spanish readers, which can be read in various orders.

In what ways is "The Metamorphosis" realistic?

Other than Gregor's surprising change, what's bugging him and his family?

Walden, by Henry David Thoreau

Walden is one of the key works of the Transcendentalist movement of the American 1800's, but it probably never hit its peak popularity until the 1960's, roughly a century later. During his short life, Thoreau was known mostly for his radical opposition to slavery and to the American invasion of Mexico. He wrote in favor of John Brown, who was hung for killing slaveholders. And he wrote "On Resistance to Civil Government," the essay often known as "Civil Disobedience," while in jail for refusing to fund the invasion of Mexico by paying a tax.

In Walden, Thoreau describes a year of his life in a homemade cabin at Walden Pond, just outside of Concord, Massachussetts. A lot of MtSAC students are putting together households, or will. What's the difference? What principles still apply?

On "The Gambler," by Dostoyevsky

What sense does gambling make?

How is gambling similar to work? What if the work is done on commission? How is it similar to owning stocks or commodities trading?

How is or or isn't the main character's personality characteristic of gamblers or gambling in general?

If we say a thing is valuable or has value, what does that mean?

How does this reading relate to the poem by Sappho that we looked at in class way back towards the start of the semester?

Shakespeare - Choice of film

Towards the end of November, we're going to see a movie based on a play by William Shakespeare. I have not decided which.

A lot of you are familiar with at least a few Shakespearean plays and might have opinions about which you would rather see and write about. I welcome everyone's opinions, and will probably show the film that the class chooses.

Here are the films I know I have access to, and a very short evaluation of each:

• Hamlet: I would probably use the early '90's Zeferilli production with Mel Gibson as Hamlet; Glen Close as his mother, Gertrude; and Alan Bates as the scheming Claudius. Kenneth Branagh did an interesting Hamlet in 1996, but it lasts 4 hours, and we will probably want the time for discussion. Gibson gives a passionate and surprisingly cogent performance; Close and Bates are measured and good, as expected. Hamlet is famous for the profundity of the main character's grief and philosophical investigations of life, death, and responsibilities of various sorts. Some have said that Prince Hamlet is literature's most intelligent fictional character; others feel he goes on too much about his own problems.


• Othello is a tragic story of love, jealousy, friendship and betrayal that is considered by some to be Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, in part because the plot is very tight and moves fast. I would use the 1994 version with Branagh as Iago and Laurence "Morpheus" Fishburne as Othello. For my money, it's Branagh's best performance, better than the early Henry V that made his reputation. There is some nudity and violence.


• Macbeth is tightly plotted, moves quickly, has lots of action, and showcases some of Shakespeare's finest language. It's a story of ambition and murder in which the strongest and perhaps most interesting character is the female murderess, Macbeth's wife. I'm not sure which Macbeth I'd use yet. There's a recent Australian version set in Melbourne with three very alluring young witches, which does contain some nudity; a 1972 or so version directed by Roman Polanski, lushly costumed and appointed; there is also an older Orson Welles version that I have just acquired and hope to view this coming week. There is violence, but so far none of the versions strike me as graphically violent by the standards of modern TV viewers.


• Titus is the Julie Newmar version of Titus Andronicus, surely Shakespeare's most savagely and graphically violent play, and both the violence and sensuality are graphic in this Newmar production. This is superbly acted and realized. Anthony Hopkins plays Titus Andronicus better than I'd have thought possible. [] is savage and lovely as the Barbarian Queen, and very effective when her discomfort with the Elizabethan script don't weigh her down. The Queen's Afican lover, Aaron, whom many find the most interesting character in the entire piece is nobly played as well. If we watch this, viewers must be ready for some strongly graphic scenes that involve both violence and nudity.


• Romeo and Juliet is of course the famous tale of star-crossed young lovers. If I go with this, there is a big decision to make about which version to use. West Side Story is a version of R & J done as a musical in the late 1950's with Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno. It's a great production, though I find it more dated than the 400-year-old play itself. It does not use Shakespearean language, which I think is a pity (student opinions vary). There are several fairly standard versions that I could choose from. But then there's also Zieferelli's mid-90's version with Leo DiCaprio as Romeo, which sets the whole play in a stylized "Verona Beach" filmed across town from here in Venice CA. The rival families show up here as rival gangs who shoot at each other and have names shaved into their heads. Modern drug references are made in Shakespeare's original language. It's pretty wild altogether. Some passing nudity, and a fair amount of violence.


• The Merchant of Venic is kind of halfway between tragedy and comedy. Take your pick. Shakespeare takes 4 traditional stories that feel kind of like fables or fairy tale examinations of love and values. Then he gets some real depth by weaving them together. I'd go with the lovely 2005 production, filmed in Venice with Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons sharing the screen with a crew of attractive younger actors. Some nudity, no violence, some laughs.


• The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy about gender roles. Feminists often complain because "the shrew" is female, and in some sense apparently "tamed" or dominated by her husband, but to my mind the most accurate readings of the play and its best performances give a very different impression. This is one of Shakespeare's funniest pieces, and so remains popular despite questions about whether it's politically correct, as the saying goes. So far the best version I have is the old Liz Taylor vs Richard Burton 1968, played very broadly and for laughs, with the couple spitting and bellowing at each other and Taylor merrily cracking chairs over Burton's back and head. C'est la vie, mes amis.


• A Midsummer Night's Dream, for all its apparent silliness, involves profound examination of love and may be Shakespeare's most popular comedy. Four couples and a troop of would-be amateur actors traipse through the woods at night, befuddled by fairies and magic that strangely resemble a lot of human romantic behavior. This version has Michelle Pfeiffer as the Queen of the Faeries, Calista Flockhart chasing her man through the woods, and an extraordinary performance by Kevin Kline as the lunkheaded dreamer Bottom. This play causes some confusion because viewers tend to take it as just a light comedy and nothing else, but when the faerie dust clears, there are always things to write about.


• Julius Caesar is one of the better known of Shakespeare's histories, a thoughtful consideration of power and morals. The version I have features a very young Marlon Brando in one of his first filmed performances.

Staggered Schedule

Everyone note: we're still on a staggered schedule this week.

The debates will be next week, 11/2 or 11/4, depending which day you're in class.

FYI -- You Can Make New Posts for Credit

Like a lot of new things, student participation is getting going slowly in terms of quantity, although so far the quality of the entries has been very good.

One thing I notice is that no one is making new posts. Just to be sure this is clear:

YES! You can make new posts!

In fact, in many if not most cases, I recommend it. That puts your words right up there front and center at the top of the blog, where your colleagues can read it and comment. Once we get a few more comments up there, it will be (I think) easier to continue.