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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Disney can always cope with Latinos but would you accept a black Cinderella? I settled down the other day to watch a new version of Roald Dahl's The Witches. It's hard to muck up given the plot. They managed it (for me anyway) by casting a black child in the central role. My expectations were based on this
| The Witches is a 1983 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. A dark fantasy, the story is set partly in Norway and partly in England, and features the experiences of a young English boy and his Norwegian grandmother in a world where child-hating societies of witches secretly exist in every country. Wikipedia |
The grandmother is black too, which took some doing in the Norway of yesteryear. But it has to be quintessentially English (and Norwegian) or it doesn't work at all. Unless you make it quintessentially US high school or whatever, which they hadn't. It was stage-Brit in all the other trappings.
My uncomprehending fury at the sheer pointlessness would probably have driven me away. Such blatant tokenism is close to racism. But to do it here, where it adds a fundamental difference between the boy and the straight world and between boy and witchworld had me wondering whether headmistress Anjelica Huston would turn out to be an alien from Planet Zog mistakenly recruited by the coven.
Although actually...
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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We're awaiting news of the woke remake of "Lord Of The Rings".
So far, it's fallen at the first. Deciding what word should replace "Lord".
After that, how to deal with the Hobbits.
The whole original plot line was obviously and stupidly masculine. All-male Hobbits that slog a long way across hostile territory, having to fight all the way against an obviously Slavik climate-changing villainous foe. Which delighted in chopping down the sacred Ents and forests. Only for the Hobbits to pass out on the side of Mount Doom, an erupting volcano, and having to be rescued by the Giant Eagles.
The remake will have female Hobbits, who will be far more sensible. Fly direct from The Shire to Mount Doom on the Giant Eagles, drop the Ring down the volcano from above, and be home in time for tea. Job done.
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Pete Jones
In: Virginia
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The more I read through this here forum, the less I'm sure where certain thoughts belong. The culture thread seemed best for this one.
This famous Robert Frost poem remind me of this place. I don't think interlarding it with commentary is appropriate, so be on the look out for the "mischief" and the unthinking neighbor, toward the end. It seemed to me similar to MJH's description in a book somewhere of trying to get an academic to listen:
"Mending Wall"
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ | |
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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My immediate response is that "good" academics love "Good fences". As an arbitrary way of creating a division between subjects. Thereby creating a small(er) territory or legal fiction. That of owning said territory.
Within which the academics can rule supreme, untroubled by the opinion of other "neighbours", and as a barrier to meddling outsiders.
These "good" academics may well regard AEL-ists as horrible heretic anarchists, who respect no boundaries or fences, and run riot over their beloved subject.
Academic property is intellectual theft!
AEL workers of the world unite!
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Pete Jones
In: Virginia
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Hadn't thought of the fences as walls cordoning off disciplines, but yes.
I was interpreting the unthinking neighbor as someone who immediately shuts down when the paradigm is questioned. And who just blandly repeats, say, "Everything is relative" or some other rote-memory self-contradiction of modern science.
I also love "Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder if I could put a notion in his head". Clearly, this is impossible.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I can't bring myself to read poetry so cannot comment on Mr Frost but poetry and poets are worth considering as a world in itself. The first thing to observe is that 'the English' are the world's top poets.
I got into a lot of trouble claiming that 'the English' (I'm having to put it in quotes to include the Irish Ascendancy and the Americans) are also the world's best novelists and dramatists. Anything involving literature simply because English is far and away the most 'wordy' of the world's languages. The Inuit might have fifty words for snow but English has fifty words for everything.
That will do for now while I try to work out what makes poets and poetry special. This may take me some time because, I don't know if I mentioned it, I can't read the muck myself so I have to approach the problem historically and sociologically.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I'm not sure there is a canon of 'female writers who would possibly have gone unnoticed if they were male though not now, when all writers are female (o.n.o.)' but if there were, I would put Sybille Bedford in it. I am reading her A Legacy with great approval at the moment.
There was a fab BBC series based on one of her books (possibly this one) many years ago but I expect it got scrubbed. Leastways I've never heard hide not hair since. Does anyone remember it? Glossy German Jewish(?) family, first half of the 20th century.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Who was the first person to play Le Carré's Smiley? You may not know but you certainly guessed. George Cole, late of St Trinians and the future employer of Minder. There's typecasting for you.
Actually this is not quite true but Le Carré's first novel, Call for the Dead, was adapted for radio back in 1977 and going out on R4X https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002b5v8
Just to complete a nap hand of canons, the co-star is Alfred Burke of Public Eye.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Both Beryl Reed and The Killing of Sister George are in their respective canons so I thought a few details about how the two got linked wouldn't go amiss. [Courtesy of 'Beryl Read in Conversation' (with Sian Phillips) on Radio 4X.]
After decades as a solo variety artiste, Reed decided she fancied being a 'serious actress'. After being sent off to watch Entertaining Mr Sloane (also in the canon) she was asked to audition for Sister George.
Beryl's Agent: I'm afraid Ms Reed doesn't do auditions.
Beryl: For this she bloody well does. |
She got the title role and went off to Bristol for the first try-out of the play. After three weeks one of the cast members tried to burn down the theatre. After recasting and re-rehearsing, the play set off on a provincial tour.
| "I can't tell you what a disaster it was. In 1964 lesbianism wasn't discussed openly. We managed to empty practically every theatre. At Hull, there was a dozen people in the audience. We could barely get served in shops. Two previews--to nurses and policemen--were greeted with absolute silence." |
But when it finally opened in the West End it was a smash. Then New York. Then the film, to be directed by Robert Aldrich with Bette Davis slated for the Sister George role.
Bette Davis: I'm not going to wear those terrible suits Beryl Reed wears on stage.
Robert Aldrich: No you won't be, darling, Beryl Reed will be. |
A lucky escape for one and all!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Two more linked canons
Did you know George Harrison was the executive producer of Withnail and I? You not only knew it but you have a withering contempt for anyone who didn't know it. Sorry I spoke.
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