Sunday 25 December 2011

Merry Christmas!

I'd like to share this with you; it's one of my favourite Christmas "carols"; Bill Nighy sings a cover of Love Is All Around á la Robert Palmer for the film Love Actually. It's probably the only good thing in that film, but it's totally worthy. Love the way Bill Nihghy acts, like he's thinking 'Can I handle all these hot ladies? I'll try, it's Christmas'. Enjoy and remember, silly Christmas songs are the best!



Saturday 17 December 2011

Censorship in the XVIII century British theatre.

It seems that censorship was common since the XVI century; way before the Licencing Act, and opposition to it was almost non-existing. However, this early auto-censorship disappeared gradually and plays became bawdier and more explicit until the imposition of the Act in 1737.
After the Restoration, theatre became a very important business controlled by a few, at first friends of the king who didn’t know anything about the management of theatre. Of the two existing companies, the Duke’s company was more innovative and had less difficulty in keeping actresses and young actors and paying the playwrights; finally it absorbed its rival, the King’s company.
Prior to the Act, self-censorship was enough for a time, but in the 1670s sex comedies became the fashion. Before that, political plays had been often performed but the audience was scarce. However, the government started to practice censorship against the pro-Whig ones, closing companies and banning scripts.
After the Glorious Revolution, the United Company produces mainly ‘operas’ with impressive stage effects that, though successful, were too expensive for the company. The United Company changed management which reignited the split and rivalry between the two companies.
The resulting chaos and the political changes made the two companies stage new bawdy comedies of manners, very popular among the public. The damaging competition, problems with patents of old plays and the lack of new public tried to be solved with additional attraction: young attractive actresses with sexy outfits and slutty characters were included in many plays, acrobats and ballerinas in the entre-acts, … in the midst of all this, some voices against the immorality of theatre began to raise again. Censorship by the Lord Chamberlain was mildly tried, but it was ineffective. Writers like Congreve and Vanbrugh were very successful and the monarchs were very much against the closing of any theatre, though not because they liked it especially. Something to do with some Puritans in the past century, I guess…
Anyway, by the turn of the next century the rivalry between the two companies was almost over and translated Italian operas were the new trend. The Lord Chamberlain was now simply mediating between the actors and the management. In 1714, theatre managers got complete control to decide what plays to stage. But this wasn’t going to last.
In the 30’s, political satire became fashionable, due in part to the success of the Beggar’s Opera in 1728. The Walpole ministry became a bitter enemy of theatre’s right of choosing what to represent, especially because the playwrights tended to kill the Walpole-like character. Walpole tried to pass a bill in 1735, denounced satires and probably secretly staged a play attacking the king, The Golden Rump. This play was never staged and is now lost, if ever existed. However a cartoon of it was showed by Robert Walpole in the House of Lords, after the bill had passed through the House of Commons. The Act closed all non-patent theatres and required all plays to be approved by the Lord Chamberlain before being staged.
And thus, British theatre was changed forever. It also had the consequence of leaving actors at the mercy of the two main companies and led some playwrights to become novelists in order to avoid censorship. Both companies became predictable and new plays were hardly encouraged. Melodramas and pantomimes became the main representations and English theatre was extremely mediocre for a long time.

It seems that His Majesty had a huge ass in real life too.

Thursday 1 December 2011

Un pequeño poema.

Es un pequeño poema satírico que escribí basándome un poco en Pope y por haber tenido que ver Twilight dos veces. No es nada, pero el par de personas a las que se lo leí se rieron. Es más gracioso interpretado.

Pálida doncella sin pensamientos,
Guapa sin conocerlo, delgada
Que no anoréxica, delicada.
Al verle comienzan sus sentimientos.

Por las montañas de Forks va gritando:
"Oh, Edward! Oh, Edward!"
Y a lo lejos él le va contestando:
"¡Oh, Bella! ¡Oh, Bella!"

"¿Te casarás ya conmigo?"
"Sólo si me haces vampiro
Y conservo mi apellido."

En verdad creo que es más que de entender
Que Señora Cûllen no quiera ser.

Wednesday 23 November 2011

Crinolines and hoops.

In Pope’s The Rape of the Lock there is a very powerful description of high class women in the XVIII century. They’re very beautiful, yes, but inactive, vain and stupid. Belinda actually breaks molds when she has a fit because her fiancé has dared to cut one of her locks. In fact, it can be said that was proto-feminist and all.
No, really. She’s the protagonist, she’s active at the end of the poem, and she’s perceived by other people and even the poet as a ridiculous young lady with no class (and PMS, as Pope so subtly suggests).
I’m not saying there were no intelligent women at the time. Even those who weren’t poetical genius weren’t dumb either. But their physical attractiveness was their only way to show some energy and stand out, so they (I mean high-class women) spent a preposterously great amount of time dressing up. Obviously, the clothes they wore were imprisoning them too.
The hoop at the time didn’t reach the floor, so women would be able to walk in very elegant short steps, and made them occupy the place of three people. Imagine the spectacle, one woman walking very carefully not to throw anything on the ground, unable to run, occupying a whole sofa, … it was like a walking cage. In fact, it reminds me of the Chinese noble women’s feet. Google that and look at the images; it looks worse than it sounds.
Pope is very ambivalent toward women, but he at least conceded some thought to that; women’s behaviour is not portrayed as entirely stupid; Clarissa is given a good monologue about common sense and humour (she also aides the Baron, so well… an ambiguous character) and Belinda has some psychological profundity, though the poet finally didn’t see the importance of the matter; he, at least, tried to understand why, instead of accepting the common theories of the time (do women have a soul? They really doubted it).  

Twilight IV, part 1.

I really enjoyed the first part of the movie, really. Kristen Steward in bikini, Charlie and Bella’s wacky friends appeared and they’re my favourite characters, Alice is definitely a fashion psycho (actually, it creeps me out),… all very funny and bullship, but hilarious. Apart from a ridiculously dramatic dream I was having fun. So were my friends, although they didn’t laugh at Jacob’s “Oh, no! My ex-girlfriend is marrying my worst enemy! What should I do?! I know!” and tears out his shirt very intensively. I loved the trailer just for that.
So, I was enjoying the movie, in a so-bad-it’s-good way, like with the 3rd one (I found the first two boring; I’m not even very sure what happens in the 2nd one), but suddenly, bam! Abortion! Yes, they actually tried to talk about abortion, being clearly against it. It’s not the moment! If only she had used protection! Or maybe his sparkly sperm is so potent it would have burst the condom?! I hated the rest of the movie, except for the very ending, but I’ll tell you later.

I love how kissing her looks so painful to Edward.


Really, my friends were horrified by the pregnancy and the birth. I’m used to some gore, but it was all new to my friends, one of them only sees romantic movies and comedies, and the other said she wouldn’t have sex in at least ten years. How does it dare to have a message?! I’m not against of it having a little moral, like “be yourself (no matter if you’re an obnoxious teenager, don’t grow up!)” or “choose true love (no matter if he’s an abusive asshole, he loves you!), that’s fair and simple; but a fucking dissertation about abortion! It’s not right, it’s just not right. Oh, and the boy Bella is constantly rejecting and giving false hope at the same time, well, it’s Ok, he gets the baby! Yes, he gets the baby that was trying to kill Bella. Despite there was already Leah (who everybody treats like Meg in Family Guy), well he discovers the joys of paedophilia. I hated that movie, not even Charlie or sexy Kristen Steward can redeem it.
Oh, and the ending is Bella waking up… and the credits start and the director of the film turns out to be some Bill Condon. I laughed at that, but was really angry. 

Tuesday 1 November 2011

Happy Halloween!





Here where I live, celebrating Halloween is pretty new, and I’m too old for the Trick-or-Treat thing. Anyway, I love Halloween; it’s so much fun, back in Edinburgh I went to a  party dressed as a witch after seeing a parade of green and blue fairies and elves. It’s my favourite party after Christmas.

Unlike me, my sister hates it. She says it’s not our tradition and therefore we should not acknowledge and stick to our own tradition for this day, which I'm not very sure what it is about. I know it involves going to the cemetery and cleaning up the family tombs. Yes, that sounds like fun.

So, just after this argument with her, I went out and bought her a Halloween lollipop. That was as a prank, but you have to admit, it was a rather nice one. She couldn’t say anything other than thanks, and I think she’s keeping the lollipop.
What do you think about Halloween? I know it’s not really a part of our culture, but is that so important? 

Wednesday 26 October 2011

Amistad, a movie by Steven Spielberg.




This movie has a very compelling moment in the middle, showing the horrors of a slave ship, and a powerful interpretation by Djimon Hounsou (Cinque), and to me that makes the movie worthy of a view; however the way history is portrayed and, in fact, just the choice of that particular episode of the American history may move the spectator to the wrong conclusions about the end of slavery in the United States.

Some simple anachronisms are easy to spot: Van Buren campaigning (presidential candidate didn’t campaign until 1860), the crew of the Portuguese ship speaking in Spanish, and some characters speaking of the Secession War as if it were a fact, twenty years before it happened. They bothered me a little, but don’t really matter.
It would have been better though to give the captives more focus, or at least subtitle their dialogue (only a small part is subtitled). The main characters are actually John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) and the lawyer Roger Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey), not the captives, of whom we only know Quince.
A fictional abolitionist is thrown there, played by the always excellent Morgan Freeman, who has nothing to do here, though. His role could be completely deleted; probably someone thought the movie needed to be more balanced or something. There is a scene between him and the white abolitionist, the ending of their friendship after the white abolitionist speaks about how the captives are more valuable to their cause dead is very powerful, until you realise they have been friends for years, so they would have talked about martyrdom before, in fact it was rather an acceptable view among white abolitionists, who were the majority, so I don’t see how all that rant about martyrdom could have been new to Freeman’s character.

I think the real problem here is that the Amistad case was not as historically important as it is presented in the movie, when in fact it was considered a case about property and the Atlantic slave trade, thus nothing to do with slavery at home.
I think Spielberg didn’t choose this event because it was significant in the history of slavery, but because he’s so fond of happy endings. The only bitter note of the movie’s ending is a short recognition of Cinque never finding his family, and among all the victory of the ending (including the destruction of the slave fort by the British, which actually happened five years later). I mean, Spielberg did a movie about the Holocaust, and somehow, he chose an episode that ended well! That can be partly the reason of his success, as the public prefer happy endings, but I think a movie shouldn’t need a happy ending, it should make you go home with something to think about, something to resolve by yourself, instead of an episode where everything is resolved.


Sunday 16 October 2011

The General’s King.




You might have heard of Daphne du Maurier. OK, maybe of her novel Rebecca, or at least the adaptation by Hitchcock. Well, she wrote many other novels and short stories, in fact Hitchcock adapted her novella The Birds and her novel Jamaica Inn. She was a master of suspense too.

The General’s King is one of her many novels and it has been frequently overlooked. It’s historical fiction, very well documented, set during the English Civil War; in fact many events of the novel really happened, especially the Cornish campaign, and the lack of power of Charles II, sympathetic to the protagonists but unable to help them. The titular character really existed; Sir Richard Grenville was really a royalist general, famous for his courage and his extravagant ruthlessness. He even tried secure Cornwall’s independence while he was at it, and lost many fortunes and women until the end of his days (and now, he has a Wikipedia entry). He is not the protagonist though, but the narrator, Honor Harris. She’s a Cornish noblewoman, and therefore, the point of view completely backs the Royalists and it’s more focused on Cornwall.



Du Maurier often writes the house when the main episodes of her novels happen as a real character. It was always her real home, called Menabilly and in Cornwall. In the novel, the house has its real name. There is a reason; what sets her narration was the founding of a skeleton in a secret room of the house, surrounded by Cavalier remnants.

Thanks to this novel, I know about the only Civil War in England as to not be at loss six years after reading the novel, since the story is unforgettable. The only problem is that it lacks the Roundhead (Parliamentarian) view. It’s however shows the cruelty of the Civil War; there is this brief scene when Honor passes through a field with men hanging of the trees, and realises that they are of the Parliamentarian troops, and it must be Richard’s deed, since he doesn’t believe in taking prisoners.

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Blackadder III.



This season of the British series Blackadder is set in the Regency period, but as there is some anachronism stew, you can find references to many events that happened before: Samuel Johnson appears in one episode, played by Robbie Coltrane (Rubeus Hagrid), trying to finish his dictionary, actors and terrible acting at that time, even George III makes an estellar appeareance asking his son to marry a bush in a very thick German accent. And events that happened later; the French Revolution, Byron, Shelley and Coleridge in a tavern, all emo because they're dying, references to Jane Austen, and the popular theory that she was actually a red bearded man from Yorkshire (!). 
But I'm recomending it too because is so funny! Edmund Blackadder is played by Rowan Atkinson as an inteligent, dark and manipulative hero-villain, his master the prince is played by Hugh Laurie as a dim-witted, snotty royal brat:



... not what we're used to from these two, eh? Watch it, it really makes you learn while you laugh.



Sunday 2 October 2011

Intro.

This blog's been created solely because my English Literature professor is very fond of the use of the "new tecnologies" (they have over twenty years now!) applied to our subject. But, who knows, maybe I'll like it and continue writing the blog. I'll try not to write too much about myself, only about those subjects I love and care, like music, Tv series and movies, lists and, yes, literature.

This year we're going to study the Restoration and the XVIII century in English Literature. When the professor announced that, I asked 'It's that gonna be all?'. Well, yes, that's gonna be all, enough for a year. She basically said that, and she's right, I actually didn't want more, I wanted another thing. This is because I think the Restoration (1660-1700) and the XVIII century are the most boring periods of the English literature: I'd rather read some old Alglo-saxon epic in the original language (at least it sound funny read aloud, try it).

This can be because this past year (I was in another university) I had to study the Augustean age: Humphrey Clinker (I couldn't read more than a half, it was sooooo boring!, worse, filled with unfunny jokes), A Sentimental Journey (I liked that one a bit, I even wanted to read more by the same author, but didn't have time), and finally ... The Rape of the Lock (go on, try it. And remember, this is supposed to be funny too). I know, Gulliver's Travels is from the same period, but past the first two famous chapters is surprisingly mean and twisted, and full of values dissonance. It's definitely not a children book (admittedly, I read when I was eleven). As for Robinson Crusoe, I liked Friday, but I found it again slow and boring, till Friday appears and, dammit, the real story on which is based is so much more entertaining! And, as for the Restoration period, I haven't read a single thing from that period, but I'd never heard about Aphra Benh, nor the other playwrights, until I started college. That doesn't necessarilly mean they're not interesting, but it's a bad signal. And the language is difficult, and probably many of the jokes are lost in time. Also, it's theatre, it's better if you see it represented, but I doubt I will find one of them represented any time soon. They probably add a lot of slap-stick (visual comedy) now.

I always  tend to assume the worse (nothing personal, just in case), so the last paragraph is only my own biased opinions. I'm at least going to enjoy Tristan Shandy, and we have two movies in perspective, so yay! It's still my favourite subject, it's kinda like travelling in time through the books, and the music and the pictures, and many cool things were going on then (the novel was invented, women started to be smart, a new dynasty that included a mad king was established, tea was introduced ... yes, the XVIII century was a riot. And the Romantic period seems extreme!). Maybe I'll change my mind. I'm actually kind of excited.