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For we're strangers when we meet
One of the sillier assignments I was ever given was a seventh-grade instruction to write a sequel to O. Henry's "A Retrieved Reformation," deciding what happens after its safe-cracking protagonist, now straight, aliased, and respectably engaged to be married, reveals himself in rescuing a small child locked otherwise inaccessibly inside a bank vault. Fortunately this travesty was composed on a classroom computer and, with any luck, no longer exists in even the most illegible hard-disk form. A History of Violence (2005) is like a successful fantasia on this theme, with heavy echoes of Westerns and film noir—the lives we put behind us, which circumstances force out again; Viggo Mortensen inherits not a little from Robert Mitchum and Alan Ladd. I'm not sure it matters that I saw this film after last year's Eastern Promises, but I am glad finally to have seen them both; they share lines of family and allegiance and all senses of blood, worlds with their own inexorable gravity that pull underneath the surface of the everyday. Next up, if I keep going backward, is Spider (2002). Or I could just wait and see what Cronenberg does next.
I have had few genuinely bad teachers; I've been lucky. Tenth grade, my luck ran out. The same English teacher who destroyed my ability to read Sylvia Plath for seven years attempted the same service for Robert Frost, did not wreck A Tale of Two Cities and Kim only because Dickens and Kipling are well-nigh indestructible (and even so, she tried. No one should ever set as an essay for students an enumeration of the ways in which Sydney Carton is Christ), and all I remember of her lectures on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is that I annotated my copy of the play with small green-inked cartoons of a disgruntled Brutus and that Portia's voluntary wound in the thigh was probably not as psychosexually significant as the teacher tried to make out. In defense of literature, my mother rented and showed me A Tale of Two Cities (1935) and Julius Caesar (1953), thus introducing me to Ronald Colman, John Gielgud, and Marlon Brando all in one shot. The second of these was on TCM a few weeks ago, so with fond and curious memories I taped and watched it: I was not disappointed. As Marc Antony, Marlon Brando is like James Cagney in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), I don't know why he didn't do more Shakespeare. He looks like an athlete in marble and hits the famous speech like an orator's orator's lightning-strike; so much for getting away from politics, because Julius Caesar may be ultimately a story of spin. James Mason's Brutus is a passionate and troubled idealist, not a dupe, a dissembler, or a demagogue; his thoughts at Caesar's death are transparently painful, while afterward he gives a plainfaced defense of their conspiracy only to be upstaged by Antony with the bleeding corpse of Caesar in his arms. He has no stagecraft. John Gielgud as Cassius, meanwhile, has the empty eyes of an archaic bronze mask; he looks as though the glass has been taken out and shadows only left in, and only two or three times—his envious condemnation of Caesar, the assassination, the news of Portia's death—do we see him without his sardonic guise and probe of rhetoric, which in any case does not save him. He knows where to lean on his friend, but forgets that friendship can only be leaned on so far. Once the action shifts from political intrigue to the fields of Philippi, it's fascinating to watch Brutus come confidently into his own, at least until the apparition of Caesar resigns him to his fate, while Cassius dwindles waspishly, all rolling indignation and spite when accused of bribe-taking; Brutus laughs him off. Him we see lie maybe twice, once unsuccessfully to Portia about the conspiracy, once to the page whom he blames for his own shout of horror at ghostly Caesar, and both times it sits oddly on him. They are mirrored and shadowed well, the honorable man and the one who thinks too much. I suspect the slash potential in this version goes up to eleven, though I don't think I want to read it any more than an O. Henry sequel. Anyway, this is the version that put graffiti in Latin all over the Roman soundstages: I approve.
Did I mention that I was first shown Being There (1979) as part of a high school class in semiotics? That was not in tenth grade.
I have had few genuinely bad teachers; I've been lucky. Tenth grade, my luck ran out. The same English teacher who destroyed my ability to read Sylvia Plath for seven years attempted the same service for Robert Frost, did not wreck A Tale of Two Cities and Kim only because Dickens and Kipling are well-nigh indestructible (and even so, she tried. No one should ever set as an essay for students an enumeration of the ways in which Sydney Carton is Christ), and all I remember of her lectures on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is that I annotated my copy of the play with small green-inked cartoons of a disgruntled Brutus and that Portia's voluntary wound in the thigh was probably not as psychosexually significant as the teacher tried to make out. In defense of literature, my mother rented and showed me A Tale of Two Cities (1935) and Julius Caesar (1953), thus introducing me to Ronald Colman, John Gielgud, and Marlon Brando all in one shot. The second of these was on TCM a few weeks ago, so with fond and curious memories I taped and watched it: I was not disappointed. As Marc Antony, Marlon Brando is like James Cagney in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), I don't know why he didn't do more Shakespeare. He looks like an athlete in marble and hits the famous speech like an orator's orator's lightning-strike; so much for getting away from politics, because Julius Caesar may be ultimately a story of spin. James Mason's Brutus is a passionate and troubled idealist, not a dupe, a dissembler, or a demagogue; his thoughts at Caesar's death are transparently painful, while afterward he gives a plainfaced defense of their conspiracy only to be upstaged by Antony with the bleeding corpse of Caesar in his arms. He has no stagecraft. John Gielgud as Cassius, meanwhile, has the empty eyes of an archaic bronze mask; he looks as though the glass has been taken out and shadows only left in, and only two or three times—his envious condemnation of Caesar, the assassination, the news of Portia's death—do we see him without his sardonic guise and probe of rhetoric, which in any case does not save him. He knows where to lean on his friend, but forgets that friendship can only be leaned on so far. Once the action shifts from political intrigue to the fields of Philippi, it's fascinating to watch Brutus come confidently into his own, at least until the apparition of Caesar resigns him to his fate, while Cassius dwindles waspishly, all rolling indignation and spite when accused of bribe-taking; Brutus laughs him off. Him we see lie maybe twice, once unsuccessfully to Portia about the conspiracy, once to the page whom he blames for his own shout of horror at ghostly Caesar, and both times it sits oddly on him. They are mirrored and shadowed well, the honorable man and the one who thinks too much. I suspect the slash potential in this version goes up to eleven, though I don't think I want to read it any more than an O. Henry sequel. Anyway, this is the version that put graffiti in Latin all over the Roman soundstages: I approve.
Did I mention that I was first shown Being There (1979) as part of a high school class in semiotics? That was not in tenth grade.
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ETA: What do you know: Netflix had it--but it turns out to be 1953, not 1935. I was disappointed when none of the choices were the right year, but then noticed that the one with the transposed date had the right actors :-)
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That's because it was a typo on my part. It is of course 1953; it was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
Enjoy!
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Cool! I'll let you know what I think.
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"An essay: an enumeration of the ways in which Sydney Carton is Christ"
I know very little about Jesus, not being Christian. I also know very little about Sydney Carton, having never read A Tale of Two Cities. Since I know next to nothing about both characters, they might as well be the same, for what distinguishes nonexistent entities I have no descriptors for?
(As I imagine I would come closer to what I would've written, 10 years ago, had I actually read A Tale of Two Cities. I'm completely lying about the description of Carton, by the way, as I can't find a copy immediately to tell me what he looked like. It's funnier this way anyway.)
I know very little about Jesus, not being Christian. So I will have to proceed with what few assumptions I know.
I know that Jesus was a man, who probably had some mental issues to believe he was a direct descendant of G-d. I know Jesus was Jewish, spoke Arameic, and lived in what is now the state of Israel. I hypothesize that he was at least fairly intelligent in order to take advantage of the then-current sociopolitical situation in order to create a mythos surrounding himself that has endured for millenia. Also, he was a carpenter by trade. He also may have been in love with a hooker.
Let us compare this picture to that of Sydney Carton. By the description in the book, he was short and dark haired, so they have this in common, which is more than most people have in common, so we're already doing well. Carton, so far as I know was Christian, not Jewish, which has the odd dichotomy of being a person who worships a person who is like unto himself. It's a shame that he had sufficient mental issues as to be unable (or unaware) of his own resemblance to his purported deity. Though, knowing him, that might have pushed him towards agnosticism instead of towards liking himself. But you just can't please some people.
Carton clearly has significant mental issues. He has no faith in himself and fosters an unrequited love for several years. Lucie is not quite a hooker, but she is very willing to trade her friendship and a few non-sexual favors for the usefulness that Carton provides -- namely, his life. Carton, perhaps, should have driven a harder bargain (though Dickins could probably not have written that into the story at the time). At the very least, Carton and Jesus both fell in love with people who had issues.
Carton was a laywer and Jesus was a carpenter. Point: Jesus. More seriously, being a lawyer is like being a carpenter because one puts together dead trees to make useful constructions and the other should be hung from them.
Carton, by direct description in the book, was very intelligent. Jesus, by assumption, is very intelligent. All intelligent people have more things in common than this, but you wouldn't understand, dear teacher. So I shall have to unfortunately, leave it at that.
(Mostly because I should shower and get dressed and start working. But the quick exercise was too amusing to not try for 10 minutes :)
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*snerk*
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However, you would be an exceptional student. I have very few students who read for fun on their own. I work in a school district that includes all the problems of poverty, transitory families, ESL students, etc. I just want them to learn to love reading and writing.
(Having two state tests this year...is making me want to chuck all the stupid test guidance manuals in a very merry bonfire.)
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I wouldn't worry. My seventh grade English teacher was in fact quite good; she had us read Treasure Island and Bradbury's "Fever Dream," and let me choose Diana Wynne Jones' Dogsbody for a project. The O. Henry assignment was an outlier.
(Having two state tests this year...is making me want to chuck all the stupid test guidance manuals in a very merry bonfire.)
Yikes. May I ask what state you teach in?
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But for this year, it's a nightmare of testing and preparation. We all know that education is not about learning how to fill in bubbles.
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Possibly he did Shakespeare on stage and of course we can't see those...? I'm unfamiliar with his career.
Tangentially, this reminds one how evanescent stage performances are, as one feels when reading a reviewer like Andrew Porter, who appears to have vividly visionary and encyclopedic memories of all the operas he's ever seen, makes me envious; only a few minds can be so well-stocked with performances.
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Now I'm going to be depressed!
Possibly he did Shakespeare on stage and of course we can't see those...? I'm unfamiliar with his career.
I don't know. I've seen very little Marlon Brando in any medium—On the Waterfront (1954), Guys and Dolls (1956), The Godfather (1972), Superman (1978), The Freshman (1990). I know Gielgud offered him Hamlet after Julius Caesar, but he turned the role down. I should check.
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excellent Peter Sellers vehicle. I adored the bit at the end with the umbrella.
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It was the first thing I ever saw Peter Sellers in. I love it.
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I'm not sure what it is about tenth grade, cos I had a terrible English teacher then, also. My punctuation and grammar were fine until I wrote a story with politics of which she didn't approve, after which they were, apparently, terrible. My mother and my guidance counselor went to her, told her she was full of shite, offered test scores, and essentially forced her to give me a B-plus or an A-minus. I also remember her stopping a lecture on the evils of stereotyping to say "Oh, look outside. There's two metalhead kids talking. Must be a drug deal!" with absolutely no sense of irony whatesoever.
Fortunately, it was a semester course, and I got somebody else for the next semester. Who wasn't all that great--she used as examples of "slant rhyme" 16th century poetry which, at the time of writing, had been true rhyme, and her unit of "war poetry" should've been called "First World War-era anti-war poetry"--but by comparison was excellent.
Anyway, this is the version that put graffiti in Latin all over the Roman soundstages: I approve.
Brilliant!
Did I mention that I was first shown Being There (1979) as part of a high school class in semiotics? That was not in tenth grade.
I don't think I've ever heard of a high school class in semiotics before. Interesting.
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Very possible. It suffers from a cast made of cardboard except for one and a half characters, but I'm still very fond of it. Sydney Carton went into my archetype pack.
I also remember her stopping a lecture on the evils of stereotyping to say "Oh, look outside. There's two metalhead kids talking. Must be a drug deal!" with absolutely no sense of irony whatesoever.
. . . Ow.
I don't think I've ever heard of a high school class in semiotics before. Interesting.
On the whole, I had a really good high school.
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Pretty much, yes.
On the whole, I had a really good high school.
Sounds like.
Mine was one of the better ones in the area, and that was probably a sign of how low standards overall for high schools are/were. I'm told that a couple of years later they got a new superintendant who was one of those "Basics! Basics! We have to concentrate on the basics!" people and pretty much everything went to heck in a handbasket.