Crawling on one's stomach tends to produce such aberrant behavior. Perhaps Richard will stand up again some day, having forgiven himself for seeking forgiveness. He should read some Shakespeare.
Are we sure Hanania is in earnest? While I'm not a fan of the little I've seen of Hanania's writing, I would infer from his 'attempt' at imitating Shakespeare's style that his piece is meant to be some sort of parody or satire: it is too sophomoric to think it was meant to be otherwise.
It reminds me of the bit of dialogue at 1:28 of this clip from the great movie Charade:
I think Shakespeare looked into the future with Lady Macbeth- "That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to toe top-full of Direct Cruelty! Make thick my blood". Four centuries later and we have Hillary Clinton.
Hm, this is starting to look believable. Apparently Macbeth was presented to celebrate James I becoming king...after the death of Elizabeth, who was a woman in what was at the time a man's job.
Lady Macbeth as Elizabeth? Exactly the sort of un-PC thing they'd never admit these days, but quite credible.
This situation is curious because it contains such beauty and such ugliness. I wonder if someone like Eugène Delacroix would have enjoyed painting the moment when a Shakespeare Birthplace Trust scholar replaces a museum plaque.
At what point did Richard Hanania evolve into a species of attention-troll, hot-takes, “Internet Right” character? — What a shame; what a waste! (says I).
Recalling it foggily, it strike me as a rather quick transmogrification from respected-by-the-alt-right dissident to whatever the hell he is today. Makes me assume it was not so much a change of form as it was a case of "broken clock happened to be right once or twice" thing.
I don't know much about the guy but my general impression is that men change (some by happy choice, others ben-nagged into it) when their immediate family begins adding females.
Richard *sounds* deliberate and diametric enough to be in some sort of Richard Spencer situation (fed or some other form of institutional carrot & stick) but more likely he fell for the trap of the standing snake, and for a few minutes of bliss and an affirmation of manhood he got a girl pregnant and, hell, I'd go so far as to guess she may have even bore a daughter.
I noticed someone very prominent around these parts who suddenly seemed a lot less bitter about women and Jews, and my guess is that his son started dating and maybe married a Jewish girl?
I don't look too deeply into events in my own life such as whether the government tried entrapping me in a sexual situation the day I was to lead a mask burning in New York, so I sure don't care to figure out whether my yawning estimations about the lives of strangers are correct through any sort of research.
It just happens to be true that, as Steve used to point out (possibly?quoting? kissinger?) that the war of the sexes will never be resolved because there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
We live in a generation where normal masculinity is deemed toxic while female toxicity is enshrined and worshipped at every holy place, so when a boy uncouthly blabs against the girls and their cooties it's a pleasant respite, but often enough he's not just in danger of falling to the enemy but is actively seeking an offer.
Does anybody know if I'm right? Did Dick get a Chick pregnant? And entangled? And maybe even bear a daughter?
I mean, dads of girls obviously can't help but silently root for at least some aspects of feminism that they formerly opposed up to she's a teen anyway).
Heck, moms of boys in cultures where masculinity pestery is par for the course tend to get less bothered by it the more boys they have, and once their childbearing years are done and they know they aren't going to get to have the daughter they always wanted, they often become feminists most extreme opponents.
Humans ain't that hard to understand.
Speaking of Richard Spencer, I haven't heard from him lately, is he still a fed? More interestingly, is he receiving any actual carrots or just the threat of sticks?
From my series on the 10 commandments, here's my sermon on #7:
But if you're only going to watch one 10 Commandments sermon, #6 "Thou Shalt Not Murder" is by far The most important and actionable. Here's the cleanest and clearest portrayal of the Bible's ideal regarding human relationships. And before we go to war with Iran, I recommend watching and taking this very very seriously. MOST ESPECIALLY if you have any respect for the Bible at all:
Well, Walt Bismarck would be another example of your theory. (I recommend his Substack, if you have tolerance for stories of falling in and out of love with art hoes; his AI songs are pretty funny and he's actually really smart.)
It's why I figured Peter Thiel was who he was; being gay he didn't have any women to sway him to the other side.
I think he always was, he just realized being a libertarian philosemite paid better than being a white-supremacist countersemite (especially when you're not actually white).
(The line in this post starting with "To prove it," as of now appears in the quote-box but I believei is meant to Sailer's interlinear commentary and thus should outside the quote-box.)
The Hanania lines attacking Shakespeare, unlinked, is from: "Shakespeare is Fake," by Richard Hanania, Oct 9, 2023.
Hanania is a stereotypical angry levantine but this is profitable for him because he is basically a natural born troll and that generates engagement. Same with Taleb.
There is probably an "HBD" (ethnic/racial/cultural) factor to the kind of person willing/able to BE an "engagement troll." The rates will vary by group.
What you see with people like Hanania is, often, a pollution of the commons that NW-Europeans would much more seldom be willing to do. Although we assuredly have such people too, historically they have not at all set the agenda or the norms.
Engagement-trolls, in that sense, are parasites off of high-trust informal institutions/commons, which a million Richard Hananias could never, among themselves, build.
Speaking of great. I think the great irony here is that the hostile elite are too busy attacking Shakespeare that they either are not reading him, or don't fully understand what he's written.
What am I talking about? His tragedies. Specifically, how the hostile elite are a living, breathing, albeit mediocre and stupid, in your face version of what his tragedies were all about. How so? Well....
All of his tragedies have to do with the extinction of a ruling family, individual, or group, and the establishment of a new dynasty or ruler.
And the cause is that the ruling order is infected by a socio-moral illness that spreads throughout the kingdom, and this moral infection is mentioned early on in each of those plays ("Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.").
The infection is so bad that health can not be restored until the kingdom is wiped out (Hamlet) or the rulers are destroyed (e.g. Coriolanus and Othello).
And all of this is presented by Shakespeare, not made up by me, as is the case in the annoying "our interpreation = the truth" take on him by the elite.
In any event, and as Steve said, Shakespeare is loved throughout the world. Perhaps the hostile elite's growing, mid-witted awareness of what Shakespeare's tragedies are really all about, coupled with the fact that he's loved throughout the world, is the real source of their current malaise. It very well may be.
In that case, no wonder they want to decolonize Shakespeare.
I kind of enjoy it. Last I read him about a year ago he was an absolute total ass. he literally didn't give a shit if people died if they weren't meritocratically capable of keeping up with the capitalistic system he was as anti-human and comfortable in his elitist status as anybody could be I feel like now he's getting his just desserts and it's a pleasure to watch. I mean of course I prefer that he reform and simply start caring about all human beings instead of just fighting this side or that side and he'll be happier that way and I'll be happy or for his sake as well. but as long as he insists on warfare he was once an absolute douche of a rich confident don't give a shit about poor people kind of human being of the ugliest sort and to see him now sucking trannies is a bit of schadenfreude that I don't think the Lord would mind.
All the theater kids I happen to know seem like the people who only quote Shakespeare to sound sophisticated. They don't appear to have any real reverence or emotional attachment to Shakespeare's plays, and they only seem interested in parodying or "deconstructing" his work.
I think the small-town theater kids love the chance to dress up in fancy costumes and use fancy words. (Not sarcastic; this is a fundamental human need fulfilled in our culture by Shakespeare.)
The big-city ones have to sound cool so they deconstruct him.
I could copy Shakespeare’s style and produce something just as appealing …
Even if true, copying is far less impressive than originating. New art forms emerge and the originators have the advantage of novelty. People love surprises but learn new tricks quickly so if you are the follow on generation, copying the originators, you'd better bring greater skill and polish and maybe add a few tricks and conventions of your own.
For the movie "Almost Famous" someone wrote a bunch of original songs that sounded like plausible good examples of music from that great era...but they weren't so even I enjoyed them in the context of the film, I don't play them on Spotify years later.
But seriously Richard, if you don't like an art form in the first place, why would you assume you grok it well enough to make your own good version of it?
The claim in and of itself is disqualifying for anyone with any exposure to the works of Shakespeare. I fear that what allows Hanania to exist is the fact that well, most people born in this century do not have that exposure. They aren't being taught why and how to appreciate genius.
I don't think anybody should have to be taught anything in fact I wish literacy or something earned rather than something forced into people The internet shows us that universal literacy is actually quite terrible does anyone think that in the world of universal literacy the Bible could have been written or that HL Mencken could have been published by anyone anywhere?
remember the opening to Huckleberry Finn the first few lines on their own page introducing Huckleberry Finn?
he foresaw the evils that were to come but even he couldn't have guessed that they'd be teaching it in schools I'm pretty damn sure that if he came back alive today he would engage in a series of school shootings just to get people to stop teaching Huckleberry Finn in school.
Shakespeare should be fun and the people who are genuinely into him should be into him because they enjoy him not cuz they're getting paid for it then we won't have any problem trusting them that he's smart and if we ourselves want to give it a go then we will.
You can live out your days in a sleepy provincial town two days’ ride from London never dreaming much of the future British Empire and four hundred years later strangers will drive into town and tell you you need to be decolonized.
"But, there wouldn’t be much reason to go to Stratford if Shakespeare were merely “part of a community of equal and different writers and artists from around the world.”"
Steve really says the most obvious thing ever - that the revealed preference of people the world over gives the game away in terms of what people think of Bill S, no matter what the decolonial people say. In fact, in my two score and change years on Earth, I cannot think of anyone really proposing an alternative to the idea that Shakespeare was the best, they just occasionally come up with theories that the identity of the person known as Shakespeare was in fact someone else.
At any rate, it appears to me that the era of whites apologizing for their achievements is coming to a close. We aren't there yet, but in daily life I see/hear more people willing to openly stand up for their civilizational heritage and that's going to pick up steam. The people that sought to dilute white influence through immigration and scary tales about whites being obsessed with their identity are actually going to make that happen.
I was an English major as an undergrad, back in the first wave of political correctness and deconstruction in the 1980s. There was a frenzy then of 'theorists' ripping apart lesser authors for their -isms, but Shakespeare was still too exalted for these midwit ankle-gnawers to reach.
In the years since then, Shakespeare has cruised the literary seas as the haters' white whale: if they can bring him down, then they will feel like they've won.
My impression is that attempts to storm the bastion of the Bard's genius have still not been as successful as the assaults on most other historical white male authors, but the haters have made gains via treachery and back-door maneuvering, e.g. quietly removing Shakespeare requirements for English majors, reducing students' exposure to his works on the grounds of the difficulty of his language, pushing English majors into studying modern/contemporary authors, and so on.
The story Steve has linked is an example of a common recent mode of attack; it's guilt by association, which essentially means striking off whole periods of literature because at that time icky things happened.
Anyway, let's see how it goes. If they can still bring down Shakespeare at this point, then they've still got the upper hand.
Darwin's work was applied widely and brutally in late 19th-century colonial and expansionist contexts, e.g. the sweeping aside of the Plains Indians in the 1870s to 1890s. He's therefore wide open to canceling, given the far more flimsy grounds on which others have been dismissed. But his usefulness contra orthodox Christianity has been his superpower -- I think this has protected him more than Galton has, although there certainly has been a sort of good cop/bad cop dynamic.
These days materialist/rationalist arguments against Christians are old hat, though; Team Cancel may well be coming for Darwin soon.
A big part of what keeps Shakespeare afloat in those circles is that he wrote great parts for women. There aren’t a lot of other great dramatists who did, so girls need Shakespeare. Thus so far it’s been more profitable to apply interpretative lenses to Shakespeare’s writings, even though many seem like dead ends (eg, queer perspectives in Shakespeare).
I have a hard time believing that Shakespeare was the best just simply because I know how little I know about the era I mean if all I'm being shown is Shakespeare then it's really hard for me to judge whether he really was the best in his time or not I mean presumably he was just based on the facts of his life but if the were a couple of plays and other writings put out in his day that were not actually superior to his writings that would be quite a shock. Don't get me wrong is ouvre is of course monumental and it could certainly be that you know judging that against anyone else's that he wins but I'm certain that in his day there were a number of extraordinary books and presumably plays that were superior to at least some of his writings.
was actually really really odd is reading his place instead of watching them I mean it's torturous and mean and it makes people not like it.
If you've ever watched a live Titus andronicus you do not forget Aaron the Moore.
And If you're in a relationship with a girl and it isn't a beatific relationship then you really don't have to employ all that much intellect to have strong visceral responses as you watch the taming of the shrew.
but reading a movie? I mean that's just crap.
mostly they do it for reading these days because it's rare it's almost unseen for anybody to actually care to truly get into the mind of the characters. One of the coen brothers that a black and white of Hamlet I think it was and I quit a few minutes in once I realized that at least that part that I was watching Denzel was definitely reading either reading on q cards or reading it from his head but he wasn't actually speaking the words he wasn't actually the character and I was like this is crap I don't give a shit. and otherwise I think the coens Are my absolutely favorite movie makers That's literally the only one that I didn't finish. out of curiosity have the two of them together come out with anything since buster Scruggs?
I mean those guys have really done some incredible incredible things I hope that they're still working together and coming out with something good. We really need them too.
they literally haven't made a single bad movie. inside lewyn Davis isn't my kind of thing but I still watched it twice. and intolerable cruelty is basically crap because it's a rom-com but if you're going to compare it to any other rom-com it's a world-class rom-com.
And there's nobody else who does what they do. I saw today there's another movie coming out by that Wes Anderson guy and I really can't wait to not see it. Wes Anderson is oversaturated awakwardness and depression for people who are too stupid or too autistic to distinguish them from Coen movies. Real cheap knockoffs.
I mean, shit, does any other auteur or frauteur have a shelf that includes Hudsucker, Fargo, Serious, Caesar, Buster, Lebowski, O Brother, and Raising Arizona?
No complaints on the other ones (it's popular to boo the ladykillers - watch it again. It's a ROLLICKIN' fun ride) but each of the ones I mentioned are just perfect pictures of immense beauty.
Who knew Richard Hanannia is such an ass?
Crawling on one's stomach tends to produce such aberrant behavior. Perhaps Richard will stand up again some day, having forgiven himself for seeking forgiveness. He should read some Shakespeare.
Probably because once I clicked on one of his posts) Hanania consistently shows up in my X feed. There are many who realize what he is.
I did. And if you pine for something even worse than his prose, I recommend you listen to his poscast and hear him speak!
Are we sure Hanania is in earnest? While I'm not a fan of the little I've seen of Hanania's writing, I would infer from his 'attempt' at imitating Shakespeare's style that his piece is meant to be some sort of parody or satire: it is too sophomoric to think it was meant to be otherwise.
It reminds me of the bit of dialogue at 1:28 of this clip from the great movie Charade:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgsst15iI2k
Didn’t seem like it, but maybe.
I think Shakespeare looked into the future with Lady Macbeth- "That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to toe top-full of Direct Cruelty! Make thick my blood". Four centuries later and we have Hillary Clinton.
Ha- they had 'em back then too. People don't change that much. Shakespeare clearly knew such broads in real life.
Such as the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I.
Hm, this is starting to look believable. Apparently Macbeth was presented to celebrate James I becoming king...after the death of Elizabeth, who was a woman in what was at the time a man's job.
Lady Macbeth as Elizabeth? Exactly the sort of un-PC thing they'd never admit these days, but quite credible.
Elizabeth had bumped off her rival to the crown, Mary Queen of Scots, who was James’s mother.
OK. That's so fricking obvious and would have totally been in the heads of an English audience at the time. Yeah, she's supposed to be Elizabeth.
The Bard gets the Hidden Figures treatment.
The Hair composers scrambled up the words, but I can't help using their tune for the Hamlet speech.
When my sister drove up to Scotland in '83, it hit 90 deg and she got a sunburn hanging her elbow out the car window.
This situation is curious because it contains such beauty and such ugliness. I wonder if someone like Eugène Delacroix would have enjoyed painting the moment when a Shakespeare Birthplace Trust scholar replaces a museum plaque.
What is Richard Hanania's “game”?
At what point did Richard Hanania evolve into a species of attention-troll, hot-takes, “Internet Right” character? — What a shame; what a waste! (says I).
Recalling it foggily, it strike me as a rather quick transmogrification from respected-by-the-alt-right dissident to whatever the hell he is today. Makes me assume it was not so much a change of form as it was a case of "broken clock happened to be right once or twice" thing.
Richard Hanania married a Korean woman of middling type, who is attached to an elite California university.
I don't know when, exactly; I also don't know how that fact ties into any of his metamorphosis.
A lot of questions one encounters are actually cloaked variants of that ancient riddle: "Chicken or egg"?
I don't know much about the guy but my general impression is that men change (some by happy choice, others ben-nagged into it) when their immediate family begins adding females.
Richard *sounds* deliberate and diametric enough to be in some sort of Richard Spencer situation (fed or some other form of institutional carrot & stick) but more likely he fell for the trap of the standing snake, and for a few minutes of bliss and an affirmation of manhood he got a girl pregnant and, hell, I'd go so far as to guess she may have even bore a daughter.
I noticed someone very prominent around these parts who suddenly seemed a lot less bitter about women and Jews, and my guess is that his son started dating and maybe married a Jewish girl?
I don't look too deeply into events in my own life such as whether the government tried entrapping me in a sexual situation the day I was to lead a mask burning in New York, so I sure don't care to figure out whether my yawning estimations about the lives of strangers are correct through any sort of research.
It just happens to be true that, as Steve used to point out (possibly?quoting? kissinger?) that the war of the sexes will never be resolved because there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
We live in a generation where normal masculinity is deemed toxic while female toxicity is enshrined and worshipped at every holy place, so when a boy uncouthly blabs against the girls and their cooties it's a pleasant respite, but often enough he's not just in danger of falling to the enemy but is actively seeking an offer.
Does anybody know if I'm right? Did Dick get a Chick pregnant? And entangled? And maybe even bear a daughter?
I mean, dads of girls obviously can't help but silently root for at least some aspects of feminism that they formerly opposed up to she's a teen anyway).
Heck, moms of boys in cultures where masculinity pestery is par for the course tend to get less bothered by it the more boys they have, and once their childbearing years are done and they know they aren't going to get to have the daughter they always wanted, they often become feminists most extreme opponents.
Humans ain't that hard to understand.
Speaking of Richard Spencer, I haven't heard from him lately, is he still a fed? More interestingly, is he receiving any actual carrots or just the threat of sticks?
From my series on the 10 commandments, here's my sermon on #7:
https://youtu.be/gztT47LlpUg
For a fuller view of the issue of family life, you might enjoy watching #5 too:
https://youtu.be/CNgEnnCJTAc
But if you're only going to watch one 10 Commandments sermon, #6 "Thou Shalt Not Murder" is by far The most important and actionable. Here's the cleanest and clearest portrayal of the Bible's ideal regarding human relationships. And before we go to war with Iran, I recommend watching and taking this very very seriously. MOST ESPECIALLY if you have any respect for the Bible at all:
https://youtu.be/pp7OL1kQ5-M
Well, Walt Bismarck would be another example of your theory. (I recommend his Substack, if you have tolerance for stories of falling in and out of love with art hoes; his AI songs are pretty funny and he's actually really smart.)
It's why I figured Peter Thiel was who he was; being gay he didn't have any women to sway him to the other side.
I think he always was, he just realized being a libertarian philosemite paid better than being a white-supremacist countersemite (especially when you're not actually white).
(The line in this post starting with "To prove it," as of now appears in the quote-box but I believei is meant to Sailer's interlinear commentary and thus should outside the quote-box.)
The Hanania lines attacking Shakespeare, unlinked, is from: "Shakespeare is Fake," by Richard Hanania, Oct 9, 2023.
Is it already Peak Woke under Sir Keir Two-Tier Starmer? Or is it going to get even worse?
I don't believe there to be a bottom. Things will only get worse unless neutralized by some stronger force.
But Konstantin Kisin said that the woke left is deader than dead!
The Undead lol
And no one but the pathologically gullible and incurably ignorant believe him.
Hanania is a stereotypical angry levantine but this is profitable for him because he is basically a natural born troll and that generates engagement. Same with Taleb.
There is probably an "HBD" (ethnic/racial/cultural) factor to the kind of person willing/able to BE an "engagement troll." The rates will vary by group.
What you see with people like Hanania is, often, a pollution of the commons that NW-Europeans would much more seldom be willing to do. Although we assuredly have such people too, historically they have not at all set the agenda or the norms.
Engagement-trolls, in that sense, are parasites off of high-trust informal institutions/commons, which a million Richard Hananias could never, among themselves, build.
Great comment! Thanks!
Speaking of great. I think the great irony here is that the hostile elite are too busy attacking Shakespeare that they either are not reading him, or don't fully understand what he's written.
What am I talking about? His tragedies. Specifically, how the hostile elite are a living, breathing, albeit mediocre and stupid, in your face version of what his tragedies were all about. How so? Well....
All of his tragedies have to do with the extinction of a ruling family, individual, or group, and the establishment of a new dynasty or ruler.
And the cause is that the ruling order is infected by a socio-moral illness that spreads throughout the kingdom, and this moral infection is mentioned early on in each of those plays ("Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.").
The infection is so bad that health can not be restored until the kingdom is wiped out (Hamlet) or the rulers are destroyed (e.g. Coriolanus and Othello).
And all of this is presented by Shakespeare, not made up by me, as is the case in the annoying "our interpreation = the truth" take on him by the elite.
In any event, and as Steve said, Shakespeare is loved throughout the world. Perhaps the hostile elite's growing, mid-witted awareness of what Shakespeare's tragedies are really all about, coupled with the fact that he's loved throughout the world, is the real source of their current malaise. It very well may be.
In that case, no wonder they want to decolonize Shakespeare.
I enjoy it when you mock Hanania, but I also think it is beneath you.
Hanania is the kind of shock comedian who rolls in dung.
His behavior is disgusting, but if you comment on it then he wins.
https://youtu.be/cuosN3N1ex0
I kind of enjoy it. Last I read him about a year ago he was an absolute total ass. he literally didn't give a shit if people died if they weren't meritocratically capable of keeping up with the capitalistic system he was as anti-human and comfortable in his elitist status as anybody could be I feel like now he's getting his just desserts and it's a pleasure to watch. I mean of course I prefer that he reform and simply start caring about all human beings instead of just fighting this side or that side and he'll be happier that way and I'll be happy or for his sake as well. but as long as he insists on warfare he was once an absolute douche of a rich confident don't give a shit about poor people kind of human being of the ugliest sort and to see him now sucking trannies is a bit of schadenfreude that I don't think the Lord would mind.
"All over the world, theater kids love Shakespeare."
Nah- All over the world, theater kids claim to love Shakespeare.
All the theater kids I happen to know seem like the people who only quote Shakespeare to sound sophisticated. They don't appear to have any real reverence or emotional attachment to Shakespeare's plays, and they only seem interested in parodying or "deconstructing" his work.
I think the small-town theater kids love the chance to dress up in fancy costumes and use fancy words. (Not sarcastic; this is a fundamental human need fulfilled in our culture by Shakespeare.)
The big-city ones have to sound cool so they deconstruct him.
I could copy Shakespeare’s style and produce something just as appealing …
Even if true, copying is far less impressive than originating. New art forms emerge and the originators have the advantage of novelty. People love surprises but learn new tricks quickly so if you are the follow on generation, copying the originators, you'd better bring greater skill and polish and maybe add a few tricks and conventions of your own.
For the movie "Almost Famous" someone wrote a bunch of original songs that sounded like plausible good examples of music from that great era...but they weren't so even I enjoyed them in the context of the film, I don't play them on Spotify years later.
But seriously Richard, if you don't like an art form in the first place, why would you assume you grok it well enough to make your own good version of it?
The claim in and of itself is disqualifying for anyone with any exposure to the works of Shakespeare. I fear that what allows Hanania to exist is the fact that well, most people born in this century do not have that exposure. They aren't being taught why and how to appreciate genius.
I don't think anybody should have to be taught anything in fact I wish literacy or something earned rather than something forced into people The internet shows us that universal literacy is actually quite terrible does anyone think that in the world of universal literacy the Bible could have been written or that HL Mencken could have been published by anyone anywhere?
remember the opening to Huckleberry Finn the first few lines on their own page introducing Huckleberry Finn?
he foresaw the evils that were to come but even he couldn't have guessed that they'd be teaching it in schools I'm pretty damn sure that if he came back alive today he would engage in a series of school shootings just to get people to stop teaching Huckleberry Finn in school.
Shakespeare should be fun and the people who are genuinely into him should be into him because they enjoy him not cuz they're getting paid for it then we won't have any problem trusting them that he's smart and if we ourselves want to give it a go then we will.
Ummmm... What?
You can live out your days in a sleepy provincial town two days’ ride from London never dreaming much of the future British Empire and four hundred years later strangers will drive into town and tell you you need to be decolonized.
"But, there wouldn’t be much reason to go to Stratford if Shakespeare were merely “part of a community of equal and different writers and artists from around the world.”"
That, sir, is entirely the point.
Steve really says the most obvious thing ever - that the revealed preference of people the world over gives the game away in terms of what people think of Bill S, no matter what the decolonial people say. In fact, in my two score and change years on Earth, I cannot think of anyone really proposing an alternative to the idea that Shakespeare was the best, they just occasionally come up with theories that the identity of the person known as Shakespeare was in fact someone else.
At any rate, it appears to me that the era of whites apologizing for their achievements is coming to a close. We aren't there yet, but in daily life I see/hear more people willing to openly stand up for their civilizational heritage and that's going to pick up steam. The people that sought to dilute white influence through immigration and scary tales about whites being obsessed with their identity are actually going to make that happen.
I hope you're right.
I was an English major as an undergrad, back in the first wave of political correctness and deconstruction in the 1980s. There was a frenzy then of 'theorists' ripping apart lesser authors for their -isms, but Shakespeare was still too exalted for these midwit ankle-gnawers to reach.
In the years since then, Shakespeare has cruised the literary seas as the haters' white whale: if they can bring him down, then they will feel like they've won.
My impression is that attempts to storm the bastion of the Bard's genius have still not been as successful as the assaults on most other historical white male authors, but the haters have made gains via treachery and back-door maneuvering, e.g. quietly removing Shakespeare requirements for English majors, reducing students' exposure to his works on the grounds of the difficulty of his language, pushing English majors into studying modern/contemporary authors, and so on.
The story Steve has linked is an example of a common recent mode of attack; it's guilt by association, which essentially means striking off whole periods of literature because at that time icky things happened.
Anyway, let's see how it goes. If they can still bring down Shakespeare at this point, then they've still got the upper hand.
The Big Four Dead White English Males are Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin, and Churchill.
Darwin would be in big trouble for his Race Science if he didn't have his cousin Galton to take the abuse for him.
Interesting choices.
Darwin's work was applied widely and brutally in late 19th-century colonial and expansionist contexts, e.g. the sweeping aside of the Plains Indians in the 1870s to 1890s. He's therefore wide open to canceling, given the far more flimsy grounds on which others have been dismissed. But his usefulness contra orthodox Christianity has been his superpower -- I think this has protected him more than Galton has, although there certainly has been a sort of good cop/bad cop dynamic.
These days materialist/rationalist arguments against Christians are old hat, though; Team Cancel may well be coming for Darwin soon.
I feel like Churchill is going down next. Too right-wing for the left by far, and the right no longer has warm fuzzies for Europe or the UK.
You could always claim Newton as asexual. And there's all the rumors about Shakespeare being bi.
A big part of what keeps Shakespeare afloat in those circles is that he wrote great parts for women. There aren’t a lot of other great dramatists who did, so girls need Shakespeare. Thus so far it’s been more profitable to apply interpretative lenses to Shakespeare’s writings, even though many seem like dead ends (eg, queer perspectives in Shakespeare).
I have a hard time believing that Shakespeare was the best just simply because I know how little I know about the era I mean if all I'm being shown is Shakespeare then it's really hard for me to judge whether he really was the best in his time or not I mean presumably he was just based on the facts of his life but if the were a couple of plays and other writings put out in his day that were not actually superior to his writings that would be quite a shock. Don't get me wrong is ouvre is of course monumental and it could certainly be that you know judging that against anyone else's that he wins but I'm certain that in his day there were a number of extraordinary books and presumably plays that were superior to at least some of his writings.
was actually really really odd is reading his place instead of watching them I mean it's torturous and mean and it makes people not like it.
If you've ever watched a live Titus andronicus you do not forget Aaron the Moore.
And If you're in a relationship with a girl and it isn't a beatific relationship then you really don't have to employ all that much intellect to have strong visceral responses as you watch the taming of the shrew.
but reading a movie? I mean that's just crap.
mostly they do it for reading these days because it's rare it's almost unseen for anybody to actually care to truly get into the mind of the characters. One of the coen brothers that a black and white of Hamlet I think it was and I quit a few minutes in once I realized that at least that part that I was watching Denzel was definitely reading either reading on q cards or reading it from his head but he wasn't actually speaking the words he wasn't actually the character and I was like this is crap I don't give a shit. and otherwise I think the coens Are my absolutely favorite movie makers That's literally the only one that I didn't finish. out of curiosity have the two of them together come out with anything since buster Scruggs?
I mean those guys have really done some incredible incredible things I hope that they're still working together and coming out with something good. We really need them too.
they literally haven't made a single bad movie. inside lewyn Davis isn't my kind of thing but I still watched it twice. and intolerable cruelty is basically crap because it's a rom-com but if you're going to compare it to any other rom-com it's a world-class rom-com.
And there's nobody else who does what they do. I saw today there's another movie coming out by that Wes Anderson guy and I really can't wait to not see it. Wes Anderson is oversaturated awakwardness and depression for people who are too stupid or too autistic to distinguish them from Coen movies. Real cheap knockoffs.
I mean, shit, does any other auteur or frauteur have a shelf that includes Hudsucker, Fargo, Serious, Caesar, Buster, Lebowski, O Brother, and Raising Arizona?
No complaints on the other ones (it's popular to boo the ladykillers - watch it again. It's a ROLLICKIN' fun ride) but each of the ones I mentioned are just perfect pictures of immense beauty.
Oh and Barton Fink of course.
https://youtube.com/shorts/QmRD27JyvGU