Richard III in motorcycle leather

From this IU production of Richard III:
http://www.indiana.edu/~thtr/productions/2012/richardiii.shtml

For the productions I've seen for this class, I seem to chronically pick bad seats (see Don Giovanni: Not the kind of transport Cavell experienced). I spent most of Richard III looking straight down at the actors, who never acknowledged that some of their audience was above them.

Two things I noticed about Richard III that have to do with our discussions and readings:

1. Very clear (sometimes obtrusive) use of dramaturgy. I noticed this most in the political ads on the small screens before the play started and at the end of the play when Elizabeth came onto the balcony in full Tudor regalia. And, of course, in the leather jackets.

2. Intrusion of the actors' bodies. I call this an intrusion only because it seemed to jump out at specific moments rather than being an integral part of the production. Richard's limp and the costuming of his leg and arm necessarily drew attention to the actor's body when he moved quickly or referenced them in the play. Also, the moment when Anne spit on Richard and he licked his fingers jolted me out of thinking of them as characters into thinking of them as actors and bodies.

Notes on Crane

"Early modern concepts of performance include embodied, non-representational aspects of drama as well as its implication in discursive systems." -Mary Crane, "What Was Performance?", p. 171

"[Exercise] gestures toward a prediscursive kinesthetic form of learning that need not necessarily bear a representational or ideological force." -p.172

"What kind of transformative experience might a play provide for an audience if it is not a conventionally moral one?" -p. 180

These quotes interest me because they suggest that embodied, kinesthetic physicality might be one way to effect transport without "insisting on sameness as a criterion of worth" (Davis, "Theatricality and Civil Society in Theatricality).

Hollywood casting and Hodgdon's "Replicating Richard"

"How does this 'actor's body' become the bearer of texts, of social as well as theatrical histories? How does it become susceptible to meanings? How does 'character' get revisited in relation to the body of a specific actor, inviting spectators to engage in a negotiation between actor and character? And how does that double body function as a locus for a spectator's imaginative desire to reperform the role?" -Barbara Hodgdon, "Replicating Richard: Body Doubles, Body Politics"

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Spock

http://www.eonline.com/news/364526/

Today I'm mostly interested in this question as it might apply to casting decisions for film, which are becoming more and more a topic of online debate as the casting process becomes more public for big films and remakes have also suddenly popped up everywhere. How much is our perception of the character tied to the actor's body, and how is that complicated when a famous movie role (which, unlike a role in a play, is strongly associated with one particular body) is remade using another actor? The publicity of the casting decision for Katniss in The Hunger Games, for instance, results in a ghosting of different actress who might have been chosen instead of Jennifer Lawrence, and the character of Spock has subtly changed for me because the body representing him is now that of Zachary Quinto rather than Leonard Nimoy.

Nine Actresses Who Were Almost Katniss:
http://www.hollywood.com/news/Hunger_Games_9_Actresses_Who_Were_Almost_Katniss/21459748

The Antisyzygy of Black Watch

"The literature [of Scotland] is the literature of a small country...in this shortness and cohesion the most favourable of conditions seem to be offered for a making of a general estimate. But on the other hand, we find at closer scanning that the cohesion at least in formal expression and in choice of material is only apparent, that the literature is remarkably varied, and that it becomes, under the stress of foreign influence, almost a zigzag of contradictions. The antithesis need not, however, disconcert us. Perhaps in the very combination of opposites--what either of the two Thomases, of Norwich and Cromarty, might have been willing to call 'the Caledonian antisyzygy'--we have a reflection of the contrasts which the Scot shows at every turn, in his political and ecclesiastical history, in his polemical restlessness, in his adaptability, which is another way of saying that he has made allowance for new conditions, in his practival judgement, which is the admission that two sides of the matter have been considered. If therefore, Scottish history and life are, as an old northern writer said of something else, "varied with a clean contrair spirit," we need not be surprised to find that in his literature the Scot presents two aspects which appear contradictory. Oxymoron was ever the bravest figure, and we must not forget that disorderly order is order after all."
-G. Gregory Smith, Scottish Literature: Character and Influence, 1919

This essay introduced into Scottish literary studies the idea of antisyzygy, which has never entirely left it since. Maureen Martin defined it as "the idea of dueling polarities within one entity," and I might define it as an internalized paradox necessary to the formation of an identity. In my seminar course on Middle Scots Poets with Michael Adams, this idea has come up frequently and been one of the guiding principles in evaluating how Scottish identity is constructed in literature.

"The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy" is my favorite piece of Scottish literature, and it typifies this antisyzygy neatly. I have never read anything that is simultaneously so artfully constructed and so bawdy. Here is an excerpt of the poem, just to give you an idea of its rollicking nature:

Iersche brybour baird, vyle beggar with thy brattis,
Cuntbittin crawdoun Kennedy, coward of kynd,
Evill-farit and dryit as Denseman on the rattis,
Lyk as the gleddis had on thy gulesnowt dynd,
Mismaid monstour, ilk mone owt of thy mynd,
Renunce, rebald, thy ryming, thow bot royis.
Thy trechour tung has tane ane Heland strynd,
Ane Lawland ers wald make a bettir noyis...

Mauch mutton, byt buttoun, peilit gluttoun, air to Hilhous,
Rank beggar, ostir dregar, flay fleggar in the flet.
Chittirlilling, ruch rilling, lik shilling in the milhous,
Baird rehator, theif of nator, fals tratour, feyindis gett,
Filling of tauch, rak sauch--cry crauch, thow art oursett!
Muttoun dryver, girnall ryver, yadswyver, fowll fell thee!
Heretyk, lunatyk, purspyk, carlingis pet,
Rottin crok, dirtin dok--cry cok, or I sall quell thee!

-from TEAMS edition, William Dunbar: The Complete Works, ed. John Conlee

The production we saw of Black Watch had a few qualities in common with this poem. One was clearly the free use of expletives and insults, but another, I think, was the enactment of antisyzygy. In the poem, the antisyzygy takes the form of Highland versus Lowland, each insulting the other but both together forming a cohesive whole. In the play, the antisyzygy involves a simultaneous desire to glorify the history of Scotland at war and to expose it as anything but glorious.

But these dueling polarities aren't as well integrated into the whole of Black Watch as they are in "The Flyting," and at the end, the play fell back into military-movie tropes of brotherhood and solidarity and marching on in the face of defeat. One of the most successful parts of the play was the letter-reading scene and its paired ten-seconds-of-fighting scene, both of which involved dance. Together they captured something about the mix of emotions that must be involved in being a soldier in Iraq. But the least successful scene in the play was when the officer tries to convince the main character to remain in the army. After starting out so strongly, the play reverted back to a stereotypical exchange that boils down to this: "Son, what the army needs is a few good men like you." "I'm sorry, sir, but my buddy's death has made me embittered and cynical." Black Watch can't sustain its portrayal of antisyzygy, possibly because it doesn't address the problem of specifically Scottish military problems directly enough.

The Archive Calls

There is just something about a very old book. It's different from any other kind of artifact--it evokes the sacredness of a church, the authority of a crown, the personality of an artist, and the humanity of a pair of shoes. You can see its richness and beauty, but you can also see shadows of the person who wrote it, the person who read it. This is certainly true of the beautiful illuminated medieval manuscripts that we looked at for our group blog post in the Lilly Library, but for me it is also true of my set of Dickens novels that used to belong to my grandfather.

Pictures from Sara Taylor:
http://writingperformance.blogspot.com/2012/10/group-blog-post-andrea-iris-jenna-sara.html

This assignment has reminded me again how much I love books--not just the ideas they contain or the theoretical approaches they support, but the physical books themselves. I think it has to do with my image of the scholar, which is, predictably, tied to medievalism. If I were to imagine the ideal image of scholarship, it would probably look something like this:

http://www.news.hypercrit.net/2012/08/10/poring-over-the-meaning-of-pore-over/

And while on some levels that idealized image is a problem that I'll need to grow beyond at some point, on another level that image informs me about what really calls to me in this profession and where my interests truly lie. I enjoyed looking at the Book of Hours and thinking about the theoretical applications of performativity to the manuscript, but I would much prefer to lock myself up alone with such a book for weeks on end, learning its old language and deciphering its script, maybe someday recovering something from it that no one has been able to read or understand for a thousand years. To me, the call of the archive is a powerful one, and during this project it has been helpful to realize more precisely why.