Some Thoughts on Those in the Out-Club

I have seen a few stories on the "interesting" stories on the controversy surrounding the criticism of the Emmy nominations. The fact is that certain groups of white and Mestizo voices including the Hispanic Caucus criticized the Emmys for having no Latino representation. The problem is that Latinos HAVE been represented in not only nominations, but have won...but those people are Afro-Latinos aka they black. For all the talks of "La Raza" and mestizaje and "racial democracy" coming out of Latin America and the Latino community in the United States, the facts-on-the-ground have finally come to the surface and like here in the USA, black folks in and of Latin America aren't considered legitimate. I watched a talk a few weeks ago called Centering Blackness in Afrolatinidad in which Afro-Latinos talked about their experience with being Afro-Latinos in Latin America and the United States and their thoughts on Latinidad. At one point they talk about something that I had wondered about. I had for years noticed that certain Afrolatinos, specifically those living in South America would refer to themselves as, besides Negro (the Spanish word for black), Afrodesciende which means Afro-descended in English or just Afro. The fact of the matter is the long obviousness that the white-mestizo polity in Latin America sees black people as legitimate to "la "raza" as white anglos see African-Americans as "Americans". These speakers of the online discussion said they don't accept Latinidad because Latinidad has made it clear that it doesn't accept them. So while they use the term as a matter of convenience and a historical/academic place-name (which I can certainly understand), the Latino part is simply not as relevant in a positive way to them.

African-Americans have long shared the spoils of hard-fought gains with others of the African diaspora like Afrolatinos for the fact that "their" supposed co-ethnics feel no need to do so and this is one of the clear examples of that. Seeing Afro-Latinos or the Afrodesciende people of Latin America raise their voices in the digital age has been an experience. The tradition of erasure in the Spanish-speaking world is coming undone and I am glad to bare witness to it.

My Review of Dragon Inn '龍門客棧' (1967) directed by King Hu

A year has passed since the release of King Hu's blockbuster success at Shaw Brothers and two years since he had left Shaw Brothers Studio and went to Taiwan and co-founded  his own studio to produce his next two films in Taiwan. This was the Taiwan still under the autocratic rule of the KMT, so it was surprising that his next two films focuses specifically on the cruelty of unchecked state-power.

In the run-up to the making of this film, Hong Kong and much of the world was caught-up in the exploits of a British spy called James Bond. Hu went to the movies and watched these films and was disturbed by what he saw and by what these movies implied in glorifying secret security organizations. As someone who had know life with both the KMT dictatorship and the colonial British authorities (including MI5) in Hong Kong, he saw no reason to praise them. Hu decides to make this film and A Touch of Zen (1971), in-part, as a criticism of the racist copaganda of the Bond franchise--using the Ming China secret police organization called the East Chamber (or Eastern Depot) Group (Dōng Chǎng in pinyin). This organization was suppose to be loyal only to the emperor, but was in-practice ran by eunuchs and corrupt officials in the Ming Court (according to this movie's own dating, the events here take place in 1457 in the last year of the reign of the Jingtai Emperor).

The opening of this film sees a family of a wrongly-purged Ming official being banished to the frontier of the country in exile. They are all attacked by agents of the East Chamber Group who have decided that they are too much of a liability to be left alive. The kids and guards are saved at the last moment by our first protagonists: two mysterious siblings who repel the assassins. Meanwhile, the other members of the East Chamber Group brutally commandeer the titular Dragon Inn and go out looking for the kids. Just after that  we met another protagonist: a mysterious man in all white.

This second of the King Hu "trilogy" (along with Come Drink With Me (1966) & A Touch of Zen (1971)) carries over the Chinese Opera and Japanese martial arts cinema influence, but the music score is now incorporating Western music along with the Chinese Opera (specifically Beijing Opera) motifs and incidental music. The cinematography and the fight choreography has taken a big step up from where it was in Come Drink With Me (1966) The use of Taiwan's landscape and the costume design (which King Hu personally assisted with) are taken full advantage of. Hu wanted his first movie post-SB to count (and it would)!

This film took the Wuxia genre to another level (and it would have it's climax in Hu's next film). The fight choreography of Han Ying-jie is amazing and the fact that all of the protagonists are of near-equal strength to each other as fighters gives the action a special touch. Of course with hero protagonists this good, the villain antagonists have to bring it--and they do. The East Chamber Group are no slouches; unlike other martial arts and action films in-general, King Hu films do not like red shirts. The rank-and-file henchman are strong and if they have speaking roles they are really strong. The second and third in command are very formidable, but the big bad is possibly the strongest villain of any King Hu film. He is nigh-invincible and the heroes have to throw everything they have at him.

Another theme that comes into the movie after the halfway-point is racism. The Ming Dynasty saw China renew its territorial expansion into the Muslim Turkic frontier while fighting-off the former Mongol Yuans. All of this is playing in the background of the events of this movie. Two Turkic soldiers who were castrated (standard practice of the Ming) and forcibly-conscripted into the East Chamber Group defect to the heroes-side at the first opportunity and become crucial in the final fight of the film.

In the end, this film had a massive impact on the future of wuxia films and Chinese martial arts cinema as a whole. Shaw Bros came out with The One-Armed Swordsman the same year and King Hu immediately began work on his masterpiece. Dragon Inn (1967) became a massive hit with Asian audiences across the world. It broke box-office records in Taiwan and South Korea, and was the second-highest selling film in Hong Kong after...a James Bond movie. The combination of Japanese sword-play, Beijing Opera, and naturalism set in the Ming Dynasty made this hugely resonate movie for a generation of increasingly pissed-off Chinese cinema-goers enduring smug colonial and authoritarian rule in Hong Kong and Taiwan, respectively.

My Review of Come Drink With Me 大醉俠 (1966) directed by King Hu

I'm not as comfortable or confident at reviewing and analyzing movies as I am with books, but hopefully I can get better by trial and error. That being said, consider this more of an impression rather than a tradition review--what folks would call "thoughts."

The first of what I consider King Hu's trilogy (along with Dragon Inn (1967) and A Touch of Zen (1971)); this was the last feature film he made for the Shaw Brothers Studio production company and one of their greatest films. It is very different from the formula that would be put in place by Lau Kar-leung in subsequent years. Hu had been an actor and assistant director at Shaw Bros during their early years making mostly musicals, adaptations of Chinese Opera, historical pieces, romances, and adaptations of classic Chinese literature and comedic-musicals. With the growing popularity of Japanese martial arts movies and the growing popularity of adopting the Wǔxiá genre (originally fantasy literature) for movies saw the demand for martial arts films in the Sino-cinema world go up--and this film was one of the first to meet that demand.

The contrasting influences of things like the

One thing that distinguishes this film from other Shaw Brothers movies is the narrative-driven plot and style of King Hu. Shaw Brothers would become known internationally for the by-the-numbers, Han nationalist, pure action style of Lau Kar-leung & others, but their start in martial arts movies can be traced back to this movie and Hu's more art house sensibility which was going against the new style that Shaw Brothers (and Run Run Shaw in-particular) were shaping. Hu's films had a more spiritual aspect to them and saw the Han Chinese more conflicted with themselves than any outside invader.

The film introduces us to the first of King Hu's (and one of the first of Run Run Shaw's) badass female fighters. What would distinguish Hu and the Shaws throughout their careers was their embrace of women as capable fighters in action movies in their own right. This film introduces us to Golden Swallow who would get a sequel after the success of this film. We meet her in what would be a trademark of King Hu: a fight in close-quarters, usually an inn, temple, or forested area. Golden Swallow is in disguise (another King Hu trait) and she is one of two main protagonist fighters in this film. We also see the introduction of another mysterious, noble fighter who is a sort-of trickster character, but is crucial to plot.

What I like about villains in Chinese martial arts movies is that they are usually as strong as their rank in their organization. The number two really is the second-strongest person the bad guys have. The big bad is a lot of times the strongest person in the movie and it takes as many of the heroes as possible to bring them down. In King Hu's "trilogy", his fight choreographer Han Ying-jie plays one of the lieutenants in this film and Dragon Inn (in A Touch of Zen he is the big bad). The big bad in this film is an evil Buddhist priest who betrayed his master and is after one of his master's relics, while also holding the governor's son hostage.

This movie is the pinnacle of 1960s Shaw Bros martial arts cinema and the beginning of King Hu's long career as one of the most unique Chinese martial arts film-makers of all time. He would leave Shaw Brothers after making this film and head for Taiwan (taking a lot of the actors and crew of this film with him), where he would make his two greatest films Dragon Inn and his masterpiece A Touch of Zen (one of my all time favorite films). Much of the early tropes of the Shaw Brothers that we see in this film would be gone in Dragon Inn, as well as in the more realist-based Kung Fu films that SB would make following this movie.

Appreciation for Charles Burnett

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This is a Criterion Channel exclusive hour-long interview by @iamroberttownsend of Charles Burnett the year he received his honorary Oscar. Burnett talks about growing up in South Central LA and the making of his films—mainly Killer of Sheep & To Sleep With Anger. Of all the movies I watched and reviewed in the last few days, Burnett was the film-maker I watched the most. His movies are some of the great stories of people who are not heroes or saints, not exactly villains or demons, but ordinary people attempting with great fury to survive every day on a world that seems to try toast upon them with no apparent coherence. His "heroes" are those we find in Chekhov or Dostoevsky, Adichie or an Edward P. Jones short story. His method of storytelling one is tempted to call surreal or dream-like if it wasn't so focused on such deadly real things that all of us seem to know of, but refuse to have to confront in our "entertainment" mediums like movies. I am one of the few among you that can see film as having the potential of being both art and/or entertainment—something that many "book" people chauvinistically refuse to do. Of course, despite my handle, my love of movies is much older than my love of books—but back to Burnett. His movies—whether it be Killer of Sheep (1977); Selma, Lord, Selma (1997); or Quiet as Kept (2007)—all strip away any highfaluting "sacredness" that we are taught to view protagonists and are able to show the true value of these people: what Chekhov says at the end of his story Uprooted, "their life was as little need of justification as any other." ¡Amen y vamanos! #movie #film #cinema #charlesburnett #roberttownsend #criterionchannel #blackfilmmakers #blackfilmsmatter #larebellion #blacklivesmatter #blackfilms #cinephile #cinephilenoir

A post shared by Ken's Bookshelf & Movieshelf (@rinehartstation) on Jun 29, 2020 at 11:10am PDT

On Iranian New Wave Cinema

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I spent the last weekend or so going over some Iranian films from yesterday-year, specifically the two giants: Abbas Kiarostami & Mohsen Makhmalbaf. During the late 20th century, they made films unlike any I ever saw. I was not aware of Iranian cinema until the success in the West of A Separation (2011) by @asgharfarhadiofficial . I always hate when that happens of being late to the party. When I saw the feature on Iranian cinema from The Story of Film: An Odyssey, I knew I had to see some of these classic films. This has not been easy, given the political situation, but I have had a chance to watch some films:

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The Traveler (1974); Close-Up (1989); Salaam Cinema (1995); A Moment of Innocence (1996).

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The first two films are by Kiarostami (who died in 2016). The Traveler is about a boy who attempts to travel across Iran to see his favorite soccer team play. Close-Up is a documentary-on-steroids about a man whose obsession with film ruins his life. He ends up being arrested for trying to impersonate the director of the other two films films in the image. What makes the documentary unique is that AK gets all the people in the real life incident to re-enact their roles. Salaam Cinema was conceived by Makhmalbaf as a celebration of the 100th anniversary of film, but ends as a meditation on art and humanity (questioning if a true artist can really be humane). A Moment of Innocence recounts Makhmalbaf's time as a militant, during the last years of the Shah. It is a study of memory, violence, and how you truly try to save the world.

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I have to say, these films remind me so much of the work of Dostoevsky and Chekhov. Kiarostami's Close-Up is like watching a character from The Brothers Karamazov wander into Uncle Vanya. Salaam Cinema & AMOI sees our very Dostoevsky-inspired director push his actors to their emotional limit to make them (& us) discover deeper truths about being alive.

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These films are beautiful–emotionally devastating–but beautiful. Can't recommend them enough! #movie #movies #film #documentary #iranianfilm #iranianmovie #abbaskiarostami #mohsenmakhmalbaf #Mosāfer #thetraveler #closeupmovie #salaamcinema #amomentofinnocence #cinephilenoir

A post shared by Ken's Bookshelf & Movieshelf (@rinehartstation) on Nov 19, 2018 at 8:50pm PST

My Review of Touki Bouki directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty

This has been a film on my radar for a minute. One of the most celebrated films ever made. Touki Bouki was made by the Senegalese film-maker Djibril Diop Mambéty, whose mystical, surrealist style of film-making was and is very different from what most film-makers were doing in 1973 (and now). This film is a commentary on the malaise of post-colonial Senegal and sees a disillusioned couple hustle their way around town to get money and clothes to go to France. This film is highly similar to the film I reviewed previously, The Traveler (1974). Both films see their protagonists go after what they want no matter who they have to go through or scavenge from. The ending of this film is as shockingly-bittersweet as the other. Touki Bouki lays a very pointed critique of neocolonialism and capitalist greed that was taking hold of society. Economic injustice is a big part of Mambéty's films and I can't help seeing the similarities between this movie and a film I watched in February made by Mambéty's niece Mati Diop called Atlantics (which one the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival). Touki Bouki film is full on stream-of-conscious visual/audio art. Every scene in this movie looks amazing—the cinematography game is on point. 

The audio of this movie, no less than the visuals, also made an impression upon me. The sounds on the surface seem chaotic, but you realize that they reflect the surroundings in a very precise way. The use of motifs are done very well here and play a part in the actual plot. Both audio and visual call-backs are used here in away that other film-makers around the world wouldn't pick-up for decades.

The director of this film said that it was on African cinema to reinvent cinema as a whole--this is a great foundation to start this process. I will definitely be watching more from this film-maker.

My Goodreads Review of Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

This is another one of thoughs books that sticks with you long after reading it, specifically the last page. Like the ending of One Day I Will Write about This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina, I can't quite stop thinking about it.

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

آزادی به حال قیمت - Last sentence of the book (in Google-dialect Persian).

Growing-up a strong-willed girl during the Cold War was hard, but if you also happened to have lived in Iran during and after the 1979 Revolution then it was really hard. This book documents the life and times of Marjane Satrapi from around 1978 to 1995-96. She was part of a family of ex-royals that became Iranian Marxists who helped oust the Shah, then after the Iranian Revolution became the Islamic Revolution her parents' friends and even her family members found themselves being purged by the new Islamic Republic of Iran...and then things get bad when Iran & Iraq go to war. She goes to Austria as a refugee for awhile...and then things get really crazy for her. This story is almost like some sort-of Charles Dickens-type of story in its theme and scope.

I don't know if Persepolis started the trend I've noticed in recent years of the Middle-Eastern themed graphic-memiors like the works of Zeina Abirached & Riad Sattouf, but it is the oldest-known work of this genre that I know of. I certainly see how this book influenced the story-telling and look of books like I Remember Beirut and Sattouf's The Arab of the Future series (the fact that all three of them eventually settled permanently in France probably helps). I have really been anticipating reading this graphic novel for a year-and-a-half and am glad that it met expectations (though I selfishly wished it had been longer). This book has me now hungry for more books to read of this kind.

Again what James Baldwin said about the power of books is still true.

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My Goodreads Review of The Iliad by Homer

I wrote this after just feeling numb after reading this poem in January 2018. I get why this poem is celebrated, but I had so many thoughts concerning the hypocrisy of Western civilization and I was seeing red a-little.

The Iliad by Homer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have no proper introduction for this, lets just go. I had been torn on whether to read the translation by Alexander Pope or Robert Fagles, but Fagles won me out with lines like this:

"Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles."

I was kept engaged by beautifully placed lines like that. One of the advantages of listening to hip-hop is that a lot of rappers like to use hexameter (what Homer and Virgil used) over common meter. Oh, I will get back to the relationship between hip-hop and Homer in a moment.

My thoughts about the poem: It was decent. The introduction by Bernard Knox was very good, even if I disagreed with 4% of what he said. The main hero for me is Fagles, for making these guys way more appealing than they should have been. I was not a big fan of most of the Acheans, I only favored Odysseus and Nestor. Though I liked the Trojans more, it was just barely. Hector was the only sane man in this whole poem, Aeneas was Odysseus' equal (that's why he gets a sequel). Priam is a much better king than Agamemnon. My thoughts on Achilles are the same as Apollo in the last book (chapter/book 24 lines 46-65). My one compliment is that he earned his epithet of man-killer (as did Hector). I feel the meeting between Priam and Achilles was perfectly done. I was amused at the lax nature of this epic poem. During very crucial times in the actions we get a page long reminiscence to something that happened years ago.

When folks speak of this poem, they often speak with an awe of the "old Greek virtues" or they hand-wave many of morally hateful things to praise the parts of the poem they liked. I wasn't impressed because, growing-up in the DC-Maryland area in the 1990s, these virtues weren't as praise-worthy. I suspect that the majority of people who like Homer are not fans of gangster-rap--which is a shame, because you would get much better renditions of the things in this play and in Homeric meter. Having read this book I scoff at folks who think Achilles is nobler than Tupac. Achilles says:

“Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?
Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.
And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am?
The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life--
A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you,
Death and the strong force of fate are waiting.
There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon
When a man will take my life in battle too--
flinging a spear perhaps
Or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow.”

While Tupac Shakur says:

"The other day I thought I seen my homeboy Biggy
Sayin' shit don't stop, nigga, no pity
We all hoods and all we ever had was dreams
Money makin' motherfuckers plot scandalous schemes...
Man, ain't nobody promised me a thang
I been caught up in this game
Ever since I was a little motherfucker wantin' to hang
I can see 'em in my head – pow!
Memories of my nigga but he dead now
Lookin' back in my yearbook
All the years took half my peers, they're stretched for years
And if I die, will they all shed tears?" - Few men were as much doomed by fate as Tupac.

Some will scoff at my analyzes, but I couldn't help seeing the parallels. In my heart, I believe the only reason this poem is still talked about is because it is really old, which is fine, but I wonder why no one else is admitting this. Outside of Europe, we have other tales of old kingdoms going to war. In Asia, the big war epic is the Romance of Three Kingdoms or, more suitable for comparison, The Tale of the Heike. Like the Epic Cycle of Troy, "Heike" is about the complete destruction of the Heike Dynasty in Japan with the Battle of Dan no Ura and its aftermath being every bit as brutal as the Fall of Troy.

But I am getting off topic, I am gald to finally have read this and look forward to reading The Odyssey.

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Shakespeare and Me

Long before I became the bibliophile I am today, I was a young black kid in Prince George's County, Maryland. I was good at reading but was not doing it actively and I was at that age very much into black literature and simply ignored white literature (something that was easy to do in 1990s to early 2000s). Towards the end of my 8th grade year, I read Ralph Ellison and became an official book-reader/book-lover. When I was in high school I started to read books with purpose and read white writers, but I still had little patience for one specific white writer.

For most of my life, the mainstream (i.e. white) culture has pushed Shakespeare in the academy, institution, and pop-culture as the paradigm of institutional power of letters in the Western world. Because of this, I was not encouraged to like him on my terms and like many black people I felt Shakespeare irrelevant to my experience because of how he'd been taught to me throughout my grade school life. I knew the story and the plots and famous quotes of R&J, Hamlet, and Macbeth, but I felt like none of it spoke to me the world I lived in and witnessed. I was still under the mis-teaching of the institutions that taught this (hat-tip to James Loewen).

It was when I got to university that things changed. In between and after classes I use to go to the library because it was quiet, had one of the best bathrooms at the school, and the nicest building. It was a rainy day so I decided (I can't remember why) to watch an adaption of Hamlet that was on YouTube (this was when you could still post movies there) starring Mel Gibson. It entertained me enough, but I realized it was an abridged adaptation. I tracked down the full adaptation by Kenneth Branagh and it knocked the hell outta me. From that point on I knew I would have to really get into Shakespeare on a totally different level and this marked my start.

I had to re-evaluate what I had read before and now look with new eyes on the rest. When I could read and watch these plays for myself, it changed everything. I heard the lyrics and saw the story of people living and dying like folks around my way. I understood that the humanity in Shakespeare and the humanity of the people I knew were not distant at all. The ability to show the great and mighty as regular-ass folks who worry and are as vulgar as we are is one of the great strengths of Shakespeare, but there is more...

His use of language and poetics is what really gets me. He can tell dirty jokes and contemplate all of existence in back to back lines. Shakespeare made iambic pentameter the default verse of the English language and literally invented words that we all use till this day. The influence on all of our favorite writers from him is absolute. He not only showed us he instructed us.  I can go on (will probably have more to say on this), but let me turn it over to another convert to Shakespeare, James Baldwin:

  "The greatest poet in the English language found his poetry where poetry is found: in the lives of the people. He could have done this only through love —by knowing, which is not the same thing as understanding, that whatever was happening to anyone was happening to him. It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it —no time can be easy if one is living through it.I think it is simply that he walked his streets and saw them, and tried not to lie about what he saw: his public streets and his private streets, which are always so mysteriously and inexorably connected; but he trusted that connection. And, though I, and many of us, have bitterly bewailed (and will again) the lot of an American writer —to be part of a people who have ears to hear and hear not, who have eyes to see and see not —I am sure that Shakespeare did the same. Only, he saw, as I think we must, that the people who produce the poet are not responsible to him: he is responsible to them.

 That is why he is called a poet. And his responsibility, which is also his joy and his strength and his life, is to defeat all labels and complicate all battles by insisting on the human riddle, to bear witness, as long as breath is in him, to that mighty, unnameable, transfiguring force which lives in the soul of man, and to aspire to do his work so well that when the breath has left him, the people —all people! —who search in the rubble for a sign or a witness will be able to find him there."

My Goodreads Review of Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Hamlet by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

[February 2020]I'm looking back on this old review of mine from many eons ago. This was me when I first started trying to review books "seriously," but it is obvious my craft for literary criticism was not on the same level as my ambition. I am not a big fan of going through my old reviews because of how raw I was and how much it makes me cringe. Me leaving my 20s would write this review of one of my favorite works of literature very differently than the me below who was entering his 20s. I only go through old reviews for proofreading purposes (I was and remain, sadly, a terrible editor of my work) or if they are really good. Most of what I was writing on Goodreads at age 22 was really not good. I am preserving most of it to show how far my growth has come.


From November 2012:
(Well it is the weekend and I have nothing to do so it is time I finally get around to reviewing "the big one")

I think all of us has a favorite Shakespeare play. Often, we consider said play to also be considered the best of his plays hands-down. I usually take such claims with the typical grain of salt because I know the subjectiveness that even the most objective fan can have.
But I will make a confession, I am no better than any of these people and when asked of the best the Bard had to offer I will gladly point to his epic about The Prince of Denmark. Now I will have to argue why I think this is, objectively speaking, the best Shakespeare play ever made.

This is the magnum opus of the stage, in my opinion, simply because every human experience can be found or at some level understood through this play. Now I could list other things that make this play great, but you can easily find those things in all of Shakespeare's plays, good and bad. Because this is a tragedy you will find that all but one person will be left standing, no "good" character that is not a simple sidekick will be spared, women (evil or otherwise) are screwed, young people are screwed, and all evil/asshole characters will be punished only after destroying the "heroic" character...this is all typical Shakespeare. As standard of all long-form Shakespeare plays (this being the longest) we will have the majority of characters giving standard to extended length monologues/soliloquies which shed light on their psychological/mental being, there will be sizable amounts of named incidental characters that you could easily write-out without destroying the overall plot (this play has two of the most famous of those characters), a central theme is being expressed outright or is being hidden below the surface of a more than-acceptable theme, meta-allusions to the art of the theater, and as is standard in all Shakespeare plays dirty jokes (i.e. dick/vagina) abound and are at least a fourth of the dialogue in Hamlet overall. These things are to be expected in every Shakespeare play and I can almost guess the plot to any of his plays by looking out for these and similar attributes that his work has.

But what makes this play stand out is how I never can stop finding new things in it. I can view this play happy, sad, neutral, and otherwise and I still see something new that I could not see before; it is the closes we may have to a modern "revealed" text. I feel that almost every character in this play is in the world we live in right now. And every age can be found in this play.

Of late, I have gotten into the habit of quoting dialogue or verse in my reviews to demonstrate or dissect the work that I am reviewing. But how do I do that here, in a play in which the dialogue and parts of the work are known by heart to people who have maybe never even heard of Shakespeare or at least never heard of Hamlet. Even if that were not the case I find that no matter what page of dialogue I turn to, I do not know what to use. So if I have the very unpleasant choice of picking a "favorite" line of dialogue from this play...alas it can't be done. If I try to fit one quote I will have to fit all quotes! So this review sort of breaks the trend of quoting within a review for me.

One also notices that I have talked of this play but not about it. This is related to my above difficulty with picking quotes for the play. I am not afraid of spoiling this play but I don't feel that my feeble mind can do it justice [right now] and my love for it is so that if I can't raise it up completely I will let the play speak for itself and simply say SEE IT, if you have not seen it keep reading this review until I have made my recommendations than immediately get off of goodreads and WATCH IT. You can have text to follow along with it, but this play has to be watched and then, as I have, find the text that is most suited for you and go into the play again.

Now forgive me but I will cheat in this section by simply posting some of my post from the Shakespeare group that I belong in to advise on the versions of the play I saw and then in the next paragraph I will talk about the book/script of this play that I posses.

"...I first sought it out when I first went to college. I saw the adaption with Mel Gibson available on the internet and while the story had me intrigued I went ahead and did research, etc. and found out that it was an abridged adaptation. So I did next logical thing and brought the Kenneth Branagh version which is the complete unabridged one, which for me was 4 hours of awesome." Now to help qualify and expand on my quote I would recommend to newcomers to check out the the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2011 adaption with David Tennant than if you want the full unabridged play go ahead with the Kenneth Branagh version. This play has had countless adaptions and interpretations over the centuries.

The book I own is a reprinting of the script used by the RSC and it also comes with not just a detailed study of the play (including scene-by-scene analysis), but a detailed analysis on the history of the various performances of the play and Shakespeare himself (and more!) so you can imagine how excited I was just to find out this book exist but the supplements made this book an early Christmas gift for me(given the low price I was able to get for this book).

In the end I am certain I will see many plays that will captivate my imagination but no play will stay with and in me and through me like this play has.

WATCH THIS PLAY!

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My Review of Brae New World by Aldous Huxley

I wrote this LONG ago in a time called 2011, my whole way of reading books and understanding them was different and much more limited, but I'll share this anyway for the hell of it.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've always thought of Brave New World as the most "honest dystopian novel". As much as people fear George Orwell's 1984 as somehow being even possible, It always seem to me this Huxleian tale of a dark future had a much better chance of happening and in fact we seem to always be marching just a little bit closer to A.F. time (After Ford) so I think this novel should be studied by everyone as to what to guard against. It won't be the taking away of freedoms that will end Democracy but the saturation and neglect of it by materialism.

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Brave New Crappy World

Should we just take it for granted that Aldous Huxley was right? The world of today is now in the hands of whoever makes us feel like we don't have to be responsible for anything. Even when there is social progress, it comes at whims of corporations who are mostly indifferent to the notions of right/wrong, good/evil. This is an accordance with the dystopia that Huxley imagined. Maybe I'm just feeling extra-pessimistic right now, but the losses feel as big as the wins feel small at the present time.

Some thoughts on Maya Angelou & poetry

A while back I mis-read an advertisement for a poetry contest and had the mis-placed courage to think I could try poetry. While in this delusionary-state I came across a poem by Maya Angelou which brok my heart by how beautiful, simple, and complex it was:

 When you come to me, unbidden,
Beckoning me
 To long-ago rooms,
Where memories lie.

  Offering me, as to a child, an attic,
Gatherings of days too few.
  Baubles of stolen kisses.
Trinkets of borrowed loves.
  Trunks of secret words,

I CRY.

These words sound so effortless, but anyone who has tried their hand at any type of creative-writing knows how hard it is to make something like that. You can do and show so much in poetry, but it takes so much more technical skill  to do compared to prose. I really wish I had the talent  and discipline  of  my literary  heroes. The ability to not only say something, but to have the know-how of getting correct how one says it. I think poets are the best storytellers--the best writers. Even the writing of blank verse and free verse is done with an eye to precise word-order.

I've thought about the poetry of Maya Angelou and how she is able to get a direct emotional effect from every word she uses. The fact that she was as capable at reciting poetry as she was reciting it is amazing. When I think of people like her, Dylan Thomas as well as lyricists like Stevie Wonder and Kendrick Lamar--I am amazed the genius of these artists.

My Review of And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

My review of the audiobook version of the most famous volume of poetry by the late Dr. Maya Angelou. One of my favorite poets and poetry-reciters I knew when I came across this audiobook that I had to have it. As great as reading her is, listening to her is almost-better. This review is light on critical analyzes, but was my excuse to post her poems publicly.

And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Hate often is confused. Its
Limits are in zones beyond itself. And
Sadists will not learn that
Love, by nature, exacts a pain
Unequalled on the rack. - Second stanza of "A Kind of Love, Some Say"


One of my favorite poets and one of her best collections. Reading Maya Angelou is great, but listening to her is better. I am always put into a better state of mind with her words. Dr. Angelou was one one of the great multi-talented writers of the 20th century as a playwright, poet, actress, and memiorist. Though her most celebrated work is her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she considered herself a poet first. She wrote over 11 volumes of poetry, but this may be her most famous volume. It contains some of her most quoted poems (including the title poem) and has been a consistently anthologized book.

On Aging

When you see me sitting quietly,
Like a sack left on the shelf,
Don’t think I need your chattering.
I’m listening to myself.
Hold! Stop! Don’t pity me!
Hold! Stop your sympathy!
Understanding if you got it,
Otherwise I’ll do without it!
When my bones are stiff and aching,
And my feet won’t climb the stair,
I will only ask one favor:
Don’t bring me no rocking chair.
When you see me walking, stumbling,
Don’t study and get it wrong.
‘Cause tired don’t mean lazy
And every goodbye ain’t gone.
I’m the same person I was back then,
A little less hair, a little less chin,
A lot less lungs and much less wind.
But ain’t I lucky I can still breathe in.

This audiobook is a bit of a mystery to me as it was recorded some time between the 1990s and the 2000s and only contains 13 of the 32 poems found in the actual printed book (leaving out--for instances--a poem like Phenomenal Woman). Still the poems included-in are great and we get to hear Dr. Angelou's great ability as a storyteller and reciter on full display. One bonus we do have is commentary in which she tells the story behind some of the poems and what she was aiming for or how she felt she missed the mark in one place so she included another poem to make-up for it.

Ain't That Bad

Dancin' the funky chicken
Eatin' ribs and tips
Diggin' all the latest sounds
And drinkin' gin in sips.

Puttin' down that do-rag
Tighten' up my 'fro
Wrappin' up in Blackness
Don't I shine and glow?

Hearin' Stevie Wonder
Cookin' beans and rice
Goin' to the opera
Checkin' out Leontyne Price.

Get down, Jesse Jackson
Dance on, Alvin Ailey
Talk, Miss Barbara Jordan
Groove, Miss Pearlie Bailey.

Now ain't they bad?
An ain't they Black?
An ain't they Black?
An' ain't they Bad?
An ain't they bad?
An' ain't they Black?
An' ain't they fine?

Black like the hour of the night
When your love turns and wriggles close to your side
Black as the earth which has given birth
To nations, and when all else is gone will abide.

Bad as the storm that leaps raging from the heavens
Bringing the welcome rain
Bad as the sun burning orange hot at midday
Lifting the waters again.

Arthur Ashe on the tennis court
Mohammed Ali in the ring
Andre Watts and Andrew Young
Black men doing their thing.

Dressing in purples and pinks and greens
Exotic as rum and Cokes
Living our lives with flash and style
Ain't we colorful folks?

Now ain't we bad?
An' ain't we Black?
An' ain't we Black?
An' ain't we bad?
An' ain't we bad?
An' ain't we Black?
An' ain't we fine?

One of the reasons I was glad to have the audiobook was to have the poet's insight on the rhyme and rhythm of the poem. I think you can use meter to an extant when reading this book, but you gain a lot of priceless context in hearing how the poet imagines her piece to what the piece's meaning is. This book explores a lot of the inner life of people--their dignity in the face of hard times or good times. It is a volume of poetry that seems to come from an ancient place of the psyche, but a modern or everlasting message--at least to me.

"You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

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My Review of The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison

I wrote this review in March of 2019, about six months before Toni Morrison's death. It would be the first of two books I would read before their author's death. This books importance to me has only grown since I first read it (as a library book, no less). I hope to own it one day, but I do at least have access to the two essays that have affected the way I think of fiction the most-deeply.

The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One thing that can be said about Toni Morrison is that she has no time for modesty and all the time for hubris. She's the athlete that trash-talks, but can back it up with skill: a literary Muhammad Ali (whose autobiography The Greatest: My Own Story she edited). As interesting as it was to read her views on literature and her literary criticism, I was fascinated at how she configured her own personae. That added a very unusual dynamic to this book since most of this book was transcripts of speeches rather than actual essays.

Some of these selections were amazing. I was intrigued by her thoughts on the so-called "canon wars" of the late 1980s-early 1990s, because she (or rather her work) was one of the big topics of it. One quote by her that caught my attention was "Canon building is empire building, canon defense is national defense." Lines and passages like that gave me food for thought, especially given how out-dated that controversy is now. That same section had a very powerful examination of Moby-Dick, or, the Whale, which has prepared me even more to read it.

Her use of the Cinderella fable, Sula, and Beowulf to explain her own theory of feminism was very well-done. I know that Morrison does not identify as a card-carrying feminist (or at least she has said in interviews that she has problems with the term as we know it), but she seems to outline ideas and a philosophy that can easily be called feminism. For her, showing the importance how women relate to each other is very important. At the very least, it would be interesting to compare her ideas with that of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie--another Black woman novelist who very much identifies as a feminist (though not a womanist).

In another passage Morrison says, "When I hear someone say, 'Truth is stranger than fiction,' I think that old chestnut is truer than we know, because it doesn't say that truth is truer than fiction; just that it's stranger, meaning that it's odd. It may be excessive, it may be more interesting, but the important thing is that it's random--and fiction is not random." (-- Both bold texts are mine.) This was like the key piece of thought that I'd been looking for for awhile now. This is something so profound, but not appreciated enough by writers or readers now-a-days. This fact is what separates myth from history. The site of memory in this book is something you really appreciate as you go deeper into your self as a reader. Lines like this quotation are found throughout the book.

The only parts of this book I skipped over are the parts that reference books by her that I have not read yet. Morrison is her biggest fan so her primary reference for her literary criticism is her own work. This obvious means we get expert commentary by the author, but we also get spoiled or a very "guided" interpretation of the work. I wanted more examinations of her own contemporaries or works she liked (or hated), but one has to settle. I was fascinated by her ideas on writing, even though I don't think I agreed with half of it. It is always interesting to see the psyche of a particular writer, especially one who is this knowledgeable and...we'll say confident. Some of these speeches I'd already heard like her Nobel Lecture and eulogy of James Baldwin, but most of these were definitely "archive/lost tapes" material.

I wish I could go in further, but I will have to reread the book with more time (and after reading more novels by Toni Morrison).

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Some Thoughts After My First Quarter of Moby Dick

I got the first quarter of Moby Dick down and am moving along at a decent pace. So far in the book we are finally at sea bound for the Indian Ocean and we finally get the actual appearance of Ahab in the last (29th) chapter. Also so far: we get a look at coastal New England at the mid-19th century, we learn how one goes about getting on a fishing vessel back then, and most importantly we really become part of the mind of Ishmael. Ishmael would be an interesting character today, he must've really stood out when this book was published in 1851. Pertaining to my interests, it is intriguing to see his journey from a 19th century version of a "non-racist" to what we may call now "antiracist" (in no small part due to his partnering up with the Austronesian harpooner Queequeg). It is a very much in-process transformation, but even a quarter of the way in, it is noticeable his change since the beginning of the book. As I am reading this book according to Toni Morrison's recommendation in Unspeakable Things Unspoken, this gives the book an interesting feel to it that I'm guessing most people who read this novel don't have.
 

 It only seems that the canon of American literature is “naturally” or “inevitably” “white.” In fact it is studiously so. In fact these absences of vital presences in Young American literature may be the insistent fruit of the scholarship rather than the text. Perhaps some of these writers, although under current house arrest, have much more to say than has been realized. Perhaps some were not so much transcending politics, or escaping blackness, as they were transforming it into intelligible, accessible, yet artistic modes of discourse. To ignore this possibility by never questioning the strategies of transformation is to disenfranchise the writer, diminish the text, and render the bulk of the literature aesthetically and historically incoherent - an exorbitant price for cultural (whitemale) purity, and, I believe, a spendthrift one. The reexamination of founding literature of the United States for the unspeakable unspoken may reveal those texts to have deeper and other meanings, deeper and other power, deeper and other significances. - "Unspeakable Things Unspoken by Toni Morrison

 
Many folks want to be like Toni, but ain't really trying to be like Toni—at least in the way she was as a reader. I decided after reading The Source of Self-Regard last year that I would take-up Morrison's suggestion of reading this book (and others of "the canon" with new eyes for a deeper meaning—what she called the "Afro-American presence in American Literature." I suspect I may have been doing this subconsciously with classic literature for awhille anyway, but Morrison articulated this in a way that I have not been able to forget since I read The Source of Self-Regard last year. 

A Short-Meditation on Two Characters

I want to talk about two characters that's been on my mind lately. The title character Sula and the protagonist of Americanah, Ifemelu. 

I read Americanah before I read Sula, but I am curious of how I would feel about the books had I read them in reverse. Sula is an interesting play at the Ubermensch character in literature because it is a black woman as oppose to a white man. Sula is, as Toni Morrison wrote about her, "quintessentially black, metaphysically black which is not melanin and certainly not unquestioning fidelity to the tribe. She is New World Black and New World woman extracting choice from choiclessness." She goes on and says she represents "a modernity that overturns prewar [WWI] definitions, ushers in the Jazz Age (an age defined by Afro-American art & culture), and requires new kinds of intelligences to define oneself." I love that last phrase. She shakes up the black neighborhood where she lives and after her death her legacy is assimilated and gradually phased-out as time passes.

Ifemelu, then, is like the interesting inheritor of this legacy. She's not from the same time or place as Sula, but she has all of the spiritual ingredients and since we know that Ifemelu reads Toni Morrison novels, we can only speculate the influence in-universe. But the difference is where Sula is an Ubermensch respecting no truth but the one she sets or creates, Ifemelu is a Byronic Hero—something that I wasn't expecting to see in a contemporary novel. She goes back and forth between being Sula and Childe Harold. She's not the most like able character in the novel, but she is certainly the most fascinating. Equally fascinating is how Black women across the Diaspora react to her—I'm always intrigued by it. The idea of this character being at once so noble, hypocritical, caring, and heartless is something to watch. Folks are often disagreeing not on how much they like Ifemelu, but how much they dislike her.

In the end, both of these characters are fascinating to watch though I would be weary of getting mixed-up with either of them on a personal-level. By convention we cheer for Nel and
Obinze, but the respective authors are asking us--or rather making us question why we like those two and not their more socially destructive counterparts.