The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.1960 Tuesday, 29 November 2005
[1] From: Richard Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 27 Nov 2005 17:22:04 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck
[2] From: Al Magary <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 27 Nov 2005 14:00:35 -0800
Subj: Re: SHK 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck
[3] From: Marcia Eppich-Harris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 28 Nov 2005 17:00:26 -0600
Subj: RE: SHK 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Richard Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 27 Nov 2005 17:22:04 -0500
Subject: 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck
Comment: Re: SHK 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck
Kathy Dent asks "what's the point?" in regard to my posts on the remains
of Shakespeare on film and other media.
There are many points. Here a few:
1. To create via Shaksper an electronic archive of sorts of such examples.
2. To suggest that such examples Shakespeare's hold on our cultural
imagination is deeper, more pervasive, and longer lasting than some of
us may have realized.
3. To suggest that an account of Shakespeare in performance needs to be
encyclopedic. (Arguments made about the performance history of a given
play are sometimes made in ignorance of a huge number of examples that
call these accounts into question.)
4. To suggest that allusions to Shakespeare in mass media are not
ancillary to some more putatively central Shakespeare, free of mass
media, but are one part of Shakespeare's general mediatization.
5. To call attention to the breadth of ways in which Shakespeare is
alluded, including not only textual citation or images of Shakespeare
but paratextual phenomena such as posters, theater marquees, movie
marquees, film clips in films; rehearsals of scenes of plays in films; etc.
All of these points and others are served by a two volume reference book
I have edited entitled Shakespeares After Shakespeare: An Encyclopedia
of the Bard in Mass Media and Popular Culture. The book, which will be
published by Greenwood Press in May or June of 2006, covers film
adaptations, film spin-offs and citations, TV, pop music, literature and
genre fiction, comics, theater, and radio. Contributors include Courtney
Lehmann, Douglas Lanier, Wes Folkerth, Douglas Lanier, and Amy
Scott-Douglass, among others. The book is now at press, and I don't yet
have a final count on the number of entries. But I can say that it is
somewhere in the mid-thousands.
The book cover may be viewed at
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/~rburt/publications.html
I explore further some of the points made above in three forthcoming
articles:
"Digtial Film, Asianization, and the Transational Film Remake: Alluding
to Shakespeare in L'Appartement, The King Is Alive, and Wicker Park "
forthcoming in Shakespeare Yearbook XVII, special issue on "Shakespeare
in China," ed. Yang Lingui and Douglas Brooks, 2006.
"Civic ShakesPR: Middlebrow Multiculturalism, White Television, and the
Color Bind," forthcoming in Shakespeare and Colorblind Casting, ed.
Ayanna Thompson (Routledge, 2006).
"Backstage Pass(ing): Stage Beauty, Othello, and the Makeup of Race,"
forthcoming in Shakespeare on Screen , eds. Mark Thornton Burnett and
Ramona Wray, (Edinburgh University Press, 2006).
The new journal Borrowers and Lenders as well as the published work and
SAA, BSA, WSC, MLA, etc., seminars, conference papers, and so on
directed and delivered by the contributors, myself, and a number of
other scholars suggest many of the venues for research and teaching
opened up by the kinds of examples I post on Shaksper.
I assume that many members of this listserv interested in Shakespeare
and performance will find my posts of interest and use. I assume that
members of this listserv who do not share these interests will simply
delete my posts.
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Al Magary <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 27 Nov 2005 14:00:35 -0800
Subject: 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck
Comment: Re: SHK 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck
Kathy Dent complained, "Perhaps now is a good moment for Richard Burt to
explain the purpose of his posts. What is the point of 'simply'
describing a film if he has no comment to make upon it?"
Mr. Burt posted briefly on the film about Edward R. Murrow. It seems to
me that he renders a useful albeit non-comprehensive service to the
Shakespeare community with periodic posts about Sh. references in
popular culture--"Shakespop," in someone else's nice word. Any
individual post may not be terribly valuable but in sum, as found in the
list archives, they are as valuable as the total discussion in threads
about, say, interpretation. It is rare for the individual post about
everyone's favorite bundle of complexities, Hamlet, to be remarkably
valuable, but the thread can be informative.
Cheers,
Al Magary
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Marcia Eppich-Harris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 28 Nov 2005 17:00:26 -0600
Subject: 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck
Comment: RE: SHK 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck
Kathy Dent asked "what's the point" of Richard Burt's posts on
Shakespeare and popular culture.
No offense to Ms. Dent and others who aren't as interested in this sort
of thing, but I love seeing Mr. Burt's posts on Shakespeare in pop
culture, whether there is a discussion to be had on them or not. One of
my hobbies is collecting Shakespeare art (paintings, prints, spoken
word, etc.) and films (tangentially related or adaptations), and a lot
of times word of mouth is the only way to hear about such things. So
please continue, Mr. Burt, to let us know when you find something. I,
for one, appreciate it immensely!
And in response to the statement, "He never explains to the rest of us
why he wants to draw our attention to these references," my reply would
be this -- it's a case of "if you don't know, then I can't tell you."
Best wishes,
Marcia Eppich-Harris
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