As I was polishing the prose of yesterday’s post into a blinding sheen, I received an email from my former student and current friend, the actor and poet Paul O’Brien, with a link to this amusing layout of Shakespeare’s plays bracketed for an NCAA-like tournament to determine the very best of the best.
Shakespeare’s March Madness
Accompanying the link was Paul’s commentary on the above bracketing, a tour de force that echoes the idioms of sports commentators. I asked Paul if he would be so kind as to drive over to Hoodoo studios here on Folly Island and record it for you, which, obviously, he did, because – presto – here it is!
Make sure you hit the grey arrow below so you can hear Paul’s performance as you read along.
O brother, we few, we happy few! Madness? I’ll say, mad as the sea and wind when both contend which is the mightier! Whose picks are these? Marlowe? Earl of Oxford? Some amateur wannabe? Where to begin? Okay, first in the Tragedy Region: there is no way that two powerhouse top seeds like Hamlet and Lear meet in the first round! No way. That really would be a tragedy. They don’t square off until the quarters. Hamlet would have to get by Othello, which would be tough, but that tenacious squad of Danes and their unselfish style of mutual murder and mayhem would carry the day for Elsinore. Yeah, Iago’s got mad skills, but let’s face it, he still hasn’t learned how to be a team player. MacB is bloody good, wicked good, but lacks solid ball control–he just doesn’t know when to stop sometimes, and Lear advances especially if Kent keeps up the tight defense. The quarter final match up between Hamlet and Lear would be close, but I’ll take Hamlet by a couplet at the buzzer. On to the History regionals. You want history, hey, Henry V–you’re history! You’re all pomp and circumstance and bluster in the middle, and you put on a good show, but you run out of steam in the fourth quarter, while your younger self has still got moves and knows how to take control and change the game at the right moment. Yea, sure, Falstaff doesn’t always come ready to play, but hey, you got Hotspur coming off the bench. Gimme a break! Henry IV wins and then beats the Romans, who really just don’t have their act together enough to go too deep in this tourney. As for Comedy, here’s some comedy: Twelfth Night over The Tempest. Are you crazy? Who’s gonna stop Prospero when he’s in the zone? Viola? The Duke? Malvolio? Malvolio?? Oberon and Titania are too much for Benedick and Beatrice bickering in the backcourt, but it doesn’t matter because Tempest is going to the final four. And here’s a problem alright: The Merchant of Venice over Troilus and Cressida. No way that’s happening. Achilles takes it to the hoop past Shylock every time. And Antonio just doesn’t match up well with Ajax in the post. Final Four: Troilus and Cressida v. The Tempest and Henry IV v. Hamlet. Finals: Hamlet v. The Tempest. Hamlet is the favorite, but they’ll all be dead by then, and The Tempest has magic going for it, which is pretty tough to beat. And won’t it be great to see Caliban cutting down the nets?
Of course, time seems to pass more rapidly as we age because of the forever diminishing frames-of-references that years represent.
For example, when I was five, a student at Miss Marion’s kindergarten, a year was a fifth of my life and seemed as expansive as a continent. The previous Christmas seemed like a far distant outpost several time zones removed, separated by a progression of slow transpiring days that unfurled and closed like lazy morning glories.
[check out the vines on the left as Cat Stevens rejoices]
Now, that I’m 61, a year seems like one revolution on a Tilt-a-Whirl that’s gone haywire in Max Sennett short – each successive whirl faster – last Christmas seeming a day or two ago and the next a day or two away.
But here’s the thing. For the past week it’s as if I exist in a Rod Sterling directed Twilight Zone adaptation of a Kafka short story.
Every time I reach for something, it’s the very last one available! It’s ubiquitous. Uncanny.
For example, the day before yesterday, I had to replace the toilet paper roll in the master bath and the very next day needed to replace the roll in what we euphemistically call “the powder room.” Coincidence – of course – but then last night as I unfurled the dental floss, the spool unwound and spit out the last remaining thread . This morning’s dry dog food scooping found the cup hitting the bottom, the food not completely done, but within three or four days of depletion.
And here’s the clincher: at school, I forgot to hit the staple function on the copier in the work room,[1] so had to staple my Romanticism tests by hand, and guess what, not only did the first stapler I used run out of staples, but the next one did as well!
To be honest, though, there was plenty of looseleaf paper to distribute to my students who are at this very moment in time explaining why this stanza of Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” conforms to the subject matter and poetic conventions of Romanticism:
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
[1] By the way, in those halcyon days before email, the copy room called the Lounge, and perhaps the fact that we in the working world are so busy there’s no time for contemplation may also play a role in the seeming acceleration of time’s passage.
[2] Of course, when I was copying my rubric for grading my students’ responses the copier ran out of paper. I swear!
Once upon the time, our local paper published a Thursday supplement that targeted local geographical communities like “West Ashley,” “East Cooper,” “Summerville,” etc. In those supplements a column called “Do You Know?” featured interviews with faux celebrities like the heads of recreation departments, popular bartenders, and other notable citizens that help make life more bearable for us First World sufferers. We’d learn the towns and cities of their births, their idea of a fun weekend, their favorite dishes, and inevitably, their chosen guests at a “fantasy dinner.”
Without a doubt, the most popular fantasy dinner invite of all time was Jesus. Not Jesus Alou, mind you, but the Jesus, the one from Nazareth. I’ll get into why choosing accompanying guests is problematic with Jesus at the table, but first, let’s address a gargantuan challenge involved with entertaining Joseph and Mary’s first born.
He speaks Aramaic!
If you’re thinking, yeah, but he’s the Son of God, a miracle worker, let me remind you he was also Mary’s son, i.e., half human and sometimes plagued with doubts (cf., Gethsemane). From my reading of the Gospels, it’s not as if he had a clear pipeline to God through which the latter would walkie-talkie-like tell him what to do. Turning water into wine, casting out demons, walking on water seem like veritable pieces of cake compared to mastering a language that didn’t even exist when you were alive.
No, if I had the chance to meet Jesus in the flesh I’d want him all to myself, to be able to look him in the eye, perhaps to pantomime messages back and forth, to have the focus to be only on him. In other words, I don’t want Leonardo or Nietzsche, or Lady Gaga distracting me with Jesus in the house.
C’mon folks, invite fun folk who speak the same language to your fantasy dinners: Groucho, Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, or if you wanna get shit-faced with the dead, Richard Burton or Christopher Hitchens.
Oops, this just in from my superego: “It’s a fantasy, jackass, make believe. You can have Jesus speak English if you want.”
Okay, then. What about dress? Nice casual? A clean robe for Jesus, a diaphanous jumpsuit for Lady Gaga? And what to serve? Loaves and fishes? Wiener schnitzel?
Like, I said Richard Burton and Christopher Hitchens . . .
Southern Charm is a reality television show created and broadcast by Bravo, a basic cable satellite channel. Begun in 1980 as a suscription-only platform devoted to cultural programs, Bravo originally featured a PBS-like mix of international and independent films, musical shows such asJazz Counterpart, and stage productions like the Texaco Showcase presentation of Romeo and Juliet.
Interestingly enough, the evolution of Bravo mirrors the decline of Western Civilization itself. After MGM and GE took over the channel, programming shifted from highbrow entertainment to decadent reality shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and the various Real Housewives shows. Bravo’s shift from high to low is a microcosm of a macrocosmic degradation. For example, during the Elizabethan Period, educated people considered Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet pop art, middle brow entertainment that nevertheless enthralled even the rotten-tomato-toting lower classes of London. Now almost 400 years later, even most college educated people consider Shakespeare too highbrow, and theatre goers in London would much rather sit through The Lego Movie rather than a production of Twelfth Night.
It is within this context – the decline of civilization and in this case, Late Empire American culture – that Southern Charm takes its cues. Not unlike Petronius’s skewering of the excesses of Nero’s Rome, (e.g., the Romans’ obscene ostentatious consumption of food; their round-the-clock drunkenness; their loveless, indiscriminate sexual couplings), Southern Charm documents the decadent and extravagant lifestyles of a group of Republicans who live in the most glamorous city of a state that refuses to expand Medicaid.
Oh, yeah, there’s one significant difference: whereas Petronius mocked the excesses of decadent Roman culture, Southern Charm celebrates it. It would appear that people’s lives are so impoverished that they would rather live vicariously through vacuities than engage with other humans in bars and restaurants. Academics disagree as to whether Bravo’s management is cynically exploiting the “stars” of their shows in a post modern commentary on the poverty of contemporary culture or simply stuffing their pockets with money and not giving a shit.
Plot Overview
Set in the tourist and retirement mecca of Charleston, South Carolina, Southern Charm follows former South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel as he readjusts to life outside of prison after doing 10 months for buying and distributing cocaine. Although the show purports to explore the life of Charlestonians, Ravenel is the only local featured (see characters). Besides Ravenel, the show focuses on five other main personalities, two women, and three men, all white and seemingly a couple of decades younger than 50-year old Ravenel. The cast also consists of minor characters: mothers, fathers, hook-ups, carriage tour horses, polo ponies, etc.
Essentially, the show explores the main characters’ interactions as they engage in tedious conversations in ever shifting scenic spots as they eat, drink, woo, reject, seduce. As in most other “reality shows,” the viewer peeks in on the principals’ daily routines, in this case at their plantations or town houses or out on-the-town in swanky shops, restaurants and nightclubs. In addition viewers also get to hear the characters’ personal takes on the events as they smugly backbite into the camera.
Character List
Thomas Ravenel – the son of successful politician “Cousin” Arthur Ravenel and a graduate of the Citadel, Thomas himself aspired to be a politician, unsuccessfully running for the Republican nomination in South Carolina for the US Senate but later being elected as State Treasurer. A backer of Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 Republican nomination battle, he supported Ron Paul in 2012. Of course, Ravenel’s 2008 coke conviction brought his political career to a screeching halt.
A hedonist, polo player, and wealthy man about town, Ravenel feels pressure to settle down, marry, and sire male heirs. Here’s Thomas on his way to his plantation on Edisto talking to his father about what Thomas hopes to be a bourgenining romance:
Cameron Eubanks – a native of the Palmetto state but not of Charleston, Cameron likes, according to Bravo’s website, “boating or laying (sic) on the beach with a good book.” (The Carpetbaggers perhaps?) So far on the show, she parties with the boys and engages in non-witty repartee. Having just turned 30, she offers subtle hints of her biological clock’s ticking as she shifts careers from cosmetics to real estate.
Craig Conover – Drawn from Delaware to the College of Charleston, 25-year-old Craig has stayed on in the Holy City (don’t they all) to attend the troubled Charleston Law School. The spawn of an incredibly athletic family, Craig seems more down-to-earth than other cast members, perhaps because he “finds meditation in diving, golfing, and shooting guns.”
“Om, Fore, Boom!”
Jenna King – Aspiringfashion designer Jenna hails from Sumter, South Carolina and manages somehow to be simultaneously country cute and avant garde cool (see hair). This globe trotting graduate of Trident Tech has a passion for animals, especially horses.
Shep Rose – Listing his profession as raconteur, Shep nevertheless ends each sentence with the interrogative lilt made famous by Vally Girls. He’s a man of many diverse interests, like drinking, dressing like a preppy, talking, fornicating, listening to the Grateful Dead, and hanging out with Republicans. Perhaps not the most perceptive of raconteurs, Shep describes his friend Whit (see below) as “an elitist hipster” despite the latter’s penchant for wearing pajama-looking shirts and silver chains around his neck.
Whitney Sudler-Smith – Self-proclaimed composer of “brilliant screenplays and ingenious independent films that few will see” (it appears that he and your humble sparksnote reporter have something in common). Despite having directed a film about Halston that has been “screened” on Showtime, Whit lives with his hideous mother in what the producers of the show call an “urban plantation.” He and Shep are “partnering” to open just what Charleston needs – a sophisticated rock-n-roll bar.
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Themes:
Not unlike The Great Gatsby, which doesn’t have a likable character in the entire novel, Southern Charm centers on the privileges and decadent lifestyles of a cast of wealthy characters; however, unlike Gatsby, not one of the characters in Southern Charm is even vaguely interesting. A quote from the National Lampoon’s parody of “Desiderata” comes to mind:
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most souls
Would scarcely get your feet wet.
Major themes include the tension between enjoying a hedonistic lifestyle and settling down, the difficulties of maintaining successful bromances when libidos get out of hand, and lastly, how cool everyone is because they live in Charleston.
Motifs – the need to procreate, lavish dinners, hangovers, hooking up, unresponsive women turning down swashbucklers accustomed to bodice-ripping, Ravenel’s tarnished reputation. Old buildings. Nice things.
Symbols – Charleston = Rome. Whiteness is also a symbol. African Americans are virtually nonexistent. Maybe that’s why no one smokes weed.
Quotes
“I am a cunning linguist.” – Thomas Ravenel, putting the moves on Catherine.
“I don’t like Brandy [her seemingly closeted gay son’s romantic female interest]. I don’t like Brandy. I don’t like Brandy. Have I made myself clear? I don’t like Brandy” – Whit’s mother.
“I often wake up drunk,” – Shep.
Discussion Questions:
Discuss the title. Is it serious or ironic? Identify elements that one might find charming.
Compare and contrast Shep and Craig. What do they share in common? How are they different? Which one would you murder first?
Mothers and fathers play an important role in the series. Given how their children turned out, why do you think they’re so eager to have them replicate?
Television and film tend to caricature Southerners. We’re all familiar with the types – the drawling sadistic sheriff who looks as if he has swallowed a sack of horse feed whole; the I-do-declare coquettish belle all aflutter, the tart-tongued steel magnolia, the wiser-than-he-lets on Negro manservant, etc.
Yawn.
Therefore, when I finally got around to peeking in on House of Cards for the first time last weekend, what a pleasure to witness Kevin Stacey’s portrayal of Congressman Frank Underwood, who not only sounds like a real Southerner but who also rises above the stereotypes non-Southerners generally associate with someone from Dixie – rightwing politics and racism – which is not to say that Frank is an admirable character. Part Richard III, part Iago, he’s the apotheosis of Machiavellian machination, a son of a bitch who makes the historical LBJ seem like Atticus Finch in comparison.
Frank not only sounds like a Southerner, but he has a way with words reminiscent of those who have grown up in the oral tradition of story telling, a tradition that appreciates a clever, alliterative turn of phrase. Here he is provoking NEA union boss Marty Spinella into assaulting him: “I’m a white-trash cracker from a white-trash town that no one would even bother to piss on. But here’s the difference. I’ve made something of myself. I have the keys to the Capitol. People respect me. But you, you’re still nothing. You’re just an uppity dago in an expensive suit turning tricks for the unions.” Some of my favorite moments occur when Frank turns directly to the camera in Shakespearean asides looking you, the viewer, in the eye and saying shit like this, “Every Tuesday I sit down with the speaker and the majority leader to discuss the week’s agenda. Well, ‘discuss’ is probably the wrong word… they talk while I imagine their lightly-salted faces frying in a skillet.”
Frank hails from Gaffney and represents South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District, a district that just a few years ago had as its representative courtly Democrat Congressman John Spratt, Davidson-educated, a man of immense integrity, as unlike Frank as Henry V is from Macbeth. Of course, now the district has fallen in Republican hands. It would appear as if Democratic elected officials in South Carolina like Spratt and Fritz Hollings have gone the way of the Carolina parakeet – that is, offstage forever.
At any rate, if you like small batch bourbon, chances are you’re going to like House of Cards. Although occasionally you may find your suspension of disbelief in peril, in fact, on the verge of Hindenburging, but the characterization is superb, complex, including Frank’s ruthless, insecure, profoundly unhappy wife Claire and his doppleganger of a mistress Zoe; even his chief of staff comes off as an authentic human being.
The series is strong, tasty, addictive, and capable of knocking you smack dab flat on your ass, like Jefferson’s Reserve, a great small batch bourbon that I wish I had some of right now.
In case you haven’t heard, a number of delicate damsels and/or censorious puritans at the so-called liberal arts college Wellesley have gotten their granny panties in a knot over a temporary outdoor installation of art by Tony Matelli entitled The Sleepwalker.
Warning: the image below may be offensive to you, especially if you’ve been sexually assaulted by an older male somnambulist undergoing chemotherapy.
The account below comes from the “Globe,” the newspaper, of course, no stranger to controversy having covered in its day the banning of many works in Boston including Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and the Everly Brothers’ Wake Up Little Susie.”¹
Anyway, “Zoe Magid, a Wellesley College junior majoring in political science, started a petition on Change.org with other students asking college president H. Kim Bottomly to have the statue removed.” The petition in part reads
[T]his highly lifelike sculpture has, within just a few hours of its outdoor installation, become a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering (sic) thoughts regarding sexual assault for many members of our campus community [. . .] While it may appear humorous, or thought-provoking to some, it has already become a source of undue stress for many Wellesley College students, the majority of whom live, study, and work in this space.
Here’s a thought, Zoe. Given that you’ve only been out of high school for 3 years, why not leave the selection of temporary art installations to professionals who know what they’re doing and stick to those skills you’ve mastered, like Tweeting (#philistine), You’re following in the footsteps of Jesse Helms and John Ashcroft, the latter who famously had the piece of filth below covered with curtain in the Robert F Kennedy Department of Justice Building because exposure to an aluminum breast is, well, um, not necessary.
Not only are poly sci majors down on The Sleepwalker, but art history major Annie Wang² also wants the statue removed because she sees it as an “assault”.:
“I think art’s intention is to confront, but not assault, and people can see this as assaulting,” Wang said. “Wellesley is a place where we’re supposed to feel safe. I think place and a context matters, and I don’t think this is the place to put it.”
I just don’t get it. The statue ain’t exactly Gustave Courbet’sL’Origine du monde, and I believe my 83-year-old mother could out run the poor [pardon the tautology] unhip, unattractive, tightie-whitie wearing somnambulist. I suspect that what really offends these young ladies is that the statue embodies unbeautifully the thing they most fear: growing old.
___________________
1. I shit you not.
2. By the way, I’m offended by Ms Wang’s surname because it brings to mind verbal assaults I suffered in locker rooms after PE in junior high school.
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