I have never seen "Shakespeare in Love," nor, before God I swear, will I ever....
Not to acknowledge that Shakespeare never saw an actress in his life shows abject ignorance, moral cowardice--and something worse: inveterate, stupid and stupefying heteronormativity. And it quite obfuscates the much more profitable and intriguing, and more plausible, plot-line that, had Shakespeare fallen inamorato of one of his real-life personifiers of Rosalind or Cleopatra or Lady Macbeth or Juliet, he'd have been (may well, in fact, have been) head over heals in love with a boy; or even more likely, in light of the Sonnets, which celebrate Shakespeare's mature bisexuality (compared to, say, Marlowe's fervent, juvenile pederasty), with a young man.
Whilst the Queen, double-translator of Greek tragedies that she was, and well aware of the various, conflicting minds and hearts of her loving subjects--and used by long practice to overlooking and not passing judgement on what she perceived in them--had she been asked her opinion of the evident, indeed flagrant, homoeroticism of her favorite all-male theater companies, might very conceivably have answered, "It's none of my business--or yours."
And question: Do you really, now, think that Harvey Weinstein's being the Producer of Shakespeare in Love had no influence on it of, perhaps, vulgar, predatory heteronormativity? Or might it have simply passed unnoticed in the cozy relaxation of the movie's unabashedly illiterate anachronism?
Whilst the Queen, double-translator of Greek tragedies that she was, and well aware of the various, conflicting minds and hearts of her loving subjects--and used by long practice to overlooking and not passing judgement on what she perceived in them--had she been asked her opinion of the evident, indeed flagrant, homoeroticism of her favorite all-male theater companies, might very conceivably have answered, "It's none of my business--or yours."
And question: Do you really, now, think that Harvey Weinstein's being the Producer of Shakespeare in Love had no influence on it of, perhaps, vulgar, predatory heteronormativity? Or might it have simply passed unnoticed in the cozy relaxation of the movie's unabashedly illiterate anachronism?
posted by anatole at
9:38 AM
4 Comments:
I'm disconcerted to discover that "heteronormativity" has made its way to the OED.
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet", says Juliet, while Shakespeare, turning in his grave, denies responsibility for his fictions being quoted as fact . . .
Ugly word, I must admit. But the reason I use it, and the reason it's in the OED, is, simply, that it's the only word that describes the fatuous stupidity of believing that heterosexuality is the absolute norm and sole reality of existence--as, most certainly, it was not for Marlowe and Shakespeare, to name but two.
I don't know how "the fatuous stupidity of believing that heterosexuality is the absolute norm and sole reality of existence" pops up here--a kind of straw man, methinks.
But the last para of your piece poses a question, while dragging the name of Harvey Weinstein into your reasons for vowing never to watch Shakespeare in Love. My answer to the question would be "no". Impugning such an influence on one of the producers seems far-fetched, since another of the producers wrote the script, along with Tom Stoppard.
So it is to the suthors that we owe the conceit of an actual woman playing a boy who plays a woman.
I think you would actually enjoy the film for its own sake and also as a game to see how many unabashed anachronisms you could find. I suggest they would be literary jokes rather than illiterate vulgarities.
Actually, it's to Shakespeare that we owe the running joke (in, for example As You Like It, and Twelfth Night) of a boy playing a woman who plays a boy. Which, in Shakespeare, really is clever and funny. But which is sheer leaden stupidity, IMO, when Tom Stoppard inverts it.
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