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Where(fore) Art Thou, Banksy? OR How I learned to stop worrying and love rampant consumerism

I was never one much for Banksy’s work, so I didn’t think to go looking for it. A few of my classmates buzzed about hunting down some number of his installations, but I was really much more taken with the idea of doing literally anything but that. It isn’t to say that I don’t like street art, because I do. I’m a layman at seeking it out, but I have as much respect for it as I do any other form of art (if not, in some cases more.) It’s Bansky in particular who I don’t like. I think he’s preachy and trite most of the time. Everything from his anonymity to his vague anti-status-quo statements like “consumerism is bad,” or “the royal family are clowns,” or “graffiti is art.” I may well be missing some hidden meaning in his work, but his style is not intriguing enough that I feel tempted to stare at an image of a rat holding up a picket sign that says “I HEART LONDON” to uncover its hidden depths. I’m not a Bansky connoisseur, so I don’t find myself speaking on him much, but I don’t find his message or his visual style to be particularly challenging or compelling for this day and age. I can appreciate the idea of Dismaland, not for its message (theme parks are an industry, you say? Shocker) but for the platform it gave to other up and coming artists. It’s nice to see that Banksy found a valuable home for the revenue and acclaim he’s generated for himself-- especially given that any other use for it would have seemed hypocritical. 

I didn’t go looking for Banksy, and I didn’t take a picture of Shop Til You Drop when I passed it in Mayfair. I was too busy collecting ticket stubs and cooing at the heaps of plushes, books, expensive confections, and accessories I’d saved up to accrue on my trip. I learned to make peace with the tourism industry while participating in it this month. I know that’s not punk, but it’s much more fun than cutting about in a new place looking for crude stencil art with no more revolutionary ideas than a child who thinks liking Green Day makes them an iconoclast (I have room to judge; I was that kid once.) If I wanted that, I could have stayed at home and watched Andy Samberg’s “Threw It on the Ground” for two weeks. Instead, I emptied my bank account at Fortenum & Mason and a giftshop inside of a church. I had fun. God bless the free market. I will shop until I fall off the side of a building in Westminster if I so choose. The dude abides.   

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The Unbelievable Bigness of Warwick Castle

Of every really old, really big thing that we visited as a group, I was the most taken with Warwick Castle, if for no other reason than it was really, really big, and really really old. The sense of awe it inspired in me was less reminiscent of my childhood fling with Medievalism than it was of my even earlier stint with dinosaurs and their unfathomable size and age. There’s something primordial about Europe’s long, dark, bloody history; when up at the highest vantage point I could reach there, I could not stop the instinct-driven, prelapsarian facet of lizard brain from seizing control of my mouth, and I babbled to anyone (usually classmates; not always) who would listen about how very very big, tall, and high up we were. I wish I had said, felt, or thought something smarter than “big, old, high up,” but that’s what I was most taken with. This, combined with the mythic image of ancient Britain on which I was raised, bowled me over. The two images of an infant England that I have been fed since childhood are at direct odds: one presented a proud, noble military and royal lineage-- a fantastical world lost to time which lives on in the prim propriety of modern Englishmen, the other a dirty, backwards, and miserable life of disease, toil, and fanaticism. I found that every display and every historical fact I was fed at Warwick Castle bolstered both images, but did not favor one over the other. Maintaining those images-- Medieval gregariousness and misery-- is, like most things, an industry. Much like Shakespearean tourism, however, it is based in fact, and I for one, enjoyed being spoon-fed both the dirtiest and proudest factoids so long as they fueled my sense of wonder whilst inside the castle walls. I wasn’t even bothered by the many hotdog stands, semi-historical reenactments, talking wax figures, or gift shops. After a certain point, they were too far away to be seen. Warwick Castle’s proprietors are clever-- if you want kitsch, they’ll give you kitsch. If you want immersive, they’ll give you immersive.  I wanted immersive. I got it. But that isn’t to say I didn’t dabble in the former to what really should be a shameful degree. 

Actually, in my stupor, I later went into a to a tourist’s fugue and purchased sixty-quid’s worth of nick-knacks. Something about staring into the deep void of human history made me desperately need an £18 plastic goblet with dragons on for one of my brothers and £30 worth of plush birds. The deep void of human history is big, old, high up, beautiful, and scary-- I really needed to put some overpriced, mass-produced garbage in it to make it seem shallower again. 

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South Kennsington Natural History Museum!

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Detail from the Walter Scott Monument in Edinburgh, the view of the stained glass from inside, the view of the Balmoral Hotel from the top, and also me and my pal are there.

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Full fathom five, thy father lies;

those are pearls that were his eyes.

Of his bones are coral made,

nothing of him that does fade

but doth suffer a sea-change

into something rich and strange. 

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Anne Hathaway and Audra McDonald in Twelfth Night. I am HUGELY annoyed that this was never brought to my attention. 

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The gentleness of all the gods go with thee!

Antonio & Sebastian from Twelfth Night

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Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

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Taking Tea

Of all of the things I missed about the States, one thing that I did not miss and am sad to return to is the dearth of afternoon tea. I loved taking tea in England and did it whenever I had time. Normally, I liked to take cream tea (a name which confused and concerned me at first) with a mixed berry scone, and that generally ran me about  £4.50, but on the recommendation of a stateside friend, I decided to splurge on tea at a place called Liberty Cafe on Piccadilly. High tea was  £30, which I was too foolish to buy, but afternoon tea was  £20, and despite my horror, I would say that it was worth it, if only as a Treat Yourself 2k17 type of thing. The tea itself was lovely, and it came complete with french macarons, and two hot scones. For an extra fiver, I got ahold of a lemon curd tart. It came with pansies on top. I ate the pansies. They were pretty good. 

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Scotch Whiskey Tasting in Edinburgh

During my free weekend abroad, I decided to go up to Oxenholm in the Lakes District to visit these two rascals

Right to left: fresh faced college boy Nathan, and precocious younger sibling Beck. Longtime friends of my siblings and myself. I stayed with them in Oxenholm for three days, during one of which, we took a two hour train ride up to Edinburgh. We had a few destinations in mind, one of which was the Edinburgh Dungeon, which was good, gruesome fun, and a gateway to new information on Scottish urban legends. I went specifically for their exhibition on Burke and Hare, the infamous Victorian resurrectionists, with whom I have been fascinated since high school. I also discovered a few new British horrors, like the legend of actual cannibal Alexander “Sawney” Beane and the North Berwick Witch Trials and rejuvenated my interest in the history of the Black Death with a layman’s guide to plague academia from the Dungeon’s gift shop. In a less sickening (and less tacky) turn, we also went to a scotch whiskey tasting at a local distillery. It was a surprisingly educational experience, and I learned to appreciate and understand the flavors and textures inherent in a good scotch, rather than lean on my shots-first-ask-questions-later approach to whiskey. 

Beck was too young to participate in the tasting, but they were a good sport and came with us anyway (the whiskey touring guide gave them an IRN BRU, so they were pacified while their older brother and I enjoyed Scotland's finest.)

We samples five scotches in all, each from a distinct region: the Highlands, the Lowlands, Islay, Campbeltown, and Speyside. Nathan and I agreed that the Islay and Campbeltown were our favorites, but we were surprised and delighted to note a coffee-like aftertaste in the Speyside and a salted toffee something-or-other in the sample from the Lowlands. We learned the basic methods that go into the creation of scotch whiskey-- the way the barley is toasted, the kind of wood used to make the barrels (always oak, apparently), they way the wood is charred, and how each variety of scotch gets its flavor (it’s all up to the region in which the oak is grown, apparently-- so it makes sense, for example, that the scotch made in the bays of the Lowland region would have a salty taste, since they’re so close to the shore. For another example, Islay scotch is best known for its smokey flavor, because the barrels used to age the whiskey is nearly blackened by fire before it is put to use.)

We were also taught the basics of assessing whiskey for age, body, aroma, and finish. To give a brief rundown:

1) The color of the scotch indicates its age, so a lighter honey color makes for a younger batch, while a darker bronze tone indicates that it’s been well aged.

2) Twirling whiskey in a whiskey tasting glass has a purpose outside of looking extra posh. Unlike with wine, it doesn’t alter the flavor, but it does allow you to assess the maltiness of the batch you’re sampling. Once the inside of our glasses were well coated, we were instructed to watch as droplets formed and rand down the sides. These are colloquially referred to as “legs;” thicker, slower moving legs indicate a higher sugar content and a maltier scotch (for the record, the IRN BRU obviously had oodles of sugar in it, but its legs were thin and quick. It’s good to know Beck’s soda wasn’t fermented.) 

3) It may take a few tries to get passed the smell of alcohol, but if you give your scotch a hearty sniff, you can start to pinpoint aromatic “notes” in the batch, usually described with adjectives like “floral,” “smokey,” “fruity,” or “spicy.” 

4) Obviously you gotta taste that bad boy. You’re supposed to take a tiny sip, hold it on your tongue, and then swirl it around your mouth to get the full breadth of the flavor.

5) Swallow the whiskey and notice its “finish.” Sometimes the finish is short (or if its especially cheap, it might just burn,) but some leave a tingling sensation or a new flavor that lasts for a few minutes. 

Being barely legal, Nathan and I are both greenhorns in terms of the flavors of liquor, and tend to think more about chasers and mixers than the year of the batch or florid turns of phrase like “an underlying honeycomb maltiness” or “notes of bonfires and sea air,” because they sound absolutely stupid. However, we have found that there is truth in such purple prose, and yes, we could actually taste pleasant hints of citrus fruit and vanilla oak in 12 year old fermented barley water that’s been floating around in a cask in some basement. 

TL;DR: I learned to be a scotch whiskey snob in Scotland, and my friend’s kid sibling got a sodie pop. 

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Day 7: Lecture on early modern theatrical spaces and workshop on Globe performance practices at the Globe Theatre

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If you will not murder me for my kitsch, let me buy a bag with medieval torture-print on it

Okay, so, while I was wandering the streets of London and Edinburgh, I could not help but notice that the celebration of the UK’s tragic and gory was popular and monetized 24/7. Anywhere I went, I had (and often took) the opportunity to pay £7.50 to wander into a dark room and gawk at distressed wax dummies. Like everyone who’s still recovering from being a mall goth, I’m interested in gruesome history and folklore. Fortunately for me, the English and the Scots (and, I must assume, the Irish and the Welsh) delight in displaying their darkest moments as much as they do their proud monarchic line and ancient architecture. The torture of innocents, endless waves of three different plagues, fires, crooked rulers, cannibalism, and serial murder is not only proudly displayed, but also cheapened (and I say this with love-- I bought a lot of ghoulish nick-knacks and went to a lot of haunted houses, after all) by commerce. I didn’t just see plush representations disembodiment, I purchased them as gifts for my younger siblings. Sure, the U.S. will always have fun haunts like the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast, or the Salem Witch Trials Wax Museum, but those are rarely popular beyond the month of October. The Edinburgh Dungeon, London Tombs, Clink Prison Museum, and Jack the Ripper Walking Tours were jumping joints in June, as I imagine they would be year ‘round. The latter was so popular, in fact, that I couldn’t get tickets for them unless I booked several days in advance (at that point, we were too deep into our trip, and I was unable to attend unless I found it in me to shell out  £350 for a private tour by car. Obviously, I didn’t do that one either.) 

Not only that, but antique torture devices like the rack

and the catchpole

are displayed within reach among recently crafted representations of other gruesome contraptions and corny props. In full honestly, I liked this attitude. The British reverence for their history and antique objects goes hand in hand with the notion that everything they do then becomes a part of that history-- the old and the new meld seamlessly not only in their architecture, but even in their hokey tourist traps and unpleasant histories. 

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A Tourist’s Guide to Riding the Tube Alone and Drunk

Hi, you know me, I’m the functioning alcoholic with no friends who is a very busy man and needs to get from point A to point B. Armed with only an oyster card, a nip of whiskey, a woefully out of service Android, and a vague understanding of the New York subway system, I have learned that even the ugliest American can evade human traffickers like a professional street urchin and get from Cockfosters to Fleet Street with minimal incident. 

Londoners don’t seem to look down on Americans half as much as I expected.

Bars close early in England because most of them tend to be drunk all the time anyways; they won’t notice or care that you are too.

If you’re good to walk a straight line to the tube station, you’re good to follow the straight lines up on the walls that tell you where all the trains are going. 

All the buses go to the tube. If you’re lost, find any bus and take that bus to any tube station because all roads lead to Rome in London.

You don’t have to be reading, but if you stare hard enough into a book, everyone will think you are a very smart person, and they will not trifle with you. 

I still don’t understand why the English paste their street signs to the sides of buildings like barbarians instead of putting them in plain sight. Never knowing what street I was on made me feel really stupid, but at least I learned to use the tube.

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As a sidenote, I found the Hamlet that we saw to be pretty flat and unremarkable, but I thought that the RSC’s Antony and Cleopatra was absolutely brilliant (especially Josette Simon as Cleopatra and Ben Allen as Caesar.) 

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The Whirligig of Gender Will Have Its Revenges

Over the course of our trip, I was very vocal (perhaps too vocal) about two things in particular: 

1) Twelfth Night is my favorite Shakespearean play (save for the possible exception of Hamlet, but lately the odds have tipped from his favor to Viola’s).

2) I absolutely loathed the Globe production that we attended. 

By the end of the play, I was deeply incensed (not to mention a few drinks in)-- so much so that I couldn’t stand to stay for the triumphant finale jig and left early. After that, I called home and ranted to my younger sister until I felt calm again and went back to my flat. To be clear, I have never been so emotional about disliking a theatrical (or cinematic) production of anything to this day. I’ve even seen Twelfth Nights I’ve liked less than the one we saw as a class without being half as disturbed or upset by them. “Why then, did this particular version have such an effect on you?” You are not asking yourself this question, because my opinion is neither here nor there to anyone but myself; I wondered this while half-drunk, actually, and later, once sober again, came upon the answer:

As a preface, I would like to point out that, in the 21st Century, there is no wrong way to interpret Shakespeare, so long as you have a particular vision in mind and follow through on your plans. There are, of course, inadequate methods of performing and staging (for the record, I thought that the blacking and acting we saw was effective and skilled), and some Shakespeareans-- particularly those at The Globe-- are especially staunch about leaning into “original practices,” but theater has evolved so much in the last 400 years that even productions that call themselves traditional Elizabethan stagings are not that (consider the Tim Carroll Twelfth Night: where are the prepubescent boys meant to be playing the Viola, Olivia, and Maria? Why is the blocking so modern?) All that is left is the text and its sparse stage directions. I am aware that my disdain for the Emma Rice production is based mainly upon personal preference. However, I like to believe that my opinions hold enough water to be worth the attention and respect of others.

(Under the cut for length.)

My two favorite things about Twelfth Night are, in order, its inherent queerness and bitterness. Make no mistake, being an Elizabethan comedy, it can just as easily be light, frothy, and straight (as evidenced by what we witnessed last week) and even the darkest versions thereof must make room for fun potty humor and slapstick and heterosexual, cisgendered couplings (as those too, are in the text). Those things, as much as any present queerness or anger, are part of the fun of Twelfth Night, and the former is where most of the comedy comes from. But the genderqueer, non-straight, and angry undercurrents that can be detected in this play (whether placed there by its author knowingly or not) go oft ignored. I am disappointed by this, naturally, but never before have I had it thrown in my face this way by a company so prestigious as the Globe. 

I think my central problem with the Rice staging was her Feste.

Yes, I did notice that Feste was portrayed by a very talented and engaging drag queen. No, that did not help. But did it make my experience worse? Absolutely, 100%, yes. Feste is perhaps the pettiest, most resentful character in the text. He cares not for the emotions of others, particularly not that of his Lady Olivia, who’s grief he mocks and belittles (granted, this is his job, and at his kindest, he has been portrayed as genuinely fond of her, but more often than not, he is a punch-clock entertainer, who cares only for the emotions of others as long as they will pay him for what he elicits) in his first appearance, after being absent from her court for an extended period of time. 

Feste. Good madonna, why mournest thou? Olivia. Good fool, for my brother's death. Feste. I think his soul is in hell, madonna. Olivia. I know his soul is in heaven, fool. Feste. The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen (5.1. 357-362).

His only real interests throughout the play appeared to be song, logical wordplay (”simple syllogism[s]”), crude jokes (”many a good hanging prevented a bad marriage”), weaseling pocket change away from the rich, and enacting petty revenge. At his best, he’s a puckish partygoer and delightful busker, at his worst, he is apart from all other social groups in the play and cruel to at least the same degree as the bear-baiting merrymakers. 

“Earlier, Malvolio had mocked Feste for his dependence on others... But [Feste] also mirrors Malvolio specifically as a dependent in a court and as one the play most clearly shows as a solitary character. He is the one who echoes Malvolio’s words about dependency on approval in shortened form, ‘An you smile not, he’s gagged’ (5.1.363-4), back to him at the end. And after he exults ‘Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges’ (364), Malvolio in turn mirrors him, promising his own revenge” (66 Novy). 

Feste is at his most useful when existing as a mirror for other characters-- he contextualizes his lady’s grief with cruel mockery, challenges Viola’s wits and disguise, and most importantly, shows Malvolio the cruelty that he callously doles out. When his dialogue is chopped up into saintly wisdom from a loving goddess in the Heavens, his status as a dynamic character and device is stripped from him. When Feste is robbed of his archetypal trickster-status, it weakens the core themes of the play which are written into the very title (as Twelfth Night and the Feast of Fools were, of course, traditionally a day of opposites, much as Feste the wise fool is a natural mirror and walking contradiction). When he is robbed of his anger towards his social betters (Olivia and Malvolio), this is further weakened. 

My qualms with making Feste a benevolent Goddess are based entirely upon the text; my problems with casting said benevolent goddess as a drag queen are two fold. My first is in the broader scope of media representation of drag queens, trans women, and feminine genderqueer persons. Most often, the cinematic and theatrical tradition is to demonize such individuals as lascivious perverts, which is obviously dehumanizing. As well-intended backlash, many younger content creators have thus spun around done the patent opposite by deifying them (this is also, notably, a dichotomy experienced by black women/femmes, be they cisgender, trans, or otherwise gender nonconforming). Deification is in its own way a subtler form of dehumanization. Much like the treatment of so-called virtuous women in the Victorian era, the representation of any group as somehow morally superior or “above” the rest of the rest is restricting. An anti-Semite might do well to wonder: “Hath a Jew not eyes?... If you prick us, do we not bleed?” but any white, cisgendered woman who routinely refers to black women and femme queers as “black goddesses” (which is absolutely a thing, as those of you who frequent tumblr, twitter, pintrest, or instagram most likely know) should be reminded that, just like all people, black queer femmes fart and defecate regularly, and they, like all other members of the human race, run on a sliding scale of morality, wisdom, and grace, depending on the individual. The archetypal example of this “heavenly body” trope is Angel of Rent, being a Latina trans-woman (or gender-fluid person, or drag queen, depending on the interpretation) who is always given the moral high ground, dies a tragically noble death, always has resources to bestow upon the less fortunate, and is literally called “Angel.” Much like Feste, she is the only gender non-conforming femme poc in her cannon, and that, paired with the erasure and demonization of this particular group that has been so common in Western art and media, leaves them as the sole representation of said group to be found in fiction. Each time a character of a group so mishandled as that is brought into play, that character becomes a mouthpiece for the entire population of such individuals that exist in reality. The trope of the black, femme goddess is much kinder than the demonization and willful ignorance of old, but in 2017, we should be beyond this refusal to portray those who exist outside of the white, straight, cis hegemony as anything other than individuals as complex as everyone else in their canon. Anyone who is tempted to bring up the “Sister Topas” scene as a counter-argument is welcome to it, but this derives from a halfhearted attempt to recast Feste as a personification of fate after four acts of being nothing but sage and understanding. It is not deeper characterization, as it is not played as either vengeance or cruelty-- at best, it is a twist of fate personified, at worst, it is whoever doctored the script backing themselves into a character-writing corner by striping Feste of his humanity.

My second challenge to the choice of La Gateau Chocolat as Feste is that her place in the cast is by its very nature misleading. Twelfth Night is well known among Shakespeare fans as one of the (if not the) queerest Shakespearean plays. It is well-known for featuring one of several Shakespearean Antonios, all of whom are noted for their non-explicit homosexual passion (Twelfth Night’s Antonio’s love for Sebastian is second only to the Antonio of Merchant of Venice and his suicidal devotion to Bessanio, and the villainous Antonio of The Tempest finds his match and constant companion in an equally rotten Sebastian.) Also present is the wooing that takes place between two women, and the Duke Orsino’s apparent attraction to one who is “both man and maid,” whom he never ceases to refer to as “boy” or “Cesario,” even after learning “his” true name and gender. Moreover, of all of Shakespeare’s cross-dressing Paige Boys, Viola spends the most time as her male counterpart, who’s name, as we discussed in class, translates roughly to “rebirth” by way of “cesarean section.” I bring these up because each of these characters have been stripped of their queerness systematically. Cesario/Viola is often played as not just a cross-dresser for strategy’s sake but a genderqueer individual in earnest; Olivia’s realization that Sebastian is not his sister has been played as a horrible, sinking realization; Antonio is often left on stage alone to highlight his loss of Sebastian to heterosexual tradition. I am by no means saying that stagings must be this way or that they must reflect this queer undercurrent, and I have liked versions of the play that exemplify few or none of these choices. My problem with Rice’s Twelfth Night is that, not only does it ignore the inherent discomfort that Feste and each of these queer characters experiences when played as such, but she has dressed her staging up as a celebration of queerness and diversity when that diversity only runs skin-deep (at least, in terms of the aforementioned and belabored queerness.)

 I have already explained my problems with Rice’s Feste, so I will now move on to two new subjects: Malvolio and Sir Andrew. These characters are blatantly coded as queer in that Malvolio is played by a cross-dressing woman and Andrew is played as camp gay. However, that is as deep as the queer vein in this staging runs. Malvolio is not traditionally a queer character (although he is often the subject of “genderbending” to varying degrees of success), nor is he played as queer on stage. He is only branded as such due to being played by a woman, despite being played as a man. Andrew’s status is particularly egregious, as-- in being both comically stupid and violently mean-- he is the most difficult to sympathize with of any character; he has no compelling emotional core written into the text, nor is any planted into Marc Antolin’s portrayal of him. He is also a wooer of Olivia’s and, as far as the text and blocking is concerned, more “metrosexual” than homosexual in earnest. What this does is play all stereotypically gay mannerisms (those that he possesses which Antonio, Sebastian, and even the preening Duke evade whether they are played as queer men or not) for laughs and nothing else. “It’s funny,” the audience says, “because he’s in a pink sweater and he’s got a funny lisp.” Meanwhile, Olivia never notices her very real attraction towards another woman, the Duke Orsino’s sexual identity crisis is just barely hinted at, and most questionable of all, Antonio is played as a father figure to Sebastian. Lawman’s Antonio’s body language is neutral and distant, not half as wracked with passions as his lines:“If you will not murder me for my love//Let me be your servant” (1.2.642-3) and “ I could not stay behind you: my desire//More sharp than filed steel, did spur me forth” (3.3.1492-3). 

In conclusion: Rice’s staging of Twelfth Night may be good for a laugh, but it robs the text of its philosophical weight, its bitterness, and its genuine queer discomfort, thus replacing these things with a light gloss of queer acceptance by playing “We Are Family” at the beginning and giving Sir Andrew a pencil mustache. I am not upset that Rice’s staging was not queer or angry enough for my liking; I am upset because her staging insisted (whether she wanted it to or not) that a wave of sequins and a disco chorus should be queer enough for me, and I ought to stop being so angry all the time and accept what I’ve been given. 

SOURCES:

Novy, Marianne. “Outsiders and the Festive Community in Twelfth Night.” Shakespeare & Outsiders. Oxford University Press, 2013. 

Shakespeare, William. "Twelfth Night, or What You Will." Open Source Shakespeare. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 June 2017.

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