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dweemeister · 4 years ago

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The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953)

Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, remains best-known for his children’s books. The Cat in the Hat; Green Eggs and Ham; and Oh, the Places You’ll Go! are household names in English-language literature. Seuss’ bibliography overshadows his work in films, beginning with the adapted screenplay of his own book, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1943) – directed by George Pal as part of the Puppetoons series. During WWII, Seuss was heavily involved in propaganda films and the Private Snafu (1943-1946) military training films. After the war’s end, Seuss returned to writing children’s books, but also continued to write for movies. The Academy Award-winning animated short film Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950) benefitted from Seuss’ story work, and Seuss’ success there inspired him to write a screenplay for a live-action fantasy film. That screenplay – the unwieldy rough draft coming in at over 1,200 pages – was The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. The eventual movie, produced by Stanley Kramer (1960’s Inherit the Wind, 1961’s Judgment at Nuremberg) and directed by Roy Rowland (1945’s Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, 1956’s Meet Me in Las Vegas) for Columbia Pictures, would be Seuss’ only involvement in a non-documentary feature film.

Like many who speak English as their first language, Dr. Seuss’ books graced my early childhood. So integral to numerous children’s youth is Seuss that his whimsy, wordplay, and authorial stamps are easily recognizable. In that spirit, the cinematic record of live-action Seuss adaptations consists of the scatological Jim Carrey in How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) and the visual nightmare that is Mike Myers as The Cat in the Hat (2003). Compared to the original works, both films are ungainly, casually cruel, and overcomplicated. Not promising company for Dr. T. But even taking into account the three animated feature adaptations of Seuss – Horton Hears a Who! (2008), The Lorax (2012), and The Grinch (2018) – and the fact that Columbia forced wholesale deletions from the rough draft script of Dr. T to achieve a feasible runtime, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T is arguably the most faithful feature adaptation to Dr. Seuss’ authorial intent and signature aesthetic.

In other words, this is one of the strangest films you may ever encounter. No synopsis I could write in one paragraph will ever capture the film’s bizarreries.

Little Bart Collins (Tommy Rettig) is asleep during piano practice and his teacher, Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried), is furious. His overworked, widowed mother Heloise (Mary Healey) intuits Terwilliker’s unrealistic expectations (Terwilliker wants to teach the next Paderewski) towards Bart’s piano skills and inability to concentrate. Heloise also appears to be quietly eyeing the plumber August Zabladowski (Peter Lind Hayes) and his wrench. With the lesson done for the day, Bart falls asleep again. This time, he dreams that Terwilliker is now the leader of the Terwilliker Institute, a pianist supremacy mini-state which is built upon five hundred young pianist slave boys (hence, 5,000 fingers) forcibly playing Terwilliker’s latest compositions. His mother is Terwilliker’s unwilling, hypnotized assistant and plumber August Zabladowski (Hayes is essentially playing the same character, but in a different world) is Bart’s only ally around. Together, Bart and Mr. Zabladowski must evade the Institute’s guards as they attempt to undermine Terwilliker’s plans for his next concert.

In its final form, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T is a muddled mess of a story. The analogues between Bart’s reality and his dreams are inconsistent, several would-be subplots never resolve (or at the very least develop beyond a basic idea), and the film’s initial lightness is subject to rapid mood swings that make this picture feel disjointed. Indeed, Seuss’ sprawling social commentary in his first draft – including allegories and themes of post-WWII totalitarianism, anti-communism, and atomic annihilation – is in tatters in this final product. The viewer will witness brief fragments of those ideas, remaining in this movie as the barest of hints of the contents of the original screenplay’s rough draft. Even now, Dr. T inspires psychiatric analyses and accusations that Bart’s relationship with his mother reveals signs of an Oedipal complex (to yours truly, the latter is too much of a reach). The grim nature of Terwilliker Institute renders Dr. T unsuitable for the youngest children. For older children and adults, try going into this movie without expectations of narrative logic and embrace the grotesque aspects that only Seuss could imagine.

If my attempts to describe this movie’s preposterousness through its narrative and screenwriting approach have failed, perhaps I can capture that for you by writing on its technical features.

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For its sheer narrative inventiveness – inconsistencies, abrupt tonal shifts, nonsense, and Rowland’s uninspired direction aside – The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T is nevertheless an ambitious film, and Columbia bequeathed a hefty budget to match that ambition. Much of that budget went to the film’s visuals. This is an extravagantly-staged motion picture, as nothing could do Dr. Seuss’ illustrations justice without fully committing to his geometric impossibilities: skyward ladders and improbable connections between rooms, an eschewal of right angles and straight lines, and architecture bound to raise the ire of physics teachers. One could compare this to German Expressionism, but Dr. T’s sets tend not to dictate the film’s mood nor are they subject to high-contrast lighting. Seuss went uncredited as the concept artist on Dr. T, and it was up to Clem Beauchamp (1935’s The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, 1952’s High Noon) and the uncredited matte artists to commit those visuals to the real world. Outside of animated film, Beauchamp and the matte artists succeed in creating twisted sets that seem to leap off the pages of Seuss’ most artistically interesting books. Some of the sets appear too stagebound, but the production design accomplishes its need to resemble a world borne from a fever dream (or, at least, a young pianist’s nightmare).

This movie’s outrageous costume design (other than Jean Louis’ gowns for Mary Healey, the costume designer/s for this film are uncredited) comprises absurd uniforms and two of the most ludicrous hats – the “happy fingers” cap (see photo at the top of this write-up) and whatever the hell Terwilliker dons in the film’s climax – one might ever see in a film. Most of the costumes are laughably impractical and ridiculous to even those without fashion sense. In what might be the tamest example, while working under Terwilliker, Bart’s mother wears a suit that is all business formal on the left-hand side and bare-shouldered, sleeveless, and nightclub-y on the right. The delineation of real life – which barely features in the film’s eighty-nine minutes – and this world of Bart’s dreams could not be any more unambiguous thanks to the combination of the production and costume design work.

The disappointing musical score by Fredrich Hollaender (1930’s The Blue Angel, 1948’s A Foreign Affair) and song lyrics by Seuss rarely connects to the larger narrative unfolding. Seven songs make the final print, with nine (yikes!) Hollaender-Seuss songs ending up on the cutting room floor. Seuss’ wordplay is evident, as are Hollaender’s melodic flourishes. Columbia, a studio not known for its musicals, assembled a 98-piece orchestra – the largest musical ensemble to work on a Columbia film at the time – for The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T alone. That lush sound is apparent throughout for the numerous nonsense songs that color the score in addition to the incidental score. It is unusual to listen to a collection of novelty songs orchestrated so fully. Listen to “Dressing Song: Do-Mi-Do Duds” and its complicated, seeming unsingable lines:

Come on and dress me, dress me, dress me In my peek-a-boo blouse With the lovely inner lining made of Chesapeake mouse! I want my polka-dotted dickie with the crinoline fringe For I'm going doe-me-doe-ing on a doe-me-doe binge!

The rich orchestration seems to hail from a more lavish film. But too many of these songs are scene-specific, and rarely does Hollaender utilize musical quotations from these songs into his score. “Get Together Weather” is delightful, but it seems so isolated from the rest of the film; elsewhere, “The Dungeon Song” exemplifies a macabre side to Seuss seldom appearing in his books. Nevertheless, Hollaender is able to demonstrate his playfulness across the entire film, none moreso during any scene with the bearded, roller-skating twins and the “Dungeon Ballet”, in which the music complements stunning choreography and fascinating props that recall the jingtinglers, floofloovers, tartookas, whohoopers, slooslunkas, and whowonkas from the Christmas television special How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966). Yet, Hollaender’s film score and the soundtrack with Seuss seems to demand something – anything – to tie the entire compositional effort together. Perhaps a song or some cue like that was cut from the film, which is ultimately to its detriment.

Hans Conried (who starred as Captain Hook in Disney’s Peter Pan several months prior to Dr. T’s release) stands out from a decidedly average Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healey – Hayes and Healey, in a sort of in-joke, were married. Conried’s performance as the sadistic, torture- and imprisonment-happy music teacher can be considered camp, but this is anything but “bad” camp. He throws himself completely into this cartoonish role, sans shame, complete with mid-Atlantic accent, and topped off with exaggerated facial and physical acting that fits this fantasy. As Bart, child actor Tommy Rettig (best known as Jeff Miller on the CBS television series Lassie) seems more assured in his performance than most child performers his age during the 1950s. His fourth wall-breaking asides seem more appropriate in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but Rettig makes it work, and inhabits Bart’s flaws wonderfully.

Columbia demanded numerous reworkings of Seuss’ script, leading to several reshoots – most notably the opening scene (Seuss opposed the conceit of Bart’s dream framing the film) – and a ballooning budget. Upon its release in the summer of 1953, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T bombed at the box office and was assailed by critics. A crestfallen Seuss, who could not stand the production difficulties that beset the film from the start of shooting, would never work in feature films again. He would dedicate himself almost entirely to writing and illustrating children’s books, with many of his most popular titles (including The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, and Green Eggs and Ham) published within a decade of Dr. T’s critical and commercial failure. His hesitance to participate in filmmaking informed his reluctance to allow Chuck Jones to adapt How the Grinch Stole Christmas! thirteen years later. Animation suited his books, Seuss thought, and he would never again pay any consideration to live-action filmmaking.

The reevaluation of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T has seen a rehabilitation of the film’s image in recent decades. Home media releases and television showings have introduced the film to viewers not influenced by the hyperbolic negativity of the film critics working in 1953. This is not a sterling example of Old Hollywood fantasy filmmaking, due to a heavily gutted screenplay, scattershot thematic development, and incongruent musical score. Yet, the movie’s surrealistic charms and Seussian chaos know no peers, even in the present day.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T #The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T.#Dr. Seuss #Roy Rowland #Peter Lind Hayes #Mary Healy #Hans Conried #Tommy Rettig #Allan Scott #Stanley Kramer #Frederick Hollander #Rudolph Sternad #Cary Odell #William Kiernan #TCM #My Movie Odyssey

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mesogeios · 5 years ago

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The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek—it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language—all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture December 7, 1993

#Toni Morrison #on language #quote

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errthel · 4 years ago

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I have risen up from the dead for the holidays to give this gift (Route Two : Part 6)

Hey man, wassup, how's life? I dunno what to say, I'm a terrible Santa. I put in more time into this chapter than the other chapters (in the spirit of preholiday break procrastination) so I hope you like this gift. This is derived for the amazing @tri3tri 's SW AU and I just thank her for creating such vivid and lovely AUs which I can immerse myself in, I loved the recent AU, Dead MC, a very nice one indeed. So I guess I will leave now so you can enjoy your reading time in peace ♡♡♡♡♡♡

Lucien’s mind was a maze. Every twist and turn, every dead end taunted him, like a defenseless child taunted by their cruel relatives. His frustration knew no bounds when he failed to exit the maze, but that anger was soon replaced by something far more sinister.

The numbing sear on his body felt as if his body was suffocated when he slept. His appendages were like cooked pasta, limp and unruly. Breaths that were like that of an athlete who had run a marathon filled the room at lightning speed. The degradation of his vision forced the boy to squint but even that proved to be ineffective when blobs of different colors was all that filled his vision. Lucien could no longer feel the beat of his heart, his lungs wouldn’t budge and supply him with air. He felt his eyelids droop lower and lower in an agonizingly slow pace until they finally reached their destination. The room fell into a hushed silence, like the prior noise never happened, it was peaceful like a field of flowers on a cliff.

For her, time wasn’t a constriction, she had lived long enough to no longer fear the obnoxious concept of time. She lives alongside time. She is time. As long as time exists, she will live and be indifferent to time. Her hourglass will forever be reversed again and again when the sand trickled to the bottom.

But her long life no longer gave her any thrill, she lives in a kingdom where war no longer ensues in its borders and she has been reduced to a routine of nothingness. Until the woman with flowing (h/c) hair and blazing (e/c) eyes came years ago. The woman who was her granddaughter-in-law was an untameable dog who very much was the one who her dear grandson loved with all his heart.

The sour taste in her mouth left her itching to tame the woman until she was the perfect lover for her grandson.

The sour taste in her mouth was satiated when the woman was on her knees along with her daughters, her confidence was cracking.

She was almost perfect.

Maleficent looked back to those recent memories and scoffed, what was she thinking? (MC) hadn’t changed even with a decade of taming, she truly was an untamable dog. She sat on a chair that was as black as the abyss of space. In her unlit room, she was like a viper ready to strike at anything that disturbed her.

Her peace however is disrupted by a wave of magic. Her eyes quickly focused on the magic and tried to discern what kind of magic dared to make its way into the Valley of Thorns. Once she figured out what magic it was, her cackling reached the throne room as her bright green flames engulfed her room. She called in a meeting with all the high ranking nobles of The Valley of Thorns.

Her room was as gloomy as it was large, floor to ceiling window panes let in as much natural light as the rainy day allowed. She sighed, he was having another tantrum from their one-sided conversation in the morning.

Her black dress was almost as beautiful as the woman who wore it. The dress was a two piece dress consisting of a bodice and a skirt. The woman's bodice was luxurious, even if it was done in a black fabric, delicate embroidery in black thread was littered across the bodice, while her two layered scalloped bertha collar was created with a sheer black fabric. A large skirt supported by a steel crinoline accentuated her waist as the corset helped to hold up her large skirt. She also wore a black veil, as if she was mourning for someone.

“Mother, long time no see.” Sherry’s somewhat cheery voice announced her presence

“How are you Sherry?” hearing her mother’s question brought the teenager joy as she happily sat on the sofa and talked about how she was feeling

“Hello Mother.” a stoic voice called out to the woman as she walked into the room

Sherry’s green eyes flicked over to Renata who seemed like she walked to the depths of hell and back.

“Yo Renata! You look like you're about to drop.”

“I do very much feel like that.” Renata sighs as she plops herself down to the sofa next to Sherry

“When you’re tired, sleep my dear.”

“Mhm”

“Renata, did you?” (M/c) asked the black haired teen who nodded in agreement

“Mhm, I already did.” Renata said, referring to a magic spell which allows nobody to eavesdrop on their conversations

“I can feel that something will happen.”

Sherry and Renata looked at their mother with confused looks, “What will happen?” Sherry said breaking the confusion

“Lucien is here in Twisted Wonderland.”

“You’re joking!” Renata said looking at her

“The kid’s finally here huh.”

“We still aren’t ready.”

“Don’t worry, where do you think we live? Even if the Valley of Thorns continues to invade countries near it, this kingdom will always be isolated.”

But her statement was disputed with the wave of magic that engulfed the room and brought the three ladies to panic. The magic was like a hurricane that knocked the breath out of their lungs and gave them excruciating pain by doing so.

“This magic! How is it so strong!” Sherry said trying to breath

“No way. This is a finishing stage of transformation magic!” Renata said making (M/c) look at the window with surprised eyes

“Lucien…”

His face was like an unkempt garden and cottage, bellflowers and catmint littered the ground, sullen from the cold atmosphere. The yellow straw of the cottage roof looked disheveled as if it barely survived a violent snowstorm. That was the appearance of Briar Rome as he sat on the intolerably cold and hard stool that seemed jutt into his tailbone. His purple eyes that seemed to always give the person staring into them the warm feeling of spring, instead looked dejected, regretful, downcast, miserable, and just plain sad. Briar’s wheat colored hair was like sad damp straw, a victim of the recent and sudden storm that glazed Royal Sword Academy for a few hours.

His pale hands held a hand larger than his own, the nails were a menacing black that glossed under the light of the infirmary. His eyes trailed up to the person’s pale face, the person had (h/c) hair that was like the clouds in the great big sky and his horns were two skyscrapers that disrupted the beautiful view. His silk-like fringe was brushed to the side to reveal a threatening yet alluring pattern of black scales that started in between his forehead and hairline. The ornate design strangely complemented the boy. He looked at the white robe his friend wore and grimaced, he should have known that he was sick or hurting earlier, when he heard that Lucien was the one who had unconsciously casted the tragic storm while also suffering from his transformation, he felt like a thousand needles had pricked him at the same time.

A light groan felt like the bang of a sudden firework to Briar, it felt like seeing the light at the end of a dark and long tunnel. His breath hitched as if his mind stopped working for a moment and he stood up and shouted for a nurse when he finally had a grasp on what was happening. Like swifts, a pair of nurses entered the room, one ushering Briar out, to his dismay, while the other tended to the now semi-conscious Lucien.

The room was like Antarctica to (M/c), frigid and deathly silent. Her eyes trailed to the imposing figure that sat upon a throne of thorns. Like a paperweight weighing down everyone with a rule of silence, Maleficent observed the court, everybody was here, save for the Crown Prince, he wasn't necessary.

She sat on a throne on the right of her husband while Bellatrix sat beside Maleficent on her left. Her children were separated from their mother as they sat on their respective chairs as the High Court Magician and Supreme General.

"I hope I wasn't the only one who felt it, I'd be disappointed if I was." she haughtily said looking at the court of high ranking nobles

Words of confirmation echoed in the large hall and Maleficent steadily raised her staff and pointed to Renata.

"High Court Magician, elaborate further."

Renata stood up and explained, "The magic that came across the Valley of Thorns is quite unique."

Some chatter was heard among the nobles, they weren't really surprised, if anything, they probably weren't listening. Why should they listen to a half-human princess? It was probably through pure luck that she was able to get that position, probably by asking the vile queen.

Renata silently clenched her teeth and sucked it in and continued, "The magic is transforming magic, more specifically, dark fae transformation magic."

Gasps were heard in the court while a noble stood up to object the sayings of the High Court Magician.

"Your Highnesses! How can we be so sure about what she says!"

Renata looked at the man and clicked her tongue, Muave Heighgroove. What a joke, she sat down, deeming it unnecessary to stand up

"What do you mean?" Malleus said in a hoarse voice

"Your Highness! We don't know for sure if she is lying."

"Faes can't lie." Malleus says passively

The fact that the king didn't respond aggressively blew Muave up like a puffer fish with pride.

"Well, with the princesses being half-"

His claim was cut short by Maleficent who just laughed, no cackled, like a dying goat. She was beyond amused. Maleficent looked Muave straight in the eyes.

"That girl is plenty capable in discerning what magic it was. Honestly, I wonder how you all are part of the royal court."

Clean and swift.

Renata stood up and displayed her utmost gratitude and explained the magic even more.

"The circumstances are very unique when we consider this case, in case you happened to forget, transformation potions and anything regarding transformation is illegal in most kingdoms unless it is their Unique Magic, not in the Valley of Thorns though. But even then, transformation magic, especially for a dark fae transformation, is still hard to obtain here as it's distribution is under the jurisdiction of the Former Queen. So Your Highness, were you the one who gave some without the court's knowledge."

Renata was as cruel as she was realistic, her eyes were gleaming as they stared at the great-grandmother's dragon eyes. She was only stating facts and asking the correct questions to the correct people. A perfect smile was displayed on her face, whether or not the smile had other motives was unknown.

"I see, no I didn't."

"Thank you for answering Your Highness. To be honest that was just a formality, I can say with the nature of the magic, the transformation wasn't necessarily done by a spell or a potion."

"Was it a Unique Magic?" Bellatrix said looking at the magician

"Not necessarily, you can say it was a late metamorphosis. Even so, the nature of this transformation is very unique, it may take months of research before a solid reason is formulated. Of course that's if I don't go there myself."

"!!!" Malleus looked at his daughter, her black hair was perfectly sculpted showing off her scaly pattern on her forehead

"The magic came from the north-west, very likely from the Royal Sword Academy region. So My King, My Queen, allow me to go."

"I will have to decline this request, Head Court Magician." Malleus said exasperated while (M/c) looked at Renata, her dark veil shadowing her features

"I will give my permission."

Malleus shot a look at (M/c), who only scoffed and said, "It will be beneficial to the Valley of Thorns, if we nurture the transformed, they can do our bidding as a payback for teaching them how to control their powers as a dark fae."

"How will you know that they will be beneficial."

His only answer was a chuckle.

#draconia family series #tri3tri #twisted wonderland #twst malleus #malleus draconia #sherry draconia #renata draconia #bellatrix draconia #maleficent

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binsofchaos · 4 years ago

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Toni Morrison | Nobel Lecture December 7, 1993

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

“Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise.” Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures.

“Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise.”

In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement.

One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, “Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead.”

She does not answer, and the question is repeated. “Is the bird I am holding living or dead?”

Still she doesn’t answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.

The old woman’s silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter.

Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. “I don’t know”, she says. “I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.”

Her answer can be taken to mean: if it is dead, you have either found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it. Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility.

For parading their power and her helplessness, the young visitors are reprimanded, told they are responsible not only for the act of mockery but also for the small bundle of life sacrificed to achieve its aims. The blind woman shifts attention away from assertions of power to the instrument through which that power is exercised.

Speculation on what (other than its own frail body) that bird-in-the-hand might signify has always been attractive to me, but especially so now thinking, as I have been, about the work I do that has brought me to this company. So I choose to read the bird as language and the woman as a practiced writer. She is worried about how the language she dreams in, given to her at birth, is handled, put into service, even withheld from her for certain nefarious purposes. Being a writer she thinks of language partly as a system, partly as a living thing over which one has control, but mostly as agency – as an act with consequences. So the question the children put to her: “Is it living or dead?” is not unreal because she thinks of language as susceptible to death, erasure; certainly imperiled and salvageable only by an effort of the will. She believes that if the bird in the hands of her visitors is dead the custodians are responsible for the corpse. For her a dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences. Official language smitheryed to sanction ignorance and preserve privilege is a suit of armor polished to shocking glitter, a husk from which the knight departed long ago. Yet there it is: dumb, predatory, sentimental. Exciting reverence in schoolchildren, providing shelter for despots, summoning false memories of stability, harmony among the public.

She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love. But she knows tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience.

The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

The old woman is keenly aware that no intellectual mercenary, nor insatiable dictator, no paid-for politician or demagogue; no counterfeit journalist would be persuaded by her thoughts. There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination. There is and will be more seductive, mutant language designed to throttle women, to pack their throats like paté-producing geese with their own unsayable, transgressive words; there will be more of the language of surveillance disguised as research; of politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute; language glamorized to thrill the dissatisfied and bereft into assaulting their neighbors; arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.

Underneath the eloquence, the glamor, the scholarly associations, however stirring or seductive, the heart of such language is languishing, or perhaps not beating at all – if the bird is already dead.

She has thought about what could have been the intellectual history of any discipline if it had not insisted upon, or been forced into, the waste of time and life that rationalizations for and representations of dominance required – lethal discourses of exclusion blocking access to cognition for both the excluder and the excluded.

The conventional wisdom of the Tower of Babel story is that the collapse was a misfortune. That it was the distraction, or the weight of many languages that precipitated the tower’s failed architecture. That one monolithic language would have expedited the building and heaven would have been reached. Whose heaven, she wonders? And what kind? Perhaps the achievement of Paradise was premature, a little hasty if no one could take the time to understand other languages, other views, other narratives period. Had they, the heaven they imagined might have been found at their feet. Complicated, demanding, yes, but a view of heaven as life; not heaven as post-life.

She would not want to leave her young visitors with the impression that language should be forced to stay alive merely to be. The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers. Although its poise is sometimes in displacing experience it is not a substitute for it. It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie. When a President of the United States thought about the graveyard his country had become, and said, “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. But it will never forget what they did here,” his simple words are exhilarating in their life-sustaining properties because they refused to encapsulate the reality of 600, 000 dead men in a cataclysmic race war. Refusing to monumentalize, disdaining the “final word”, the precise “summing up”, acknowledging their “poor power to add or detract”, his words signal deference to the uncapturability of the life it mourns. It is the deference that moves her, that recognition that language can never live up to life once and for all. Nor should it. Language can never “pin down” slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable.

Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical; erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue?

Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

“Once upon a time, …” visitors ask an old woman a question. Who are they, these children? What did they make of that encounter? What did they hear in those final words: “The bird is in your hands”? A sentence that gestures towards possibility or one that drops a latch? Perhaps what the children heard was “It’s not my problem. I am old, female, black, blind. What wisdom I have now is in knowing I cannot help you. The future of language is yours.”

They stand there. Suppose nothing was in their hands? Suppose the visit was only a ruse, a trick to get to be spoken to, taken seriously as they have not been before? A chance to interrupt, to violate the adult world, its miasma of discourse about them, for them, but never to them? Urgent questions are at stake, including the one they have asked: “Is the bird we hold living or dead?” Perhaps the question meant: “Could someone tell us what is life? What is death?” No trick at all; no silliness. A straightforward question worthy of the attention of a wise one. An old one. And if the old and wise who have lived life and faced death cannot describe either, who can?

But she does not; she keeps her secret; her good opinion of herself; her gnomic pronouncements; her art without commitment. She keeps her distance, enforces it and retreats into the singularity of isolation, in sophisticated, privileged space.

Nothing, no word follows her declaration of transfer. That silence is deep, deeper than the meaning available in the words she has spoken. It shivers, this silence, and the children, annoyed, fill it with language invented on the spot.

“Is there no speech,” they ask her, “no words you can give us that helps us break through your dossier of failures? Through the education you have just given us that is no education at all because we are paying close attention to what you have done as well as to what you have said? To the barrier you have erected between generosity and wisdom?

“We have no bird in our hands, living or dead. We have only you and our important question. Is the nothing in our hands something you could not bear to contemplate, to even guess? Don’t you remember being young when language was magic without meaning? When what you could say, could not mean? When the invisible was what imagination strove to see? When questions and demands for answers burned so brightly you trembled with fury at not knowing?

“Do we have to begin consciousness with a battle heroines and heroes like you have already fought and lost leaving us with nothing in our hands except what you have imagined is there? Your answer is artful, but its artfulness embarrasses us and ought to embarrass you. Your answer is indecent in its self-congratulation. A made-for-television script that makes no sense if there is nothing in our hands.

“Why didn’t you reach out, touch us with your soft fingers, delay the sound bite, the lesson, until you knew who we were? Did you so despise our trick, our modus operandi you could not see that we were baffled about how to get your attention? We are young. Unripe. We have heard all our short lives that we have to be responsible. What could that possibly mean in the catastrophe this world has become; where, as a poet said, “nothing needs to be exposed since it is already barefaced.” Our inheritance is an affront. You want us to have your old, blank eyes and see only cruelty and mediocrity. Do you think we are stupid enough to perjure ourselves again and again with the fiction of nationhood? How dare you talk to us of duty when we stand waist deep in the toxin of your past?

“You trivialize us and trivialize the bird that is not in our hands. Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? You are an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald. Or if, with the reticence of a surgeon’s hands, your words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can never do it properly – once and for all. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

“Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.

“Tell us about ships turned away from shorelines at Easter, placenta in a field. Tell us about a wagonload of slaves, how they sang so softly their breath was indistinguishable from the falling snow. How they knew from the hunch of the nearest shoulder that the next stop would be their last. How, with hands prayered in their sex, they thought of heat, then sun. Lifting their faces as though it was there for the taking. Turning as though there for the taking. They stop at an inn. The driver and his mate go in with the lamp leaving them humming in the dark. The horse’s void steams into the snow beneath its hooves and its hiss and melt are the envy of the freezing slaves.

“The inn door opens: a girl and a boy step away from its light. They climb into the wagon bed. The boy will have a gun in three years, but now he carries a lamp and a jug of warm cider. They pass it from mouth to mouth. The girl offers bread, pieces of meat and something more: a glance into the eyes of the one she serves. One helping for each man, two for each woman. And a look. They look back. The next stop will be their last. But not this one. This one is warmed.”

It’s quiet again when the children finish speaking, until the woman breaks into the silence.

“Finally”, she says, “I trust you now. I trust you with the bird that is not in your hands because you have truly caught it. Look. How lovely it is, this thing we have done – together.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/books/best-toni-morrison-books.html

#toni morrison #nobel lecture #1993 #nobel prize #We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.#meaning of life #language

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monarch627 · 4 years ago

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“The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.“

—Toni Morrison, 1993 Nobel Lecture

Full text: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/

Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC_Tv0gxQBI&ab_channel=JongHwiYoo

#Toni Morrison #a crucial read for all writers interested in challenging injustice and bigotry through language #writing fanfiction #phandom

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stompingdaisies · 5 years ago

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I have been consumed by brain rot once again so take this assassin Kai au/Umbrella Academy crossover (ft. Kai working for The Commission)

🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓

When Kai is 11, just a little shy of turning a year older, a hurricane of black sweeps into the tiny little mountain town he calls home; she calls herself The Handler, pincurls of platinum and red lips that quirk in a knowing and mischievous way. The fabric of her dress crinkles as she bends down to help him pick up the book he dropped, and when they make eye contact, she winks in a manner that says she knows something he does not, and it intrigues him so, *burning* itself into the back of his mind. When they see each other as the sun sets across the horizon, she whispers of the ways she can teach him to protect the family he has left (Nya, who can kick and bite as much as she can get dragged away screaming), of how there’s a million and one ways that chain could go if he disagrees. As moonlight finally blankets the cobblestone streets, Nya tucked away with an old family friend, she whisks them off in a swirling vortex of blue and white.

From there, everything feels like it passes by in a blur, fragments of time disjointed by the smell of gun smoke and shells before bodies like halos. The Commission treats him well enough, his fellow assassins sometimes stopping to make empty space filling chatter before warping away for jobs; the sound of briefcase clasps snapping open becoming somewhat of a comfort. The Handler parades him up and down the halls, calls him her most prized weapon, hands him the finest pistols and blades that her near endless money can buy. He’s fifteen when he puts in his notice of temporary leave, just as the desks where the requests all come from begin to whisper about a man (not quite a boy) who comes from the apocalypse; Five and Kai share a nod of understanding when they pass by one another in the halls. The crinoline of her familiar (and favorite) little black dress presses against his legs, mutterings of luck whispered in his ears as he’s pushed out, with nothing but his official briefcase and the clothes on his back.

🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓

Nya asks questions, they all do, but he keeps everything sealed away, going back to his job as a blacksmith like nothing ever changed (the feel of fire against his skin reminds him too much of the mansion he set ablaze once, no survivors save for him, the briefcase, and the waiter uniform kept as his disguise). The old man who speaks to them one day has his finely honed sense of intuition *screaming*, but his offer of protection is something Kai thinks neither he or his sister (his precious baby sister, the one who doesn’t quite know how big a *monster* the brother she always looked up to really is) would refuse the offer to. They travel when the sun just peaks over the edge of the night sky, climbing up the mountain with skill not quite matched; (Kai has had to do an awful lot of climbing in the years he is away). A boy who smells of oil arrives around the time they do, he easily strikes up a conversation with Nya, leaving Kai to sort his thoughts; a familiar weight in his hand keeps him grounded, a metal canister hitting something makes his heart drop, his sister eyeing him with much suspicion. Time seems like it’s dragging on forever as two others join them, shop set up as quick as possible.

They start out rough, they wonder just how Kai can seem to move faster, be sneakier, than what he seemed at first. When they all fall into a restful slumber, nobody quite notices the footsteps that lead out to the training deck, or the whirling spiral of blue and white that disappears as fast as it comes. Her heels against the tiled floor are aptly welcomed, a hand on his shoulders with nails that dig in. Hazel and Cha-Cha greet him as he’s heading back out, curt nods as he warps away once more, a finger on the trigger for his silenced beretta, the other thumbing at the clasps to take him back home.

#daisy wrote something #ninjago #kai smith #nya smith #jay walker #zane julien #cole brookstone #master wu #the umbrella academy #the handler #hazel tua #cha cha tua #number five #daisy’s flame of the commission au #((maybe I’ll actually write more for this? that’s a concept))

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myborderland · 5 years ago

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The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

Il sistematico saccheggio del linguaggio può essere riconosciuto nella tendenza di coloro che lo usano a fare a meno delle sue proprietà maieutiche (come le sfumature e la complessità) per usarlo invece al fine di minacciare e assoggettare. Il linguaggio oppressivo fa qualcosa di più che rappresentare la violenza: è violenza; fa qualcosa di più che rappresentare i limiti della conoscenza: limita la conoscenza. Che si tratti del linguaggio di dominio usato dal potere oppure del falso linguaggio usato in modo spensierato dai media; che si tratti dell’orgoglioso ma imbalsamato linguaggio dell’accademia oppure del linguaggio oggettificato della scienza; che si tratti del linguaggio maligno della legge-senza-etica oppure del linguaggio creato per discriminare le minoranze e nascondere il suo razzismo attraverso la sua sfrontatezza letteraria – esso deve essere rifiutato, modificato, svelato. Si tratta di un linguaggio che beve sangue, che piega le vulnerabilità, che nasconde i suoi stivali fascisti sotto crinoline di rispettabilità e patriottismo e si muove in fretta e furia verso il fondo, verso menti ridotte ai minimi termini. Il linguaggio sessista, quello razzista, il linguaggio teistico – sono tutti linguaggi tipici della politica del dominio, e non possono permettere, non permettono nuove conoscenze né incoraggiano il mutuo scambio di idee.

(Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture 1993)

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tartantardis · 5 years ago

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The Four Doctors in Fiona Cumming’s Who career

(This interview was conducted in October 2013, for the Daily Record's Tartan TARDIS supplement. At the time she was retired and living with her husband Ian Fraser - another Doctor Who alumni - in Dumfries and Galloway, in the south of Scotland. Sadly, Fiona passed away in 2015. This interview is presented in full, with quite a lot that was cut from the print original)

FIONA Cumming has a Doctor Who CV to be proud of, boasting credits with the First, Second, Third and Fifth Doctors.

Indeed, when Peter Davison made his debut as the Fifth Doctor in 1981, it was Fiona, who grew up in Glasgow and Edinburgh, who was directing the story. She went on to direct three more stories with him.

But Fiona's involvement goes further back than the 1980s, having first worked on the show in 1965 as an assistant floor manager on William Hartnell tale The Massacre.

Fiona, said:"I had applied to the BBC in 1964 when they were getting ready for BBC2, and I had been accepted - but they lost my file and because I had a teaching degree, I came back up to Glasgow and started teaching at Bellahouston Academy. I can remember in 1963 when the kids came in, talking about this brilliant TV show they had seen the Saturday night before, and I said, 'What do you mean, it's set in a police box?'

"Then in 1964 I went to the BBC as a relief assistant floor manager, where you were slotted into various programmes. I was doing the twice-weekly soaps Compact and Swizzlewick, and the first time I was moved on to something different it was Doctor Who.

"I was put onto The Massacre in 1965 - so it's now 48 years since I first worked on Doctor Who. Peter Purves was William Hartnell's assistant at that time and the director was Paddy Russell, who had such a great reputation.

"In those days, working in television was like working in a teaching hospital - you learned from the person above you, and in turn you passed it on to the person below you when you moved up the ladder

"There was a feeling of passing on knowledge, but I think now that's not that way, because people are too busy looking after their own backs, and keeping their cards very close to their chest. In those days, there was a generosity of spirit, which was quite remarkable."

A couple of years later, Fiona worked on Patrick Troughton's second adventure after succeeding William Hartnell.

She said: "By 1967 I became a Production Assistant on The Highlanders with Pat Troughton which was one of the lost stories but there is a relic which I think I've still got. It was a piece of film in a tin and in the BBC, you get moved arond from office to office, and then one day someone forwarded this to me, along with a note, saying it was ridiculous I was leaving archive material behind! What they didn't realise was that it was just me with the clapperboard!

"I loved working with Pat Troughton and teamed up again in 1969 with The Seeds of Death. I had worked on Dr Findlays Casebook with him and admired him as an actor greatly.

"In 1972 I worked on my next Who, when Jon Pertwee was the Doctor in a story called The Mutants. That was around the time they had started using CSO, and I remember Katy Manning, who played the assistant, sitting in the middle of what seemed like a lot of custard, with the yellow colour they were using. She was pretending she could see all sorts of things, but really, it was just in the middle of this yellow part of the studio."

"The next years were varied but I'd started Directing and after cutting my teeth on Z Cars, Angels and other programmes in the Drama Serials department."

Fiona was delighted when she returned to the worlds of Doctor Who, launching Peter Davison as the Doctor in 1982 story Castrovalva.

But she didn't think that the show's new star was bothered with the level of expectation being thrust upon him after succeeding Tom Baker.

She said: "With Castrovalva, I think the pressure was on me because until then, I had been doing an awful lot of classical stuff - I was used to directing people in crinolines and long skirts.

"David Maloney had offered me an episode of Blake's 7 and I felt the writer Tanith Lee had done a great script, Sarcophagus, and I thought she was a writer who could work beautifully on Doctor Who. I sent a copy of the completed tape to John, and he did try her but it didn't work out, but out of that came his offer to direct Castrovalva.

"Because it was the first story of a new Doctor, and because it was an area that I hadn't really worked in for so long, not having done a Doctor Who since 1972, that was quite a long period of time.

"The other thing was that by that point, in 1980, the cult that had developed around Doctor Who was underway, so you were quite aware of the mantle of Doctor Who by that time.

"It wasn't so much being the first story of a new Doctor, but the pressure, I felt, was on me coming back to it.

"Peter was absolutely terrific, a real joy to work with, and we kept the feeling of family on the show, which was extremely important as well.

"I thought at that stage, and at all the times I worked with him afterwards, that Peter would have made an excellent director. He had an eye for the right kind of things and knew what was right for the programme. I thought he might go behind the scenes, but instead he perfered to stay as a performer.

"He had been doing particularly well on All Creatures Great and Small, and he already had a big following, and I thought it was a brilliant piece of casting to take a younger man and make him the Doctor.

"Nowadays, it's far more common with the likes of David Tennant and Matt Smith as the Doctor, but back then it was very unusual to have a younger Doctor. Until then he had always been an older man, with Bill Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker.

"He showed it worked.

"I was very lucky with my scripts - it was nice to be able to delve into them.

"I actually got a letter from a man who had not allowed his children to watch Doctor Who, but for some reason he let them see Castrovalva and he jumped on to the fact we had featured the art of MC Escher. He found it so interesting that a children's programme like Doctor Who was looking at Escher.

"JNT (producer John Nathan-Turner) was always very good about casting his crew, as it were. He always good a good combination - he rated me as a director, but he wouldn't have put me onto something that had metal monsters - he worked to the strengths of the crew."

Fiona was back directing two stories in the show's 20th season, the first being Snakedance, which featured the TV debut of Martin Clunes. She laughed: "Doing Snakedance was lovely - I had been to Morocco and was very aware of the scenes we had in the souks, as I wanted to get the Moroccan feel for them.

"I was very lucky as John would give me carte blanche for casting, although he always kept an eye on things, but I was able to bring in people like Collette O'Neil and John Carson and leave them to do their thing as I've worked with them before and knew I can trust them, and that would leave me more time to spend with people like Jonathon Morris and Martin Clunes who were both working in television for the first time.

"I had found Martin just by flicking through the pages of The Spotlight. They used to have a dedicated to students who were just leaving their various courses, and I saw his face looking back at me. I knew the character of Lon would only work if you could equate him with being a spoiled brat who was totally self-centred, because of his extreme youth. You didn't want to dislike him, but he was totally objectionable! And Martin hit the spot, beautifully!

"The other performance I really liked was Brian Miller - I don't think I could have got anyone better."

Later that year, Fiona directed another story, Enlightenment

She said: "When I did Enlightenment, I think, at the time it was the only Doctor Who which had been written solely by a woman.

"I had originally cast Peter Sallis, but we lost him when we had to remount the story after a strike, and I brought in Keith Barron, who played it very differently.

"Peter arrived and asked, 'Where do I sit?' I told him he was the master of the ship so he would have to stand, but he said, 'No, I only do sitting parts!' I eventually convinced him the master of the ship was a standing part - but I think he was sending me up rotten!

"As a director, you have a company of actors you use regularly, and you develop a shorthand in terms of working, but if they've never done a telly before, they need to be led into it.

"When I did the remake of Enlightenment for DVD, I was able to take out what was the best in the original with the story, the acting and plot, and then go forward. I felt the model shots we had done back then really creaked and groaned to such an extent that I wanted to update them with computer graphics. I had the full box of tricks at my disposal, some 25 years on, and I was really pleased as I felt I was able to get the best out of it."

Fiona's next outing took the Doctor overseas for 1984's Planet of Fire, which was shot in Lanzarote. The location came about by chance after Fiona sent producer John Nathan-Turner a postcard from a family holiday.

"We were on holiday in Lanzarote and had the children with us. I sent JNT a postcard saying, 'Location fabulous, troglodytes willing - how about it?' I took some pictures without the children in them, just vistas, and out of that came Planet of Fire.

"In the heat, it was quite punishing, and we were trying to make sure everybody was drinking enough weather. It was not the most comfortable shoot!

"Poor Nicola (Bryant) was rolling down the jaggy rocks, and it was her first job straight out of drama school - I think she learned pretty quickly that it wasn't all glamour when you were making TV!

"But we all had a fantastic time - because we were there on a package deal, everyone was there together.

"On the days he wasn't filming, Peter Wyngarde would spread himself out on the beach, and I noticed he was always listening to music. I said to him one night, 'What's your choice of music?' He looked at me and asked what I meant. When I explained I'd seen him with his earphones on, he said: 'I'm not listening to anything - I just put the plugs in my ears so no-one disturbs me!' It's now something that I do myself if I'm on planes or whatever, if I don't want someone disturbing me.

"I went back and did a remake of Planet of Fire for the DVD release - it was interesting because I realised that they wouldn't let me into any of the areas which I'd previously worked on.

"We couldn't make it in the same way now, as the footpaths we had used back then were now just for the scientists working there.

"I liked being able to add volcanoes and fire to the long shots and to get rid of the music and just get the sound of the fire in - I appreciate it, but I think some of the fans didn't."

#Scotland #Scottish #DoctorWho #WilliamHartnell #PatrickTroughton #JonPertwee #PeterDavison #Lanzarote

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shannybasar · 5 years ago

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Toni Morrison On Language

From Toni Morrison’s 1993 Nobel Lecture:

The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

#toni morrison #rip #books

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momo-de-avis · 6 years ago

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tell me more about millais and the whole "steal ur wife and have a happy marriage with her lmaoo" and the whole pedo thing??? im intrigued

At the top of my head and very quickly without bothering myself with checking things online cause I’m a bit lazy sorry (though I’ve been over this story for quite a while, I trust my instinct)

When the Pre-Raphaelites appeared, they were the bad boys of London. Reasons:

1) Fucked around, mostly Rossetti

2) Broke academic rules by painting in excruciating and vivid details that weren’t possible with the naked eye (like Holman Hunt painted every single blade of the grass—your eye can’t see it unless you stare closely at it, so academically, that was ugly)

3) Used redheaded women as models. Now, Victorians were absolute fucking lunatics, but the ideal beauty to them was some corpse-looking Morticia Adams. Black hair and pale skin, was top notch. Blonde, blue-eyed beauty came second, probably. What mattered was the pale skin. It was a trend among Victorian women to paint purple and blue veins to look as dead as possible because the frailty of women in a society that told they literally were good for nothing except breeding was the Latest Trend. Redheads, however, were considered cursed. Case in point: the greatest pre-raphaelite muse, Lizzie Siddal: she was not only a red-head, but her skin was also darker than most prefered. Not that she was anything but a white woman, just not white enough to look like you were already flirting with tuberculosis and ready to die fashionably at 40 (though Lizzie was famous for being constantly sick and bedridden. And addicted to Laudanum, like a good Victorian).

4) Basically what gave them the name: PRE-raphaelite. To explain quickly: academic painting privileged the art that resembled Raphael's paintings: harmonious, made of volumes through precise shadowing, mannerist in its style. Line and drawing prevailed above colour. This is linked to formalism so I’m just gonna wrap it up quickly: drawing was considered the intellectual form of art (because in the 16th century people were like ‘oh, astronomy is a science!’ and 'oh, mathematics is a science!’ and people were like, 'well shit, we gotta find a reason to call arts a science too’ and the Renaissance worked that out by explaining that drawing was basically a form of science. Take Da Vinci). The Pre-raphaelites said: fuck that noise, and privileged colour. They used techniques to brighten their paintings (like a layer of white paint applied to the canvas before they applied the preliminary drawing, which made the colours stand out, and then finished it off with wax varnish, which makes it glow. If you ever see a PR painting live, note just how vivid it is. It looks like it’s never gonna wear off, it’s incredible). So with this, they basically said the Royal Academy was a bunch of piss babies who knew jack shit about painting (the accusation of being dumbasses included).

5) …but to be that guy, you had to LIVE the life. So, if you privilege medieval thinking, lifestyle and theology, what you gotta do? BE that medieval knight Victorians thought were oh so Chivalric. Again, famously, Lizzie Siddal is known to be the bad girl of this revival: she refused to wear crinoline and whatever shit the Victorian ladies wore. She wore loose dresses, no corsets and overall dressed like the engravings on Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. She was actually lauded for her commitment like, even Ruskin at one point saw Rossetti as a piss baby rock star wannabe who never finished his shit, but this girl? She committed.

So you see, when these guys popped up, Victorians scowled. BADLY.

But they knew that, to conquer the hearts of promiscuous dandies and hypocritical high-society, laudanum-ridden, arsenic-eating uptight douches and douchesses, they had to get to the loins of one man: most important art critic of his time, single-handedly responsible for elevating William Turner to the True Genius of English Painting: John Ruskin.

Now, just WHO was John Ruskin?

First of all, this little shit was overtly religious. Protestant kind, so you know what you’re in for. This guy studied Turner back and forth, knew everything about him, wrote extensively of his genius and was responsible, as I said, to consecrate him to the memory of British sea painting. Except he purposefully left a bit out, one particular episode of Turner’s life that, to Ruskin’s mind, would ruin his reputation.

Turner was a freak. My man has ENDLESS erotic drawings that go from curious artist look into the Vagina from full-blown pre-victorian porn. And Ruskin kept it all locked away inside his drawer.

The thing was, Ruskin was brought up surrounded by art. This guy looked at Roman statues of women, with their perfectly waxed peepees and toned arms supporting perky breasts and DEAD ASS though this was what women looked like.

So he married Effie Gray, a woman in everything respectable, a prosperous marriage for the good ol’ Victorian lady and dude.

And for the next five years of their marriage proceeded to REFUSE to even touch her.

When the pre-raphaelites pop up, Ruskin attends their very first exhibition and writes them a glowing review. Immediately they go from nut-heads to pop stars. But among them all, it was clear that it was John Everett Millais who was the most talented. So Ruskin took him under his wing.

His first assignment was: paint my portrait. But the pre-raphaelites did something the British academics didn’t: to paint nature, they went outside and painting the motif by looking directly at it. And Ruskin, who praised this mode of making art, had in mind the precise spot he wanted to be painted on: a waterfal or some shit in Scotland, where he owned a cottage.

This cottage was not big. It was actually rather small—you know, in pretending-to-be-a-peasant-is-so-much-fun! victorian fashion. And what does this absolute buffoon does? He invites Millais and his wife Effie in to paint his portrait.

Now I want you to imagine this woman, who has been pushing down 5 years of Horny, putting up with this dude’s shit, enclosed in a tight space with this man—who was older than herself—and incidentally, a handsome looking young fella who paints nicely.

I insist on this thing that Ruskin didn’t touch his wife because he thought women looked like statues because he actually told her. He told her he found her repulsive because—what do you know!!! The peepee’s got some pubic hair! And women menstruate! And like, we’re real fucking things, not Pygmalion's wet dream forged over and over again! She actually wrote a letter to her father detailing this (if you watch the show Desperate Romantics, the scene were Effie confesses this to Millais, the actress is actually reciting this letter word for word).

So when they return to London after the painting is done, they just… Fall in love. I mean, shit, what was she supposed to do?

The face of a man who doesn’t know he’s about to be shit-whipped by his pupil, painted by none other than his protegée, this same pupil.

But remember: no matter what Victorian fangirls say, and whatever that Victorian TV show tries to show you, this society was absolute utter shit for women. Effie Grey presented an annulment proposal to her marriage, and society collapsed on her. She was actually blamed for the fact that Ruskin wouldn’t consummate the marriage. And because she had grown quite close to Millais, she had to prove before the entirety of Victorian society that she was a virgin. Oh, yes. It’s what you’re thinking.

Those open-your-legs-wide-and-let-me-insert-this-not-at-all-friendly-looking-metal-utensil-up--your-private-canal-to-prove-you-are-a-virgin. This, mind you, was back then as utterly humiliating as it sounds now, and to make matters worse, Mr. I-only-fuck-clean-shaven-pussy claimed she was mentally unstable.

Either way: annulment conceded, and she married John Everett Millais. The two went on to a lifelong of fucking and 8 children. Check Millais’ painting Peace Concluded and tell me those two idiots did not die happy together.

I kid you not: until Millais’ death, Effie was socially ostracized. She was even barred from being present in social events where Queen Victoria was, proclaimed by the Queen herself (because remember kids! Victorian society absolutely sucked because it was none other than our favourite imperialist who made it so!) even after she ordered Millais the first Laureate painter. It was only when Millais was dying that in his death bed he BEGGED to lift that stupid shit and she conceded. I just honestly believe Effie didn’t give a shit at this point, because my girl was happy.

So, you ask, what happened to Ruskin?

Don’t think he got off easy lmao. He had his own demise. He wasn’t seen with good eyes after the whole annulment debacle. But of course, being the pissy adult he was, he had to make things worse.

Enter Rose de La Touche.

You see, Rose de la Touche was Ruskin’s pupil. She is, as far as we can tell from his writings, the only woman he ever called attractive and revealed to be attracted to her. When, you ask?

When she was fucking 9 years old, the first time he met her.

He became tutoring her when she was 14. At this point, this ugly ass vulture was way past his 40s. Rose’s parents actually made it worse if my mind doesn’t fail me, but I’m not certain so I won’t address them. Either way, he pretty much groomed her and she grew infatuated with him. He actually made plans to marry her once she turned like, 18 or something, like a good pedo.

The only reason Rose didn’t marry Ruskin? Effie Gray stepped in. Not that she was that interested in what was to happen. The thing was, the reason for the annulment was that Ruskin was impotent, and if he fucked a healthy girl and she got pregnant, she’d be in the shits. But either way, I think it was easy given that he was like 40 years older or some shit. Rose actually declined to marry because she wanted the marriage to be unconsummated, but this time around, ya big Pedo declined! I wonder why was it so easy the first time, and so hard now that he found himself a neat little child to corrupt, right?

At some point, even fucking Rossetti intervened. Now, Rossetti was the rock star of his time: he fucked everything that moved, he got into affairs with the wives of his pupils while Lizzie lingered between life and death at his home, and it took him some 9 years to finally keep his promise to Lizzie and marry her ass. He was the last person you’d expect to say a thing. But you know you’ve fucked up and that you’re a perverted piece of shit when THIS IS THE GUY who steps in to say 'hey, Ruskin, big fan, but you really gotta tone it down cause even I’m not a pedo, pal’.

Now listen: yeah, there’s a lot of speculation about Ruskin’s 'love affair’ with Rose de La Touche. Did he really fall in love with her when she was 9? We don’t know. We don’t care either, because it doesn’t make him any less a fucking pedo. Like, yeah, good art critic, nice theory on the whole Modern Painting book, but this dude had some serious issues.

And there you go

#breakerofvows

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emilychanglikes · 6 years ago

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Quotes I should have posted a long time ago

“Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.” ― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye “The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas. - Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture, 1993

“Sex is not a cause, but a consequence. It is the expression of one's sense of value. In fact, men's choice of sex is a result that brings together his most basic ideas. Tell me what a person feels sexually attractive to him, and I will tell you all the philosophy of his life. Let me see the woman who sleeps with him, and I will tell you what he said about himself. Sex is still the most selfish in all behaviors, and the sole purpose of this behavior is to make yourself enjoyable. This kind of behavior cannot degrade the self, but only enhance the self. It can only be found in the soul full of desire and respect for desire.” - Author: Ayn Rand; Source: Atlas Shrugged

#quotes #belated #quote #quote about love #quote about beauty

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isolasheart · 3 years ago

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DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI - JANE MORRIS (THE BLUE SILK DRESS), 1868

Une histoire raconte qu'elle [Constance] assista un jour à une exposition de peintures préraphaélites de Dante Gabriel Rossetti à la Royal Academy et qu'elle entendit l'homme devant elle préciser que les lèvres boudeuses telles que Rossetti les peignait ne se rencontraient jamais dans la vraie vie. Mais lorsque l'homme se retourna et aperçut Constance, il fut « emporté » et « réduit au silence » par le vrai Rossetti qu'il vit soudainement devant lui.

[…]

La référence à Otho [son frère] gloussant devant sa « robe laide » fait allusion à son enthousiasme naissant pour la robe préraphaélite ou « esthétique ». En effet, la description que Constance donne des tenues qu'elle et Tizey [sa belle-sœur] pourraient porter pour le mariage d'Ada, en bleu paon avec des manches bouffantes, sonne particulièrement « préraphaélite ». Ce développement dans le goût et l'apparence de Constance n'a jamais été entièrement approuvé par Otho, qui, comme d'autres membres de sa famille, ne s'est jamais beaucoup identifié à l'esthétisme ni n'en a vu l'attrait.

En tant que préraphaélite déclarée - un terme qui dans les années 1880 était interchangeable avec « esthète » - Constance portait une torche dont la flamme avait été allumée dans les années 1850 par un groupe de femmes associées aux peintres fondateurs de la Confrérie préraphaélite. Des femmes comme Elizabeth Siddal et Jane Morris, respectivement épouses du peintre Dante Gabriel Rossetti et du poète, designer et socialiste William Morris, avaient posé pour les artistes préraphaélites, vêtues de robes amples et fluides.

Mais ce n'est pas seulement leur représentation sur toile qui a déclenché une nouvelle mode parmi une élite intellectuelle. Hors toile, ces femmes ont également établi de nouvelles libertés pour les femmes qui, une vingtaine d'années plus tard, étaient encore à peine adoptées par une population féminine plus large. Elles lancèrent de nouveaux types de robes, avec des manches cousues à l'épaule plutôt qu'en dessous, ou bouffantes et amples. Alors que le reste de la population féminine victorienne devait se déplacer avec les bras épinglés au corps dans des gaines serrées et immobiles, les femmes préraphaélites pouvaient bouger leurs bras librement, pour peindre ou poser ou simplement être à l'aise. Les filles préraphaélites ont également supprimé les énormes jupes à crinoline en forme de cloche, maintenues par des cerceaux et des cages attachées aux dessous féminin. Elles renoncèrent aux corsets serrés en sablier qui pinçaient la taille, ainsi qu'aux bonnets et aux coiffures complexes qui s’ajoutaient couche après couche à la toilette quotidienne d'une femme.

Leur robe 'Esthétique', comme on l'appelait, était plus qu'une simple mode ; c'était une déclaration. Dans la recherche du confort pour les femmes, il évoquait aussi un désir de libération qui allait au-delà de l'aisance physique. C'était aussi une déclaration sur l'expression créative des femmes, qui en soi était alignée sur des questions féministes plus larges. La fraternité préraphaélite d'origine vivait de manière non conventionnelle avec des artistes, travaillait sur ses propres projets artistiques et devint célèbre dans le processus. Les femmes qui portaient des vêtements esthétiques dans leur sillage avaient tendance à croire que les femmes devraient avoir le droit à une carrière et finalement être émancipées avec le droit de vote.

CONSTANCE, THE TRAGIC AND SCANDALOUS LIFE OF MRS. OSCAR WILDE (FRANNY MOYLE)

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