Posts Tagged ‘Drama’
Warning: pinaciphobes avoid!…
We define a phobia as ‘an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.’ You are probably aware of the more common phobias, such as arachnophobia (fear of spiders), claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces), and agoraphobia (fear of open places), but did you know there are also words which describe the fear of idleness, worms, and even body odour?…
Find them all at OUP’s “A list of phobias from ‘atelophobia’ to ‘zelotypophobia’” (an excerpt from which, above).
[“Pinaciphobia,” fear of lists; c.f. also: “katastichophobia”]
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As we face our fears, we might recall that it was on this date in 1876 that George Bernard Shaw quit his job as a clerk in an estate office to devote himself full-time to writing. Though his first success was as a music and literary critic, and he later co-founded the London School of Economics, he is best remembered as a dramatist, the author of over 60 plays.
It’s a measure of his gift for creating high literature that connected with mass audiences that he is the only person in history to have won both the Nobel Prize in Literature (1925) and the Oscar (in 1938, for his work on the film Pygmalion, an adaptation of his play by the same name).
Double vision…
1998
Great minds thinking alike? The power of the zeitgeist? The herd instinct at work?… Browse through Twin Movies (uncomfortably-similar films released in the same year) to decide for yourself.
1989
2013
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As we head for the art house, we might recall that it was on this date in 1906 that a perky Norwegian nurse greeted her charge with “Our patient is feeling much better today.” Playwright Henrik Ibsen ( Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, and The Master Builder, among others) replied “On the contrary!” and passed away.
A trick of perspective…
William Hogarth (1697-1764) was a British painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist sometimes credited with beginning the tradition of sequential art in Western culture (by virtue of his series of paintings depicting the rise and fall of a dandy, A Rake’s Progress).
Two centuries before M.C. Escher and his play on perspective, Hogarth created Satire on False Perspective. Subtitled, “Whoever makes a DESIGN without the Knowledge of PERSPECTIVE will be liable to such Absurdities as are shown in this Frontifpiece,” there are in fact quite a few absurdities buried within it. Click here for a larger version of Satire, and see how many you can spot…
Hogarth provided no key, but Wikipedia has accumulated a list of (so far) 22. To get you started: notice that the tavern sign is overlapped by two distant trees.
[TotH to Scientific American, from whence the image above]
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As we train our eyes on the vanishing point, we might spare a thought for Aphra Behn; she died on this date in 1689. A monarchist and a Tory, young Aphra was recruited to spy for King Charles II; she infiltrated Dutch and expatriate English cabals in Antwerp during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. But on her return to London, George II turned out to be a stiff; despite her entreaties, the King never paid her for her services. Penniless, Aphra turned to writing, working first as a scribe for the King’s Company (the leading acting company of the time), then as a dramatist in her own right (often using her spy code-name, Astrea, as a pen name). She became one of the most prolific playwrights of the Restoration, one of the first people in England to earn a living writing– and the first woman to pay her way with her pen. She was buried in Westminster Abbey, where the inscription on her tombstone reads, “Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be / Defence enough against Mortality.”
Leaning In?…
Barbie, who celebrated her 54th birthday last month, has had more than 130 careers. Some, of course, command higher wages than others. But what is perhaps surprising is that the price of a doll varies by profession. Most in the “Barbie I can be…” collection cost $13.99; but some, like “computer engineer” or “snowboarder” can cost two or three times more. It can’t be the (cheap) accessories that come with each— why should a miniature plastic laptop be valued so much more highly than a chef’s tiny cupcakes?
The Economist‘s “Graphic Detail” explains…
Matthew Notowidigdo, an economist at the University of Chicago, calls it the “Barbie Paradox,” an idea popularised by his colleague Emily Oster in an article last year in Slate. They conclude that price discrimination is probably at work: sellers exploit parental hopes that a girl playing palaeontologist may grow up to be the real thing, so charge more. And the white-collar professions certainly assuage criticisms from the early 1990s when Mattel released talking Barbies that groused “Math class is tough” (which inspired The Economist to publish an in-depth analysis of the pint-sized princess in 2002). Interestingly, there is only a modest correlation between Barbie’s occupations and real-world salaries. Inexpensive pilot dolls are paid quite a lot in life, and despite babysitter Barbie’s moderately high price, she would take home a pittance as a childcare worker.
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As we put away our childish things, we might send darkly humorous birthday greetings to Samuel Barclay Beckett; he was born on this date in 1906. A novelist, poet, and theatrical director, Beckett is best remembered as the playwright who created (with Eugéne Ionesco) what Martin Esslin dubbed “The Theater of the Absurd.” His Modernist masterpieces– Krapp’s Last Tape and Waiting for Godot, for instance— had a profound influence on writers like Václav Havel, John Banville, Tom Stoppard, and Harold Pinter. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.
Eh… What’s up, Doc?…
The inimitable Chuck Jones— animator, and director of well over 200 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts (plus TV specials and feature films) starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester, Pepé Le Pew and others from the Warner Bros. menagerie– on “how to draw Bugs Bunny”:
From the terrific film Chuck Amuck.
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As we keep an eye out for Elmer, we might send rhyming birthday wishes to Ben Jonson; he was born on this date in 1572. While Jonson is probably best remembered these days as the author of hysterically-funny satirical plays like Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, he was also an accomplished poet, whose work (especially his lyric poetry) was tremendously influential and his Jacobean contemporaries and on the Carolines.
Jonson was a contemporary of Shakespeare, and is often remembered as a rival– probably, given the competitive atmosphere of the theater in those days, accurately. But it was Jonson who provided the prefatory verse that opens Shakespeare’s First Folio (which Jonson may, some scholars believe, have helped to edit). Indeed, it was Jonson who animated the view of Shakespeare as a “natural,” an author who, despite “small Latine, and lesse Greeke,” wrote works of genius. But lest one take that as back-handed praise (Jonson was himself classically educated), Jonson concludes:
Yet must I not give Nature all: Thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
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