Gaiman: Madman or really smart guy?

I liked it. Classics are classics because they inspire thought and invite interpretation. And while there have been egregious "remakes" and interpretations on past stories (I'm looking at you, Hollywood! Stop remaking movies already!), Gaiman's offering is smart, witty, and an interesting view on Shakespeare's classic.

And yes, I would say that it helps cut through the clutter that the archaic writing sets before the casual reader (and helps with understanding the story better).

The liberties, if anything, lie in the way the play within the story is repeatedly truncated (for the sake of space and time), which is unavoidable. Gaiman does, however, add layers to the characters of the story not readily apparent in the original tale. Puck seems more malevolent in this version (though it might just be the look of him) but he is ever the mischief maker. Titania and Oberon seem much more noble and less petty than the original counterparts and it's all packaged oh so ever neatly.

So yeah, maybe people don't like it because it is not traditional and impugns on some imagined sacred taboo, but that's the whole problem: it's imagined. Literature should not be taken as some untouchable sacred cow but as a work of creativity. And works of creativity should inspire more creativity.

Breaking the fourth wall: Puck's speech

Everybody loves Puck's speech because it's just so gosh darn cool. It appears in great movies like "Dead Poet's Society" because it's so gosh darn cool (which is the primary reason it sticks in my mind like a wet booger).

Anyway, the reason why it is so gosh darned cool is because Puck does something that is quite rare (at least during Shakespeare's period): he breaks the fourth wall. That is instead of being contained within the story of the play he includes the audience by directly speaking to them recognizing the otherwise invisible watchers.

He literally says "well, if you didn't like what you saw tonight, pretend it was a dream!" (Act 5, scene 2...though Puck says it much more eloquently).

It reveals Puck to be a playful lout, the speech that is, but who is nevertheless earnest in his playful ways. He asks to be forgiven for any transgressions done, and that he'd make amends if he has offended, mending any broken friendships.

It is a very tongue in cheek moment.

The language is effective here because it is direct (though some may argue that point). Puck states his intent in the first two lines. The rest of the speech is just following up those thoughts.

The ultimate love triangle thing!

It's been a while since I read the play, so excuse me if I come off a bit muddleheaded.

Oberon loves Titania but, let's face it, he's a bit of a dick. He makes her fall in love with someone else (some vile thing, which turns out to be Bottom), and in some places that would be grounds for divorce.

Or at least a spot on the Maury show (headline: you made me fall in love with an ass so I want a divorce!).

But, as in all of Shakespeare's comedies, everything is resolved in the end and everybody makes up and/or gets married.

Hooray!

Thesis idea maybe?

My basic idea is about how war and conflict causes society to constrict on itself and become insular, forcefully demonizing anything that is foreign to that particular society's core value system. It happened in world war 2 when the american government forced citizens of japanese descent into labour camps, and the post 9-11 environment where arabs were ostracized by the general public, and (most importantly) the systematic banning of all things western by the Iranian government in Sartrapi's Persepolis.

Ugh...sounds heavy. Help!

Oh, and I totally want to do a multi-genre paper. I doubt anybody wants to do a traditional piece.


Addendum: going through everybody's posts...it seems like i was wrong...

Persepolis!

I think that pg 102 of Persepolis has a good dialogue with the final lines of "I explain a few things" by Pablo Neruda.

Neruda writes:

...bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

It is a singularly powerful image where the cruelty of adults sacrifices the lives of children. It is echoed on the first panel of the page in Persepolis where the children are dying in explosions, the keys to heaven dangling on their necks.

Neither are blessed, heaven's promise not quite assuaging the grim reality of their sudden deaths.

So how does the conflict forge identity? The general worldview that the writers have in common (because of war) is that it serves no purpose save to beguile and bewilder the youth, robbing them of a future and change what is beautiful about a nation into something sordid and vile through the violence of the war. That is what war is. It serves no great purpose. People fight and are forgotten, save for the few that history turns into heroes. Time, after all, creates heroes and dissolves celebrities. The glory is all that is remembered if time passes enough. For these writers, the war and effects of war is still too close and will forever remain close all their lives. That is what war does. Even the unscathed are scarred (I had a friend who would always flinch whenever he heard sirens. It always reminded him of bombing warnings, he told me).

Quickie on...War Is Kind

I liked this poem. It was pretty straightforward in its message (because hey, war is not kind), and even I understood it. Plus, Crane gets extra points for actually having lived through the Civil War and thus saw the events first hand (giving him street cred, or something. I can't really remember, but he might have died during the civil war as well...but I'm too lazy to google it at the moment so we'll just say he died. It makes for a more compelling story). The use of sarcasm juxtaposed with the harsh imagery really drives home the message, but I feel somewhat the Crane approaches the subject with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. But that's just me.

It doesn't detract from the fact that the poem is a very effective piece of work for what it intends to do (and it is rather eloquent with its stark images of violence). I also like the fact that the poem manages to evoke sounds of the battlefield with the wording.

I chose not to write about persepolis because I already did the reader's response about it.

Blankets

I liked the surreal aspects of pages 42 and 43 and it begins to show Thompson's need for his escapist tendencies which later boil over to religious fervor. To say that his belief in religion was a mistake would be unfair. Belief in itself is never a mistake, but something to be envied and admired. But I digress...to me, everything that fueled Thompson's early life from his love of art to his need to dream was a form of escapism (he says it himself at one point). This, coupled with the need for acceptance in a world he felt did not want him, led him to religion. Pages 49 and 51 are indicative of this.

More importantly, it is interesting to note that there is an artistic correlation between page 42 and page 51 (where he first states he wants heaven). The theme of blankets can be shown here in that in page 42 he is shown being enveloped by an exotic cloud (which then transforms into his dream playground) and page 51 is a similar splash page (though cleaned up of the exotic elements), suggesting a need to be...safe and protected (especially from the darkness of the background, in my opinion).

This idea of using religion as a safe haven draws parallels with Winterson's book (as Jeanette also found comfort in religion). Both main characters have a special relationship with God, in that they see him as unjudgmental and a steadfast friend in the face of a confusing world. How they are forced from that place of comfort, however, is quite different and it is here that I become a little disgruntled. Jeanette is literally forced from her haven as a result of her choice, whereas Thompson releases himself from his haven into the outside world. For him, religion is his last blanket, but the reason it bothers me is...it felt so sudden. I won't spoil anything (and I hope I was sufficiently obscure in my allusions to affect this), but it just...really....BOTHERS ME! Argh! I can't put my finger on it exactly, but there it is.

And for those who read this and feel that I have unnecessarily spoiled your reading...I apologize. But it still bothers me.

Addendum:

I also liked page 60, where Thompson burns his drawings and releases everything in him. The childhood memories welling out from his mouth are a great way to show his purging or his youth and there's an almost pagan aspect to it (he's in front of a fire, his eyes waxy and empty in a trance state). The dreams loom large on the page, taking up the entirety of the sky, perhaps suggesting their importance or how much a part of his life they really were. It's possibly one of the most powerful images in the book.