Behind A Mask

Alcott's thriller raises questions about masks, performance, and everyday life, in particular about gender and class. For Thursday, we'll add in theorist Judith Butler's ideas from "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution."

"these indeed seem,/ For they are actions that a man might play"

Today we continue our exploration of performance as we forge forward in Hamlet, joined by slam poet, performer extraordinaire, and faculty advisor to the Berklee Poetry Club, Caroline Harvey. We'll revisit the idea that all performance involves a consciousness of doubleness (Carlson, 73, summarizing Bauman): "Performance is always performance for someone" (73).

HAMLET

Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe. Act 1, Scene 2


at around the 4 minute mark, in this clip from the Royal Shakespeare Company film:

HAMLET

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month--
Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!--
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she--
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.


Kenneth Branagh's performance of Hamlet's soliloquy in Act 1, scene 2

In this clip, Patrick Stewart discusses setting Shakespeare in a contemporary or historical context, acting for stage and film, and some issues about performance that are central to our discussions.

Hamlet

There is so much in this play--revenge, sanity and insanity, the genre of tragedy, family relationships,

doing and thinking, corruption and decay- but we are going to focus on two themes in particular: performance, and appearance vs. reality.

We are going to watch different film versions of the play, and compare performances, stagings, and interpretations, as well.

Performance in Everyday Life--& in/of Don Quixote

What does Goffman mean by "performance?" To be "taken in" or "cynical?" By "setting" and "personal front?" To what does Goffman's perspective turn our focus?

As we explore Don Quixote in a range of manifestations--the Cervantes text, art, ballet, musical theater, in popular discourse, and in the documentary about Terry Gilliam's failure to make a film based on Quixote--let's think about how the concept of performance, and of being taken in or being cynical about one's own performance, or mask, connect to one of the famous lines from Cervantes' Don Quixote: “I know who I am, and who I may be, if I choose.”

Web "tour" about Don Quixote I suggest the text-based version.

The Monkey King and Youth Appeal

Today we start exploring enduring characters and the questions they ask, ponder, and symbolize in culture(s) at different times and in different media--with Monkey. We've read excerpts from the classic Chinese novel, and we'll see how others have interpreted Monkey since the late 16th century when the novel was published.

The Monkey King and Youth Appeal

MFA 3d animation thesis

BUDDHISM: Dipping our toes into another way of looking at Being

This is lifted wholecloth from: http://www.exeas.org/resources/foundations-text-3.html

Foundations and Transformations of Buddhism: An Overview
John M. Koller

Central Teachings: The Noble Fourfold Truth and the Noble Eightfold Path

After attaining enlightenment, the Buddha presented the central teaching of Buddhism as the Noble Fourfold Truth. The four parts are:

• Life as it is usually lived is profoundly unsatisfactory and full of suffering ( duhkha ).
  
• The Buddha saw that suffering arises because of ignorance about existence, an existence that is dynamic and ever-changing, consisting of interrelated processes. If the very nature of everything that exists is to be continuously changing and if everything that exists is interrelated and interdependent, then the human craving for permanence, separateness, and independence will be inevitably frustrating.
  
• Overcoming the craving for a separate and permanent existence will eliminate suffering.
  
• The fourth part offers a way of practice that can eliminate the ignorance and selfish grasping that causes suffering : the Noble Eightfold Path

The Noble Eightfold Path consists in wisdom (namely the acquisition of right views and wholesome intentions), virtuous living (right speech, right actions, and right livelihood), and meditative insight achieved by right effort, mindfulness, and concentration. Therefore the eight parts are:

1. Right views
   
2. Right or wholesome intentions
   
3. Right speech
   
4. Right actions
   
5. Right livelihood
   
6. Right effort
   
7. Right mindfulness
   
8. Right concentration

The Case for Seeming Over Being: Machiavelli

Machiavelli's view of goodness in context: "A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good" (63).

Ch. 18: Machiavelli uses the mythic example of Chiron, the centaur, and the animals of the lion and the fox to illustrate some of the ways a prince must act.

Ultimately, and most importantly for our focus, he concludes:

"It is not, therefore, necessary for a prince to have all the above-named qualities, but it is very necessary to seem to have them" (73).

Ch. 23: Echoing Cicero's warning against flatterers, Machiavelli picks up the question, really, of friendship, and to whom a prince should listen to for counsel.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave, The Matrix, Seeming & Being

Esse quam videri

Esse quam videri: To be, not to seem. Cicero wrote this in his essay, "On Friendship," and it is the Berklee College of Music motto, emblazoned on visually stunning posters we have around. For a long time, I've pondered this phease's meaning, and mynthoughts have led me to more questions than answers. These questions formed the course I proposed for the National Endowment for the Humanities Enduring Questions grant, and now I invite you to explore what it means to be, what it means to be rather than seem in performance-- both on stage and in everyday life--and what being and seeming might mean in our age of media culture and increasing technological illusion. I also invite you to form your own questions, raised when you consider, "What Is Being?"