SHAKSPER 2005: JC and Good Night, and Good Luck

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@shaksper.net)
Date: 11/29/05 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.1960  Tuesday, 29 November 2005

[1] 	From: 	Richard Burt <rburt@english.ufl.edu>
	Date: 	Sunday, 27 Nov 2005 17:22:04 -0500
	Subj: 	Re: SHK 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck

[2] 	From: 	Al Magary <al@magary.com>
	Date: 	Sunday, 27 Nov 2005 14:00:35 -0800
	Subj: 	Re: SHK 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck

[3] 	From: 	Marcia Eppich-Harris <marcia_eppo5@hotmail.com>
	Date: 	Monday, 28 Nov 2005 17:00:26 -0600
	Subj: 	RE: SHK 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		Richard Burt <rburt@english.ufl.edu>
Date: 		Sunday, 27 Nov 2005 17:22:04 -0500
Subject: 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck
Comment: 	Re: SHK 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck

Kathy Dent asks "what's the point?" in regard to my posts on the remains 
of Shakespeare on film and other media.

There are many points. Here a few:

1. To create via Shaksper an electronic archive of sorts of such examples.

2. To suggest that such examples Shakespeare's hold on our cultural 
imagination is deeper, more pervasive, and longer lasting than some of 
us may have realized.

3. To suggest that an account of Shakespeare in performance needs to be 
encyclopedic. (Arguments made about the performance history of a given 
play are sometimes made in ignorance of a huge number of examples that 
call these accounts into question.)

4. To suggest that allusions to Shakespeare in mass media are not 
ancillary to some more putatively central Shakespeare, free of mass 
media, but are one part of Shakespeare's general mediatization.

5. To call attention to the breadth of ways in which Shakespeare is 
alluded, including not only textual citation or images of Shakespeare 
but paratextual phenomena such as posters, theater marquees, movie 
marquees, film clips in films; rehearsals of scenes of plays in films; etc.

All of these points and others are served by a two volume reference book 
I have edited entitled Shakespeares After Shakespeare: An Encyclopedia 
of the Bard in Mass Media and Popular Culture. The book, which will be 
published by Greenwood Press in May or June of 2006, covers film 
adaptations, film spin-offs and citations, TV, pop music, literature and 
genre fiction, comics, theater, and radio. Contributors include Courtney 
Lehmann, Douglas Lanier, Wes Folkerth, Douglas Lanier, and Amy 
Scott-Douglass, among others. The book is now at press, and I don't yet 
have a final count on the number of entries. But I can say that it is 
somewhere in the mid-thousands.

The book cover may be viewed at
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/~rburt/publications.html

I explore further some of the points made above in three forthcoming 
articles:

"Digtial Film, Asianization, and the Transational Film Remake: Alluding 
to Shakespeare in L'Appartement, The King Is Alive, and Wicker Park " 
forthcoming in Shakespeare Yearbook XVII, special issue on "Shakespeare 
in China," ed. Yang Lingui and Douglas Brooks, 2006.

"Civic ShakesPR: Middlebrow Multiculturalism, White Television, and the 
Color Bind," forthcoming in Shakespeare and Colorblind Casting, ed. 
Ayanna Thompson (Routledge, 2006).

"Backstage Pass(ing): Stage Beauty, Othello, and the Makeup of Race," 
forthcoming in Shakespeare on Screen , eds. Mark Thornton Burnett and 
Ramona Wray, (Edinburgh University Press, 2006).

The new journal Borrowers and Lenders as well as the published work and 
SAA, BSA, WSC, MLA, etc., seminars, conference papers, and so on 
directed and delivered by the contributors, myself, and a number of 
other scholars suggest many of the venues for research and teaching 
opened up by the kinds of examples I post on Shaksper.

I assume that many members of this listserv interested in Shakespeare 
and performance will find my posts of interest and use. I assume that 
members of this listserv who do not share these interests will simply 
delete my posts.

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		Al Magary <al@magary.com>
Date: 		Sunday, 27 Nov 2005 14:00:35 -0800
Subject: 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck
Comment: 	Re: SHK 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck

Kathy Dent complained, "Perhaps now is a good moment for Richard Burt to 
explain the purpose of his posts.  What is the point of 'simply' 
describing a film if he has no comment to make upon it?"

Mr. Burt posted briefly on the film about Edward R. Murrow.  It seems to 
me that he renders a useful albeit non-comprehensive service to the 
Shakespeare community with periodic posts about Sh. references in 
popular culture--"Shakespop," in someone else's nice word.  Any 
individual post may not be terribly valuable but in sum, as found in the 
list archives, they are as valuable as the total discussion in threads 
about, say, interpretation.  It is rare for the individual post about 
everyone's favorite bundle of complexities, Hamlet, to be remarkably 
valuable, but the thread can be informative.

Cheers,
Al Magary

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		Marcia Eppich-Harris <marcia_eppo5@hotmail.com>
Date: 		Monday, 28 Nov 2005 17:00:26 -0600
Subject: 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck
Comment: 	RE: SHK 16.1952 JC and Good Night, and Good Luck

Kathy Dent asked "what's the point" of Richard Burt's posts on 
Shakespeare and popular culture.

No offense to Ms. Dent and others who aren't as interested in this sort 
of thing, but I love seeing Mr. Burt's posts on Shakespeare in pop 
culture, whether there is a discussion to be had on them or not. One of 
my hobbies is collecting Shakespeare art (paintings, prints, spoken 
word, etc.) and films (tangentially related or adaptations), and a lot 
of times word of mouth is the only way to hear about such things. So 
please continue, Mr. Burt, to let us know when you find something. I, 
for one, appreciate it immensely!

And in response to the statement, "He never explains to the rest of us 
why he wants to draw our attention to these references," my reply would 
be this -- it's a case of "if you don't know, then I can't tell you."

Best wishes,
Marcia Eppich-Harris

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S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook, editor@shaksper.net
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>

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