My quick response to Looking for Richard turns into a full-blown essay.

Like Shakespeare himself, I learned of the video Looking for Richard before I saw it - much in the same way so many of us know of Shakespeare before I read or watched anything of his. we are told that the work is good until we want to like it, decide to see it for ourselves, and find whether or not we are satisfied. The difference is that at this point, Shakespeare has at least lived up to my expectations.

I thought the acting was top-notch and would have loved to have seen a full-length adaptation of Richard III. In fact, a proper adaptation of the play alone would have sufficed to accomplish Pacino's mission of accessibility - to make it accessible through the acting and directing, and otherwise let the play speak for itself. Of course, the insight of the British and some American actors was extremely good; they know their stuff well. I think this Richard III travelogue would have been outstanding if our tour guide had been Gielgud or Branagh or Redgrave (their being British would have downplayed the "American" aspect of the study, but would have enhanced the "Shakespeare" aspect).

Unfortunately, with all due respect to Al Pacino - I still consider him a skilled actor - he leads us with a ninth- or tenth-grade understanding of Shakespeare. It would be wronge to accuse Pacino of talking down to his viewers; this can't be helped if he himself needs to be talked down to. My qualms that Pacino does not do Shakespeare full justice are certainly not helped in the scene where, in trying to make the play accessible, he decides to change the line in the opening soliloquy from "G of Edward's heirs" to "C of Edward's heirs." This is no mere superficial bastardization; Shakespeare chose the letter G for a reason - a reason that comes about explicitly and almost immediately afterwards with Clarence's "Because my name is George....[King Edward] from the cross-row plucks the letter G,/And says a wizard told him that by G/His issue disinherited should be;/And for my name of George begins with G,/It follows in his thought that I am he." Even changing the aforementioned line to "George of Edward's heirs" would have clarified the line in and of itself, while still maintaining the connection to Clarence's spiel.

This film is, of course, not entirely without merit. While I find myself somewhat aligning with Sara on my verdict on this, I agree with Bahar's comparison to the film to the NEA video. Looking for Richard is an introduction to Shakespeare, rather than an intense study of Shakespeare. Many audiences - i.e. the high school students and "common folk" Pacino addresses throughout the film - demand a simple spoonfeeding like this, rather than, for instance, a nutcracker and snow crab legs. I would probably be praising Looking for Richard had I been viewing it in the eighth or ninth grade, when to hear something like an explanation of iambic pentameter would have been useful to me. In this context, it is a much better idea to introduce Shakespeare through something like Richard III, rather than a "greatest hit" like Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet.

Apropos to this class: the film even serves a great purpose to the whole intellectual, college-educated, Shakespeare-scholar crowd many of us fall into. It is more of a record of the first, rather than the second, word in the phrase American Shakespeare. Whether Pacino ever knew it or not, his film serves as a document on how, in America, Shakespeare is deified, with little or no understanding of his works, to those who do not understand him, or could care less about him. It is a sketch on the almost inevitable and sometimes necessary condescension and hackneyed explanation involved with the teaching of Shakespeare. I couldn't help thinking of an old piece from The Onion that illustrates excactly this point, albeit in a far more intentional, exaggerated manner:

"Shakespeare Was, Like, The Ultimate Rapper." - from The Onion, August 24, 2005.


Trieste 1910
Brooklyn 2008

Give us some slack!

Sara, you said: "As far as making it more accessible to American audiences, I think he is insulting American culture by claiming we can't access it without his help."

You also have to realize that not everyone is as educated and well-versed in Shakespeare as you guys. I would like to consider myself an educated individual, but I have very little understanding or appreciation of Shakespeare. I have no where NEAR the understanding or appreciation that you guys have. That's why I'm taking this course.

Someone like me, who is obsessed with mainstream actors, can easier connect with a movie like this.

There is an audience for every kind of "mediator". Professor - would you consider this movie successful?

(P.S. No hard feelings Sara - just playing devil's advocate)

What about the video we viewed in class?

My question to Samantha's blog is . . .

Then how do you feel about the video we viewed from the NEA ???

I'm surprised to hear positive feedback from Looking for Richard. I was rolling my eyes throughout most of the movie. Towards the beginning, Pacino says that his mission is to "translate our passion and what we've learned to portray how we think and feel today." Why is this unique to Pacino? Don't we still perform Shakespeare today because the plays are passionate and relevant to what we think and feel today? Granted, there are antiquated, dispassionate productions done with overt pretense, but who is Pacino to 'save' us from these productions? After he makes this claim about making it "relevant today," there seems very little in the rest of the movie to accomplish this goal. His production is no more modern and interesting than the many BBC produced classical Shakespearean productions. As far as making it more accessible to American audiences, I think he is insulting American culture by claiming we can't access it without his help. It's even more insulting that, as far as I could tell, the only thing he did to make it more accessible to the American public was cast American actors-himself [of course], Kevin Spacy, Winona Ryder- bankable stars that make a film accessible to the public, not necessarily Shakespeare. Many of these performances (especially Ryder's) had be convinced that his counterargument was correct: American actors can't handle Shakespeare.

The most illuminating parts of the film, I felt, were the interviews with the English actors who are Shakespeare veterans. Vanessa Redgrave in particular supplied a lot of insight. But Pacino is placing these actors on a pedastal. I would have been interested to hear Pacino interview American actors who frequent Shakespeare and how they managed to bridge the gap between the American culture and this allegedly British tradition. Instead, Pacino spent most of his time interviewing people on the street who have nothing illuminating to say; most of them just seem excited to be talking to Al Pacino.

By the end of the film, I had written in my notes "WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS MOVIE?" It was poorly planned with no conclusion. Pacino did not make Richard III accessible, but he hurt his cause by speaking for American actors and producing this mess of a film. The film seemed nothing but self-indulgence from an actor who can afford to be self-indulgent. The documentary side of the film's disarray suggested to me that halfway through filming, Pacino realized he had no relevant footage and just threw together the nonsensical, pretentious arguments he did have in a pathetic attempt at a narrative. At one point, Pacino is trying to explain one of Shakespeare's lines and then dismisses it by saying "it's very confusing. I don't even know why I'm bothering." Neither do I.

The finding of articles... a TOUGH prospect

I never thought using a database would end up being so difficult! When we went over it in class, I was so excited to actually show off my SKILLZ in finding the best articles. Well... when we were asked to find a review for Pacino's "Looking for Richard," I had to think long and hard about what to pick... and then I found it!! Anyone who wishes to see it, go to town.

Art & Performance Notes
Shakespeare to the People
Looking for Richard
Al Pacino
Review author[s]: Emily C. Bartels
Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 19, No. 1. (Jan., 1997), pp. 58-60.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0735-8393%28199701%2919%3A1%3C58%3ASTTP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L
NOTE: This article contains high-quality images.

THEN - the hard part happened. I had to get the article about new methods of teaching Shakespeare in America. I hope I'm not the only one who found this difficult... I tried almost every search keyword I could think of, and still most of the articles were useless to me. Then I found "Determined to prove a villain": Criticism, Pedagogy, and Richard the III by Martine van Elk. The idea is to overlap textual classroom analysis with performance. This isn't a new idea, of course, but the approach has an edge to it. Also, if you'd like to read it,


Title:
"Determined to prove a villain": Criticism, Pedagogy, and "Richard III"
Personal Author:
Van Elk, Martine
Journal Name:
College Literature
Source:
College Literature v. 34 no. 4 (Fall 2007) p. 1-21
Publication Year:
2007
Abstract:
This essay offers suggestions for teaching William Shakespeare's Richard III, using a pedagogy that combines a historically aware, text-based exploration of the play's treatment of subjectivity with a performance-oriented approach. Concentrating especially on the play's famous opening speech, I explain how students might be encouraged to engage productively with the text's intermingling of competing, overlapping, and mutually enhancing models of identity. The play's representations of identity derive from the early modem period's secular humanism and metaphysical views of selfhood, but also present us with less clear-cut reflections on psychology and theatricality. The essay ends with an analysis of three modem film versions of the speech, showing how these can be used to help students learn to recognize the ways in which our own perspectives on identity are themselves the product of a long, complex, and often contradictory historical development. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Subject(s):
Identity (Psychology) in literature; Villains in literature; Speeches, addresses, etc. in literature; English literature/Early modern (1500-1700)/Study and teaching; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616/Works/Richard III
Peer Reviewed Journal:
Physical Description:
Bibliography
ISSN:
0093-3139
Language of Document:
English
Works:
Richard III [Drama]: Shakespeare, William
Document Type:
Feature Article
Update Code:
20071106
Database:
Humanities; Education
Accession Number:
200728803831005
Persistent URL:
Click to copy the HTML full text article linkClick to copy the PDF full text article link

I think the difficulty of this assignment was what I found most fascinating about it. There were so many options and so many errors I could make. I found myself wandering around the databases. I wasn't able to focus my energy and go overwhelemd. It seemed like such a juvenile problem, and I really felt very stupid. I've learned, though, that the database can't do everything for me. I have to help it along a bit. It will just give me everything I ask for, and that's why I have to be careful about the questions I ask.

Yes, Bahar is correct the reviews from Fedderson, Richardson and Bartels do point out that when I walked out from Bobst after viewing "Looking for Richard," I did feel that Pacino was a successful mediator between the text and the audience.  Pacino makes Shakespeare ours, it is American, it is something that we can gasp onto, hold onto.  Richard III is something that we can now see as being related to American actors, and the American streets, the American language and maybe even American history.  But when the issue of whether Pacino is a great mediator or not is put aside, I have to admit that I still have that weird feeling in the pit of my stomach after this weeks reading just as I did after the reviews and after the screening.  Because "In this cautionary tale about coming to America, Pacino not only hijacks the bard, but then he also audaciously offers him for sale back to his original owners," and I do not know that I am okay with that (Fedderson 2).

If '... the holy grail was lost and found and renewed, recovered in effect, by the modern hero, Al Pacino," is that okay?  Is that the right thing?  Was Shakespeare REALLY lost ... was it our place as an American to find him and be the modern day hero in relation to it?  "Pacino, the dramatized director-as-character within the film's fictional space, offers himself as the new keeper of the text, the man who can make Shakespeare accessible once again to Everyman" (Fedderson 3).  I guess I am just left asking why?  Why did he need to do that?  Why do we as Americans, to listen to the documentary, feel that we understand more, possess more and can then say that "Pacino sets aside a weighty old, leather-bound edition of the Complete Works for a more malleable and contemporary Folger Library paperback version," and say with certainty that's a good thing?

"Pacino himself argues that Richard is just like the American-style gangsters with whom he made his reputation" (Fedderson 5).  Why do Americans feel that we need to make it ours?  Why not just be satisfied we can connect to it, like Folger Library, like the kids who in connecting to it, make or have a better life?  Why is it ours to save, to change, to want to rewrite language to or to make universal?  Be creative, do what you want with it, be artistic, but ... is "looking for Richard" just artistic or is it something else?  Why do I feel like I need to preach to the choir about asking America's relationship to Shakespeare?  Why could I sit there and watch the movie and be entertained and smile and then read Fedderson, Richardson and Bartels' review and become so hot headed and frustrated?  Has this become our relationship to Shakespeare, we NEED to connect to it, feel that it is ours, sell it back to the people who kind of gave it to us in the first place?  Or maybe this was just, is just, my relationship with Shakespeare ... maybe this is what my relationship to Shakespeare has become, just a bunch of questions for the moment.

Sorry if I am rambling or ranting,

Samantha

I Am The Virgin Shakespearian

I

NYPL Shakespeare Research Session: From Stratford-upon-Avon to NYPL

The following is a notice for an upcoming Shakespeare Research Session given by The New York Public Library.
Here are the details -- taken directly from the NYPL website: www.nypl.org

"Shakespeare: From Stratford-upon-Avon to the New York Public Library"

02/21/08 THU 2:15 PM 3:15 PM Classroom B
Humanities and Social Sciences Library
5th Avenue and 42nd Street
New York, NY 10018-2788

Description: Discover the world of William Shakespeare at The New York Public Library. Ponder the textual problems of the quartos and folios. Explore various beautiful and unusual illustrated editions of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Experience Shakespearean research for the 21st century through the Library’s databases. Requirements: 1. A conviction that the plays of Shakespeare were written by Shakespeare. 2. A belief that the works of Shakespeare constitute one of the cornerstones of world literature.

Prerequisites: Participation in all classes assumes a basic level of computer skill and experience.

Subject Area: General Humanities Research Skills

Registration Information:

Classes are held in The Celeste Bartos Education Center, located in the new South Court building. Enter South Court from Astor Hall on the first floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library.

All classes are free. Classes are limited in size.

No reservations are necessary. Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Classrooms will be opened 15 minutes prior to class starting.

Participation in all classes assumes a basic level of computer skill and experience. For help in learning how to use computers, visit our Branch Libraries.

It may be odd- but it is also common

In response to "an odd finding": I can't really speak for other countries, but I know that here in America you can find no end of both script and story interpretations of Shakespeare's works like this one you've displayed. Such an enormous precedent, I think, argues both for and against the need for this particular edition. My reaction to it, however, is much more mixed than yours is. I have to say that I personally have a wealth of "children's interpretations" of most of Shakespeare's plays- and they are quite exquisite. Skillfully broken down into the most basic plot and supplemented with funny or stunning illustrations, some of these shortened versions of his works really impress me. It seems to me that it is unfair to be overly critical of any attempts to make Shakespeare more accessible to the general American public. I am an obsessive text nerd- someone who lives by the first folio, and  worships the words (probably to a fault), so I completely understand the desire to approach Shakespeare with a belief in the sacred, untouchable nature of his writing. However, as a Shakespeare supporter, how can I not believe in something that can assist people's understanding of his plays? Were it not for these "Shakespeare for Dummies" versions, I may never have known Shakespeare at all because it was reading these versions as a child that gave me the basis for the love and knowledge of the "original" versions that I possess today. And what's more, the ongoing debate of authorship along with his universalized adoration these days, argues to me that we have every right to reduce, rewrite and recreate Shakespeare's plays according to our over-changing modern world. If books like these are the best or only- or even just one- way to reach a larger audience, then I have to consider supporting it! The trouble comes in when you create something like this as a supplement or introduction, but it becomes used as a substitute (i.e. CliffsNotes and SparkNotes, which are so often used to get out of school reading assignments). But I truly believe that the risk of that is worth the pay-off of getting even one more person to overcome intimidation or boredom and begin to love and know Shakespeare the way all of us do.

An odd finding...

So, this doesn't really have to do with anything said in class thus far, but it certainly has to do with the interpretation of Shakespeare. A good friend of mine gave me a book last night that he said reminded him of me. The book was a collection of very short, narrative summaries/outlines of most of Shakespeare's dramatic works. None of them are more than 5/6 pages long.

I didn't really know what to make of this...I was obviously grateful that a friend went out of his way for me, but at the same time I found it a bit insulting that this author (Marchette Chute- I looked it up, an American author) thought that it was A) appropriate B) necessary and C) possible to sum up the craft of what has come to be the institution of Shakespeare in these little cliffnote style featurettes....it was just very bizarre. And I thought I would share in case anybody has any comments or insights.

Emily

Welcome, 2008 American Shakespeare Scholars!

Welcome, 2008 American Shakespeare Scholars!

Please use this site as a forum for continued discussion and reflection.
In addition to your class reflection papers, please also post here your thoughts, comments and observations of other instances and occurrences of "Shakespeare in America".

Best regards,
A.S.H. - The Shakespeare Diva