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