Maybe you saw the Times’ fabulous piece the other day on the MIT Professor who gives physics lessons on Youtube, even turning himself into a pendulum with a rope and a harness. Kids in India are learning from him. Wonderful.
It makes me wonder Who will be the Shakespeare of the internet? Any writer will tell you that we labor in Shakespeare’s shadow. He invented the language, Harold Bloom says. Many of our great cliches come from him, all the music of speech is in Shakespeare and we’re rehumming his tunes. That said, Shakespeare was lifted by a new technology. He got in when there was an open field. He could invent the language because no one was ahead of him. Gutenberg and moveable type were barely 100 years old. Yes, Shakespeare’s celebrity had to do with the Globe and performance, but his unending majesty was assured by print. It seems to me that the internet affords another clear field in the arts. Who knows what sort of expression it is likely to be, how much of it written, how much performed ala the MIT prof.
The internet though is more like the stage, a wonderful but passing experience.
The internet allows access to new literature as it does to new politics. Without it there is no hope for either, just the same status quo take on everything. Best of all, it's cost effective for all the teeming masses left out in the customary ways.
Wrong question.
Ask 'Who will be the next Walter Cronkite of the Internet?'.
There, all fixed.
Harold Bloom? Spare me.
Geez…MondoWeiss…I go around bragging about you and your moral courage and then you mention a Yalie.
Bloom (Harold, not Allan…let’s not go there!) reminds me of Freud…absolutely brilliant but brilliantly wrong. Sure, he’s worthy of study. So pull out the dictionary and read his works. But Bloom as the ultimate authority on Shakespeare is like watching Allan Bloom trying to play football in the SEC. Not a pretty sight.
Ah! Wasn’t it Allan Bloom who said he was so above it all that tragedy becomes comedy and comedy becomes tragedy? Now that I seem images of him playing quarterback in the SEC I know what he is talking about.
Each to his or her own of course, but the secret to Shakespeare is not fully revealed by the word according to Harold Bloom. Think Flag of our Fathers. Think Mercutio. But do not, under any circumstances, think Yale. Do you honestly believe to understand Shakespeare that you have become androgynous?
Of course if Habakkuk the Brit wants to weigh in, I’ll take notes.
The more compelling question is: who will be the Bill Shakes of the IM set? "2B r no 2B"
Basic reduced to Base.
And who is Tybalt today?
Shakespeare was a "one off": There hasn't been another "Shakespeare of the Theater" since, nor a "Shakespeare of the Cinema" nor, much less, a "Shakespeare of the Television", so why expect a "Shakespeare of the Internet"?
What really worries me is that they (the powers of (shudder, gasp) darkness) shut the whole beautiful thing down.
"Harold Bloom? Spare me."
I would like to add. Especially on Shakespeare. But don't worry, I wont go into details.
Here is a perfect example of what Dr. MacDonald is referring to when he singles out Jews as the destroyers of Western European Civilization.
http://www.jewsonfirst.org/
And the Jews wonder why they are hated?