Minds at work
Oct. 18th, 2022 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakSix years into the making, a few weeks ago the German production of Hamilton started in Hamburg, and while in advance there was a lot of scepticism (not about the musical per se, about a German language production instead of just keeping the English original text), there was a lot of praise for the result. Since there are such a lot of puns in the original text, not to mention the importance of rhythm, I had a hard time imagining something good myself, but I have to say, this sample of the cast recording the opening song, Alexander Hamilton, is impressive:
This pre-production performance of The Schyler Sisters in German isn't half-bad, either (and it amuses me that the one sentence in each song that's kept in English is the one praising NYC - "In New York you can be a New Man" and "the greatest city in the world" respectively).
And here is an interview with Frances O'Connor, who directed and wrote the not-really-about-Emily-Bronte film, which I read because yet another glowing review praising the film for "ossing aside the image of a shy, sickly recluse, replacing it with an antiheroine whose inability to fit in with the ordered world is a source of strength rather than weakness", I was curious as to what she was thinking. (Also: Good lord, Mark Kermode, Emily always had the wild child of nature image, that's not new. She wasn't described as "shy" by those inhabitants of Haworth willing to talk to Mrs. Gaskell but as rude. And until the final year of her life, she wasn't sickly, either. Anyway, this passage from the Frances O'Connor interview sounds somewhat more thoughtful than the review (on both the part of her and of the interviewer) :
The question that drives it is how the prickly recluse of historical record, holed up with her siblings in a parsonage (apart from a brief, disastrous stint as a schoolteacher), could have been able to summon such passion not only in her single novel but in her poetry.
O’Connor’s answer is to pair her up with one of the six curates who joined the Brontë household over the years: a man so beloved by the parishioners that he was memorialised by them, after his untimely death from cholera, in a plaque on the wall of Haworth church. William Weightman, it reads, was a man of “orthodox principles, active zeal, moral habits, learning, mildness and affability” – not the qualities that are brought most quickly to mind by Oliver Jackson-Cohen’s lusty portrayal.
Yes, but wasn’t it Anne Brontë with whom Weightman was thought to have had a romantic entanglement? “It is, but if you read up on it it’s disputed. There was one comment from Charlotte and that’s it,” says O’Connor, who cites a range of Brontë studies, not least one by Lucasta Miller, which argued that each age recreates the family in its own image. This may be fiction, but it has been conscientiously thought through.
Fine, but firstly, "you have to have had experienced (romantic) passion to write passionately" is rubbish, and secondly, while it's perfectly true the Anne/Willy theory rests only on one statement by Charlotte in a letter to her bff Ellen (a letter in which she also suggests Willy Weightman/Ellen as a (better) pairing, which is why Juliet Barker doubted it in her biography, too, there's not even that much to indicate that Reverend WW had any interest in Emily or vice versa. You can even make a better case for Charlotte/Willy Weightman (since she does have a keen interest on his romantic life and keeps speculating and reporting about it in her letters to Ellen). But that's not really the irksome thing here, it's this idea that a (female) writer absolutely HAS had to have experienced romantic passion, or else.
All of this makes me revise my opinion on the central theory in Catherine Lowell's The Madwoman Upstairs, because while Charlotte is also the villain in that one, at least it's about Anne (and meant to be something of a spoof on academia, as Lowell's heroine is convinced Charlotte stole Jane Eyre from Anne and Anne tried to avenge herself on Charlotte by attempting to set her on fire. I can buy that before I buy Emily/William Weightman). (No, not really, Anne wouldn't.) More seriously now, it's true that Charlotte as the longest surviving and most successful sibling edited her sisters (plural) works after their death, but the idea she might have censored Emily is sheer speculation (it mostly rests on the assumption Emily might have written a second novel, for which, again, there's no proof), whereas we do have it in black and white that Charlotte censored Anne. (She didn't permit a reprint of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in her life time and treated the novel, which today is seen as Anne's masterpiece, as an embarassing mistake.) So if you really want to make a film about a Bronte sister who has been edited and displaced from her story and to whom this hasn't been done before, Frances O'Connor, you should have picked Anne. With or without Willly Weightman romance. :)
This pre-production performance of The Schyler Sisters in German isn't half-bad, either (and it amuses me that the one sentence in each song that's kept in English is the one praising NYC - "In New York you can be a New Man" and "the greatest city in the world" respectively).
And here is an interview with Frances O'Connor, who directed and wrote the not-really-about-Emily-Bronte film, which I read because yet another glowing review praising the film for "ossing aside the image of a shy, sickly recluse, replacing it with an antiheroine whose inability to fit in with the ordered world is a source of strength rather than weakness", I was curious as to what she was thinking. (Also: Good lord, Mark Kermode, Emily always had the wild child of nature image, that's not new. She wasn't described as "shy" by those inhabitants of Haworth willing to talk to Mrs. Gaskell but as rude. And until the final year of her life, she wasn't sickly, either. Anyway, this passage from the Frances O'Connor interview sounds somewhat more thoughtful than the review (on both the part of her and of the interviewer) :
The question that drives it is how the prickly recluse of historical record, holed up with her siblings in a parsonage (apart from a brief, disastrous stint as a schoolteacher), could have been able to summon such passion not only in her single novel but in her poetry.
O’Connor’s answer is to pair her up with one of the six curates who joined the Brontë household over the years: a man so beloved by the parishioners that he was memorialised by them, after his untimely death from cholera, in a plaque on the wall of Haworth church. William Weightman, it reads, was a man of “orthodox principles, active zeal, moral habits, learning, mildness and affability” – not the qualities that are brought most quickly to mind by Oliver Jackson-Cohen’s lusty portrayal.
Yes, but wasn’t it Anne Brontë with whom Weightman was thought to have had a romantic entanglement? “It is, but if you read up on it it’s disputed. There was one comment from Charlotte and that’s it,” says O’Connor, who cites a range of Brontë studies, not least one by Lucasta Miller, which argued that each age recreates the family in its own image. This may be fiction, but it has been conscientiously thought through.
Fine, but firstly, "you have to have had experienced (romantic) passion to write passionately" is rubbish, and secondly, while it's perfectly true the Anne/Willy theory rests only on one statement by Charlotte in a letter to her bff Ellen (a letter in which she also suggests Willy Weightman/Ellen as a (better) pairing, which is why Juliet Barker doubted it in her biography, too, there's not even that much to indicate that Reverend WW had any interest in Emily or vice versa. You can even make a better case for Charlotte/Willy Weightman (since she does have a keen interest on his romantic life and keeps speculating and reporting about it in her letters to Ellen). But that's not really the irksome thing here, it's this idea that a (female) writer absolutely HAS had to have experienced romantic passion, or else.
All of this makes me revise my opinion on the central theory in Catherine Lowell's The Madwoman Upstairs, because while Charlotte is also the villain in that one, at least it's about Anne (and meant to be something of a spoof on academia, as Lowell's heroine is convinced Charlotte stole Jane Eyre from Anne and Anne tried to avenge herself on Charlotte by attempting to set her on fire. I can buy that before I buy Emily/William Weightman). (No, not really, Anne wouldn't.) More seriously now, it's true that Charlotte as the longest surviving and most successful sibling edited her sisters (plural) works after their death, but the idea she might have censored Emily is sheer speculation (it mostly rests on the assumption Emily might have written a second novel, for which, again, there's no proof), whereas we do have it in black and white that Charlotte censored Anne. (She didn't permit a reprint of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in her life time and treated the novel, which today is seen as Anne's masterpiece, as an embarassing mistake.) So if you really want to make a film about a Bronte sister who has been edited and displaced from her story and to whom this hasn't been done before, Frances O'Connor, you should have picked Anne. With or without Willly Weightman romance. :)
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Date: 2022-10-18 04:20 pm (UTC)Anyone who can ask this question should be permanently disqualified from talking about art, or indeed about people. The same goes for anyone who would take it seriously as a question. *grumbles*
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Date: 2022-10-18 04:26 pm (UTC)(In the very last Sandman story in The Wake, Neil Gaiman has a marvellous spoof/reply to that when he lets Ben Jonson (the playwright) visit retired Shakespeare and go on about how he, Jonson, has at least experienced stuff and has had a dramatic life, while Will... and Shakespeare just smiles and says, paraphrasing because I don't have The Wake with me, "and here I thought that all you need to write about human beings is to be on, and I have that honor".)
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Date: 2022-10-18 04:36 pm (UTC)♥ ♥ ♥
Gaiman gets it.
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Date: 2022-10-19 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-18 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-18 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-18 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-18 05:35 pm (UTC)Everything about this just makes me so furious and also makes me want to roll my eyes. Uuuuuuugh.
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Date: 2022-10-18 06:18 pm (UTC)I so want an Anne Bronte movie! (though ideally not by O'Connor)
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Date: 2022-10-18 06:40 pm (UTC)What's wrong with an inner life?
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Date: 2022-10-19 11:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-18 06:45 pm (UTC).....ughghgh it's "but how could women who had not known LOVE write about it" all over again. And yes, Anne was served far worse by Charlotte than Emily was! Write a gothic where Anne is haunting Charlotte or something, no Willies required. Ahem.
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Date: 2022-10-18 08:11 pm (UTC)Thanks for the German-language Hamilton share. Makes me want to zoom out to Hamburg to watch it!
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Date: 2022-10-19 11:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-18 09:30 pm (UTC)Same.
but I have to say, this sample of the cast recording the opening song, Alexander Hamilton, is impressive
Agreed!
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Date: 2022-10-19 10:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-19 09:39 am (UTC)You mean every depiction of Emily ever? I can't even.
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Date: 2022-10-19 11:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-20 02:12 am (UTC)