selenak

What you learn from the internet: the Oxfordians are at it again. Actually, I knew that was Roland Emmerich's latest project, but I didn't know Derek Jacobi signed on to the "Will is dead" theory. (Obscure Beatles joke is not obscure.) This actually makes me only facepalm in a fond way, similarly to Simon Callow declaring last year that Shakespeare (he does mean Will, the guy from Stratford) would have been the guy in the room to get all the boys and girls both. (He may have wanted to, and succeeded a couple of times, but irresistable writing does actually not get you laid by everyone.) (The only demonstrable counter proof I can think of is Brecht, who looked like a medieval nightmare, stank a mile wide due to appalling personal hygiene and yet never was without a harem, with lots of intelligent women competing how to be exploited both physically and professionally by him.) And then there was Lynn Collins with ""Nobody who thought as deep as Shakespeare could have been an antisemite" . (We wish. Artists and philosophers who were unfortunately also antisemites, racists, misogynists, homophobes or otherwise shared horrible prejudices: consider yourself non-existant.) It's not an original thought, but: we keep recreating Shakespeare in our own image, to slightly blasphemously go off on a Spinozza tangent. He's whatever the people writing about him need him to be, be it the loyal monarchist and conservative citizen or the seething-with-resentment subversive writer smuggling incendiary thoughts into every second line. And since the 19th century apparantly a branch of people needs him to be an Elizabethan nobleman whose only claim to fame otherwise is having been William Cecil's son-in-law and having been a bastard to his wife. (Not that, err, Will from Stratford was such a stellar husband, either.) Frankly, I'm with George Bernard Shaw on that one (check out the preface to Shakes and Shav, like all of Shaw's prefaces, it's a highly entertaining pamphlet). Though Emmerich (why am I not surprised at this? Ah yes, because I've watched The Patriot) apparantly thought that was too tame, and now good old Edward de Vere isn't just ghostwriting Shakespeare, he's also Elizabeth I.'s bastard son. (Whom by? Leicester, Thomas Seymour, or the Tenth Doctor?) Whom she has an incestous relationship with. I must say, Roland, this makes me look at you in a very suspicious manner. Also I find it irresistable to imagine this film as an lj post with disclaimers "dark fic, tudorcest lol!, read and review!!!!" posted by rolandSchwäbele@bards-have-no-lobby.com. (Back when our Swabian export to Hollywood made Independence Day, he expressed his relief in interviews about the freedom of making a film with villains whom one could portray as evil as one liked, because "bugs have no lobby".)

Speaking of posts, like everyone else I heard that the various downtimes of lj last week were the result of cyber attacks designed on ending livejournal as a political platform in Russia. Which is the best reason yet to keep using lj in addition to Dreamwidth. Because it's easier to laugh than to curse sometimes: my favourite cover version of Back in the USSR. From the film Heartbreakers. She plays a con woman pretending to be Russian, only for her mark to bring her into an actual Russian restaurant where she is dared to sing a Russian soung. Which is when this happens, because the Beatles are always helpful this way and awesome Sigourney Weaver is awesome:

I always had a soft spot for Back in the USSR anyway. For the way it spoofs Back in the USA and the Beach Boys at the same time, for Paul's Jerry Lee Lewis impression vocal-wise in the original and John and George's faultless Beach Boy whoohhooohoo chorus, and for the whacky origin story in India.