Day: April 6, 2012

Speak, Apologize. Repeat.

David HolcombLeave a comment
  • “Oops.”

Back in the mists of history —  about the fifth grade, I think it was — a teacher informed me that my mouth seemed to operate a bit too much ahead of my brain. Since fifth-grade teachers are prone to such Delphic utterances, I just nodded and said “Yes, ma’am,” as I always did, and continued on my way, without the slightest idea what she was going on about.

Time has not improved my mouth-brain coordination, but over the intervening decades I’ve begun to understand what she meant.

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The Play’s the Thing

David Holcomb2 Comments
  • Kit Marlowe, a contemporary of Shakespeare: He also wrote some great plays, but highbrow? Not by a looong shot.

A friend recently pointed out a DVD of a new performance of William Shakespeare’s “King Lear” and observed that she generally did not enjoy such “highbrow” entertainment, even though the star of that particular staging was an actor she adored. If Shakespeare could hear such sentiments, I think he would be both flattered and very, very surprised.

There are no hard and fast rules about what is “highbrow” and what isn’t: like pornography, we all generally know it when we see it. Shakespeare, opera, live theater generally, and movies with subtitles are highbrow; professional wrestling, monster truck rallies, the NFL, and fireworks are not. At different times, however, the guidelines have been very different.

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