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[NOTE: This post will make no sense to you unless you are pretty familiar with the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.]

I always listen to Ruddigore in October, since it’s so well suited to Halloween and all, but more than that, it is my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan opera, period. I know, most people prefer Pirates, or Pinafore, or The Mikado, and those are all quite good. But Ruddigore, in my opinion, tops them all. Here’s why:

  1. Ruddigore has the most cohesive theme of any of G & S’s works. Read Gayden Wren’s book “A Most Ingenious Paradox” if you want really detailed analysis, but suffice it to say that both Gilbert and Sullivan gave the opera a recurring theme–and a serious one, at that–and backed it up with relevant words and music. 
  2. Ruddigore is the darkest of all their comic works. (Obviously, Yeomen doesn’t count. It’s not comic at all.) The darkness lends the humor an extra edge, and Gilbert works it to the max.
  3. It has the greatest Madrigal G & S ever did. “When the Buds are Blossoming” is flat-out magical. What Sullivan does to convey the changing of the seasons is a work of genius, and it perfectly complements Gilbert’s floral imagery (Read Wren) in the lyrics.
  4. It has Gilbert’s best dialogue ever. Mad Margaret and Rose. Again, you need to read Wren’s book to get this, but it is a marvelous scene. Writing a character who is babbles insanely, yet also provides key plot information is something very few writers can do, but Gilbert nailed it.
  5. It’s actually scary. I mean, it’s not super terrifying; but done properly the ghost scene is quite awesome, and can be really scary. In my opinion, it’s best if the song is played for maximum terror, which makes the following dialogue all the funnier. 
  6. It contains this line: “So pardon us–or die!” That right there is better than anything in Utopia, Limited.
  7. The names are some of Gilbert’s greatest. “Dick Dauntless”. “Rose Maybud”. And my favorite: having “Robin Oakapple” turn into “Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd” and “Adam Goodheart” into “Gideon Crawle”. 
  8. Sullivan’s versatility. Three love songs. Naval music. Supernatural fright music. Rapid-fire patter. A deliberately awkward dance number. Sullivan does it all.
  9. The ending is Gilbert’s best. To be clear, this only applies to Ruddigore when all the stuff they cut in the original run is put back in. The ending that is performed on most of the recordings is much, much weaker. But when performed as Gilbert wrote it for the opening night, it’s brilliant. The legal nit-picking at the end is the best in all of G&S, I think, and most epitomizes the topsy-turvy logic that Gilbert is so well known for. And, of course, the solos performed during finale are excellent.

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“Deeply regret Brinkley Court hundred miles from London, as unable hit you with a brick.”–telegram to Bertie Wooster, in P.G. Wodehouse’s Right Ho, Jeeves.

Actor Ralph Fiennes laments that language is “being eroded”, a phenomenon which he attributes partly to Twitter STOP

I’ve said I think Twitter like “Newspeak” in 1984 STOP I stand by that STOP However, I think Twitter is effect, not cause STOP If people now talked as in past, Twitter wouldn’t exist STOP Wouldn’t occur to anyone to make it STOP Language skills had already “eroded” before it STOP

Posted Wodehouse quote for two reasons STOP First I think truncation necessitated by telegram format makes for funny line but also reminder this not new phenomenon STOP Though no hard-and-fast limit on telegrams, they encouraged brevity at expense of grammar STOP

(Explanation here.)

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I see there’s a new movie out promoting the theory that someone other than William Shakespeare wrote the plays commonly attributed to him.

From a historical point of view this is interesting, I guess, but my immediate reaction to this is to side with the “it doesn’t matter that much” school of thought. After all, the important thing is that the plays were written by somebody. Exactly who wrote them is not really relevant to their merits as works of literature.

At this point, we can never be really certain about it, so why bother asking? Better to consider the plays themselves, in my opinion.

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The more M.R. James I read, the more I like the guy’s writing. He’s very good at creating a mundane, triflingly pleasant world and then shattering it with the horrific. For instance, here is a passage from early on in his short story Casting the Runes:

“The Secretary and his wife were lunching out, and the friends to whose house they were bound were Warwickshire people. So Mrs Secretary had already settled it in her own mind that she would question them judiciously about Mr Karswell. But she was saved the trouble of leading up to the subject, for the hostess said to the host, before many minutes had passed, ‘I saw the Abbot of Lufford this morning.’ The host whistled. ‘Did you? What in the world brings him up to town?’

‘Goodness knows; he was coming out of the British Museum gate as I drove past.’ It was not unnatural that Mrs Secretary should inquire whether this was a real Abbot who was being spoken of. ‘Oh no, my dear: only a neighbour of ours in the country who bought Lufford Abbey a few years ago.'”

This sounds to me much more like Jane Austen than anything else. There are only a few paragraphs of real horror in this story, and a few more of vague mystery, and both are led into very gradually by this sort of light stuff. And, in my opinion, it’s not jarring at all. He makes it all blend very well, so that the horror stands out–as it ought to.

Another example is his Mr. Humphreys and his Inheritance. There’s only one paragraph of actual horror in that story. And it occurs five brief paragraphs before the end of the story. The preceding stuff ranges from purely descriptions of everyday life to hints of odd goings-on.

In summary, James came up with the concept of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies about a century before anybody else did. Only instead of playing the juxtaposition merely for easy laughs, he managed to turn it in to actual horror.

UPDATE: I should add that the flaw in his writing is that when he does, at last, bring the horror element in, he sometimes resorts to using simple violence. This is, I think, a crude device in horror fiction. The great thing about H.P. Lovecraft was that he could suggest the frightening without any violence at all.

If you combined James’ style with Lovecraft’s conception of “cosmic horror”, you’d really have something.

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Via Fryda Wolff, apparently there is some controversy regarding a poster contest the Obama campaign is running. Basically, the contest is that people volunteer to submit a poster promoting the President’s jobs bill/jobs plan/re-election. The winner gets publicity. The controversy is that people say it’s wrong of the campaign to ask that people volunteer their time to promote a jobs bill. Judging by the comments on the Rolling Stone article, people, especially graphic designers, are quite upset by this.

I don’t understand the outrage. No one complains when people volunteer to, for instance, go around from door-to-door promoting a political campaign. And this is actually a much more efficient use of resources in that, unlike a word-of-mouth pro-candidate or brochure delivery, a poster is something that you design once and can thereafter be replicated cheaply. Also, it introduces an element of competition and reward that is absent from more typical campaign volunteer work. What, I ask, is the problem?

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There’s a new documentary out called “Miss Representation“, about how women are portrayed in “the media”. I was reading about it in this Daily Beast article, which quotes the film’s director, Jennifer Siebel Newsom saying that through “the media”:

“‘We are teaching young women that their worth lies in their youth, their beauty and their sexuality, not in their capacity to lead.'”

It’s an interesting point, and I agree with the general thrust of the article, but I have some quibbles. First, a language issue: I wish they wouldn’t say “the media” when they mean “television and film”. There are other media besides those. But then, people say this all the time. I myself am probably guilty.

In this case, however, it’s important to note specifically what media we’re talking about. Television and film being visual media, it goes without saying that they will place an emphasis on the appearance of everything they depict.

Is this realistic? No, but to some extent this is to be expected. These are media where it is easy to get away with being shallow. Note that I do not say that all television programs and films are shallow, or that they do not serve worthy purposes, but only that it is possible to get away with being shallow in them.

If you’re somebody who has some mediocre idea for a television program, for instance, what’s the easiest way to make it sell: hone and improve it until it is thoughtful and well-written, or get some attractive female to carry out your existing, mediocre concept?

And it’s not just women–though women do suffer more of the burden than men, primarily because men are more visual than women, and so television is slightly biased in men’s favor–who are affected by this. Whatever the thing in question is, in visual media, the path of least resistance is to focus on the most visually appealing aspects. This is true even for the most serious, educational film and television, which is why there are more programs about astronomy than about mathematics.

So, yes, it is absolutely true, “the media” in general does offer a very distorted picture of women. But here’s the thing: it offers a distorted picture of most stuff. And here’s another thing: I think most young women are smart enough to figure this out. I’ve read somewhere that young women mature intellectually faster than young men, and even as a young boy I knew that most things on television were ludicrously inaccurate. I suspect, therefore, that young women are smart enough to know that, as well.

P.S. Whenever I write about issues like this, I’m worried I’ll offend people accidentally. If something I wrote above upsets you, by all means mention it in the comments, and know that I was not out to offend.

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In pursuance of my annual October quest for good ghost stories, I came across the works of Montague Rhodes James. I’d read about him somewhere–Lovecraft, probably–but I’d never read any of his stories until today.

What I’ve read so far is pretty good. A lot like Chambers and Le Fanu, but a bit more readable than the latter, I think. And I think he does a pretty good job of not over-explaining things, as Lovecraft sometimes did.

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Leonard Pitts mentions a revealing fact in a column on the “Occupy Wall Street” movement:

“By one measure at least, the movement that began with Occupy Wall Street is already bigger than the tea party ever was.

According to a report in the Washington Post, Occupy rallies were held in over 900 cities around the country and across the globe last weekend. The tea party is big, but it is not known to have had an impact in Barcelona, London, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Brussels, Munich, Rome, Sydney, Manila, Lisbon, Paris and Zurich.”

I consider this important because it is symptomatic of the difference in the movements. We all knew, almost instinctively, that OWS was a liberal movement, just as we all knew instinctively the “Tea Party” was a conservative one.

And liberals–cosmopolitans, as I like to say–are all over the world and, I think, feel a vague sense of unity with one another. Conservative nationalists are also all over the world, but they do not always feel the same unity, because, after all, what is good for one nation may not be good for another.

There are nationalist movements in every nation, and sometimes one is allied with another, but just as often they are in direct opposition. A cosmopolitan movement is by definition international. This, I suspect, is partly  how each movement was so easily sorted as “liberal” or “conservative”.