CSotD: Six impossible things by breakfast
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Pab Sungenis combines cultural literacy with demented foolishness on a level I really appreciate, and today's "The New Adventures of Queen Victoria" is the conclusion of a short arc shoving a stick into the spokes of that nonsensical movie, "Anonymous," which probes the theory that William Shakespeare was actually born in Kenya.
Or something.
I don't particularly mind that someone — and, as Pab points out here, someone who also made a movie warning that the world would end next year — has made a movie advancing an idiotic premise. After all, we survived "The DaVinci Code" and Oliver Stone's take on the Kennedy assassination.
Besides, this is hardly the time of year to be slagging films that exploit paranoia. Even the best monster movies require the willing suspension of disbelief, and Halloween is a lovely time to willingly believe in Dracula, Frankenstein and Burgess Meredith.
Bad monster movies are even better: "Plan 9 From Outer Space" wouldn't have been nearly as much fun if they hadn't recruited an actual psychic to do the intro in which he tells us "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives! And remember, my friends, that future events such as these will affect you in the future!"
But nobody bought time on NPR to promote "Plan 9 From Outer Space," and it bothers me to have a sonorous NPR voice equal to Criswell's declaring the theory behind this nonsense as if it were something we should take seriously, when it's no different than Glen Beck's warnings that we should purchase gold from his sponsor.
Sponsors are sponsors and we have to pretend to take them seriously even when we know they are full of it. Still, the option of not taking money from sponsors who are clearly full of it does dangle invitingly out there, and, given how sensitive public broadcasting is about its credibility at the moment, it's shameful that NPR should collaborate in promoting this nonsense, the publicity campaign for which also includes sending out free teaching materials to schools to perpetuate the fraud.
It's particularly sad that there are academics who take this thing — the theory, if not the movie adaptation of it — seriously, and I do hope they are all from wealthy families that did not have to sacrifice to help them get their advanced degrees, because the entire thing hinges on the notion that low-born people are incapable of great work.
Oh, they prattle on about how Shakespeare didn't leave any papers behind and that we have no indication that the man was even literate, beyond a few places where he signed his name with a spelling that seemed to vary with each document. But that's hardly proof of anything.
They might as well teach that Milton didn't write "Paradise Lost." There is considerable and convincing proof of that theory: Milton, as we know, had gone blind and dictated the poem, all 10,000 lines of it, which raises the perfectly reasonable question, if Shakespeare's (unproven) illiteracy is to be the lynchpin of this theory, what proof is there that he couldn't have dictated his plays and poetry to a clerk?
The answer, of course, is that Milton was well-born and educated, while Shakespeare and Homer were not. And, while academics can (and do) argue that Homer never existed, they are saddled with proof that Shakespeare did and are thus stuck with the inconvenient fact that his contemporaries credited him as the author of his works, that his works are brilliant and that this is true despite his working under the substantial handicap of never having taken their freshman lit courses.
Theories of the death of JFK, of the intricate manipulations of Opus Dei, of the non-death of Elvis Presley, are all nonsense, but they are not contemptible, elitist nonsense.
This one goes in the basket with the birther claims: He is not one of us, therefore he must be a fraud.
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