Monday, 1 October 2018
Wednesday, 26 September 2018
When you want to lose weight but the weight doesn't wanna lose you.
that awkward feeling you get when you want to lose weight but the weight doesn't wanna lose you lol
how tragic.
source: imgur.com
Monday, 12 June 2017
The Trump as Julius Caesar Controversy
The Trump family seems to have a problem with theater. In November, a few days after his election victory, Donald Trump launched a Twitter attack on the "highly overrated" New York musical, "Hamilton," after the cast's performers registered a restrained protest against Vice President Mike Pence.
And, on Sunday, his son Donald Trump, Jr., objected on Twitter to the Public Theater's production of "Julius Caesar" (part of its open-air Shakespeare in the Park series), in which the murdered Caesar closely resembles President Trump. As a result, both Delta and Bank of America have pulled their funding for the production.
As a theater critic, I saw this production on Saturday night, shortly before the storm blew up. Shakespeare's plays rarely contain heroes or villains: everyone in Julius Caesar is capable of good, though everyone ends up doing ill. Like most conservative critics, I tend to find that imposing specific modern parallels on Shakespeare tends to reduce this ambiguity, simplifying his complex characters into "Saturday Night Live" parodies.
Public Theater art director Oskar Eustis' version of "Julius Caesar" is no different. Gregg Henry's grinning, gesticulating Caesar is too obviously Trump to bear much relation to Shakespeare's flawed, charismatic war hero; Tina Benko, as his wife, is no more than a heavily-accented Melania stereotype. Subtlety is lost.
Yet this is not the vicious lynching of a Trump-surrogate that the right-wing press are keen to portray, nor a ritual expression of New York Democrats' bloodlust. Eustis' production may present Trump as a vulgar demagogue -- quelle horreur! -- but it makes crystal clear that assassinating him is the worst possible thing his opponents could do.
That is, after all, the message of Shakespeare's play. (High school students learn this; so should Donald Trump, Jr.) Brutus and Cassius assassinate Caesar because they think he's going to transform Rome's democracy into a personal empire; as a result of the violence they unleash, Caesar's nephew Octavius is able to use the army to establish his own empire instead. The last representatives of democracy end up committing suicide rather than be captured by the enemy.
If anything, portraying Julius Caesar as Donald Trump is unfair to Caesar. The Caesar of history and of Shakespeare's original, at least, had earned credibility in war, instead of dodging the Vietnam draft. In Eustis' production, Caesar's aides have the grace to look embarrassed when anyone mentions his war record. It's also hard to understand why Brutus, a democrat of rich integrity, admires Caesar's personal qualities and is so conflicted about betraying him.
But we in no way celebrate Caesar-Trump's murder. When Elizabeth Marvel's female Mark Anthony shows the audience Caesar's bloodied jacket, ripped with knife wounds, we feel her grief, and we, like the Roman crowd, are whipped into a frenzy of revulsion at the pity of this violence.
It matters, then, that Fox News and their allies are determinedly misrepresenting this production in order to pressure corporate donors. It seems to have worked: a spokesman for Delta objected to the "graphic staging" of this production, in which "artistic and creative direction crossed the line on standards of good taste." (That strongly suggests a spokesman who hasn't seen the show -- or didn't know Shakespeare's Caesar contained an assassination scene.)
This Julius Caesar does not glorify Trump's assassination, but it does critique him as a wannabe-emperor. If that's all it takes to get funding pulled, other theaters are going to be very wary of staging work that engages with the nation's President. And that has a chilling effect of freedom of expression. There is nothing less American than an America in which artists cannot speak truth to power.
It also shouldn't matter that this production of Julius Caesar has artistic flaws. Even with them, it still has value: as a British Shakespeare scholar, I've never heard any American actors pronounce his language so expertly. Elizabeth Marvel makes Mark Anthony's speech the highlight of the show and a sharp warning about the modern breed of politicians for whom claiming to lack rhetorical cunning is the most cunning rhetorical strategy in the game. ("I am no orator, as Brutus is," she roars, as if mocking an Ivy League opponent. "I only speak right on.")
Yet the rights and wrongs of this particular Julius Caesar aren't the point at all. A theater has lost its funding because it mocked the President, on the back of a lie circulated by that President's allies falsely accusing it of inciting violence.
That is a dark moment for American freedom of expression. Let us hope theater fights back: not with Brutus' knives, but Shakespeare's verse.
courtesy: Kate Maltby, CNN, cnn.com
Sunday, 23 April 2017
Shocking Shakespeare recital from Ghana
Crammed Brutus and Marc Anthony's speeches to answer multiple choice questions and fill-ins 12 years ago. 12 years on, i just realised i still remember them because i had fallen in love with them.
MORAL LESSON: Learn what you love and love what you learn and you'll never have to worry about ever forgetting it.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE!
MORAL LESSON: Learn what you love and love what you learn and you'll never have to worry about ever forgetting it.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE!
Tuesday, 13 December 2016
Touching recaps of yesteryears
100,000 monks praying for the world in one picture.
1958 in Belgium, this african girl was put in a zoo( more like a human zoo)
A Turkish official teases Armenian kids by showing them a piece of bread during the Armenian Genocide, 1915.(tragic...)
New Chinese paramilitary police recruit starts crying before being shipped for service.
We've come a long way haven't we...man in your shot Measuring bathing suits – if they were too short, women would be fined, 1920's
Red cross nurse writes the last words of a dying british soldier during World War 1.
When you have seen war like this 106-year-old Armenian, you would understand why. this 106 year old woman guards her home picture taken in 1990.
10 year old Yemeni girl smiling after she was granted a divorce from her husband - a grown adult.(interesting...)
Animals being used as part of medical therapy, 1956( i wonder if it worked, it sure looks like it here)
. A 7-month-old extremely malnourished is held by his mother at a rescue center in Kenya.
The child is said to have made a full recovery.
Marine Staff Sgt. Marc Golczynski's son accepts the flag for his father during a memorial service. He was shot a few weeks before he was due to return home.(sad...)
A man is having his nose measured by the Nazi police to decide whether or not he is Jew. Hitler had a stereotype that Jewish noses are larger than Aryan noses.
A violinist cries while playing at a 9/11 memorial service in Vancouver.
A widow receives her husband's body about after 63 years. Army Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Gantt died during the Korean War in 1951.(very sad...)
Robert Peraza falls to his knees as he touches his son's name at the 9/11 memorial. hmmmm
A sergeant looks after a 2-week-old kitten during the Korean War.
A Japanese girl placed in isolation for radiation screening looks at her dog through the window.
A dog sits next to the grave of its owner, who passed away in the disastrous landslides near Rio de Janeiro in 2011.
John F Kennedy Jr. at his father's funeral, saluting his coffin. JFK was assassinated on 22nd November, 1963.
A South Korean cries as a North Korean relative waves goodbye. A temporary 3-day family reunion was allowed after 60 years between families from across the border in October, 2010.( how tragic...)
The LIFE magazine photo of U.S. Navy Officer Graham Jackson, a friend of President Roosevelt, playing at his funeral April, 1944.
the story of Life...how it really ought to be. Father and son in 1949, 2009 and 2011.
A couple kisses after the girl was knocked down by a policeman during the Vancouver riots, which occurred after Boston Bruins' win over the Vancouver Canucks, in June, 2011.
A war veteran from Russia kneels in front of a tank that he spent the war in. The tank is now a museum.
12-year-old Brazilian kid, Diego Torquato, plays violin at his teacher's funeral, who had helped him escape violence & poverty through music.
Thania Sayne leans on the headstone of her husband the day before their wedding anniversary on 16 October 2013. (so sad...)
Life as it is...There are two sides to every story.
the saddest embrace ever...!
The final embrace of a couple that died after a factory collapsed in Bangladesh.
A man jumps to his death from the World Trade Centre during the 9/11 attack. (sighing...)
When, for some, the color of skin becomes greater than humanity: Hotel owner pouring acid in the pool while black people swim in it, ca. 1964 When, for some, the color of skin becomes greater than humanity: Hotel owner pouring acid in the pool while black people swim in it, ca. 1964.
sources: www.emlii.com
www.scoopwhoop.com
Tuesday, 6 December 2016
Monday, 5 December 2016
Tuesday, 29 November 2016
Friday, 25 November 2016
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