Camille Paglia: The Dark Women | The Forum | Stratford Festival 2014

welcome ladies and gentlemen to the Stratford Festival forum it's a privilege to have you all here my name is Anthony tulino I'm the artistic director of the Stratford Festival and today I I promise you my agent is not here today but it is such a pleasure to come together to hear Camille palea speak about the dark women of Shakespeare it is just fantastic that she's taken the time to come here and join us today Camille Paglia is a self-described dissident feminist she's been a professor at the University of Arts in Philadelphia since 1984 she's been called many many things she's been called brilliant she's been called outrageous she's been called a writer in a category all her own a radical libertarian and an academic Rottweiler and in 2005 palea was named as one of the top 100 public intellectuals by the journals foreign policy and prospect she is of course the author of sexual persona art and decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson now this book was written in the early 80s and it took a decade to get it published it was rejected by seven publishers and five agents and when it was eventually published in 1990 at what was seen then as the height of the age of political correctness it became not only a best-seller it reached the seventh place on the paperback bestseller list which is a very rare accomplishment for a scholarly book and it was at that time as many who call both a bombshell and also a breath of fresh air her other books and essays include sex art and American culture in 1992 vamps and tramps in 94 break blow burn in 2005 her most recent book is 2012's glittering images and she's a critic of American feminism and have spoke spoke post sutra structureless theory as well as a commentator on multiple aspects of the u.s. social culture such as its visual art its music and its film history poly has known her views of many aspects of modern culture including of course feminism old-school feminism she says coveting social power is blind to women's cosmic sexual power and liberalism liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands it behave as nurturer and mother in 2012 an article in The New York Times remark that quote anyone who has been following the body counts of the culture wars over the past decades knows palea her study of the classics has earned her the respect of such noteworthy as harold bloom who was also her mentor she's on the editorial board of the classics in humanities journal Orien and has been writing a monthly column for salon.com since the late 1990s she's currently working on a study of the visual arts intended as a companion book to break blow and burn and just a small reaction a personal reaction as an artist as I read her writing and especially as I read the essays that accompanied the 43 poems and break blow and burn I'm always struck at how this particular writer doesn't use jargon doesn't use can't she just exhibits deep intelligence an abundance of insight and more than anything else a real sensitivity to the beating heart that breathes life into a poem ladies and gentlemen Camille Polya good evening Anthony that was fabulous thank you so much so I'm talking to you today about women in Shakespeare particularly the dark themes that attach to women in many places let me just make a statement first of all is that I think that in general current cultural methodologies in North America and Britain are moving in a direction that is the that as they affect education are going to make young people incapable of responding to to poetry to myth ultimately to Shakespeare because of this to me very distorted view of human life where we're only society is seen as worthy of study nature doesn't exist nature is simply this thing out there we can only know it through words we're all born tabula rasa there are no fundamental gender differences etc etc and the kind of the kind of criticism that young people are being presented with and including in Shakespeare classes I think is his mediocre it's it's fourth rate it's derivative I still you know feel a very intense connection to to the great you know it the AC Bradley to to G Wilson night the those critics of Shakespeare who were immersed in the history of poetry and this is the thing is that post structuralism post-modernism can only work if they work at all okay with narrative okay with with novels with fiction like and they can do absolutely nothing with poetry because they don't understand imagery now to me Shakespeare you know it's so clearly a man of the country here he is writing writing in the city for most of his career but you know the images that come to him are drawn from his own experience his saturation in the operations of nature the seasons you know the the incredible specificity of his references and make in making metaphors throughout throughout the plays but beyond that something that G Wilson said that when she was tonight said that knocked me out when I read it in graduate school he said that that the the rhythms of the great plays of Shakespeare are these our elemental rhythms that are like a great wave motion the most profound level of the plays moving everything forward I think that it's precisely these kinds of inchoate pre rational irrational forces in Shakespeare that I think you know people's ability to access these to understand them it's like is disappearing because of the horrible contemporary criticism that they are inflicted with you know New Historicism okay it's a big discovery it's like there's like you know colonialism in The Tempest we like to run up a flag okay this is their this is their one thing okay that's all without any any sense whatever is that the overwhelming political view in in Shakespeare is is that of a man who of a generation which which which still was seeing the scars of so many decades of civil war in in in England and coming out of a period of disorder and so you have really fundamentally conservative kind of politics in Shakespeare he he privileges order he feels that monarchy is the is the best form of government and he installed his comedies in in not just marriage but multiple marriages where marriage itself heterosexual marriage is represented as a as a symbol of social consolidation and of and of harnessing nature's powers before for fertility you know for them for the future all right so you know I think Canadians are so civilized that I'm not sure okay that that there is much of a sense of the irrational here except when there's those kind of you know a crime that imitates our our crimes order but I you know I think that I find it also in the Scandinavian countries when I talk to people from Sweden or from from Norway this is kind of a rational sense that if we can just keep on refining and finding and fine-tuning the social mechanism we will get to utopia there will be human happiness if we can just find the perfect social structure okay without without any sense at all that there are these deep rational forces in in human psychology and in humans operating as groups that that is what I see okay in human history okay I'm studying you know the rise and fall of ancient Empire since I was a child and that's what I see I see these great written a great rhythm soon in history is rising and falling and so on this idea that we can just with you know that we're all basically nice yeah and therefore if we can just get along with each other okay and just like to make this little correction this little correction then the sexes will like each other and in there and there are no fundamental differences between the sexes etc okay I think you can you anthropologically from the distance of the us that was kind of going on a bit during during this and then this long soap opera about the Toronto Mayor okay because I mean from what it looked like to me is that is that everyone is so rational in Canada that they could not understand your irrational behavior and so when you had irrational behavior Canadian sort of step back look to each other's side and tried to be patient okay but had no way of direct there was no conceptual framework for understanding the irrational in Canada much less dealing with it in the United States there would have been a counter reaction to his irrationalism within like three weeks and he would have been out okay you had to put up with on and on and on okay now let me talk I'm going to talk to you about four different plays hopefully if I have time today King Lear Hamlet Macbeth and answering to Cleopatra I will see if I can get through them all but I want to talk you know discuss the different ways that this issue of dark women or darkness in in in the female powers okay let me go quickly and immediately to to a very troubling passage everybody has difficulty with in the fourth act of King Lear where Lear is now reduced to nothing okay on the you know on the heath and it's and it's so disillusioned with his with his daughters and their abuse of him and so on there's this look at this kind of a set piece where he goes off classic expression of misogyny almost it's like something out of the out of medieval theologians okay where he says about women down from the waist they are sent hours though women all above but to the girdle to the gods inherit beneath is all the fiends there's there's hell there's darkness there's a soft year spit burning scalding stench consumption five five five this is a moment when it happens periodically and Chick Spurs major tragedies where where someone becomes feels that through through a failure of trust in women feels feels as if he has been betrayed and you get this this this condemnation of women as a class but beyond that and this this passage certainly had a great influence on my thinking as I was ready my dissertation and turned into a sexual persona of the book which is that today we are in a time rationalist time with a utopian psychology which believes that human beings are perfectible and so on we're anything like this in literature or art that that reflects the hatred or a war between the sexes or any kind of revulsion disgust with the female body that this this you know is going to be erased from he ministry it doesn't represent anything fundamental to sector gender differences that it's a it's a relic of a period of patriarchy when men owned women any time you get this it's coming right that's in this isn't is not what I see what I I feel that that it's specially a major literature that any passage that reflects this kind of a tension between an especially an inflammatory one like this between the between the genders in it has some measure truth in it must be confronted now we're in a time where they've been now you know sentimentality about the vagina okay that goes on I mean any these women coming out of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues they're not even using the word right I mean it's such a disgrace to women that you have you have putative feminists you know thinking that vulva is the same thing as vagina well the word vagina means sheath okay that that is the the invisible internal organ that's there's there you know that's fits the you know the erected penis perfectly so it's the vulva they're talking about my vagina is beautiful how can you see your vagina without a microscope what are they talking about it's a alright so I mean it goes all the way back to the first phase of second wave feminism there was like the early seventies there were all these like I can't even say the word here it's a four-letter word beginning let's say that the coloring book okay what was well whatever her name was now they were was so badly drawn me if it been a little bit more artistic you know fine and you were supposed to take purple in pink and red crayons okay and like paint paint in to show how beautiful the vagina is you're supposed to like look at yourself etc well in my opinion okay there is a fundamental kind of instability built into the history of the visual arts because if you if you do indeed develop your eye okay for the perception of analysis of the visual arts okay there is you have to use the same aesthetic judgment criteria when when looking at the the both male and female genitals and you know in both are comical and absurd and it's been very difficult for artists throughout history to incorporate them in some way that what doesn't make you giggle or like or flee screaming and so on alright so but now here's the point is a point I make to my classes which is that whenever in Shakespeare's plays you have this kind of misogyny being expressed it represents a person a man who is in a state of insanity okay there's a state of mental extremity it is not Shakespeare speaking except that you know we do see in at least one of the sentence and a little bit more that Shakespeare did have periods where he felt a sense of exhaustion or revulsion exhaustion with or revulsion from sack so there was something in sex the kind of emptiness sometimes in the kind of fast track world he seemed to be inhabiting and in London there's no reference to at all to his wife waiting patiently back in Stratford and and it is a sense that that that you know that he wasn't attaining you know that you know that there's a heaven to an ecstasy to sexual contact but then a hell that happens afterwards a total state of physical you know physical waste and a sense of disillusion and alienation isolation etc etc but but Shakespeare obviously identified that feeling of revulsion okay from women or from sex as as you know as being equivalent to okay a you know almost insanity I said I've been Sam thing because there was the way this I think that is very very telling that this play King Lear begins okay in a way that you mean the way it's in the way the scene is performed doesn't catch this I think a lot of a lot of the times at you know the very the very opening okay has before Lear comes out with the map and divides the kingdom up and that's in that foolish way you have this exchange between the Earl of Kent and the Earl of Gloucester where the Earl of Gloucester is speaking in about the way his son okay is as Edmund is was conceived and he's speaking in a very kind of kind of like elbow in the ribs way the way men would speak to each other in a locker room or in a bars or something like that it's utterly gross and and the Earl of Kent okay that the lines are so austere in in the Oerlikons response that it that it's clear the earlier old can feels embarrassed okay for this it understands that it's that is insulting to to women but especially insulting to to Edmund who's standing there in different productions have a choice to make with that scene to decide whether whether is actually hearing it or not hearing it I personally feel that it would be it's more effective had been not really hearing it but standing far away enough to see that his father's body language so gross and so and looking at him snickering about the way the way this illegitimate son was conceived and for you know for Edmund to be processing it as if this is something that he's seen you know many many times before this kind of callous barroom way of talking about women is something that Shakespeare clearly okay is opposed to a so opposed to that he that he opens the you know opens the the play whether throughout in him and Hamlet also okay there are these moments where Hamlet turns against OFI Lea and begins to berate her and denounce her and to use in T into use language that you're not sure whether a philia you know whether feel is still overwhelmed she doesn't really process how how how sexually loaded these terms are but that she understands that she's I mean to speak to a beautiful young virgin in a public place with such languages as Hamlet does when they're waiting for the play to start is it's insulting okay it's it's beneath the level of a prince you know of Denmark and Shakespeare is very sensitive to this matter of the dignity with which women should be spoken of in public so again I think that this this passage of kind of in Lear you know on the heat the kind of hallucinatory misogyny I think that it is to me it's an authentic vision okay of woman's in in you know internal space internal sexual space identified by mythology it with cave and cavern in the center of the earth and so on I mean I think it's something that is part of the human imagination and in the idea that somehow in our enlightened period that we're somehow going to pass a bunch of laws and have a few little sexual harassment committees and so on and it's all going to go away I think that this this is what that's saying is that the human dream life does not exist there are no archetypes that that you know we were exactly the same you know in the you know there are hormones you know and our sexual organs and then in the still the the burden of pregnancy falling on women okay and every human being emerging from this cave within a woman's body and so and then all these things are somehow unimportant so we're not going to think about them we're not going to allow our imagination to be troubled by them again I believe that that's that the arch and myth are almost in the union way it is like the collective unconscious is a projection of our internal dream life and art great art great ideas in art in a flow it all flows from our dreaming the dream process now when I was in college there was a lot of attention being paid to dreaming and analysis analysis various analyses of dreams Freud's interpretation of dreams was recommended to us we were you know that was the P was like a whole generation that was taking drugs I did not okay I'm Italian I believe in the old-fashioned things like wine and beer and so on and you know the occasional margarita today but but but you know in this was a period that was that took hallucination and vision seriously they're all vision quests people taking peyote and mushroom wasn't going off to the desert to meditate to see visions so what happened to that okay what happened to that okay my generation okay well first of all they destroyed their brains doing that that's number one what happened but that whole testimony dropped out of the culture okay and now you know we're in we're left okay with these bureaucrats and these comas ours okay who believed that politics is nothing but statism and you know I think we have to in people in Washington you know have all into the capital capitals of the world they have the answers for the poor or proletariat naio down below etc it's absolutely mad to me okay this tremendous cultural loss okay of getting the power of dreaming okay exactly that Wells up from our own unconscious every single night I don't know about the people here everyone here is presumably an art lover okay I don't know how is individuals so seriously you take your dreams but I still take my dreams extremely seriously my grant my grandmother's born in Italy a regarded still regarded dreams as prophetic okay there they were always going I had a dream okay and they would hear the prophetic dream about does that usually disasters trance on sometimes after something bad happened they would say I hadn't dream about that okay and so you see it came true it's a and you're the kumain Sibyl okay said a Kumai all those all those centuries wasn't far from my homeland so the vision and prophecy and intuition and instinct these are all you know it's very difficult to teach them make it but you can certainly can nurture them I mean that's right this is why I've been teaching in art schools for most of my career because I because I have this I have a rapport with artists and performers who understand the need to tap their own dream lives in their own emotional lives and these in these again these idiotic methodologies post-structuralism you know post-modernism the full of irony and snark and feeling superior and so on what are they this is why the arts are becoming increasingly impoverished I have no idea what the future is for for the for any of the Arts in the US right now and there's no imagination left because the imagination has been has been trampled on by by what by the kinds of books they're these poor kids are forced to read gobbledygook contorted prose okay and say instead of opening themselves passionately to art which is what what I believe in okay you let art work on you okay all right you don't have the answers known as the answers into art okay but it's like this this incredible thing that goes back and forth between between you and it and you internalize the art it becomes part of you et cetera I mean I'm just completely okay persona non-grata as you can see in academia because of these odd and very antiquated views that art is important okay and that is art is not the servant of any ideology okay all right so what else about Oh now let me say something about the in terms of dark women about the you know about the this kind of Cinderella like pattern in King Lear where you have you have you know Cordelia as the as the daughter who you know who loves her father and the other two who betray you know betray him and so you know the problem is that you know Goneril and Regan I always have a soft spot for them okay beginning me and I know it's not fair but they're kind of you know they're and they and they're they're kind of like Betty Davis figures you know from from classic Hollywood so it's very difficult for me to I mean I I know it's wrong I know I kind of imbalanced the play you know ideally seems to me like so 1950s kind of like a Betty Crocker kind of a girl I know it's wrong of me okay but it is totally wrong because because that scene the scene where she refuses in the opening to to flatter her father okay and just says nothing okay this is one of the most powerful scenes in all drama by the way that scene alone should proof to it to anyone but that Shakespeare the man from Stratford wrote those plays okay it wasn't an aristocrat to sit sitting in a palace in place okay wasn't some courtier okay that was a man of the stage it was an actor okay who understood blocking understood drama on the stage who write us seem like that okay and she goes you going Lear calls on the daughters okay tell me how much you would love me daughter number one and then she speaks oh I love you right now daughter number two okay all right now daughter number three and in the entire audience the court on the stage and you know and then the the mature audience everyone with this pressure of eyes now on this like small frail feminine girl to Cordelia okay and she holds it all off you just have this incredible penetrating lines of dramatic force going toward her and she goes nothing we have to say nothing okay so it's like so powerful and it's just like pure theater a genius of of theater but gone around Regan because they're more active okay I tend to I think it's sometimes when you get the interest well in and and Laurence Olivier a TV version of it you have you have gone Ron Regan being played by Diana Rigg you know and Dorothy Tooting well it's like it's fabulous absolutely fabulous hilarious like soap opera vixens in this in this scene but now what in terms of darkness you know dark women now gone wrong Regan don't really operate as as sexual beings per se even though they end up fighting you know fighting with each other over Edmund you know at the end but what they're there there's the kind of trashy okay they they don't obey the the codes that would that govern the Shakespeare feels are properly govern social classes and you know in one of the best examples of it is is that is where you have gone rural confiding too much in her Stuart now this is this is a detail that is not often missed okay biking by contemporary Mia productions because we don't we don't have a class or into society any longer but you do not take servants into your confidence you don't you don't babble to servants about about the opinions of your sister and another Duchess okay or or your opinion your opinions about your father okay yeah so this dudes like this it's a strange queasy over-familiarity that Goneril has with the with her with her steward okay that that you know suggests that it it almost is processed as something it's not sexual although who knows what's actually going on but there's there's something where she lacks a sense of a borderline okay and she lacks a sense of propriety right so that's that is one form okay that's you know that the that the negative women take in in Shakespeare's plays but not way I'm gonna have to move more rapidly or we're never going to going to okay alright so now let me see about Hamlet okay all right now oh hammer okay oh dear I mean just every time I teach I just this is the thing about Shakespeare is that and why we have the obligation to present young people with great works of our early on okay and not just things that are RPC and in fulfill some sort of agenda for you know for identity politics you know to make a kind of cafeteria menu for them I mean I think that young people should be told what are the great works of our expose yourself to them don't expect to understand them but this is yours it becomes a you know it's a treasure house inside you and and and we have to say to them okay evangelical II all great works of Arts will look different to you as you get older as you accumulate experience okay so that you would like open a play or listen something or see an artwork or even in a great film and as you get older and have different experiences into becoming you and have relationships and or children or whatever it is and and then with approaching age and all the abilities that come with that and so on that's the same thing that you were reading as a student it seems to change when you when you take it again seems to have changed it's almost like the Picture of Dorian Gray or something right there's something that like a closed book has the pot has this ability to mercury early transform itself next time you next time you look at it you see you see more and more things right now the thing about about about Hamlet is the you know the gender issues in it okay in terms of dark women think we can call Gertrude dark because we're not really sure about her okay it's not that she's a negative figure she's not one to a femme fatale figure or a destructive you know I figure in any way it's just that we're never really sure about her you know production can has a number of options there it's not really clear for example from the play whether it did did Gertrude in fact you know start her relationship sexual relationship okay with Claudius before her first husband was dead or not okay we're not we're not really sure Hamlet is suspicious about it okay and determined and his his suspicions about his mother combined with his hatred for his uncle you know making make me make him turn against OFI Lea at the slightest provocation and just trash her here's here is like a one beautiful young couple that should be together it should be the future of the the future of the Danish royal house and instead it's all ruined all destroyed all false to nothing and just every every time you got you come you go to the to the play you think this time yes yes this time Hamlet Ophelia will go yes but no okay okay but the Gertrude I mean I feel that you know in Hamlet has this talked about in a second he'll has these like these long his relatives of hatred of women suspicion of women and so on coming from his sense of betrayal by his mother he there is a blurred borderline between Hamlet and his mother I mean there's no doubt about it I mean he is Hamlet is way too concerned okay with his mother sex life absolutely wait your concern all right in fact at the point of you know a point of speak of hallucinatory imaginings meaning so it's almost like he's right there at the bedside I'm so he's almost like the camera eyes sometimes talking about his mother's sex life but but I've always felt from just from the prose you could the quality of the prose that Gertrude speaks that she should be played by a big woman okay that the actress should have some meat on her bones okay you know Julie Christie who played her one either door Julie Christie from darling and so on by but Julie Christie was a little bit too beautiful into into electric and so on no I think that Gertrude is rather indolent because she she's sensual she loves to eat to drink to lie or not to have sex and so on and she she you know ended in the scene in her closet as much as acknowledges this that she's been weak you know that she's given too much license to her owns central sexual impulses etc and I feel that she I feel she's a little slow okay she's slow okay and she's slowed to process into it and I think that's important especially when Hamlet is is rebuking her and berating her and you know in her face and like that like that and she's kind of slow and trying to take it in and so do it the way that once the fault something we can hold against Hamlet is the rather sadistic way he uses own verbal skills okay as an intellectual against women okay he uses it as a defense means you see that again and again it's a trashes and slashes you know a philia and and Gertrude but like I want you bring your attention they are aware of it but this the first time we hear Hamlet's inner thoughts okay of course it's been sulking on stage in the beginning silent you know off to one side during Claudius is address to the court and then we get him alone and we have that first soliloquy okay I find it absolutely amazing in terms of this theme that we're talking about about darkness okay dark dark women in darkened and you know the dark visions of woman in the in the Shakespeare plays this is this is a soliloquy that goes oh that this too too sullied flesh would melt thaw and resolve itself into it so he goes on Hamlet goes on talking about oh if only I could commit suicide on these very abstract philosophical terms okay and then all then he then he uses the image imagery of a guard know the world is like a garden to me but it's now a total you know it should be beautiful and well maintained orderly instead it's it gets fallen to pieces this is of course because of the the the gardener the master gardener his his father the king is gone and everything is is you know this collapse into everything's a mess an unweeded garden that grows to seed things rank and gross in nature possess it merely it's overrun with rats and you know parasites and so forth then there's this break it's in the middle of a line okay I'm in the middle this is incredible note there's been nothing like this in the whole history of literature okay where you this sudden turn that here's how much talking in this abstract philosophical way up here and then all of a sudden this Welling thing comes up from the unconscious there's a Freud said you see he was a reader of the poet's in a Shakespeare and Freud said that the poets had preceded him in the invention of the unconscious and this is what this is one of the great examples of it and all of a sudden in the middle of a lime okay it turns okay the daddy should come to this but to dead nay that's so much not to okay so excellent King goes on and on about now his mother and his father okay and it gets worse and worse okay he goes on talking about must I remember okay she frailty thy name is like obsessive sudden focus on his mother okay and on his mother's relationship with it with his father there's personal stuff and all of this this buried negativity just erupts and then beyond that and then focuses totally on his mother he talk it talks about how she was faking it at the funeral the service when they were following my father's body to the graveyard she was faking her tears okay tasty obviously obviously she didn't mean it because she married my my hated uncle you know so quickly alright and then okay it gets it becomes it's almost like a great pan can't camera you know that that comes in focuses down what am I thinking oh I'm thinking of notorious okay where where Hitchcock's a camera is like over the party scene and then kind of slowly so it's whoop down until you see the key being held in Ingrid Bergman's hand okay it's a little bit like that okay wait wait we're way up here and then and then the cameras coming down at night and all of a sudden we're in the bedroom his mother's bedroom okay this is in the first soliloquy okay right at the very beginning of the play and he goes okay within a month ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears had left the flushing in her gala dies she married o most wicked speed to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets now the actor should be spitting on the front rows you know those in those lines because it's like incredible alright and and what in in so where we are is that we're in the bedroom okay and we we have his mother being represented as a horse you see a horse who we still have that phrase someone in the states and I do have a hot to trot okay alright she's hot to trot okay alright she's posting she's like she's an animal driven only by animal urges okay and galloping galloping galloping okay and leaping over people and barriers to get into the bed okay and we're not not just in the bed we are there right there because we see the actual sheets and we see the incestuous sheets okay I meaning there's so much soiled you know from that now decide whether it is technically incest that his mother married you know her brother-in-law is in different centuries different cultures have had a different judgment about certain cultures in regard as it says others none of us thought it was an obligation of a man to to marry his widow along okay so I mean there are other such passages in the play all right but this again this it's obsessive focus where we are we are we are way too close okay almost like an apparition we are way too close it's almost like we're in a motel okay in fact what I'm thinking of Hitchcock again okay opening of opening of psycho okay yes okay we were coming into Phoenix okay and you said the hotel and all of a sudden we like swoop through the window of this like seedy hotel and there is okay Janet Lee okay having her you know in lunchtime sex okay you know in you have to get back to the office quick yes in dirt and there's genitally and her brassiere was it was completely unheard of game just to see that the time and there we are okay in this in this completely enlisted in this room of it with illicit sex it's somewhat like that okay this feeling of we're uncomfortably close okay to a scene that of almost it's almost decadence it's almost decadence aren't you know that how close we are brought okay to to this okay so this is some you know this issue of can women be trusted hey is it's a theme that runs throughout throughout the play Hamlet and of course it's especially when Hamlet is berating poor Ophelia okay in that the scene where she when he realizes that that that they're being spied on by her father and that that freely in his be tricked you know betrayed him and he goes just absolutely true and it's this is the start of a feliz mental breakdown I mean just this this she's just a delicate and loving girl very simple rather noble she speaks beautifully even when even when even when he's when was abusing her she speaks you know well of him and and he's I've heard of your paintings okay God have given you one face and you make yourselves another you jig an amble you list your nickname God's creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance go to I don't know why you have made me mad okay about this now woman's we're using women using makeup and using cosmetics enhancements the way women walk okay and that slight - you know which is actually me it's because of the actually pelvic construction and the legs being slightly far apart okay because of child you know the child birth and so there's just a slight that in all of them so what what Hamlet is accusing women of here okay is of of exploiting men of domineering over men of of appealing making a direct appeals to men's sex sexual desires okay in order to in order to control them in order to lie to them okay you know this is what they say about the you know stiletto heel the high heel the leather heel actually it is actually kind of sexual aid because what it does is it forcibly forces women horses women's hips and to do that even more it's impossible to walk you know you can't walk like a soldier in stiletto heels okay so there's that swing you know seductive thing now the reason why these things are important it seems to me okay is because it's not just an art that we find these things okay it's also in crime okay the history of psychopathology right to understand the criminal to understand the you know the the criminal psychotics visualization of women that's leading to attacks on women constantly all over the world you have to read great literature and art to understand human motivation okay so I am very concerned about this you know this this this you know this political trend in a khadeem okay they way that has that has led to this present situation where now we have you know the Obama administration and the Democratic Party I'm a member of and so I'm about the war on women and we need we need more sexual harassment rules more guidelines more committees more excuse me okay and that's not my view okay my view is that women have to open their eyes okay and in men who love women must also open their eyes okay to the the one man one man in in a thousand okay who's the criminal psychotic and who visualizes women in exactly these terms this is the truth you know when Hamlet is abusing Ophelia that is the way the criminal psychotic is viewing women on the street the stranger woman okay and and this is leading I mean I just on the way here okay I'm reading yet more reports okay about yet another you know under undergraduate girl this one at the University of Virginia is coming back from a bar and it's just drunk and she's on her heels and and she's like alone and so and she gets snatched okay and they can't find her etc and this is happening like every week it seems to me and it's not there's no discourse or whatever about this except that people say we need more committees we never know you cannot retrain the mind of the criminal psychotic now I have no idea what I can understand okay criminal psychotic I don't know okay but I because I have read so much literature and and you know in art and because I take these passages seriously okay I understand this feeling of betrayal and defraud Minh and women have too much power they have too much power over me okay I'm going to I I must capture them I must exterminate this and so on this is this is a recurrent pattern in human life and until women return okay just this studying literature they will have me able to to understand okay their potential for danger in the environment okay so I mean who do you think the Dostoyevsky is being assigned these days okay things that are about you know evil or about you know about about you know huge conflicts of the human soul okay we're living in a very secular age right now where the talk of evil is considered naive that this somehow you know a discourse that belongs to fundamentalist evangelical Christians living in Tennessee or something okay and so all there's there's no some evil has been has been revised to mean only social injustice okay but but there is evil and there and there are criminals who enjoy evil enjoy destruction and you only can find it in literature in art or actually great films I mean you couldn't even say psycho the whole of psycho is about this it was based on a case ok an actual case that was far more gruesome ok then Hitchcock could possibly have filmed ok and in all kinds of ritualistic dismemberments of women and in flaying of the skins of women and so on that it sounded like asked tech cult going on it was somewhere in I was at Minnesota the guy a guy never leave his name was I think was Minnesota okay is where he was living in a cabin and it was it was this book about him okay that caused inspired Hitchcock didn't you to do that film alright so all these things are unpalatable people don't people people people still feel in this now liberal people today humanitarian people feel human nature is fixable okay and someday we'll have this again utopian future that we are moving along and every every year okay we're becoming better people and they're in the day will come when we'll be able to you know make sure that women are never attacked your men are not attacked and they'll be not I this is not what what I see I see tremendous forces of the irrational in the human psyche okay and the Greeks had it right you have the forces of you know of Lights you know of the of the rational always in contest with always okay the forces of the irrational that's what it means in the Great Temple pediment at Olympia where you have Apollo who is representing reason it's throwing out his arm it's in order to to quell okay these animal forces which are which are which are erupting there's a great you know a scene of a the attack of the Sun towers upon a banquet of women it actually isn't it's all about attack on women and about I mean I believe that human human beings are half animal okay there's a there's a there's a best Jill primitive part of the brain okay that is that most people is educable okay but in a small number of people is not okay and therefore you know it's you know intelligent woman prepares herself to defend herself in the world against the one who is in educable as much as toward the the ninety-nine who you know who want to be good man okay so now let me move on to to Macbeth oh it's incredible this now this we can see the you know Lady Macbeth is one of the great characters one of the great villainesses of world literature there are parallels to her Medea would be you know the the the earliest and then her heirs would be like absence had a gobbler and so on it's just it's it's phenomenal but the you know what's what needs to be addressed in Macbeth is the issue of the witches the witches who begin the play and who seem to have some control over the universe they do the witches determine natural law or are they simply like prophetess azores or Sybil's able to to read the signs you know who is in charge of the universe it doesn't doesn't seem as if there is a principle of justice in in in the years and so how do we have these these women these crowns okay the you know women actors love to play these roles there are hoot okay there's a kind of comedy and kind of stomping around then people can do a lot of drama with it but these there's something seductive okay by despite the fact that they're Crohn's they clearly seduce Macbeth okay into because of his own dreams of power he keeps on returning to them come you know compulsively the witch in second wave feminism there was more more talk of it at the very beginning and late 60s early 70s and so on Susan Sontag wrote a little bit about this about that about the aging woman now it seemed to me that the second wave feminist view of this was it was simplistic as much every the representing an old and aging woman as a which is is you know a prima facie misogynist okay because witches don't really exist and so on and this is just a way that men have meant have stereotyped women and kept them back at cetera cetera I mean it was the same response that second wave feminism had toward you know the Playboy Club of course not I'm going to expose it with her one month whatever she was doing there and so on and I just thought it was so completely wrong okay that was wrong also right but the but the point is the aging woman really is a little bit uncanny hello okay all right why is because the as the all human beings are a combination of both hormones there's a certain balance and young young men when they're in there in the late teens in their 20s have testosterone levels above woman's testosterone levels something like anywhere from eight to ten to twenty times okay and but as you then when when women reach menopause their estrogen level drops and what happens is that that the their energy level the saucer level you know is unopposed and so you get the strange thing where as men age they become less masculine because their hormone levels drop but women many women okay become more masculine okay because their estrogen level drops alright so you what you're getting and that's why that is why you have the witch at Halloween with those whiskers and so on and what and why and why witches are often shown as bearded it's because that that is an effect of androgen in the body I thought so I I would like to say is that it this is a world phenomenon that has been observed by all peoples okay that a the aging women and old women can be fierce okay and scary and the one in the ones who would like are starting to have Alzheimer's and you know it's nail dementia but still have their have their bodies intact and so on are ferocious I mean I can still remember you know when I was in junior high school okay there was like a house okay there was a widow in the house an old widow okay who would peek out her window and you had to hurry up pastor house and so on okay so there was like this thing about the old woman has power has certain kind of strange power and a certain kind of fanaticism okay that that the old man doesn't have and I myself you know just as a social observer so many of my ideas are based on what I hear going on around me on the street or in shopping malls and so on how many times have I heard okay you know they'll be an older couple an old married couple going along and I will hear ok behind me or in a restaurant here the woman sanctimony know you can have it stop it ok and so on all right and take him along and the man is just going along and he's become totally docile he doesn't have any hormones left ok and he yes indeed become a second child and so on and the women still are opinionated and etc alright so back to the witches so make a bet ok all right they know all see all ok no witches all right now the thing is okay that what's in it was very interesting about this this play is that Macbeth has all this ambition obviously and and then and then betrays the most fundamental laws of hospitality of loyalty to King okay as well as you know of a host to a guest and so on by the by the slaughter of the king in order to you know become king so but but what but what Shakespeare shows is this strange exchange of power that goes back and forth within him in between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth it's it's remarkable and Lady Macbeth is it she's one most powerful female characters in all of literature but she is only strong when he is weak all right when she's on her own she falls apart okay to do knows it's a Symbian it's a symbiosis between the two of them okay there's there was nothing like this you know in in literature before I mean there were there were powerful you know mythological women destroyers okay but nothing like this where you're having this kind of reciprocity in this exchange of power back and forth okay in a married pair and it looks forward to of course you know whatever happened or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf okay we're what you know the what and if anyone here has not seen that movie okay with the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor I really recommend it because you can release that see this back and forth as sparring this sense of a kind of a claustrophobic relationship okay a codependent relationship with all kinds of psychological violence you're going going on in a etc but it it this is a remarkable because Macbeth is a soldier okay who like who finally redeems himself at the end after Lady Macbeth has committed suicide and you know and and we were respect him again when he goes down fighting he won't he won't surrender and so he is he has all the valor and the physical you know power of a soldier but yet he seems that he seems to be kind of melting inside he has the the heart or soul of a poet sometimes okay he's he he's too sensitive and you have I went one of the you know the the classic scenes and again a scene totally proving that you know that these plays were written by an actor by a by a man of the theater by a director a producer and so on a scene in the banquet hall where where Macbeth is supposed to be presiding as king okay with the with the courtiers there and instead he keeps on seeing in the empty chair from Banquo Rocco's ghost and so on no one else can see bancos goes except him and his and his wife struggling to keep it everything together struggling and and horrified by his self exposure by the by the kind of it's almost a hysterical kinds of you know self-destruction you know that that Macbeth is you know it's important the fortunately victim over there alright so now Oh what else okay these witches this supernatural okay you know does the supernatural exist I mean clearly the witches tell the truth and and they but they obviously the witches themselves are cruel and and playing tricks and games and don't don't tell the entire truth so you have the you know these visions they're able to summon up of course those this was a this was a play that was not for the general stage it wasn't for the globe it was for they for the court of you know of James and therefore you have this this use of special effects okay and what what and in a way it's kind of sad because what cheeks were those techniques that Shakespeare is employing there of the special effects that we are now able to do through digital animation and so forth it's it is the end of his own genre okay the emergence of a mask you know mas quue mask as the is the new form of the age following she experienced that it's not for the general audience it's not for the mixed mixed audience in the in the public stages for the aristocratic crowd and you're moving toward the kind of aristocratic funding games of the court of the French King and but they actually salsa the birth of opera so we have to we can say that you know well well mask the emerges aristocratic mask didn't kill hmm the shakes the the kind of theatre the Shakespeare's generation had had developed as such for imperfection on the other hand it was the beginning of you know of a great form that's still very vibrant alright so let me move on to it because I'm figuring to run out of time let me move on quickly to Antony Cleopatra now Oh Cleopatra this is this play is unplayable I mean I mean I don't I don't know you kidding people you cannot find a Cleopatra that's the point okay well who can do this and I really can play the role of Cleopatra as Shakespeare wrote it if there have been you know many attempts including by you know by by Tallulah Bankhead who was a was a star in great toast of the London in New York stage in the 1920s and she tried this role and I believe the the review said something like Tallulah Bankhead barge down the Nile last night and sank okay and then another one my favorite ones was well this is about 30 years ago now someone this was reported of like two of like an actor and a director talking and something like it's saying oh I I heard Janet Suzman is going to be a great actress I heard Janet Suzman is going to be playing Anthony Lewis Patra and the other person said who's she playing enobarbus okay it was a go soldier meaning Janet Suzman as Cleopatra it's very it's very very difficult to imagine because Cleopatra is after all a historical character although we think of her through the way Shakespeare presents her exactly like Julius Caesar okay young Julius Caesar it's impossible for us not to think of the real Julius Caesar as as Shakespeare imagines him and sometimes people say you know what if Shakespeare written to play about Pompey who maybe who thinks about Pompey you know Pompey is like a footnote in history but Pompey was very important and and a son-in-law and rival and you know life very interesting but but he's he's totally erased from history except if you were a student of Roman history it's because Shakespeare didn't bother to do a play about him and that's why but now Cleopatra the mystery about about Cleopatra's character the mythology about her certainly started being pumped out was propaganda after you know after Octavius Caesar defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Actium and they commit a suicide that next year you know Cleopatra's reputation was as you know she was like maligned is a and there's no doubt that there's a certain kind of Puritanism among the you know the in the upper class patrician class and in Rome Julius Caesar wasn't wasn't was an example of that himself that is just never shown in movies they would the it gets me furious the way the way movies about Rome show it as decadent and and and simply brutally militaristic and are completely missing the actual the you know the puritanical gravitas and you know the dignity and high moral values of the of the upper class I mean there were certain obviously there were exceptions but those women of the Mideast hey it's not just Cleopatra it's like it's with the women of Babylon look at the way the women of Babylon are portrayed in the Bible okay they were they were highly sophisticated women and they end up is the of Babylon okay so the symbol of everything that is that is you know against thee against the Hebrew view of God is pure spirits and and turning away from you know they sense sensuality of the of the earth and so on we certainly know what the hell you know how the what the aristocratic women of Egypt looked like this I begin my last book glittering images with the with a painting from the to the tomb of queen nefertari they though the wife of the great ramus ii and the women were wearing these gorgeous transparent linen gowns revealing the body and so on so this kind of open sensuality acceptance of the body in that kind of semi-tropical you know climate definitely made Europeans think of mid-eastern women as harlots I saw what Shakespeare is doing here is in some sense trying to reclaim Cleopatra's image but but he's unflinching in in demonstrating that it's that you know Anthony's tragedy and Antony okay is unable to maintain his Roman personality his responsibilities he is a triumph ear he has responsibilities for people outside himself and time and again Cleopatra in the play tries to get Antony to do his duty and to pay attention to business and Anthony prefers to play you can and that and that is that is indeed part of Mark Antony's legend that he was lucky that he was um he he was a carouser the men loved him the soldiers love to me left to drink and and party all night long and so on he was a robust soldier so actually you know the issue really is Antony's responsibility Anthony's failures and we see you know moments where Anthony field his own his own psychology his own personality is melting you know melting away in a way that's like like likely like the sensibility of a poet or or an artist but Cleopatra what can we say I mean the Cleopatra was regarded as a villainous in Shakespeare she was on the bottom of the list in terms of admired characters in in Shakespeare throughout the 19th century obviously ok the Victorian period which is which made saints out of those over women like Cordelia Desdemona and so on who are who are like pure and simple in pious in a kind of 19th century manner and everything about Cleopatra seemed seemed trashy and sinful and so on it's really only post Hollywood post post the period of a Hollywood stars that we can kind that we see Shakespeare is essentially cinematic conception I mean in fact even the structure of this of this play is cinematic this this play was thought to be a mess and in terms of its design because of the veena for a long time until Hollywood okay because of that that skipping back and forth over over you know hundreds and 1000 miles scene scene scene scene scene that's that just was not done with shakes and we don't even notice it we don't notice any problem with it whatever all those those breaks because we have been trained okay through movies for like just you know end of a scene suddenly we're a thousand miles away or in a space you know a space outer space movie like you know ten thousand miles away it doesn't bother us at all the Shakespeare's failure to conform to the Aristotelian unities which the French critics always held against him the French crinch were always been very snobbish about about about Shakespeare Shakespeare he wasn't like yeah they they have been trained in the tradition of Russ scene see that's why Poe structuralism most needed in France okay to destroy the rest in Ian burden you know but we don't have that okay for heaven's sakes and we don't have a rusting problem over here do we I don't know other people here from Quebec I'm not sure all right okay at any rate Cleopatra I mean it it is she based on the Dark Lady of the sonnets there's no doubt that Cleopatra is describes her skin as burnt in the Sun she's dark complected even though the real the real Cleopatra historical Cleopatra was was Greek and descended from the Ptolemies and so she's Shakespeare thinks of her as African for sure thinks of her as Mediterranean and he also gives her this you know he gives her the the same personality this kind of this kind of multiplicity of persona that that again and again throughout his plays he ascribes two to two boys okay and two artists okay and tune in to women in general that is this kind of emotional volatility right so that the Antony is often being presented with a performance okay bye bye bye Cleopatra or she's she's stage-managing him she's scripting him from a distance she'll you know tell her tell her her wonderful serving mates go and tell him this okay even though it's not true okay and just to just to like get into his head and so he's playing this this game of theater with him and of course then that will all blow up backfire and by the very end where she tell him I've committed a suicide okay and that leads to you know Anthony's suicide alas yeah can she be trusted I mean there's like go back and forth is she's someone who's ready to sell Antony out and when she sees the power of shifting I really don't think so and so the question about Cleopatra okay in terms of as a dark woman as a woman whose motivation we can totally read who psychology we can't completely understand I think you know she feels to us very modern her her freedom from convention her indifference to dignity you know the stories told about her and dancing in the streets and so on the Queen doesn't do so she reminds me a little bit of the flappers you know of the of the 1920s it was a period when young women represented by John Crawford in film Clara Bow Louise Brooks they were you know so many of them by their new kinds of vivacity and in impedance and insolence you know we're trying to overturn the traditions the heavy traditions of propriety of the Victorian period I mean we look back at it and you can see that represented in in film okay by the older ladies looking disapprovingly as the young girls are wildly doing the Charleston and so on throwing their bodies out in every wild angle smoking drinking and makeup you know all that stuff so it said to me you know Cleopatra whose image has been so contested through hit through history represented almost like the way Sappho you know the poet Sappho the same thing you know what she a you know what she was she a virgin I don't know I think that Cleopatra is ultimately the a modern woman but how how this role can be played I'm still not sure I mean it has to it has to be a woman who has tremendous physical vitality and charisma and actually you know it Elizabeth Taylor or in the movie Elizabeth Taylor can't deliver a line in that movie I'm normally she is a good actress but I mean just every every line it's like you want to put earplugs in okay but but but you see how it's possible to throw the world away okay for a woman okay in the in the Elizabeth Taylor epic of Cleopatra which was a total commercial failure at the time but his gain he really gained admirers over you know over there over the intervening decades and what is particularly interesting is that the destruction of Antony played by Mark being played by Richard Burton okay in in that film okay where's Richard Burton met met Elizabeth Taylor in that film and then they and they abandoned their their their present spouses and had this like huge your love affair on the set over there and in Italy leading to condemnation by the Vatican the Vatican actually what it condemned Elizabeth Taylor for what was it moral vagrancy the official the official newspaper the Vatican okay your for this affair you know going on and so into the the odd thing is the in the in the career of Richard Burton everyone thought that he was going to be the heir to Olivier everyone thought they this is the grade you know new Shakespearean actor of his time okay and so what we've seen is that the movie Cleopatra you know inspired by the play and to the co-founder by Shakespeare was that this was this was the destruction um the same error is made by Antony in the play were made by Richard Burton he suddenly went off and just and just drank and bought diamonds for Elizabeth Taylor and they lived with her pets on yachts and you know all kinds of things but the Burton's were this incredible because sort of back an alien couple that dominated the headlines of that period and in that great career in the Shakespearean career was it was unfortunately truncated he just never he just wouldn't often - you know alcoholism but but but the Battle of Actium this is historically real okay and it is indeed a question in terms of woman's destructive power this is it is not is not a false accusation okay against Cleopatra - to ask okay what happened there okay at this battle the whole future of the known world hung in the balance this was the moment when it was a extra contest between Europe and Africa and if in if Africa had won possibly the whole course of Western history would have been different what what happened in this was this battle between the forces of Caesar of Octavius Caesar later Augustus the first Roman Emperor okay and the queen of Egypt allied with with Mark Antony in the trium.vira and so on this great sea battle that took place off Actium which is which is a promontory of Greece and and and the ruins have been found then there's that there's actually has been there's a whole shrine that that commemorative shrine that that that Octavius built okay to that victory that had the great that prow is the great bronze prowess of the captured the sunk you know warships the galleys war galleys of anting the Cleopatra we're actually on display there you can indeed the whole thing is still visible the bronze has long been stripped and melt of course in antiquity but it is true what what happened there okay and that's it's a pivotal tragic moment in the play where where Cleopatra convinces Mark Antony who was an infantryman who was an art who was an army man convinces him to fight a naval battle which the Egyptians you know we're always used to but but Mark Anthony had no history as a naval commander he wasn't like Lord Nelson the great you know great a great sailor and and then and then in the middle of it somehow Cleopatra took her took her ships and headed back to Egypt and then again the tragedy is Anthony's okay the tragedy Anthony is because he is so in love with her feel so abandoned by her has become infantilized in effect by his relationship with her that he abandons his men and goes back to Egypt with her so again you know the the issue is mens weakness in relationship to women is is there a moment when a profound heterosexual passion of that kind turns the man into a child and and and the woman is a kind of substitute mother figure so that that is something a theme that we can you find maybe a various points in in in Shakespeare and also in other places too maternal ISM okay is that is there you when in fact you know Botticelli has the famous Mars and Venus painting where you see after after sex okay the Mars has conked out okay he's like unconscious with his mouth hanging open his head head back like this okay and Venus is like now she's still in power okay so there's a sense that you know our men you know the art our men turned back to babies okay by this passage back to the womb this is what no one wants to think about okay all right men one and one and one it what do they want they want to go back there they want to go bad when I go back let me in let me in let me in okay all right there's a maternal thing under there hello okay all right there is okay right and that's why in sexual persona I like I assembled all these examples and showed that sometimes they would this was a nightmare fantasy as in who Eastman's or rapport okay translated is against nature and it's a very very good English edition where where this guy has a this aesthete has his dream nightmare okay of being drawn back to this unit it's like she's like the of Babylon she's like a garden she's got these spikes tropical sharp things you know like these like those fronds you know with like what the points on them and so on and he's feel suction suction suction drawing and it should be filmed okay why is this me that book never been filmed right and sucked back sucked back and then what's gonna happen like that and so on in fact you know there's a movie called teeth all right that was um that was inspired by my class my teaching okay and Mitchell Lichtenstein it was like the Sun over the painter Roy Lichtenstein was in like my classes at my first job at Bennington in the 1970s and I was talking about the vagina dentata the toothed vagina then this myth it means before a sexual persona long before was published it was it had been in my designation and he was so overwhelmed and impressed with this myth that he eventually you know wrote a script and directed a film called teeth which is all about a girl who suddenly realizes that her vagina has teeth okay and and this is a great and there's some very great this whole is a satiric horror film and there's there's some very gruesome moments okay when when a men fall fall victim to this like mechanical thing so anyway it shows it shows her at one point in the film she goes on to the web to look up for jenna dentata okay and so and she looks it up and and so they asked me they said today is this what you would say and they they gave and I said no no no that's to post-structuralist I would ever say that so I wrote I wrote the lines okay as she's on the web she's going home the vagina dentata is agreement they so does this whole whole thing yes this is a myth okay that actually occupies the unconscious life of men okay it's in there okay all right every time a man approaches that this site the sacred site charged ok the site came the site from this cave from which he emerged okay there's all kinds of things going on under the surface that people block from their consciousness okay but poets and artists have a kind of transparence what can I say the transparent layer okay between the conscious and the unconscious they're able to plumb you know the unconscious to use images you know from it and to explore them so I'm saying is we shouldn't let go of the secret fears in terrors okay because because the secret fears and terrors ultimately are the inspiration for great art that is my message to you for the evening right Wow I don't know how the men are gonna sleep tonight but at least we're clear of our Racine burden thank you okay so now it's your chance we've got a few minutes for you to ask any questions you may have we're live-streaming this so we're going to need to pass you a mic oh wait for coming where where oh you're up there we're five sisters here oh I came from Montreal okay I'll see you oh my goodness for coming okay thank you Michael for bringing her I just would like to hear your take on the uproar now in the United States in the NFL over the wife abuse or spouse abuse or whatever you want to call it I'm a great professional football fan and so on I mean I think the NFL in general is you know it's like this almost like a government in itself I think I think there are all kinds of issues that need to be dealt with I mean clearly there this is a problem also in college football hey where there's been a lot of cases of star athletes who whose misdeeds or peccadilloes are covered off because of the needs of the team and so on so forth but I do feel that this this flap is while being wildly exaggerated okay that that is the the the the Commissioner clearly erred and admitted I think was just yesterday was just yesterday that he erred in giving only two-game suspension to Ray Rice for this domestic yeah well it was it was domestic abuse it was spousal abuse that occurred in a casino in Atlantic City where to me the heart the horrible thing was not his blow on her okay and clueless she got knocked out Bochy when her head hit the rail of the elevator but the way he the way she her body was on the floor and the way he was cuddly indifferent to her body on the floor thought that was the shocking thing right his lack of earn and care for her and he's like dragging her around that's where I think he should have been is the thing that shows a moral turpitude and went where the it's really the owner of his own team okay who should have suspend it's not just the NFL it really was the owner of the team should have said this is completely intolerable and you know and that could have easily been done the only actual owner of the team could have could have ordered the coach so you know and so so this is by raising the level of publicity I think that it it will it will strengthen the you know the hand of the team owners and the coaches to make sure that it might but I don't I personally don't feel that that the amount of abuse that's going on in professional football okay so that is is greater than that in the general community and so I what I'm angry at because I'm a pro football fan is that agenda that did the feminist organizations have had against football for a very long time okay and I have been I have written about this for you I was I wrote back but was long in the 90s I wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal saying that football feminism okay is the way to go if you like this women should be studying football to not know how to like how to like plan a hard hit and take a hard hit okay and there's all kinds of ideas that come from American football okay that can be they can be used for women's advance and in the in the career system so I mean I think it's being wildly inflated and exaggerated but I'm you know in now or whatever spent all this money yet to go with an airplane you know gödel must go they had the head of the head of the you know the NFL over a stadium right that money can't be there's not better use of that money alright so I'm actually pleased that Goodell didn't step down yesterday because that is the egg on the face of now okay I've been fighting I've been fighting with nationalization for women for many many a decade all right thank you for the question hello here oh wait wait wait I've totally lost where where are we oh here okay oh yes okay um can you give us some insight as to the cultural avoidance of discussing or thinking about our parents sexuality oh that's interesting you have to tell me what interesting means no no it's an interesting point because it does seem to be a universal okay it's like it's a universal there you know it goes in the Bible you know where you you have you know the the the daughters you know seeing know their father lying naked and so on people that the thing is that this issue is certainly exacerbated by by middle-class culture okay where we now live in separate rooms larger houses where there's a sense of privacy privacy is a relatively new concept in human history there's no people in in you know colonial America on farms and so on we're living in one room houses in log cabins with you know with with a hearth and you know in a loft okay everybody was was it was together so the the the sounds of second the Indians were living Native Americans first nations as you say here we're living in you know in long houses and then we went on the road in in the kind of classic wigwam that we know the teepee etc and then there was no disguising the sex happening okay it's just simply a regular event everyday life it's really it's really a kind of bourgeois bourgeois boudoir okay that that is it that has arisen because the you know the actual facts of our parents private lives are concealed from us by you know by our modern code of privacy but I do think it's kind of a universal thing I think people are always somewhat uncomfortable about it and it just can be an archetype when those archetypes okay the word archetype is gone why why is the word archetype agape it's because young is is a completely and completely erased young hand this in enormous impact on a new-age culture I considered myself kind of new age you know thinker and and and who had impact on him was Fraser okay so James George Frazer of the Golden Bough whose work I mean influence TS Eliot's the wasteland and tons of tens of other things as well Young is completely gone okay and the only Freud that's permitted is kind of a kind of a French Freud like uh Clark on Ian Freud and there's like so the people's ability to analyze 'men ecology as well as being able to to to process to to notice to observe and to identify the process big patterns in history in myth and culturally they you get from reading young that's it's it's absolutely completely gone okay now you know a great Canadian critic it was north of Frey okay was a huge influence on my generation and he and he's been erased I'm a man of such a lot of cultivated brilliant man was a massive knowledge of world you know literature and and myth and so on and and and that's out in the United States there's just absolutely no one okay who is assigning Northrop Frye okay in classes anymore which is why writing on literature is becoming you know more more attenuated anyway this is an archetype I think it's an archetype and that and that has it has something to do with you know certain fundamental human human values cut across you know societies and cultures throughout history my opinion probably time for one more question oh there's one over here cuz I drop off here I was worried about there well it's easier take on 50 shades of grey well certainly this 50 shades of grey is the question and this is about bondage fantasy that has become wildly popular okay the whole series of novels now and you know being made into a movie and it and the I mean the popularity of that of of this number one and was from the feminist point of view it's certainly certainly with trouble in conventional feminists that to have a fantasy of a young woman's willing subordination you know in a sadomasochistic relationship to know older dictatorial man this is this is retrograde by any conventional feminist standard to me it simply proves you know certain fundamental characteristics of female sexuality that have manifested themselves on me that just like erupt without in any reference to ideology you know they say this if the popularity of the world worldwide popularity of that novel series proves how you know feminist ideology is really he simply not come to grips okay with with with sexual realities the reality of the sexual imagination it's to me it's a throwback to the period when I was reading far more important you know examples of this genre the Marquis de Sade are everywhere available when I was in college and graduate school in these growth press editions all of all of sod was available I mean it is off the map okay now coming completely gone and then and then we had the story of o was huge cause celeb right I wasn't clear who she was who was Pauline riaj who wrote this whole fantasy and so Fifty Shades of Grey is like in the line of the story of oh okay and then and then there was an interesting movie made of the story of oh I have the soundtrack wonderful soundtrack and the whole thing is very ritualistic and it was one those year old pop decadent movies so there were so many at the end of the 60s you know were you like it all glossy everyone looked beautiful it was all decadence occurring it's like fabulous you know chateau and so on I loved those movies all right it's almost like Real Housewives today I'm a big fan of The Real Housewives seriously but um but you know I really realized how fifty shades of gray how do you know I went to where was I Norway okay that's why I went to Norway to give a lecture it this was like a year ago and when I went to get on the airplane not only was fifty Shades of Grey stacked up in the bookstore it was at the gate okay there was a table at the gate only that stacked up okay that you that you could purchase okay I thought wow even in Norway I mean it's like I mean that book has blanketed the globe and someone on some way yeah and so how can how can how can feminism deal with this okay which in the feminist you know of the Gloria Steinem school would convict any woman who buys that book you know of false false thinking I'm almost like you know almost as if like it's in the Stalinist era okay but this is the point is is that the quirky human imagination okay does not follow the rules of the current PC ideology this isn't proves my point yeah thank you for the question Camille we have to get the shuttle back into a theater okay all right miss palea will be out in the lobby right after this to sign copies of her Brooke she'll be available there for you I want to thank you so much for once again proving that Stratford Shakespeare and sax make for a great time

Channel: Stratford Festival

Views: 39,939

Rating: 4.8896551 out of 5

Keywords: stratford shakespeare festival, stratford festival, stratfordfest, stratfest, antoni cimolino, anita gaffney

Id: yUXafuloSyU

Length: 87min 30sec (5250 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 20 2014