PRAGERU IS WRONG ABOUT SHAKESPEARE (AND MUCH MORE)

Due to the new right-wing US government, PBS (with memorable, progressive edutainment shows like Sesame Street or Arthur) will maybe be replaced by right-wing juggernaut PragerU, who have given me serious pet peeves:

PragerU says Columbus was "neither a hero nor a villain, but a person;" and that we should NOT judge a Renaissance person by our twenty-first century standards... at the same time they praise Columbus for spreading civilisation and Catholicism among the barbarian natives, some of whom regarded a human baby as a toothsome morsel (but they don't give the whole story: were these babies those of the tribe itself, or child prisoners of war? And was that an everyday meal or a festive delight (like Christmas turkey or Easter eggs)? I think it was a festive delight, and that those babies were prisoners of war!.

But that is nothing compared to PragerU's perception of Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon! Not only do they put the Bard ON A PEDESTAL (they rank Hamlet up there with the King James Bible, Newton's Laws of Physics, and Plato's Myth of the Cave, and they say Shakespeare inverted the modern world/existentialism); they ONLY ALLOW us to read or watch certain of his plays:

Hamlet

King Lear

The Scottish Play

Julius Caesar

The Henriad

And that's it. No Romeo and Juliet, though it is about young love (love so young that in our days they'd be doing Maths tests and chasing Pokémon). No Othello, my favourite (though it stars the first Sub-Saharan and/or Muslim hero in Western literature, and depicts him in a loving interracial marriage --until that scoundrel Iago ruins everything). No Merchant of Venice (mostly for Shylock / Shiloh: "Hath not a Jew eyes?" sounds too controversial, but also Portia crossdressing and becoming a lawyer). No Midsummer's Night Dream (whose potions can be read as drugs), no Taming of the Shrew (which deals with gender roles and expectations), no Coriolanus (our Roman generals would never rebel against the Res Publica!), and last of all no Tempest (with a character like Caliban, anagram of "cannibal," and a plot about colonialism).

BTW, Shylock is actually Shiloh, Fluellen is actually Llewellyn, and Imogen is actually Innogen.

The only Shakespearean plays that PragerU approves of are royalist, patriarchal, and with an all-white cast. In all of these plays, a usurper assassinates the ruler and takes over the throne, but is in turn defeated by the rightful heir, ready to claim his place. No plays about social or identity issues (like gender, race, queerness, drugs, or colonialism). They're missing out on a lot of Shakespeare!

Moreover, PragerU states that Shakespeare COINED expressions like "breaking the ice," "wild goose chase," "all that glitters is not gold," and many others; when obviously these idioms existed before the Bard, they were spread by word of mouth, and it's in his plays that we first find them printed and published, as words that sit in black on a white page (or screen, nowadays). Saying that Shakespeare coined, for instance, "breaking the ice," is as ridiculous as saying that Andersen wrote "The Princess on the Pea" or "The Emperor's New Clothes," or that the Grimms wrote "Snow White" or "Hansel and Gretel." These fairytales already existed as oral tales, and the Grimms and Andersen only wrote and published their own versions, and those versions became canon. The same goes for Rafael Pombo and "Rinrín Renacuajo" ("Froggy Would a-Courting Go"), "Simón el Bobito" ("Simple Simon"), and "Pastorcita perdió sus ovejas" ("Little Bo-Peep"); like PragerU's saying that Shakespeare coined expressions like "breaking the ice," "wild goose chase," "all that glitters is not gold," and many others is like when many Latin Americans say Pombo wrote these nursery rhymes, which had existed many centuries before in (especially British) oral tradition.

The most glaring things PragerU has said is that leftish millennials (like me) are ruining high culture. That some universities have replaced the portrait of Shakespeare in their hallowed halls with that of a black lesbian poet (NOTA BENE: "Shakespeare" has a proper name here, while the "black lesbian poet" remains unnamed, only identified by identity markers!). That visual art has gone from excellence, beauty, and the sublime to scatological and sexual themes: URINE AND FAECES (as Dennis Prager puts it). As examples, he criticizes artworks like a fresh banana duck-taped to a wall, or a golden toilet, in which museum visitors could relieve themselves and flush it (but readymades from Dadaism and Surrealism could also fit Prager's critique: Duchamp's urinal fountain; his L.H.O.O.Q. --elle a chaud au cul, she has a hot bottom, ie she is turned on-- a Mona Lisa card on which he drew a moustache, a goatee, and glasses; and Merde d'Artiste --Artist's Shit--, which was sold in tiny pots at huge expense, and happened to be the faeces of author Piero Manzoni).

I think that at least music (urban music, like reggaeton and trap) and TV, especially reality shows and superhero films, have gotten FAR worse in the present day; but I have nothing negative to say about readymades, no matter how scatological or erotic they might be. I am proud of being a literary geek (especially when it comes to fantasy and historical fiction) and a connoiseuse of opera and of fine art, and a queer (aroace) person, but I don't think the evergreen classics are going away anytime, and anyone can enjoy them - I enjoy works that, like Othello (the Shakespeare and Verdi versions), Les Misérables (the book, the 2012 film, the BBC miniseries, and the stage musical), and the Wizarding World (as a book, on stage and screen), that spark conversations about identity, otherness, and related issues. I am also worried that this snuffbumble (about Shakespeare, about Columbus, about gender, about race, etc). will spread through Gen Alpha and the subsequent generations; that we will become Fascist... and both Othello and Sesame Street, both women going to university and gays and lesbians getting married, will be punished by death penalty.

De Prageris fanaticibus,

libera nos, Domine!

PS. The Book-Club video calls Shakespeare working-class, but he was more like lower-middle-class (petit bourgeois; his dad was not only a master glover, but also the F-ing Mayor of Stratford). If he didn't go to university, and only had a primary education, it was only because universities were closed off to commoners, and nearly all uni students in the Renaissance were lordlings - no chance that a mayor's son from the provinces would have an Oxbridge education, but still, though he knew "little Latin and less Greek," he knew some French and Gaelic as well (just read or watch the Henriad!). He was lower-middle-class, petit bourgeois, but he at least had read some books and had a primary education. 

This reminds me of Menocchio (Domenico Scandella) in The Cheese and the Worms, who also was lower-middle-class / petit bourgeois (a master miller), lived during the Renaissance, and had a primary education and read his own books, aside from those he borrowed from the local priest / librarian. Menocchio loved to read, and among his reads were the Quran in Italian, the Travels of Sir John de Mandeville (a British noble who travelled through Asia and the East) in Italian, The Dream of Caravia (a satirical poem), Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Golden Legend (lives of the saints), the Decameron, and lunaries (calendars with the phases of the Moon, the life cycles of plants, etc.). The title comes from his cosmovision; influenced by his reads, he rejected the Creation account in the Book of Genesis and had his own creation account, influenced by Ovid in particular:

"All the elements (water, fire, earth, and air) were jumbled together in a chaotic mixture, until finally they coagulated and took their proper places, like curds becoming a cheese; in that cosmic cheese, something like worms / maggots arose spontaneously (in the Renaissance, before Francesco Redi, people thought that maggots generated spontaneously in cheese or rotting flesh - the fly eggs could not be seen by the naked eye), and these maggots became, depending of their degree of development, animals, people, angels, or G*d. G*d was the biggest and most developed maggot, and he was created at the same time at all the other living things."

Menocchio also claimed that Jesus was fully a human, that he had not died to redeem our sins, that Mary was not a Virgin, and that the Pope had no heavenly power, among other things that angered the Catholic Church.

This cosmovision was seen as heresy by the Inquisition, and Menocchio and his family had to move from town to town until, finally, since he didn't retract from his beliefs, he was burned at the stake. If he were illiterate, he maybe would have never come up with his own cosmovision. The Menocchio case illustrates the results of literacy among the Renaissance middle classes, just like that of Shakespeare itself.

Ginzburg argues that Menocchio's beliefs and actions, like those of Shakespeare, were made possible by the advent of print in Europe and by the Protestant Reformation. The printing revolution made books accessible to both Menocchio and Shakespeare, which facilitated the interaction between the oral/popular culture in which the petit-bourgeois were rooted and the literary/highbrow culture of the books, and gave them the words to express their own ideas. Observing that considerable differences exist between Menocchio's references to the books he read and the actual content of those works, Ginzburg argues that Menocchio did not merely adopt ideas that he read in books but rather used elements from those works to articulate his own ideas. The same can be said about the Bard of Avon.

A MODEST PROPOSAL, TO TAKE CARE OF THE IRISH CHILDREN

Today I feel really, really inspired to blog... and besides, Christmas is near, so nearly all of us are thinking about food, especially all the good meat on the Yuletide tables... but this meat is different, though quite similar to pork!

(READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION! NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!)

Ah, the Irish poor. Historically, these miserable people have always spawned like rats (or like rabbits); given that 1) they were very poor, and therefore ignorant of contraception, and 2) they were devoutly Catholic, and thought only of sex for reproduction, never for pleasure.

As a result, poor Irish parents historically had too many mouths to feed - but what if there was a way to put all these unwanted children to a good use - by literally having them for supper?

This is Jonathan Swift's (the creator of Gulliver''s) line of thought in a little essay titled A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor Irish People from Being a Burden to their Parents or their Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, or A Modest Proposal for short - he foresees that human meat, from Irish Catholic babies and toddlers (tender, juicy, reminiscent of pork in both taste and texture), would become the new fashionable meat to feed the Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite at their feasts, even giving a few recipes and suggestions for preparing the little ones! Just pay attention:"A young healthy child well nursed, is, at one year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassée, or in a ragoût."

There's more!

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the one hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part should be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, cattle, or pigs; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage (born out of wedlock), a circumstance not much regarded by our savages (the poor), therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom (the UK); always advising the mother of the infants to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump, and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the forequarter or hindquarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper and salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, will increase to 28 pounds.

I grant this food will be somewhat expensive, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.

Infant’s flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentifully in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet (Catholics are pescatarian during Lent, between Carnival and Easter), there are more children born in Catholic countries about nine months after Lent, than at any other season; therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of Popish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom (the UK); and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage by lessening the number of Papists (Catholics) among us.

I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which list of "beggars" I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per year, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when the said gentleman has only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants; the mother will have eight shillings neat profit, and be fit for work, till she produces another child.

Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which (babies' skin) artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.

But you should take Swift's words with a grain of salt - this is merely Juvenalian (exceedingly caustic) deadpan satire, laced with the same black humour that spices many Monty Python sketches. Nowadays the leftist are always harping upon that the poor should eat the rich - Swift seems to encourage the polar opposite; that the rich should eat the poor - as babies, no less (and use their skin to make accessories)!

Swift's use of satirical hyperbole was intended to mock the hostile attitudes towards the poor, anti-Catholicism among the Protestant Ascendancy, and the Dublin Castle administration's governing policies in general. In essence, Swift wrote the essay primarily to highlight the dehumanising approach towards the Irish poor by both the British government and the wealthy landowners, repeatedly mocking their indifference and exploitative behavior. This satirical tone underlines the absurdity of treating poor people like common commodities and products (like farm animals raised for their meat), and exposes the shortcomings of the high society's morality. 

The themes of social injustice, exploitation of the poor, widespread poverty, and the dehumanisation of the lower social class (proletariat) explored in the essay remain relevant in contemporary discussions about social justice and human rights.

IS PSALM 23 ABOUT CANNIBALISM?

Why not check it out by reading the text of the psalm (23)?

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

The fifth verse makes the rest of the psalm sound dreadfully ironic...