Shakespeare a Pot Smoker? [Insert Witty Weed Shakespeare Pun Here]

“To toke or not to toke?” “Doobie or not doobie?” “Is this a reefer which I see before me?”

Let’s cut to the chase: William Shakespeare may have smoked pot.

Ten years ago, South African palentologist Francis Thackeray analyzed some pipe fragments found in Shakespeare’s garden and found trace amounts of cocaine and cannabis. Though the pipe pieces are nothing but circumstantial evidence(they were in his garden and that’s all we know), the chemical findings basically hold up. Cannabis was cultivated in Britain during Shakespeare’s lifetime, and coca leaves had been imported to Europe by the Spanish from the West Indes.

Thackeray then decided to find literary evidence that Shakespeare enjoyed recreational drugs, citing the phrases “noted weed” and “compounds strange” from Sonnet 76. This is an incredible reach. Weed didn’t become slang for marijuana until the early twentieth century; it’s likely that Shakespeare was using “weed” to mean “garments” or “style” (more here). The “compounds” are verbal, not herbal, ones. A sonnet that starts “Why is my verse so barren of new pride” isn’t about drugs. It’s about finding new words to express love.

With his physical evidence circumstantial and his literary evidence circumspect, Thackeray’s turned to the body of the Bard himself for answers. He recently applied for permission from the Church of England to examine Shakespeare’s body. Thackeray told Fox News that he plans to use “laser-surface scanning” to determine gender, cause of death, and whether or not marijuana played a role in Shakespeare’s writing process.

It’s a long shot, though. The Church of England has spent centuries honoring the inscription on Shakespeare’s grave in Stratford-upon-Avon:

"Good frend for Jesus sake forebeare,/ To digg the dust encloased heare;/ Bleste be the man that spares thes stones,/ And curst be he that moves my bones."

To get his answers, Thackeray needs the Church to follow Shakespeare’s lead: just light a pipe and relaaaax, man.

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A Classic Case of Sequelitis

“Sequelitis - A medical condition propagated by a combination of commercial success and creative ineptitude. Symptoms include bad movies and music, arrogance, denial, and desperation. In that order.” – Urban Dictionary

Ahh…sequels. We love them (sort of). We hate them (sort of). We love to hate them (when we don’t have anything better to do).

Some sequels mean well. They’re rightly born of the original intellectual property, crafted by the original creator, and closely linked to their source. Fans accept them into canon. They create wikis to explain the connections between installments. Good times are had by all.

Some sequels are evil. They’re cash grabs, products of creative bankruptcy and fiscal trepidation. They cause fans to hate they things they once adored or, at the very least, enter into blissful ignorance of a given franchise. Good times are had by no one.

I’m sure you can think of examples of both. Star Wars has entries in each category – Final Fantasy, too. If I knew more about the Harry Potter series, I’d mention those as well.

With The Hangover II boring many critics and sequels starring pirates and giant robots dominating the summer lineup, it’s easy to think that all sequels are disingenuous hackjobs. But some do deliver on the promise of their forbearers – for every three movies starring Big Momma, there’s one The Dark Knight.

Sequelitis the disease is not confined to movies and videogames. And it’s worse when the original authors aren’t even involved. Plenty of books, television shows, and other properties fall prey to it – even plays! Especially the classics.

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Sunday Reading: Another Night at the Opera

One of the joys of writing for this site is the variety. We cover everything from food crimes (a regular on the podcast) to tech news, arthouse films to awful films, videogames to bestselling Literature. Although it’s ultimately up to you if we succeed in doing so, we do strive to maintain this scope without feeling scattershot.

In our globalized culture, everything is connected. Every other movie is based on something that started as a book, a game, or a news story. The movers and shakers in the tech world have increasing control over how we consume and create art and entertainment. To ignore media other than the one you work in is to deny yourself a potential font of inspiration.

This is the message of Bill Roorbach’s “Another Night at the Opera”. Writing for the blog Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hour, writer and professor Roorbach recalls the time an opera singer visited his creative writing workshop at Ohio State University. He was dismayed to discover that the bulk of class claimed to detest opera and quickly assigned the Columbus production of Madame Butterfly to his students.

To prepare them, the visiting tenor took on the role of guest speaker. After remarking on the nomadic lifestyle of the professional opera singer, he finally relented to Roorbach’s requests that he sing. Roorbach writes:

“"Well," said our guest. "That one starts very quietly. And I’ve been talking so much that perhaps I’m warm enough. Hm-hm. A few bars, maybe. ….But we’ll have to open the windows."

Frosty night.  No matter, one of the kids opened the windows wide. Humor the neurotic singer, all that.

"It’s going to be loud," he said. "There’s no way to sing it halfway."

What follows is a moving account of one workshop’s realization that there are, in fact, other disciplines worth studying, other arts worth experiencing. Go read it. It’s a reminder that, no matter the tool or instrument, the creative impulse is a universal one.

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Acting Unnatural – Technological Changes to an Old Art Form

I work in theatre. Yes, that’s r-e not e-r. I often spend time inside of theaters, but when I’m talking about the craft/industry as a whole I use the r-e spelling.

I’m primarily a director, though I’ve done my share of collegiate acting. Even in my young career, I’ve worked with a lot of actors. I like them (for the most part). Whenever I’m pondering my career choice or plotting out my approach to a given play, I hold one truth as my organizing principle: theatre needs actors.

That sounds a little too intuitive to warrant mantra-like repetition, so let me explain. Theatre does not exist without the actor. A beautifully painted, cleverly designed, artfully constructed set is a failure if it does not support the actor, his character, and his conflict with the other players onstage. The relationship between the audience and the performer is integral to a play’s success.

In other media, the actor’s role is often defined by the technology used. It often feels like film brings the audience remarkably close to the actors, but there’s no denying that there’s a lens, a machine, a cinematographer, an editor, and a director between us and the performer. Then there’s animation – be it for movies, TV, or videogames – which cherry picks the tools of the actor most salient to the project, often valuing the voice above all others.

Advances in technology are changing the way storytellers use actors, as well as how audiences appreciate them. There’s a parallel to be made with the advent of gas and electric lighting, the invention of motion pictures, etc. But the changes here are so drastic they bear investigation.

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Voting Extended for Smithsonian’s Art of Videogames Exhibit

In February, I wrote about the Smithsonian’s plans to curate a generation-spanning videogame exhibit. Despite my concerns about its treatment of genre, I still believe The Art of Videogames to be an exciting and worthwhile venture.

Fitting for an exhibit about interactivity, the games included in The Art of Videogames will be decided by popular vote. Popular demand has dictated that the Smithsonian extend the voting deadline until midnight on Sunday, April 17.

That means you still have time to head on over to the website and cast your vote. You need to do this. Star Wars: TIE Fighter and Diablo II are in direct competition. Someone has to help the Smithsonian make the tough decisions.

Find out more about the exhibit here, and book your tickets to D.C. to catch it at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in March 2012.

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Taymor To Step Back From Spider-Man, Spidey To Soldier On

Dust off your Schadenfreude, more changes are coming to Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. Broadway’s very own Titanic has hit another iceberg: the removal of director Julie Taymor and yet another postponement.

Taymor, the award-winning director of Disney’s stage adaptation of The Lion King, will remain on the creative team despite losing the director gig, the Associated Press reports. The producers’ statement said that Taymor’s schedule post-March 15 (the most recent scheduled opening date) would prevent her from working “the 24/7 necessary to make the changes in the production in order to be ready for our opening.” She’s still getting credit for it; they’re just letting someone else have a go at directing the spectacle.

The new team will include Philip William McKinley, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Paul Bogaev, and Peter Hylenski. McKinley (“The Boy from Oz,” “The Night of the Hunter”) will take over for Taymor. Aguirre-Sacasa will assist in rewrites, hopefully leveraging some of his experience writing for Marvel Comics. Bogaev and Hylenski will serve as musical consultants – further proof that Bono and The Edge need some fresh ears trained on their material.

A lot of people are working very hard to keep this show alive. Perhaps too hard. Were it not for the money at stake, I imagine most of the showrunners would’ve walked way ages ago.

Why else would they perform a complete talent transfusion on a show our own Boivin wrote called the Four Loko fever dream of a sleep-deprived English/Psychology double-major?

[via the Associated Press]

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Afternoon Snack: Waiting for Godot

“Let’s go.” “We can’t.” “Why not?” We’re waiting for Godot.” “Ah!”

Let the parade of videogame adaptations of classics march on!

Have you ever read or seen Waiting for Godot and thought, “Well, shit, I could do that. Wait for some dude I barely know for eternity? And my friend can wait with me? Piece of cake.”

The comic site VectorBelly’s Waiting for Godot: the Game gives you that opportunity. Set on a barren road with barely a tree for scenery, WfG:tG follows Didi and Gogo as they wait for the eponymous Godot’s arrival. You can walk around, wait, walk around, and wait some more.

Programmer and animator Jeff Rosenthal designed the game for VectorBelly, and I’m impressed by how he adapted Beckett’s famous tragicomedy to a game. The graphics are suitably Atari-like, stressing the simplicity of Beckett’s vision. Just as you start to get bored with nothing happening, the screen declares “Boss Battle,” and you fight…nothing. The boredom itself is the boss battle.

There is a lone cloud on the left side of the sky that tracks your progress. At least I think it’s alone. No word yet on the inclusion of Pozzo and Lucky. I’ve only made it to Level Five.

The most insidious (and sort of genius) thing about Waiting for Godot: the Game is how it pauses itself if you click out of the screen or open another window. Being a 21st-century surfer of the web, I generally keep multiple tabs open at time. I caught myself flitting over to other pages as I waited for Godot to progress. I checked back: the cloud hadn’t moved. The game won’t let you pass time unless you’re actually playing it. Now that’s clever.

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The Schadenfreude of Spiderman: Gleefully Anticipating a Box Office Bomb

This morning, Craig provided a nice overview of the upcoming Spiderman musical, Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark, and the reasons that it might turn out to be an unmitigated disaster. The embarrassingly bad name, the $65 million dollar budget, the technical difficulties involved in getting Spiderman to fly across the theater, all have Broadway producers holding their breath. 

The show has attracted more attention than any other Broadway production scheduled for 2011 (even Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Book of Mormon musical, a ready-made controversy if there ever was one, isn't getting as much press). The day after Spiderman's first preview for critics, the show sold more than a million dollars worth of tickets. 

But the producers of Spiderman need to cross their fingers and hope these sales continue; it's going to take two years of full houses and upscale ticket prices to recoup this investment. (The show is going to cost $1 million dollars a week to put on, and NPR reports that this is more than twice the weekly cost of any other Broadway show currently running). And, as Craig pointed out, the critics seem less than thrilled with the production.

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Spider-Man and the Black Hole of Broadway

A recipe for a Broadway musical:

- Take one superhero.  Dust off recent movie megafranchise and create own unique take on widely-accepted origin story.
- Add one Irish alt rock duo.  Be sure to find one that’s at least ten years removed from real relevancy and about twenty years from its last work of real consequence.  Their massive success should afford them the opportunity to tackle a crazy, mixed-brow project as big as they believe themselves to be.
- Toss in an acclaimed theatre director.  Preferably one with lots of success bringing beloved animated characters to life onstage through the magic of puppetry.  Extra points if she’s coming off a bonkers film based on the work of a band even bigger than your Irish duo. 
- Book actors with name recognition.  Find other actors (preferably people with chops) when delays cause your marquee names to drop out.
- Mix in $65 Million.
- Cross fingers.
- Pray (if that’s your thing).

This is not a review of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.  This is not a preview of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.  I don’t know if/when I will ever bother get a chance to see Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. 

But now that I’ve thoroughly engrained the show’s debacle of a title into your brains, I really want to talk about Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.

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The Prize-Winning Play Played Out As Oscar Bait

Most plays are people in motion (with some exceptions).  Most movies are pictures in motion (with some exceptions, I guess).  There’s a natural shared vocabulary between the two forms.  Shakespeare, Beckett, Williams, Miller: they’ve all had their work translated to the silver screen.

Currently, my Charge Shot!!! inbox is stuffed with notices about the upcoming film adaptation of David Lindsey-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Rabbit Hole.  According to press releases, it is a “portrait of a family searching for what remains possible in the most impossible of all situations” – that situation being, of course, the tragic loss of a child.

Not long ago I wrote about the intersection of the written word and the film reel, expressing my skepticism about yet another still-gestating adaptation of On the Road. 

But my skepticism can’t keep Rabbit Hole at bay, and the movie’s Oscar aspirations mean we’ll be hearing a lot about it in the coming months.

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Bald Mountain Night 30: Cannibal Holocaust

Each day in October, intrepid blogger Alex Boivin will watch a horror movie. These movies are all new to him and are part of his month-long effort to fill in his gaps in the horror canon. If he doesn't die from fright, you just might get to read about about his exploits in cinema during the Halloween season.


When I was in high school a friend, who shall remain nameless due to his current posting as an officer in the United States Army, entertained me with stories of Cannibal Holocaust, the "goriest, most disgusting and offensive movie ever made!" Intrigued at the notion of making such a claim to fame as having endured a cinematic ordeal of this type, we sought it out. Indeed, one day I found it a copy at a used record store. But when I brought my friend back to purchase the DVD, it was gone, vanished, forever mocking us. Now, six years later, I return to conquer the most extreme horror exploitation film ever made.

The plot of Cannibal Holocaust matters more than you think. It's premise was somewhat stolen/adapted by The Blair Witch Project many years later: a group of young filmmakers goes missing in the Amazon while making a documentary about the cannibal tribes that have lived undisturbed in the rainforest by civilized man since time immemorial. An anthropology professor (played with relative virtuosity by honest-to-god porn star Robert Kerman) is sent to find them, and after negotiating with one of the tribes is able to secure several canisters of film left behind by the missing expedition. What follows is a grisly orgy of murder, cannibalism, rape, and mutilation- all filmed with disquieting realism.

After years of buildup, Cannibal Holocaust didn't terrify me so much as it disturbed me. The killings and torture etc. featured in the film are brutal and shocking beyond most things the average filmgoer (and not-quite-average filmgoer such as myself) is used to, even in violent films. A lot of the stuff I can't even go into in a family-oriented blog like this one.

The goes is so excessive and realistic that director Ruggero Deodato was actually brought up on murder charges until he could prove that his actors were still alive. On top of that, there are a series of terrible actual animal killings in the movie that I genuinely found myself offended by. This all goes without saying that the depiction of the South American natives in this film is just out-and-out racist, but that's honestly the least of this film's crimes for some reason.

There's some attempts at social commentary through the frame narrative where a TV network is trying to show the footage for ratings, knowing that sensationalism equals cash. But the film seeks to condemn the very thing it indulges in, almost as if it's offended that you would even watch it. Cannibal Holocaust seemingly exists in a netherworld between grindhouse exploitation and serious art, or at least it thinks it does.

Having conquered the "Green Inferno" of Cannibal Holocaust, I honestly feel live a little worse of a person, but I suppose that's the price I pay for doing this feature.

But was it scary? Even for a seasoned gorehound such as myself, this was a bit much. I wasn't so much scared as depressed, even angered. This usually doesn't happen, people.

Final Verdict: 0 Congos. Alright, I watched you, Cannibal Holocaust; I have no more need of you now.

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Sunday Reading: Celebreadymade Art

I’ve already shared my fascination with James Franco’s bizarre career-slash-performance-art thing he has going on, but now it seems there may be a movement larger than just one man’s transformation into living art exhibit.

To examine this trend, Slate’s Ben Davis fashioned a slide show of what he dubs “celebreadymade” art.  His term marries Duchamp’s “readymade” art with the celebrity-focused work of Andy Warhol.  “Today’s artists,” argues Davis, “take Warhol’s affection for the tropes of celebrity culture to its logical conclusion, using famous people themselves as found objects.”

The beau of Davis’s pop art ball is Italy’s Francesco Vezzoli.  His modus operandi is putting celebrities in parodies of celebrity-like situations: Courtney Love and Helen Mirren in a promo for a film version of Caligula that isn’t real, Sharon Stone in a satire of political advertising, and Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams fighting over a nonexistent perfume dubbed Greed.  After Vezzoli staged an absurdist musical performance starring Lady Gaga, he told MTV, “My wish is that the entertainment industry makes love more often with the art industry.”  So he’s basically playing the role of postmodern matchmaker.

Perhaps why I’m so intrigued by this wave of pop performance art is that, after all, crafting a successful piece of entertainment is in itself an art.  Why can’t we frame that and put it on display?

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The Cultural Liberation of the Digital Age

At least among academics and other literary types, it's become rather in vogue to turn up one's nose at the Internet and the digital age that seems to be upon us. Nicholas Carr, author of several influential books that I don't think anyone has actually read, has been doing the rounds, warning us that our increasing dependence to computers is changing our brains, killing our attention spans, taking away the capability for sustained rational thought that, well, makes us human. Apparently all these hyperlinks are placing a "little extra cognitive load" on your brain.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has taken to printing articles like this one chronicling this family that seems to be helpless in their addiction to technology. While the tone of the article is so exaggerated it's almost comical (the wife burns cookies twice because she keeps checking Facebook, while the husband sits on the toilet for an hour at a time playing iPhone games), it's not necessarily unique. There have been many articles about technology's dehumanizing functions. It's killing literacy. It's killing our attention spans. It's ruining our communities. It's sucking away our empathy and the ability to communicate face to face with others. None of us know how to use apostrophe's anymore. Et cetera. Et cetera.

I'm not denying that these articles have a point. I'm not a neuroscientist or a cultural theorist, but any idiot can see that technology has had a massive effect on the American lifestyle in the past two decades or so. Our worlds have changed completely, not always for the better, and I think it's a good thing for these authors to investigate what effect, exactly, our ubiquitous contact with the Internet is having on us. Hell, I've written a few pessimistic articles myself about this.

But I think that there's also a lot about the Internet that is very beneficial to society, and a lot that has made our lives a lot better. It's not necessarily going to lead to the technological utopia predicted by 1950s science-fiction authors, but it's hardly going to be an Orwellian nightmare either.

The first thing that helped me realize this was Proms. For those of you not in the know, Proms is a two month long classical music festival in Britain, with performances highlighting music the Baroque era up to the present. For the amateur, it offers a great introduction to the most famous masterpieces of the great composers. For the expert, the massive seventy-six concert schedule means time to delve into some of the lesser known works of the major composers, as well as lesser-known composers who rarely get a chance to shine.

Why do I bring this up? Who has the time or money to go see seventy-six different concerts? Well, the magic of the Internet means that each concert is available for streaming up to 7 days after its initial performance. Not only do you get actual music, but you also get the talks and lectures that come before each performance - thousands of hours of musical appreciation and education for free.

There is something incredibly liberating about this. Genres like classical music and opera are supposedly held captive in the domain of the elite, whose stuffy, overbearing demeanor turns off a lot of people to this sort of thing before they even give it a chance. But the broadcasting of 76 free concerts to the entire world is an amazing thing - the democratization of the fine arts. This is something that would have been hard to pull off in 1995, but nowadays streaming audio and video is commonplace not just on computers, but on smartphones and iPads and the like.

When I was in high school and first getting into classical music, the Internet played an invaluable role. Record stores still existed back then, but the ones in my small hometown had pretty pitiful collections of classical music. Luckily, Amazon.com was an amazing marketplace to browse and buy music, and the reviews of different performances are fascinating to read. I don't think I could have embraced this music nearly as well without the Internet, both in terms of learning about it and in terms of being able to listen to it. There's a lot of criticisms that can be leveled against Amazon. But for those of us living in small towns without limited stock, it's an amazing resource. Even better, it keeps promoting classical music through its amazingly cheap mp3 specials.

Ruth Franklin of The New Republic wrote a pretty good defense of the corporate behemoth. I don't necessarily agree with all her arguments, but she does a good job at pointing out that, despite the criticisms leveled against the company, everyone loves to shop with it. "Before it appeared on the scene, if you lived in a part of the country that happened not to be served by a great independent bookstore," she writes, "you were out of luck when it came to getting books other than bestsellers."

The BBC is a government entity offering up concerts for free, while Amazon is a corporation hellbent on making a buck. But both are great resources, and I think both can be used to spread culture and art that used to be reserved for those lucky enough to live near a major orchestra or a decent record store. There is a certain amount of populism inherent in the idea of the Internet , and this can be used for great effect. I use classical music as an example because that's what I'm the most familiar with, and I often harness the Internet as a tool toward this subject. But I'm sure there are thousands of other subjects in which one can cite how the Internet has spread something to an unprecedented amount of people.

In addition to the sheer amount of media available, there are online communities available to discuss all sorts of subjects. I'm not talking about Facebook or Twitter, the "social communities" that are akin to a bunch of people in a room shouting at each other. But there still are great message boards and email lists out there for smaller communities if you know where to look. As a kid, I used to read these message boards to get recommendations for new fantasy and science-fiction novels to read. Recently, I used another one to discuss the latest Thomas Pynchon novel.

The Internet is not necessarily going to lead to a Golden Age of culture or educate and refine the philistine masses. But I think that it has led to a democratization of culture and the arts - anyone in the world is free to pursue any sort of culture that appeals to them, instead of being bound by mere geographic proximity. There's a lot of ill that the Internet has done, but at the same time I'm thankful that I can access so much wherever I am in this country. It's something to be optimistic about, at least.

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Saturday Morning TV: A Monologue for Thee

Hopefully this appeals to more than just theatre nerds.

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Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes of Green Day

My parents visited me in New York this weekend, and like all good midwestern families we did what all corn-fed prairie folk do when they're in the big city: we saw a Broadway show. While my first choice was to see the revival of A Little Night Music, my dad opted to buy tickets for American Idiot (and it was Father's Day so we let him pick), the stage musical based on the Green Day rock opera.

Now, there's two things that define me that pretty much everyone should know, both have to do with my high school years. First of all, I did musical theater from the ages of fourteen to eighteen; and second, I was a pop punk kid. When people ask what kind of music one listens to, generally people respond with something vague and overreaching like "rock" or "everything, you know?". I answer "pop punk and showtunes". So it was pretty interesting to say the least that I would ever see a Green Day album would find itself on the Great White Way.

I was prepared to hate the American Idiot musical. As much as I listened to the hell out of that CD (I was in high school during the chaotic period of the iPod's ascendancy) I had since come to believe that Green Day's 2004 effort, considered by many critics to be their crowning achievement, had not aged particularly well. Back in 2004 we were all pissed about the Bush presidency; I have the Kerry/Edwards '04 buttons (plural!) to prove it (John Edwards: remember that guy?), and American Idiot seemed to capture the political-cultural zeitgesit in a way that my generation hadn't really been around to see before in popular music. Four years later, Barack Obama gets elected president and I feel much better about the direction of my country and therefore the world and therefore my life. Now it's 2010, and despite whatever frustrations I may have with the political landscape of the United States, I'm generally old and wise enough (at the age of twenty-three: ha!) not to be existentially enraged at the word because of them.

To quote the Apostle Paul: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away American Idiot."

As much as I may have become soured on American Idiot over the years, I still listen to a lot of Green Day. Dookie remains one of my favorite albums of all time, and I am still fairly confident in my opinion that any fourteen-year-old boy who doesn't have a copy is better off dead. So when the news broke that American Idiot was going to be adapted to the stage, I was skeptical.

Clearly, this wasn't going to do: adapting an album from a time and place so recently passed would look stupid. American Idiot's smug and angsty anger could never play well on stage; I look back on the American Idiot years as misguided, almost wasted ones. Why would I want to revisit them?

American Idiot's rage and vitriol is directed at vague and indiscriminate sources. Is it a diatribe against the Bush White House and War In Iraq? Kinda. Is it about how parents just don't understand and suburbia is Hell on Earth? Sure. Is it about a lost generation without direction? Absolutely, in a way.

The album and musical tell the story of Johnny aka Jesus of Suburbia as he escapes the clutches of his parents (with their approval and financial backing, natch) and goes on an odyssey of punk rock and self-discovery. Along the way he does a lot of drugs, falls in love, and rebels against the establishment (but, because this is pop punk, it's in a really snotty, unspecific, "fuck you, Dad!" way). While he does this, one of his friends gets his girlfriend pregnant and another joins the Army and gets shipped out to Iraq, borrowing a plot device (not to mention the "fantasizing about the nurse after he's been wounded in combat" musical sequence) from another jukebox musical, Across the Universe.

Seeing American Idiot on stage brought me right back to 2004. I remembered those old forgotten feelings of righteous anger and socially acceptable rebellion again. I knew my enemy (a couple of songs from 21st Century Breakdown are thrown in the mix here, like the one just alluded to as well as "21 Guns", which I swear was played in at least three scenes of Transformers 2. Also, that's totally the Full House theme in the guitar solo) again and his name was George Walker Bush (I think...maybe it was my parents, or my teachers, or God; this is actually from a monologue from the show now that I think about it). Seeing a bunch of actors singing and dancing the partial soundtrack of my senior year as if it were Rent (and I love Rent) made me realize that American Idiot might have been the defining album of my era. When my kids ask me what the mid-2000's sounded like, I think I'm going to hand them a Green Day CD. Nobody better sums up how we all, or at least how I imagined we all, felt back then.

Maybe the American Idiot musical isn't essential, maybe it is partially a shameless attempt to bring a younger audience into Broadway, but it just might have helped me realize that Green Day's album was the most important of the turn of the twenty-first century.

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Exit Through The Gift Shop, or The Art of the Hoax

“I’m playing chess.  I don’t know how to play chess, but life is a chess game.”

So says Thierry Guetta, the subject of the new street art documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop.

I say street art documentary, but the film’s director, the British street artist Banksy, considers it “the world’s first street art disaster movie.”

And while Guetta is without a doubt the focus of the film, it wasn’t always supposed to be that way.  Guetta originally set out to cull from thousands of hours of disorganized footage a documentary about the street art movement, specifically its kingpin: Banksy.

As the story goes, Banksy turned the tables on the eccentric Guetta after viewing the spoiled fruits of the man’s labor: the 90-minute nightmare Life Remote Control: The Movie.  For our viewing pleasure, Banksy includes a minute or two of Guetta’s disasterpiece in Gift Shop.  Life Remote Control is Koyaanisqatsi overexposed, sped up, unfocused, and tripped out.  It’s seventeen out-of-sync projectors playing low-budget skate videos on the same screen from different angles.  It’s a reflection of a reflection of a reflection of flaming bag of dog shit.

If it’s real.

You see, Banksy isn’t in the business of creating straightforward work.  When he’s not stenciling rats armed with anti-establishment wit, he’s cutting apart phone booths and welding them back together to look like they’ve been murdered.  He painted a live elephant to match a wallpapered living room, forcing show attendees to deal with “the elephant in the room.”  His infamous art on the Gaza Strip Barrier – a child in balloon-powered flight, a giant pair of scissors cutting out an entryway, people digging toward paradise on the other side – undermine the nature and purpose of the structure.  At his best, he deals in subversion or the simulation thereof.

So forgive me if, in the days after my seeing the movie, I’ve become less convinced that what I saw was an actual documentary.

Plenty of others seem to agree.  The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw wrote in March, “As a documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop is as about as reliable and structurally sound as that house-front with the strategically placed window that falls on top of Buster Keaton.”  Jeanette Catsoulis of The New York Times’ believes that “what [viewers] will find is, like Banksy’s best work, a trompe l’oeil: a film that looks like a documentary but feels like a monumental con.”

Faux documentaries are not new.  And I don’t mean the mockumentary format championed by Christopher Guest and company.  I’m speaking of your Borats, your pre-release Blair Witch Projects, even Orson Welles’ F for Fake – films enhanced by how they blur the line between truth and fiction. 

That line must go right through Thierry Guetta’s house – no, right through his brain.

Gift Shop gives us a lot about Guetta to start.  He’s a French export living with his family in LA.  He used to earn money upselling old clothing as “vintage” (remember this when we get to the part about him selling art).  He has (or had) a compulsive need to film everything, which blossomed into him following around and “documenting” local street artists.  His cousin, Space Invader, turned him onto Shepard Fairey (yeah, that guy), who then hooked up him with the infamous Bansky.

The events leading up to Guetta’s connection with Bansky seem just odd enough to be true – certainly worthy of documenting.  What follows begins to stretch and distort plausibility.

Guetta becomes Banksy’s right-hand man, filming everything under the auspices of a documentary that doesn’t exist.  As I said, Banksy forces his hand and the result is Life Remote Control: The Movie.  Banksy then encourages Guetta to become Mr. Brainwash, a street artist treading ground stupidly similar to Banksy.  In 2008, MBW hires a workshop of prop artists and graphic design elves to churn out an absurd amount of material for an art show he calls “Life Is Beautiful.”  LA Weekly covers the massive show.  These “works of art” sell for preposterous amounts of money.

Fast Company’s Alissa Walker isn’t buying any of it: “Guetta is the biggest give-away here. His klutzy, bumbling character is blissfully over-the-top and clearly in on the ruse.”  His busted English and Palin-esque thought processes may be entirely genuine, but his bio doesn’t jive with itself.  How does a father of four leave his shady t-shirt selling business to gallivant around the world with street artists?  How does he single-handedly finance the mammoth “Life Is Beautiful” show?  And why do we never see him making the art himself?

I don’t believe that Guetta is Banksy.  Dude’s too real and too crazy to be that kind of mastermind.  But I wouldn’t put it past him to gleefully take part in an elaborate ruse constructed by Banksy and co-conspirator Fairey (who happily endorsed the Mr. Brainwash show).  Just look at how much fun he has playing toreador to New York’s futile bull.

But did Life Remote Control ever exist?  Did Banksy really discover Guetta because of the Frenchman’s filmic aspirations?  Is Guetta actually opening a show in New York or designing album covers for Madonna?  Or is he merely a vehicle for more of Banksy’s subversions?

If that’s the case – and MBW’s work is just, as Walker puts it, “Banksy trying not to look like Banksy – then this goes beyond pseudonym.  Banksy’s subverted the concept of the artist.  And how better to do that on a grand scale than to make a “documentary” about the con man through which you’re delivering your newest work?  Work of purposefully “poor” quality, meant to mock and humiliate those foolish enough to pay for it.

Banksy’s mockery permeates what Slate calls “a poisoned valentine to the movement he made famous.”  We’re given an hour and a half to guffaw at and cringe in embarrassment for Guetta.  To slap our foreheads as he stumbles over his explanation of the Mr. Brainwash moniker or his convoluted Elvis-with-toy-gun painting.  To chuckle knowingly as Banksy closes the film by saying, “I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don't do that anymore.”

He’s targeting artists.  He’s targeting overeager collectors.  And if we’re content to see Gift Shop as a mere documentary, Banksy’s targeting us.

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Batman Broadens Media Horizons

The caped crusader has been in the news a lot lately, what with the announcement of a release date for the third film in Chistopher Nolan's reboot of the series. Of course we're all extremely interested in what Mr. Nolan plans to do with the new film. First, what Mr. Nolan plans to do about the villain situation, since his script apparently killed off one of the main holdover candidates - and tragedy struck the actor who played the other. Second, how Nolan's Gotham City will respond to the fates of its two erstwhile heroes (The Batman and Harvey Dent). And finally, whether he took Miley Cyrus's cosplay audition seriously enough to consider featuring Batgirl in the new film.

As always, I encourage you all to sound off about these issues and others in the comments section.

But my current Batman interests lie less in his next iteration in traditional media (film, TV, comics), but in how the Batman "brand" is expanding into new media outlets. His most recent video game appearance met with huge success and rave reviews. And now it appears that Batman will soon be treading the boards. I know everyone says it's good to try new things... but do you really envision Batman feeling at home on the stage? Find out what I think about the whole affair after the jump.

Batman on Stage

If you didn't happen to read the whole article about the stage show, Warners and D.C. envision the project as "an elaborate arena production" rather than a musical or drama. For my money, this is probably the best bet on how to translate Batman's particular heroic idiom to the stage. Chris Nolan (and Tim Burton before him) proved that our hero is most successful when portrayed in a large scale - both the 1960s Adam West movie/TV show and the 1949 serials serve as low-budget exceptions that prove the rule.

There is precedent for live Batman-themed spectacles. One need look no further than Six Flags' Batman stunt extravaganza for an example of costumed stunt performers reenacting the exploits of the caped crusader. I've never seen the show - which was reworked for Batman Forever and then again for Batman Begins - but I can understand how it could be an engaging spectacle. Lots of explosions, high falls, swinging from ropes, animated fistfights: who wouldn't be entertained by that kind of stuff? Add in the production value that comes from the show being backed by a major film studio, and I think they'll probably have themselves a hit.

As far as dramatic merit, I don't anticipate the show competing for any Tony awards in the future. Warners top brass have confirmed that the show will contain numerous villains, so it looks more like an excuse to showcase various villain-themed sets and costumes and production design rather than an exercise in storytelling and character development. But broad isn't necessarily bad when dealing with live-action excite-fests. And if the show ends up coming to the LA area, you can bet I'll be in line for tickets.

Batman on the Consoles

Batman is no stranger to the video game, having starred in no fewer than 27 game adaptations since the first Ocean-produced game came out in 1986 for the Armstrad CPC. These games run the gamut, from side-scrollers to open worlds, and they're based on such media as movies, TV shows, or LEGO figurines. I've played a few of these games, and they've all been very enjoyable to one degree or another.

None of the Batman-themed games I've played gave me more enjoyment or a deeper sense of living in the Gotham/DC Universe than Batman: Arkham Asylum. When I first saw it (Holiday Season 2009-10), the game permeated my consciousness and has rarely left my mind alone since. I even bought a PS3 copy of the game... and I don't even own a PS3. The cinematics are gorgeous. The voice acting shines (three of the leads are alums of the acclaimed late-90s animated series), and the story follows a competent enough arc while maintaining the look and feel of the most badass of comic book representations.

Although I'm not a videogame scholar by any means, I think I can safely say that Arkham is a good example of the state of the gaming industry. It has engaging yet occasionally frustrating gameplay mechanics, it's based on a recognizable and well-branded entity, and it's presented in a dramatic and cinematic manner. At the recent Milken Institute Global Conference, Activision Blizzard president & CEO Robert Kotick touched on the blurring of the entertainment industry with the gaming industry: "'For the first time, being in Hollywood has incredible value to us,' he said, noting that animators, screenwriters, and others from the TV and movie industries are crafting video games" (Hollywood Reporter, 4/29/10).

Whether or not games should be following this path towards streamlined visuals and storytelling isn't something I'd like to get into here - I see the games-as-entertainment conversation as a somewhat specialized, yet just as thorny branch of the games-as-art debate. But as long as they're making games that feature awesomely-detailed and impeccably-acted versions of our favorite pointy-eared vigilante, I'll at least be down to play them on my friends' systems.*

*Keep your eyes on the sky for the Bat-signal announcing the newest release - I hear that casting is already underway for Batman: Arkham Asylum II: Gotham City: The Streets: 3D.

Since Batman first jumped off the comic book pages in 1949 - just ten years after his inception - he's taken both the silver screen and the small screen by storm. And I see no reason why the character shouldn't continue his dominance through other forms of media. Batman is so technological minded that video games are a great fit, and he's so theatrical that it seems like he would be perfectly at home on stage (but maybe not so much in front of the lights).

Keep marching on, Bats, with your cape and cowl flowing in the wind. There will always be a dedicated legion of fans following you to whichever media outlet through which you choose to express yourself.
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Big Laughs at the Original Renaissance Pleasure Faire

I've recently learned that there is somewhat of a stigma attached to Renaissance Faires. Maybe it's the old-timey speech spewed by ribald old men and lusty wenches with grotesquely pushed-up busts. Maybe it's the balmy heat and the constricting costumes and the unappetizing smell of horse. Or maybe it's because most people have a general dislike for periods of history before the invention of the television and air conditioning and the internet. Whatever it is, the mere mention of one of these events will elicit nasty glances, sneers, and name-calling.

I've never been able to understand this. I've been to four such events (three here in Los Angeles, and one in Cincinnati), and I've had a pretty good time at each one. I got some cool wares (a sword, a journal, and a Robin Hood-esque feathered cap), I saw some cool jousts, and I ate some delicious gigantic turkey legs. I also threw some cool axes, and saw these two guys do a pretty good comedy/precision knife-work routine. Sure I was heckled a little by the "merchants" pretending to sell their rotting fish heads and the rotund Shakespeare impersonators spouting quotations. But if this is how these people want to spend their time, who am I to object?

But people certainly do object, even at the idea of spending part of a day (let alone an entire career) at the faire. I'm not gonna lie, I've been the subject of some of these objections, and I didn't much mind - I'm aware of the stigma, and I attend anyway. But during my most recent visit, I was subjected to the worst kind of Faire-denigrators: those involved with an improv-sketch-comedy documentary. And what makes it worse: they were my friends - The Younger Statesmen!

When I visit the Renaissance Faire, I want to have a good time and get into the spirit of things. As part of this process, I like to dress up a little - because, quite frankly, it's kind of embarrassing to be the only one to show up to the faire wearing a t-shirt and sneakers. Not that I particularly care about impressing the glorified carnies who inhabit the fest, I just don't like to do things half-assed is all. So I girded myself as a Ranger of the wood, completing the look with a cloak on my back and a sword at my side.

I also provided my friends with costumes and weapons. (Having grown up doing theater, and with two parents involved with "the biz," I tend to have a lot of spare period-gear lying around. Plus I'm an ardent sword collector. What? Don't try to convince me that these things are anything but normal.) Although they didn't quite share my level of enthusiasm for the Faire, I knew these guys to be a pretty legitimate and talented comedy group, and I respected that they wanted to look the part.

I also respected their mission of providing fair and balanced (or so I thought) coverage of the proceedings. Come to think of it, I should have seen the shabby treatment coming: we're talking about lowbrow comedians who do anything to get a laugh. They have no qualms about saying crude things and making people feel uncomfortable as long as it might get a rise out of their viewers. It turns out that a great deal of their comedy involves making jokes at others' expense, rather than just sharing in a magical experience together. Looking at some of their previous work should have made this abundantly clear.

Looking back on the process of shooting the documentary-style sketch, it wasn't actually that bad. Renaissance Faires are notorious hotbeds for strange behavior, and our interviewers certainly got as good as they gave. (If you heard some of the lewd comments directed at our female videographer, you would immediately lose all sympathy for all reenactors in general.) And it was all good-natured fun: asking faire-goers about their love life and challenging innocent bystanders to duels doesn't hurt anyone. And if there's the possibility of bringing some mirth into some people's lives, then what's the harm?

Unfortunately, I didn't see it that way while we were at the fest. We'd all had a little too much mead, and I got a bunch of highfalutin ideas in my head about "honor" and "respect," and I apparently thought my friends were crossing too many lines. Plus, this one time, I was trying to demonstrate my mad skillz at a badass RenFaire event (axe-throwing), and my friends just kept heckling me and ruining my concentration. So I lost my cool a little bit.

I'm not proud of what happened between us. We had some words... and some fisticuffs. But who knows, maybe it will make for an entertaining internet video phenomenon.

YOU DECIDE!

...Visit the Renaissance Pleasure Faire from Younger Statesmen on Vimeo.

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Chad Deity and the American Dream

Did you know that they recently announced this year’s Pulitzer Prize winners? 

There’s a lot to the list that jumps out at me.  I’m pierced by a double-edged sword of pride and shame to watch reporters for m local Philadelphia Daily News take home the award for Investigative Journalism (pride) for their probe into corrupt narcotics cops (shame).  I’m fascinated that, in the shadow of a massive recession, the award for Biography went to a book about Cornelius Vanderbilt, a 19th-century shipping and railroad entrepreneur.  And shouldn’t we all take umbrage at Apple’s decision to bar a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist from its App Store?

But seeing as how my Bachelor’s is in Drama – and to earn such I once spent weeks memorizing past Pulitzer winners – my eye drifts innately to the Drama award.  This year’s recipient, Next to Normal, is a musical about a woman suffering from mental illness and the disease’s impact on her family.  This marks only the eighth time a musical has won the award, the last being Jonathan Larson’s Rent in 1996. 

However, I’m not here to talk about Next to Normal.  I’m discussing the awards because last fall I saw a production of one of this year’s three finalists for the Pulitzer in Drama: The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity.

Despite earning the bulk of my income in theatre, I’ve somehow managed to limit my discussion of the field on this site to occasional Beckett and Shakespeare references.  I mainly do this because I’m not in the practice of critiquing people I know and work with (or might work with one day).  And as much of my theatre exposure these days comes from the Philly scene, I’m not about to call them out for better or for worse.  That wouldn’t be cool of me.  So don’t expect me to break down InterAct Theatre Company’s production of Chad Deity, though you should know it was excellent.

Kristoffer Diaz’s The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity is a play about professional wrestling.  While Mickey Rourke’s Oscar-winning turn in The Wrestler portrayed the painful dénouement of an aging superstar, Chad Deity explores how such stars get born, are basked in, and explode.  The protagonist, Macedonio “Mace” Guerra, is mired in the middle ranks of a premiere wrestling outfit (cleverly titled “THE Wrestling”).  His ticket to the top comes when he meets a gregarious Indian kid from Brooklyn and the boss teams them up with one condition: they portray a team of terrorists.

What follows is a raucous exploration of the roles race and entertainment play in the American Dream.  And what better “sport” through which to view the American Dream than pro wrestling?  Pro wrestling trades in clashes of titanic wills, individual men going toe to toe in staged battle.  An individual can go from the lowliest jobber to a title contender as long as he works hard enough and succeeds in front of the crowd.

That’s the story they sell on TV, anyway.  Mace points out that – while he is one of the most technically proficient wrestlers in the company – the face of the company, Chad Deity, is a terrible wrestler.  He does not win on merit.  He wins because the crowd likes it when he wins, and when the crowd is happy, THE Wrestling makes more money.  Through Mace’s eyes, we see how the American Dream begins to resemble a less-than-pleasant American Reality. 

Portraying terrorists is the only way Mace and his partner Vigneshwar Paduar can make a splash.  Mace compromises his Puerto Rican heritage, donning faux Castro gear and spouting nonsense to the camera.  Paduar puts on a Turban and stares menacingly at the audience.  To fulfill their dreams, these men subjugate themselves to the storytelling needs of an industry laden with stereotypes. 

For a play chock full of physical action, Chad Deity rides just as much on Diaz’s effusive language.  Mace spends much of the play with one foot on the each side of the fourth wall, narrating scenes in which he’s also taking part.  His speech is kinetic and full of love for the art of storytelling in wrestling.  Unfortunately, it gets a tad verbose at times; no matter how well constructed the image or metaphor, I’d rather hear it once than three times in a row.  Still, the winding monologues alternate with great agility between nostalgia-tugging wrestling humor and revelatory insights into wrestling as a reflection of American culture.

In addition to its nuanced approach to the blunt world of wrestling stereotypes (just look at the early 90s characters Yokozuna and Haku), Chad Deity features some incredibly imaginative storytelling.  I saw the show in a thrust stage, which accurately mimicked the layout of most wrestling shows.  Live camera work projected “televised” monologues onto large screens upstage.  And, oh yeah, the set was a wrestling ring.  This genius staging decision blurred the line between literal fact-by-fact plot and Mace’s subjective narrative.  The climactic scene, in which Mace decides how to handle his newfound success/failure, is actually just an argument, but the actors kick, punch, and wield steel chairs to punctuate the dramatic action.  This heightened reality, in which subtext is mirrored with non-literal onstage violence, expertly channels the all-or-atmosphere of an industry where driving beer trucks into stadiums is the norm.  It’s also the perfect payoff for a play about the difference between performance and reality, dreams and pragmatism.

I’ve discussed with some of my Charge Shot!!! colleagues pro wrestling’s high-brow/low-brow qualities.  On one hand, it’s grown men in tights fake punching each other until they bleed.  On the other, it’s an extremely technical vaudeville act in which charismatic performers convince thousands of people to either cheer or boo their every word.  And The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity walks that top rope with all the energy and braggadocio of a world wrestling champion.

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Business Models: Play it Safe or Risk/Reward?

Ever notice how there seems to be less and less original content making its way onto movie screens lately? We've seen a dramatic rise in remakes, reboots, spin-offs, and adaptations of proven material in recent years, which points to an overall shift in the industry away from what's novel and towards what's established. Of course, if you're going to finance a movie, it's a safer bet to throw your money behind a franchise that millions of consumers have already thrown their money into. But a lot of times focusing on what's established isn't quite as lucrative as focusing on what's establish-able.

The cover article of this week's "Variety" magazine outlines the new business practices taking shape at the Disney company under new CEO Rich Ross. Disney's strategy for 2010 and beyond is to "make movies that define the Disney brand - and that can be exploited on TV, DVD, online, and through games, theme park attractions and merchandise at its Disney Stores." Hey, it never hurts to have a diversified revenue stream, right?

But what if diversity in money-making areas comes at the expense of diversity in content? Here's a direct quote from Ross: "Going forward, we will focus almost exclusively on making branded films from Disney, Pixar and Marvel." (Disney acquired the comic book giant on the last day of 2009.) A Spiderman reboot that puts Peter Parker back in high school will probably net a fair bit of coin for the Mouse House, but how much potential for expansion is there when your five year plan basically consists of trotting out slightly different variations on well-worn themes?

What we have here is a spectrum of business models. On the one hand, we have Disney's strategy: playing it safe and banking on consistent performers to continue performing consistently. On the other hand, we have a strategy that's usually taken up by smaller and more independent studios: find a premise that's interesting or compelling, then try to get people to see it. This is the motive behind film festivals like Sundance, the 2010 edition of which just completed some pretty high profile sales. Sundance topper John Cooper: "We were showcasing the best, most original work, not what might be commercial. But all of a sudden, what's good has commercial potential."

To bring in a non-entertainment related example, Sports Illustrated's Tim Marchman recently gave a pretty good rationale for adopting the Sundance business model: "the hardwired human desire to hit a jackpot. [Baseball t]eams are more willing than they should be to bet a lot on the small chance that a player will be really great, and curiously uninterested in paying for a sure thing." Suffice it to say that if such great baseball general managers as Billy Beane or Brian Cashman were to apply for a job at Rich Ross's version of Disney, they'd promptly be laughed off the lot.

I don't mean to keep picking on Disney - I'm sure most big studios operate in the same way - it's just that I just happen to have their upcoming slate ready to hand. Alice in Wonderland and Prince of Persia come out this year. They're redoing 80's era classic Tron. Robert Zemeckis is re-adapting Beatles-inspired Yellow Submarine. There's a couple of movies based on Disneyland park (Jungle Cruise and Tomorrowland) and one based on a snippet from a Disney legend (The Sorcerer's Apprentice starring Nicolas Cage as presumably the Sorcerer - he's a bit long in the tooth for the apprentice). And then it's off to sequel town: National Treasure, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Enchanted are all getting companion pieces sometime sometime down the line. And that's not even counting the inevitable Marvel-inspired comic book fare.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding, and no one can say for sure whether this slow and steady tactic in terms of content development will eventually win Disney the box office race. The fact that two of Disney's 2009 remakes - Zemeckis's 3D Christmas Carol and The Rock vehicle Race to Witch Mountain - failed to impress certainly isn't encouraging for the rehash-everything-you-possibly-can strategy. But maybe it's just a question of scaling down and picking projects carefully - Ross recently nixed a McG remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea because he didn't think it was sufficiently brandable.

And if it's a question of branding, I'm inclined to trust Rich Ross, the mastermind behind Disney Channel mega-franchises High School Musical (two sequels, a stage show, a reality TV spin-off, numerous video game adaptations, and High School Musical on Ice) and Hannah Montana (movies, concerts, and an actual music career for star Miley Cyrus). He certainly earned the right to make the big decisions for Disney, and it appears he's going to make some lucrative ones.

But what will be the consequences of such box-office/branding inspired decisions? We'll see Disney's coffers increase for sure. On the surface, the plan looks like it's nice for the consumers, because it provides lots of movies that lots of people will want to see. But in fact, this system really just treats each audience member as a walking cash machine with a smattering of freewill - just enough to decide which big-budget tentpole productions he or she wants to patronize on any given weekend.

But the real consequences of such business practices have to do with the way the films themselves are treated: as commodities to be exploited rather than as pieces of art. I realize that distribution and marketing are handled by different groups of people than the actual creative teams that make the movies. But how must a director feel when his film is financed by a corporate-structured megastudio that only cares about his work insofar as it turns a profit at the box office?

Sure there are people who get into show business for its artistic aspects, but the terms will always be dictated by the corporate types, because they're the ones that have all the money. Because, at bottom, show business is a business, which are usually best run by businessmen. If you think this is a revoltin' development, let me leave you with the immortal words of Arthur Jensen from Network:

"The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and famine, no oppression and brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for which all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused..."
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