It’s not just this thread. The whole level of discussion generally is pathetic and petty.

Scripts standardly have no camera notations at all. Only shooting scripts have any camera directions, — Terrapin Station

I wasn’t really thinking of camera directions, just that the script is written with the camera in mind. However I take your point.

Yes, you’re right. Though the script for a movie is made for the camera and edits. But they could do scenes.

There’s another aspect to Shakespeare’s plays which is the poetry. There’s a rythmn to this writing which is about the spoken word and the voice as an instrument. Even if students studied other plays they would still miss out on this aspect.

No.

That’s okay. I find your posts interesting and very ambiguous but worth unpacking.

Deeply flawed in what way?

I don’t think the argument is that he’s objectively brilliant, just that his plays are still worth being used as a subject of study in school.

Actually your point might be helpful. An artist might do a painting that is pedophelia. At the moment of creation the artist may not think about the offensiveness of the subject. It’s only in the cooling down of that process that the artist becomes aware of the potential offensiveness of the work, how it will be perceived by others.

Well your op is really about the border of creativity and madness. There I see a connection. You throw in art and filth and I can’t follow you down that path. That’s just fuel for pointless arguing.

This curious and strangely contrary being I appear to be is not especially different from anyone else, this being belongs to others, y — I like sushi

Just to clarify; this is the belonging?

this being is also special in its minute differences and it is there its sense of “ownership” — I like sushi

And this is the ownership?

What I am is what I most want to become, not my or anyone’s perception of what I’ve done and where I am now. — I like sushi

This idea of wishing to become, do you mean to become something specific, or do you mean free of the expectations around you?

What separates the concept of Art to Filth? Innovation to Absurdity? — SethRy

At the time if conception, maybe nothing.

There is very little art taught in schools anymore. The only art that is still taught is Poetry and Literature. — ZhouBoTong

I don’t know where you come from but that is not the case where I live.

But there is another type of elitism in school that suggests reading is a more important skill than listening to words (and I would agree in 4th grade, not so much in high school). — ZhouBoTong

Which is why studying Shakespeare as a play works so well.

Actually, ignore everything I’ve said. I think I’ve picked up the disease of this forum; just nitpicking. I’m sure we both know what evolution is.

Being tested out in the real world (to find out what deformity works (i.e: to find out who can more successfully reproduce)) is the trial and error I'm referring to. — VagabondSpectre

It’s the finding out bit I can’t get around, but maybe it’s just the words you’ve used.

Is that a question or statement?

Okay, but when you talk about trial and error it sounds like you mean intention.

Is being tall a deformity? If everyone else wasn’t at the time, then yes. It wasn’t an intention.

If by "bad form" you mean unsubstantiated claptrap based on unsystematic, biased observation, then yes, it is bad form. Don't try to pretty it up with some sort of truth to power act. — T Clark

So you disagree.

It adapts through trial and error. — VagabondSpectre

No, I don’t agree with that. There is no trial and error. It’s really deformities existing at opportune moments.

It probably is bad form to mention it, but I think you may be right.

We might say that evolution has a tendency to innovate and refine eyes when evolving life finds itself in a light filled environment. — VagabondSpectre

I don’t think that’s how evolution works. It’s almost the other way around. Genes that randomly create eyes that cope with light contribute to survival, they don’t adapt to conditions. Unless I’ve misunderstood your post.

Therefore, for the sake of talking about society or culturally, does that fact that prison populations are predominantly male mean or imply that females are socially superior to males? — Wallows

I think men can obviously be quite dangerous to others. Most men are not afraid of women, mentally or physically. A lot of men aren’t even afraid of each other. But I don’t think this means women are necessarily socially superior, it’s just that their weapons of choice are different.

It’s been a long time since women ‘had’ to have children. It might be difficult for them to refuse that possibility but they have had that choice for a long time. Art does take a big commitment, just look at the men who chose it over their family. Children or art, that’s the choice.

It’s obviously difficult to state what is good and what is poor art. Issues of subjectivity are impossible to argue with. And we seem to have, somehow honed in on Shakespeare, which is fine.

You feel that films like The Transformers cover similar aspects to Shakespear’s plays and that they can be just as valuable for students to study as Shakespeare. That maybe true, though I would also add in a very simplistic fashion. But that’s okay, it’s an action film, that’s the genre it works in. But to regard teaching Shakespeare at school as the elite forcing it down students’ throats is probably inaccurate.

First of all ‘The Tempest’, for example, is a play, it’s also poetry and it also has themes, etc. Being a play means that students have a script to work with, all they need is some open space and they can actually produce and take part in the play. They can’t do this with a film. There’s no room for interpretation in ‘The Transformers’, all they can do is watch it passively and then write an analysis of it.

Shakespeare’s plays offer a lot more to the students in terms of study than the Transformers can. I could list those differences but I’ll wait to see if it’s necessary. Of course it seems tiresome and boring to them because they have to make an effort to connect, but as a teacher you would recognise the whole area of ‘The Zone if Proximal Development’ here and the importance of setting work that stretches their abilities. There just seems to be a lot more in terms of teaching studying Shakespeare than ‘The Transformers’, hence it’s regular appearance in the curriculum.

:up:

:up:

This is the crippling effect of the age; to sit around discussing his behaviour, what it indicates, what it might be, who is he really, the mitigating circumstances, on and on. Yet if you went and spoke to someone staffing a women’s shelter, they would know what’s going on immediately and act.

is the unconditional love your mother gives to you preparing you to give it to others? — Bitter Crank

That’s an interesting point. Is life only about receiving love? Is Wallow’s mother’s love going to die with him?

A ‘country’ is defined by its borders. A group of people define themselves along cultural grounds, not by arbitrary borders. In the Middle East after WWI the colonials drew up arbitrary borders delineating countries according to their interests. Many of these borders cut right though the middle of cultural groups, or locked in conflicting cultural groups. The distinction between cultural groups was what set them apart. There may have been ideas about the outer edges of territory, but there was no sense of a ‘country’ that you were defined by.

If borders are arbitrary, then so are countries. And, in fact, isn’t one of the big debates these days over issues of borders.

Then I guess what I’m trying to get at is that the idea of ‘Country’ is arbitrary. Sushi talks about ‘language borders’. You talk about culture. Sushi says the idea of ‘Nation’ is relatively new. I understand your points about culture, how people define themselves through a shared culture. They didn’t regard themselves as a ‘country’. That came after when border were applied.

WHAT was actually learned? The difference between good and evil? Human nature? How to fake (not) your death so you can elope with your 13 year old girlfriend that you have known for 3 days?
— ZhouBoTong

It’s convenient to pass off ‘Romeo and Juliet’ this way, it helps your argument. What could be taken from the play, if you bothered is: ideas about male honour, public order, the individual against power institutions, religion, public order, love, violence and death, and love and violence. — Brett

Ok. I believe I could find nearly every one of those themes in the Transformers series — ZhouBoTong

You’re being a bit tricky there. I didn’t say you wouldn’t find those elements in The Transformers. It was in reply to the scathing comment on your idea about the contents of Romeo and Juliet.

But you’re helping me with one thing. I prefer the elites to you and I’d rather the elites pushing their ideas down my kids throats than your ideas on art.

I would gladly point out that by being a United States citizen and to partake in that culture is simply defined by the conglomerate cultures that exist in the United States who share a common language, goal, and principles. — Anaxagoras

I’m not sure that the commonality you mean really exists as it once did, in any country, even the US. So I have doubts about the idea of culture defining a country. I’m not sure what it is and what it will be in the future. That’s why I think of ‘country’ as, ultimately anyway, being defined by borders. The idea of culture will be too uncertain to relate to. And yet borders are arbitrary, as is, possibly, saying you are part of a country. If you crossed the border from Columbia to Venuezeula would you notice any difference in culture?

What I meant by circular, (and I wasn’t meaning just your posts, it was mine as well, and it wasn’t accusing you of being confusing), was that if we use culture to define country then eventually we reach a point where it comes back to geography.

Thinking about the way the idea of ‘Country’ is developing it seems very problematical to define it by culture. So I was thinking if countries become more multicultural, multicultural itself isn’t an identifiable culture, it’s too amorphous for people to identify with, and so in a circular way we come back to my beginning which was the idea of borders.

I don’t mind someone disagreeing with me, but I can’t see any disadvantage to looking outside the box at subjects and following a trail, even if it turns out to go nowhere.

As usual what you mean is I don’t go along with your thinking. Why shut down the conversation? If everything is so cut and dry then why bother taking part in a discussion?

What don’t I get?

:up:

Well put.

It’s not really a single anecdote, it’s a pattern of behaviour.

[reply="Susu;d5434
I’ve heard your story a hundred times. You’re becoming an enabler and the situation will end up as you suspect it will.

A nation with its own government occupying a specific territory containing districts, settlements and towns. — Anaxagoras

culture is what develops from that — Anaxagoras

This feels a bit circular to me. The changing aspects of culture or the introduction of other cultures through immigration, is unlikely to reach a point where a country can be defined as a country, or a nation as you define it, by those cultures. All that could be said was that it was a multicultural country, but that doesn’t define what a country is. That feels too amorphous to me. The collective cultures are more likely to operate within some other agreed upon idea of country.
An interesting question for me is if these people existed geographically as a central mass population would they still feel the need for a border?

Okay. So that’s not culture, then.