TCD Rant and Rave Issue 5 by Clara Murray

Michelmas Term 2013 Inside: Reviews, Opinions, Literary Criticism & more

Contents EDITOR’S NOTE

FEATURED LECTURER

THE NEW WOODY ALLEN

THE RISE OF THE OSCAR CLICHÉ

REVIEW: SHORT TERM 12

REVIEW: FINISHED MONEY

REVIEW: CO-OP

REVIEW: HOW I LIVE NOW

TROMATIZED YET?

LITERARY THEORY FOR THE UNINITIATED

QUOTES

COMPETITION

Editor: Molly Rowan-Hamilton Co-editors: Tanya Sheehan & William Brady Design: Clara Murray PRO: Alicia Byrne Keane Featured lecturer: Sam Slote

Renegades: Ciara Forristal, Laura G. Gozzi, Katie McFadden, Maud Sampson, Issy D’Arcy Clarke Emma Hayn, Tom Marr Caitlin Scott

Editor’s Note

Alan Bennett reflected that the best moments in reading are when you find ‘a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things- which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met’. Coming from the man who admitted that until leaving school, he had barely even finished a book, this is quite something. Yet increasingly, journalism is becoming a dying profession. Bennett’s acknowledgement of the palpable collective commonality found in reading the thoughts and opinions of others therefore seems a particularly important one to remind ourselves of today. Certainly this is an idea I’ve reflected on in editing a student literary publication. Some are confused as to the appeal of the views and opinions of young writers. Yet for others, it is precisely these untainted visions and fresh perspectives of the youth that are so extremely attractive. Perhaps this is why a magazine like The Rant and Rave is so vital within an institution like Trinity. For we strive to provide a platform to air these unadulterated opinions and fundamentally, this kind of platform provides a non- hierarchical space for what our writers like and what they don’t, but most importantly, what they think. Similarly, when whoever it was, for it is not known exactly who it was, wrote ‘I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like’, they seemed to have stum-

bled upon the same notion that we here at Rant and Rave HQ (Lemon Café, Dawson Street) feel motivates the magazine. For in this assertion is an invitation to wilfully indulge in an opinion on everything and anything. Yet too often, we become complacent in our opinions, not revelling in the discomfort of scrutinising thought. This is where YOU, the reader come in. For it is your role to dissect, to acclaim, to criticise, but more than anything else, to actively involve yourself in the material you engage with, in the hope that you too can be included into the commonality I mentioned earlier. So here goes: our first printed issue, fit with a shiny, new editorial team and batch of fresh, young, eager writers. Let’s not forget all that hasn’t been included in the print issue. In particular, it’s been incredible to reach out to similarly motivated ventures within Trinity such as the Trinity Arts Festival and The DU Players Society, both of which we have been appointed official reviewers. We look forward to what we hope will be a close relationship with both of them over the coming months. You can track this online. With this in mind, I here present you with a warm invitation from all of the team at Rant and Rave: to read, contribute, enjoy, observe, criticise, and of course rant and rave but most of all, to appreciate what those around you have, give and write.

FEATURED LECTURER

Sam Slote In the fateful summer of 1888, several months prior to that unfortunate encounter with a missed or edified horse, Friedrich Nietzsche enjoyed a brief, all too brief conversation with Algernon Bedford St Suive. The meeting took place in a small café in Turin, where Nietzsche was then living and which St Suive was then visiting.This meeting would be all but forgotten (along with so many other rencontres, significant or otherwise) were it not for the recently unconcealed1 diaries of St Suive. I shall quote an excerpt from the relevant passage, as if to set the stage: April 1st As my accommodations are less than perfect, I have taken to exploring Turin. This evening I found myself at an unremarkable café. Since these diaries will soon be published in their entirety by a most reputable publisher thereby completing their unintended trajectory from personal and private musings towards public dissemination), I am reluctant to continue with a full citation and shall, out of an abundance of discretion, resort to paraphrase,

truest mode of the biographist. St Suive recounts, and not without pith and insight, the typical epiphenomena and amusing parhelia of a Turinese café: the harried waiters with their curled mustaches, the busy tradesman, the indolent artistes supping sweetened coffee and nibbling upon biscuits, the pretty ladies with their big hats and dainty handkerchiefs, the rugged Englishmen with their well-filled trousers, the vulgar Belgian sailors and their badlyrolled cigarillos, the lactating dogs and the vomiting cats. And so on. The waiter to whom St Suive had ordered a hearty lunch returned with a plate not at all to St Suive’s expectations, a composed salad. During the mêlée between disappointed and supercilious waitstaff, St Suive espied that the mustachioed diner at the table next to his (to his right) was engaged in a parallel discussion concerning a mistaken order of his own. That man (for it was none other than Nietzsche) had at his table the very beef and mutton stew that St Suive had requested in his eccentric but trustworthy Italian. At perhaps the same moment St Suive noticed Nietzsche, Nietzsche noticed St Suive. And at

1. I trust that I need not draw undue attention to the modest allusion to Heidegger, late of Freiburg.

this moment of coincidence, their respective waiters exeuent from our narrative and the following dialogue takes place, a dialogue for which we shall (temporarily) return to St Suive’s diary: He: I believe this is yours. I: So it is. Notice (kindly) the way Nietzsche (the ‘He’ in this charming pas de deux) subsumes ownership (and therefore identity) to ‘belief’, instead of to knowledge. Whereas, in contradistinction, St Suive (our ‘I’), ever the ironist, responds with a declarative statement that contains no definite nouns and uses only the most general, if not pernicious, of verbs (the utterly existential ‘be’) and the adjective ‘so’ – whose essential sense, I need not remind you, is ‘corresponding to truth’. St Suive’s indeed co-responds to Nietzsche’s (declaration – or even, improving ourselves, enstatement – of) truth. Being corresponds to truth! The thought and its expression are astounding: literally! So it is… so it is, indeed, to be sure to be sure.2 Sic, oc, oïl. St Suive affirms, but what, pray, tell, does he affirm in this counter-parry to Nietzsche’s declarative thrust? Certainly not something as crass as the ‘true propriety’ of the (still tasty but by now wilting) fractal romanesco cauliflower, for that would be so unlike the poet. No. Instead St Suive affirms his right to respond and to affirm, his right to a firm denial: the great No to salad.

And there you have it. The meeting between the nineteenth century’s greatest philosopher and her greatest poet. A meeting in which only the most salient aspects of the Truth4 are discussed. Indeed, this discussion set the tone, you will no doubt agree, for the various apolocalypses of our forlorn twentieth century (a century gone the way of all centuries). Weary of distressed intestines, concerning a misplaced meal, Nietzsche resorts to the epistemological (‘I believe’), whereas St Suive ducks towards the ontological (‘it is’). One need not be surprised by Nietzsche’s comment for an astute reader would have no doubt seen it prefigured in Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. Having written such a book, Nietzsche could not have acted otherwise in that Turinical establishment. St Suive’s brilliant response, too, was proleptically prefigured in the mortal verses of ‘I Do Not Think of Belgium When I Think of Thee’. Discretion, evil stepmother of the Muses, prevents me from citing in full the pertinent line from the pertinent poem5, but I am confident that all but my thickest readers will remember it. Here is, thus, an excised quotation: *** ******** ** **** knees *** ***** * lavender *** Belgian **** A whole treatise could be written merely about the prosody of this line (and its confrères)!6 A line ununique in tandem bespeaks – hence the genius of St Suive, our St Suive.

2. As if it could be any thing else. 3. You must excuse this play on the words, I have been under some weather. 4. I feel eminently justified in my use of the capital letter ‘T’. 5. Or should I say ‘pome’? 6. Fortunately, such a treatise is currently being written by a certain Jarlath Killeen.

decade The New recent of filmmaking. Woody Allen Match Point, for in-

For as long as I can remember, people have been complaining at how terrible Woody Allen has become. “His latest film’s female lead is hopeless”, the reviews would say, “nothing compared to Annie Hall”. Or, “The dialogues? Mostly dry – a pale shadow of Mr. Allen’s early Radio Days! Not to mention the dim portrayal of relationships. If Manhattan was a person, it’d be turning in its grave”. Well, I have had enough. Our generation has only known the 70s and 80s Woody Allen retrospectively: sure, we’ve admired the black and white and the jazz and the Eighties turtleneck sweaters, but we’ve also always known that they were a thing of the past. So now why should we not be allowed to enjoy the Woody Allen of London, Paris and Rome and the opera instead of the jazz, and Scarlett Johansson instead of Mia Farrow?

His latest, Blue Jasmine, has been hailed as the 77-year-old director’s return to form; critics left and right hurried to assure us that the film was actually good because it was reminiscent of the older Husbands and Wives or Crimes and Misdemeanours. That is all very well, but it also implies that the film’s value lies almost entirely in its references to films of decades past. Knowing the Allen of the twenty-first century far better than the Allen of a time when I wasn’t even born, I can’t help but point out that, actually, Blue Jasmine seems to be the product of the last, more

stance, was butchered by critics. I adored it, and it stayed with me long after I finished watching it. The slimy selfishness that Woody Allen mixes with wealth was already present in the much-criticised You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger. Echoes of Cate Blanchett’s hysterical, crazed character are already present in the female leads of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and Sally Hawkins’ character, Ginger, is like the heightened, developed version of Kate, Colin Farrell’s loving fiancée in Cassandra’s Dream. There is no real need to trace back to the 70s the influences that made up Blue Jasmine: they can all be found in the past decade of Allen’s work, a time often overlooked by critics, who often seem reluctant to appreciate any films that fall short of the Diane Keaton/Mia Farrow period. But maybe it is time to leave the Allen of the past behind, and to become accustomed to the different kind of genius that shines, albeit at different intensities, through all of his productions. He has never tried to recreate the innocent magic of his first works, and for this he has been criticised at length – though never directly. Yet the sooner the older generation of critics bid farewell to “the old Allen” for good, the sooner their own judgement will stop sounding antiquated. There is nothing wrong with nostalgia, but that, too, can become obsolete; Mr. Allen seems to have understood it before anyone else.

Emma Hayn Forget Halloween, Christmas and Easter; my favorite time of the year is the Oscar season. For three glorious months, the cinemas are not exclusively filled with action films, romantic comedies, or a combination thereof. All the best directors, actors and screenwriters collaborate in every possible genre in the hopes of securing a golden statue. At least, that was what I used to think. Now, along with Leonardo Di Caprio, I have a bone to pick with the Academy. Let me explain. I believe in two genres of cliché: the first being “Hollywood” clichés. These are the plot lines that we all know, the “running through the airport to say I love you” etc. Overused, predictable, and the safest method of ensuring the box office draws in the cash. However, I also believe in a second genre that has developed over the past twenty to thirty years: Oscar clichés. These are oddly specific, and are becoming more common. Let me give you some examples:

specific, and are becoming more common. Let me give you some examples: 1. The biopics: there has been a massive increase in the amount of films that are “based on the true story of...” To say these films take liberty with the truth would be a massive understatement, and yet the audiences fall for it hook, line and sinker. Generally some of the most cheesy film scores accompany these pictures. Of course, the actual film footage, generally shown just before the final credits, sends us running into work the next day to tell our peers about the film with the sideline “And you’ll never believe it, it’s a true story!” Examples include The Blind Side, A Beautiful Mind, Schindler’s List, and Diana. 2. The quirky family member/ friend: a person who has a minor or major mental disability brings nothing but joy and happiness to the world around [cont.]

“To say these films take liberty with the truth would be an understatement, and yet the audiences fall for it hook, line and sinker” [cont. p8] them. In many cases, they are taken on a with some funky music, presto, the mental illness

of these road trip and hey is gone!

Examples: A Beautiful Mind, Silver Linings Playbook, Temple Grandin, and to a lesser degree: Little Miss Sunshine. 3. Meryl Streep:The queen bee of all actresses, and as pointed out by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler: “Meryl Streep is not here. She has the flu, and I hear she’s amazing in it.” She’s an Oscar magnet. No truly great film is complete without at least a cameo from her, and the award is guaranteed if she throws in an accent. Previous examples: Kramer vs. Kramer, Julie and Julia, Out of Africa. My question is this: are these movies raking in the awards because the audience wants these films and are responsive to them? Or is this a case of a time-tested model that worked and will continue to be exploited until we grow tired of it? All I can say is that I will be keeping a sharp eye on this year’s awards, but I don’t doubt for a minute that we will see some familiar plot lines returning to the big screen once again.

Alicia Byrne Keane Every now and then, a film comes along that disproves every stereotype of its genre. Destin Daniel Cretton’s Short Term 12 is centred on the lives of helpers at a foster home for disadvantaged teenagers. However, any preachy images this may conjure remain surprisingly absent throughout. The film opens with pensive, understated cinematography and a toilethumour anecdote among co-workers. The dialogue is natural to the point that watchers feel they are eavesdropping. However, with a wail of alarms as a wayward child attempts to run clear of the foster-home’s grounds, we are launched into an honest, unpredictable account of institutional life. Grace (Brie Larson) and Mason (John Gallagher Jr.) are a young couple caught between the tension of their relationship and their fraught days working in the home. At the arrival of Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever), a young girl moved perpetually between foster homes due to a history of dangerous behaviour, Grace is forced into difficult personal territory. As Jayden’s need for help becomes increasingly clear, Grace becomes embroiled in a world where justice and common sense are trumped by bureaucratic fostering systems. On the way, she has much to

REVIEW

confront. How do you separate your past from your career? How do you keep from recognizing yourself in others? Largely debut performances, the acting was unusually memorable. Larson is by turns resolute and vulnerable as Grace; Gallagher Jr. is charismatic and endearing; Dever appears wonderfully inscrutable as Jayden, showing flashes of a brilliant intellect and a precocious artistic creativity as the film wears on. Keith Stanfieldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plays the foster homeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s oldest resident, preparing to leave custody as he approaches his eighteenth birthday. A quiet, despairing presence throughout the film, the scene in which he raps one of his own compositions caused a sort of frozen hush in the cinema. Background histories are quietly alluded to, and even minor characters appear to have an unspoken depth. Artistically, the film is impressive. The cinematography takes on the quality of a visual diary as activities such as baking or drawing are

documented with a meticulous sensitivity. Great use is made wof silence, of empty rooms and toys cast aside; but also of the everyday bustle of the homeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s residents, their morning routines, their quirks and habits. Scenes of group games or snatches of conversation have the spontaneous quality of documentary filming. Largely debut performances, the acting was unusually memorable. Larson is by turns We are rarely made aware of the division between teenagers and adults.While issues of authority and responsibility could have been emphasized, what emerges most strikingly is a sense of equality. Not only do the adults resemble the teenagers in their struggles, but we get the sense of a deeper connection that brings the characters of Short Term 12 together, some human commonality that comes to the fore in hard situations. There is no middle-class-teacher-assaviour subtext. Melodrama is generally avoided, and Cretton eschews catch-all resolutions in this unsentimental account.

REVIEW

consumers

Published in 1984 and set amidst 80s greed, consumerism and the illusion that monetary value is the only value, Martin Amis’ novel Money was written before the explosion of the internet. It tells the story of John Self, a self-made advertiser-turned-aspiring-film producer jetting between New York and London in a bid to shoot his first pornographic movie. Self-centred, selfindulgent, self-deluded, Self leads an alarmingly hedonistic and gluttonous lifestyle, characterised by an addiction to drink, drugs, violence, prostitutes and pornography. By the end of the novel he is left filmless and penniless, having been conned and cheated by the producer of the film, Goodney.

Deeply depressed, Self wants his fixes quick, instantly, on demand: women, sex, porn, pills, food, alcohol, racing across London and New York to satisfy his needs. Yet, do we not suffer from the same chronic addictions, symptomatic in the deep impatience that characterises our lives? Not only do we want instant gratification, we want to be able to shop, bank, and communicate now. Unlike Self, we don’t have to leave our house to do so. That’s the beauty of the internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even more alarmingly, the ease with which porn is accessible online has led to a growing concern about the change this is precipitating in adolescent sexual attitudes, as more young people that ever are exposed to X-rated material. Are we in the process of creating a generation of mini- John Selfs?

Money is commonly cited as one of the defining books of the 80s, and the reader feels smug in the knowledge that Self is a character type specific to that era. We definitely are not, like him, rampant,

The women in the novel are frustratingly underdeveloped and silenced, acting as one-dimensional pawns in a patriarchal world. Selina Street, Self’s estranged girlfriend, is porn personified: “She

Maud Sampson

immoral

goes round the place looking like a nude magazine”. Her financial dependence on John sees her fated to act as his sexual fantasy, enduring casual violenceand attempted rape in the process. Despite significant advances i n gender equality since the 80s, the manipulation of younger women by older men in popular culture prevails today, some thirty years on. This month’s feud between Sinead O’Connor and Miley Cyrus was precipitated by O’Connor’s concern that Cyrus was being treated like a prostitute by (male) powers above, warning her: “Real empowerment of yourself as a woman would be to in future refuse to exploit your body or your sexuality in order for men to make money from you”. Take note Selina. Just what Amis was trying to preach in Money is hard to decipher, and beside the point.What makes this book compelling is the uneasy sense that despite an elapse of nearly thirty years the novel is less a satire, more a strikingly relevant commentary applicable to the pornification of contemporary society, and our own lives.

PLAYER’S REVIEW

Issy D’Arcy Clarke

Like most Players shows, Co-Op goes through many changes during its six performances. However, unlike many other shows, Apocalypse Dawn: A Cosmic Journey went through a veritable re-birth between the Friday and Saturday performances.

Brazil, Joyce O’Reilly and Meadhbh O’Rourke, here would be the biggest mistake of your young days. This year’s Co-Op is simply magnificent. As the title suggests, the characters and settings span above and beyond the imaginations of these four wünderkinds,

redundant and the underdog always wins- perfect.

The choreography was designed to make ‘Thriller’ look shabby, and the costumes fit for (who bloody knows what?) the look of the thing weren’t half bad either. Even though God the Father is the one who gets the credit for inOn Friday night the old “The stage was awash with venting ‘light’, frankly Players alumni, hacks, boundless stream s of his mere sun and stars and recent graduates piled into the theatre energy and rip-roaringly pale in comparison to the pyrotechnifor one last taste of hilarious plot twists” cal masterpiece that youth as they manically stumbled, drank and and reach a place where our lighting guru Jonathan heckled their way through Egyptian goddesses and Shanahan put on for us. I the next few hours’ traffic cockney Tommys meet don’t know the technical on stage. The result was and brave the wrath of terms, and even if I did a confused amalgamation one known simply as ‘The they wouldn’t do it justice. of ideas that can only be Lord of Evil’. With a cast compared to a blind genius of 50 eager and might I All in all, from across the randomly cutting and past- add incredibly talented sea, I send a massive coning together pages from a Freshers, the stage was gratulations for the cast, futuristic encyclopedia. awash with boundless crew and directors for Only one thing was cer- streams of energy and their incredible show, there tain; there was definitely rip-roaringly hilarious plot was an Apocalypse, then a French Boy. However, twists, characters, and sit- a re-birth and most certo leave your experience uations. The rules of sex- tainly a Cosmic Adventure. of the Co-Op, directed ism were suspended, the by Donal McKeating, Matt laws of time were made Scoing, Scoing, Scone.

REVIEW

Katie McFadden How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff is a compelling read. Telling the story of a fictional 3rd World War in the 21st century, this dystopian apocalyptic tale explores the breakdown of an idyllic English countryside home hit by the effects of a nuclear bomb. I was apprehensive when Kevin MacDonald’s 2013 film was released this October, wondering how it would live up to the book, especially as it is so strongly characterized by its evocative narrative. Told in the first person by 15-year-old Daisy, whose lack of punctuation, random capitalization and shifting use of tenses enables Rosoff to map the muddled workings of a troubled teenage mind, this novel’s strength lies firmly in its unusual and powerful narrative style. However, the film’s imaginative take on Rosoff’s stream of consciousness style is impressive. Daisy’s narrative is illuminated in the film through an innovative soundscape idea where Daisy is bombarded by voices inside her head, creating a striking alternate interpretation of Daisy’s complex and conflicted mind.

‘It would be much easier to tell this story’, Daisy says, ‘if it were about a chaste and perfect love between Two Children Against The World At An Extreme Time in History, but let’s

Dface it, that would be a load of crap’. aisy is a precocious anorexic from Manhattan who has just moved to the English countryside to live with her aunt. She is an extremely selfish and sometimes hostile character, yet through her disarming honesty and defiant narrative voice Rosoff manages to make her endearing. In the film, despite a captivating performance by 19-year-old Saoirse Ronan, at times the Daisy seems inexplicably rude and ungrateful to her kind relatives. MacDonald’s interpretation arguably lacks the subtle character development Rosoff achieves in the book. However, this does not suggest any defects in his skill as a filmmaker, but rather the constant struggle faced by films adapted from novels. Films based on books always face the challenge of competing with the subjective image of characters created and then possessively held on to by us readers in our heads. However, to criticize a film for not being the mirror image of a novel is to forget entirely that film is a fundamentally different art form. What a novelist can do with a book, a director cannot do with a movie and vice versa. The stunning landscapes of this film transport the audience into Rosoff’s idyllic English countryside, and create a stronger

portrayal of the children’s rustic childhood than the book ever could. Moreover, with gorgeous George MacKay playing Edmond, MacDonald rescues the slightly implausible relationship between the cousins – descriptions of a skinny, small boy smoking in the book just failed to explain Daisy’s intense sexual attraction for me. Film adaptations are chiefly criticized by audiences when they believe that the book’s content wasn’t handled correctly. However, through the vagueness of its narrative and its universal subject matter, How I Live Now is a book which allows and excuses a director for creativity. With no character surnames, hardly any background information, and most importantly an unidentified en“To criticize a film for not being the mirror emy, Rosoff’s book is a timeless image of a novel is to forget entirely that mediation on war, survival and film is a fundamentally different art form” love, which is powerfully interpreted by emotionally intense performances in the film. (I could attack MacDonald here for killing a main character in the film who survives in the book but I will resist.) The naivety of the children, which at times in the book comes across as self-involved disinterest towards the war; ‘I guess there was a war going on somewhere in the world that night but it wasn’t one that could touch us,’ says Daisy, becomes an enchanting portrait of childhood innocence by the film’s cast of extremely talented teenage actors. Films of books only run the risk of ruining a book if we as audiences are unwilling to accept that the interpretation of a text is subjective, and moreover that film is a different art form to literature – each with its own strengths and weaknesses.A good film adaptation illuminates the most prominent features of a book, and a great film adaptation should prompt us to think about the book in new ways as MacDonald’s How I Live Now does.

Ciara Forristal Considering that the Troma film industry is the longest running independent film industry, it remains relatively unheard of in the mainstream media. Specializing in explicit nudity, sexuality and a ridiculously copious amount of gore still unrivalled by their mainstream contemporaries, Troma movies have become synonymous with emetic, low brow and farcical fodder which serve as a foil for the alleged appropriate and more suitable subject matter of mainstream culture. This image has been contested by its founders, Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, who have created a fictional region aptly titled ‘Tromaville’ to act as a foil to contemporary society and satirize a film industry which is by nature conservative and exclusive. Just like its renegade creators, Troma’s films adopt a unique approach to social commentary that

substitutes elaborate symbolisms and trappings for a cheap thrill and gut-wrenching gore. Films involving nuclear experiments, accidents and mutations are a key staple in the Troma repertoire. Class of Nuke’em High, released in 1986, the same year as the Chernobyl disaster, places emphasis, albeit farcical, on the complacency of the town officials in placing a nuclear plant one mile from the local high school, and the effects on the students after its nuclear meltdown. Although physical deformities and mutations ensue, the most dramatic result is in the behavior of the once the behavior of the once conservative students, who become hell bent on letting loose. With virtues such as abstinence being propagated during the Reagan period, the libertine activities of Nuke’em High’s students

would have been considered by his supporters to be immoral, yet ironically it is Reagan’s policy to pursue nuclear energy that is the cause of such rebellious sexual promiscuity amongst Tromaville’s youths. Moreover, Kaufman and Lloyd do not shy away from incorporating highbrow elements of culture into their work, particularly those associated with literature. Tromeo and Juliet (1996), ex-

Tromeo and Juliet is not an accurate reflection of today’s society, it does reflect the increasing immunity that society has procured with regards to sexuality, nudity and violence within popular culture to such an extent that only the extreme can induce feelings of shock. The Troma industry is still an independent force within the film industry, and its ability to survive can be either seen as a testament to the vision

“Troma movies have become synonymous with emetic, low brow and farcical fodder” plores Shakespeare’s tragedy against the backdrop of the punk and counterculture movement, where rivalry ignites over the control of the porn industry. Critics have argued that this is a blot on Shakespeare’s escutcheon, with its unapologetic nature for grave deviations from the classics. Shakespeare considered that the functions of plays are ‘to hold as ‘twere mirror up to nature’, and although

of its creators or as a disappointing indicator of how film culture is continuing to fall into the gutter of lowbrow entertainment. ‘Movies of the Future’ is the slogan of this industry, and with the increasing prevalence of reality ity television, critics of this genre will continue to debate whether to some extent such films precipitated such turns of events, or were merely astute in their foreshadowing.

Let me begin this article with a brief disclaimer. This is a very brief, incredibly over-simplified, probably more than slightly biased guide to some branches of literary theory. Reading this article does not give you the right to be pretentious; it just means you will hopefully be a bit less confused when other people are being pretentious.

According to Liberal Humanism, certain texts are part of the canon, or The Ultimate List of the Best Things Ever Written. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the job of a literary critic to look at the themes and ideas in texts that are part of the canon. If that sounds like a really vague theory, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s because it is.

Formalists and New Critics are people who got fed up of the vagueness of Liberal Humanism. They decided that literature should become more scientific, so they set about studying literary devices (metaphor, alliteration etc.) and how they make literary language different from ordinary speech.

Literary Theory

Having been or being part of an empire is going to affect how you think about yourself and other people in that empire. If the empire breaks down, you have to forge a new identity and a new set of relationships. Postcolonialism looks at all of these different things affect literature. There tends to be a racial aspect to this kind of analysis, and Star Wars puns. No, really, The Empire Writes Back is a thing.

Structuralists believe our world is full of signs and systems that don’t exist naturally, but because we create them and give them meaning. You can’t pay your rent by writing a note that says the bank will pay up if the landlord asks, but you can use a cheque, which is essentially the same thing. When looking at a piece of writing, Structuralists look at the signs and patterns in the text to figure out how it works.

FO R THE UN I NTIATED

Post-structuralists take Structuralism one step further. If signs only have value because we say they do, then why should we pay so much attention to them and let them control the way we think and behave? So, they don’t look at the stuff in the text that follows the rules, but the points where it all breaks down and exposes the arbitrariness of those ideas.

Tanya Sheehan Feminism is a fairly self-explanatory one; it’s closely related to the political ideas of the feminist movement. This theory can be divided into 2 branches: Anglo-American and French. The Anglo-American side of things look at the socio-political aspect of writing for, about, or by women. The French school is linked to Poststructuralism and looks at how language and gender interact.

No, you don’t have to be a Communist to use this theory; but you do have to believe that all literature is political, even if the writer doesn’t want it to be. Critics who use this theory tend to focus on the political ideas in the text: what they are, why they are there, and how they are put across.

“If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf.” - Lemony Snicket “Writers fish for the right words like fishermen fish for, um, whatever those aquatic creatures with fins and gills are called.  ” - Jarod Kintz He was such a bad writer, they revoked his poetic license. - Milton Berle “Never judge a book by its movie.” - J.W. Eagan

“People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.” - Kurt Vonnegut

“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” - Oscar Wilde

“Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.” - P. J. O’Rourke “No two persons ever read the same book.” –Edmund Wilson “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” - Douglas Adams

“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.” - H. P. Lovecraft

“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.” - Oscar Wilde

I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people. - Charles Bukowski “Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason: they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.” - Clarendon “Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.” - Stephen King

Competition PASTICHE: it’s all the rage these days. If it’s not Sebastian Faulks doing a rum job playing P.G Wodehouse (Jeeves and the Wedding Bells) or going incognito as Ian Fleming (Devil May Care), it’s Anthony Horowitz dolling up as Conan Doyle (House of Silk), Sophie Hannah’s impending resurrection of Christie’s Poirot, or (and let’s not get started on this one) the interminable stream of Austen imitations. From online fanfiction to Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, it’s clear that literature is no stranger to fancy dress. That’s why we at the Rant and Rave have decided to hold a contest devoted to the underappreciated art of pastiche.

We’re keeping things simple: rewrite any fairytale in the style of any author and send us the results at tcdrantandrave@ gmail.com If you think you’ve got the grit to deliver unto the world Shakespeare’s Cinderella, Beckett’s Three Little Pigs, George Eliot’s Rapunzel, or maybe E.L. James’ Snow White, then this is the gig for you. The winner will be printed in our next issue and will also win a KINDLE PAPERWHITE. Runners up will be featured on the website. Entries should be no more than 800 words.

‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.’ -Oscar Wilde.