Here are just some random thoughts on cultural artifacts I've been consuming lately. I guess you can think of this as less like a blog post and more like extended tweets.
Henry IV Part 2: A dear friend of mine gave Isabel and myself a copy of The Age of Kings, a rather large DVD set of a BBC series which featured two-hour versions of the major History plays. While some of the footage and audio doesn't hold up so well (I don't know why they weren't anticipating 37" LCD screens back in 1960), it's a pretty awesome collection. Where else can you find anything like Sean Connery playing Hotspur, I ask you? Anyway, I finally got through 2HIV a few nights ago, and I've come to the conclusion that it may well be Shakespeare's The Phantom Menace. It's completely episodic; there's no single protagonist with which an audience identifies; and the major battle scene turns out to be a complete...well...phantom menace. And, at least from the way he was played in this version, Captain Pistoll might well be Jar Jar Binks. Seriously, though, you could cut just about any scene out of this play, and the only people who would notice would be the Bard Geeks in the room. To make it worse, it's not even like Shakespeare would have had computer graphics to fall back on. No wonder he had to pour on the rhetoric and fight scenes when he got to Henry V.
The Color of Magic: Isabel gave me a copy of the first book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series to read. We were at a faculty dinner and one of my colleagues was shocked that a person of my...er...eclectic tastes hadn't yet indulged. I'm about twenty pages from the conclusion (it's a very short book, but I'm a very slow reader), and I've been enjoying it well enough. I think I would have far more enjoyed this if I had read it in high school. As it is, it feels a bit juvenile...and also a little too frenetic. I think Pratchett introduces about thirty characters in the first fifty pages, and then abruptly drops about 26 of them (and I'm including the Luggage as a character). There's no easing the reader into his complicated (although self-proclaimed inconsistent) universe, and I found it a bit jarring.
Not as jarring, though, as the fact that I can't get the image of Simon Pegg playing Rincewind out of my head. Really, with all of the aforementioned computer graphics at a moviemaker's disposal, someone has to make a film of this book...and they needs must cast Simon Pegg as Rincewind. Apparently, there was already a made for TV movie of this last year, but if you've read the book and know who Simon Pegg is, you know I am right. Admit it.
Ocarina of Time: Well, it's been twelve years, but I've finally gotten my hands on a copy of Ocarina of Time and am poised to beat the game. What I've found most intriguing about finally settling the score with Ganondorf is how quickly my eyes have readjusted to the blocky, polygonal graphics of the N64. I suppose it says something about the quality of a game that it is ultimately the play that sustains its rather than the look. I should perhaps add that the availability of online guides also vastly improves the experience. Some of the sidequests in this game would be pretty much impossible without some kind of hintbook. My assumption is that game designers intentionally build some of these into the game as a means of generating additional profit from magazine sales or to keep buzz floating around the game long after the release (if only to prime an audience for a sequel).
I've also been thinking about what's so compelling about these long narrative video games as compared to, say, a novel. Perhaps it has something to do with the illusion of community established by the use of second person pronouns? Characters in the video game talk to the game's hero, but, since the hero is really just an avatar for ourselves, don't we pretty much always assume they are talking to us? (I know I've alarmed Isabel on multiple occasions by trying to deliver audible replies back to the fictional characters.) Would kids be more apt to read the classics if every time one of the characters addressed the protagonist, the reader encountered a second person pronoun instead? Will that be the next wave of "mash-up" literature? Instead of dropping zombies in Austen, should we instead try to break the forth wall? This actually brings us back to Discworld as one of Pratchett's favorite literary devices is to have the narrator scandalously use imperatives directed at the reader ("Imagine this...See that").
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