Arrogance, thy name is Anne.
Oct. 29th, 2011 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebness
I've been fawning over Ben Goldacre of late. He's the British scientist who forced Gillian McKeith to stop calling herself Dr. as it was false. He's the one who has taken on homeopathy and big pharma and I adore him. He constantly presses the reader -- look at the study, read it properly. Are the people presenting you with 'facts' full of bias?
This fucking woman. She drives me up the wall, and not merely for splintering my dearest fandom, not merely for dragging canon over the coals of crap. She comes out with the most stupid, simplistic shit that I get so angry. There was the time someone asked her why she came out with anti-abortion rhetoric in one of her later novels when she's all for womens' rights and she was all, 'but the facts I stated were true.' There was the idiotic 'the French don't respect freedom the way Americans do' (what?) and now this.
I dislike anti-Stratfordians, and probably not for the reasons you think. It's the inherent class bias -- that's always the thought behind it! A working-class man couldn't possibly have written such imaginative, beautiful, moving things. How could he have ever known these places without travelling? (Because he didn't make any geographic mistakes like canals in Verona, and none of us have ever written about cities we haven't yet visited, have we?) It had to have been a royal figure! It had to have been a rich man, for imagination is the sole domain of the rich and powerful. Obviously, he was some bumpkin picked by De Vere to capitalise on the plays and become a very, very rich, very revered man in his own lifetime. I await Vincent Van Gogh's unmasking as Emperor Franz Josef.
But it's more than that. It's this woman. Look at the arrogance of what she says! She has studied it 'in depth', which as we all know can mean anything from Rice truly doing a great bit of research for 18th-century Lestat or making hideous, ridiculous mistakes about modern British people and our culture. She maintains throughout her Facebook page that she has taken the time to study all this, and dissenters are really stupid, and Kenneth Branagh will totally make a film about how Shakespeare was a fraud and we're all wrong, because studying literature and loving literature, much less studying authorship can never grant us the same authority as being a published fiction writer.
A pox on her!
I read a really interesting article and debate in the Guardian a few days ago where several academics who have studied Shakespeare and the issue of whom he truly was for years argued about this. Here I will demonstrate bias myself (Ben Goldacre is side-eyeing me right now) but the academics convinced me more than ever that he was the author of the plays. As one pointed out, we have less evidence that Marlowe was the author of his own work, yet we don't dispute his authorship really, do we?
But Queen Anne has made her increasingly annoying, pig-headed mind up. IShe has pronounced herself expert, as she always, always does on issues she obviously knows very little about. She has a secret door right into sixteenth-century England and her many dorky fans are following, as if she's some tacky jewellery-clad Prophet. Ugh! How did I ever fanworship this clown?
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Date: 2011-10-29 08:39 pm (UTC)Or perhaps I'm not explaining that right. It's just something that I heard. It's not that Shakespeare plagiarised someone else's story, he just took well known tales and re-worked them. (kinda like Bram Stoker took the legend of vampires, and created Dracula. Still his creation, but he just took inspiration from mythology)
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Date: 2011-10-29 08:42 pm (UTC)I think it's very easy to rework a myth or to twist history (again, a la Macbeth into something else). So what's their argument? That a working-class man couldn't possibly dream up all the world's a stage?
You make a really good point in that his stories are hardly anything new, even for that time. But the genius was in his words and God forbid a normal man ever demonstrate anything like that.
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Date: 2011-10-29 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-29 08:59 pm (UTC)Sometimes I think the elite take those lyrics at face value.
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Date: 2011-10-29 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-29 08:58 pm (UTC)That's exactly my problem. I honestly -- honestly! -- keep trying to read it from their side, but nine times out of ten the crux of it is, 'he couldn't possibly have done it. He was too poor.'
And screw them, because that tells me all I need to know about the people desperate to say he was fake.
If you read the Guardian interview with the idiot producer of that film, you'll be spitting feathers!
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:04 pm (UTC)I had no idea that was what Anonymous was about, either. I'm so out of the loop.
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:12 pm (UTC)It's annoying this stupid film is getting so much attention in the same week as We Need to Talk About Kevin (infinitely more interesting) was released.
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Date: 2011-10-30 11:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-29 09:00 pm (UTC)Also Anne is ridiculous. Not just as a writer but as a person.
We worshipped her when were young and she, at times, at least the times we knew of, mostly made sense. Now she has a forum and an audience so her soapbox is easier for her to access. Gah.
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:08 pm (UTC)Why would a man working with a company of actors from around the country not think to do that?
The more I read about it, the more I think he just was himself.
As for Anne, she's just so ridiculous I cannot. She's absurd. She actually has some really vile opinions and acts like your embarrassing aunt. But unlike the aunt, she has an audience of clowns hanging on her every word.
I need to stop reading her craziness! It's like crack!
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:26 pm (UTC)And exactly. If I want to write about something, I ask people who know about it or are from there or visit the place myself. Even in the distant past, he could have asked traveling people about Verona, say.
Anne doesn't know shit. She reads one thing and decides "YES, that is fact." Like you said about abortions. They don't make a woman's womb weak - she was misinformed and probably read it in a pro-life pamphlet.
I really couldn't take having her in my FB feed because it would raise my blood pressure too much, but I'm sort of glad someone checks her page once in a while so we can find out stuff liek the "Louie" debacle. Did even one person say, "I thought it was Louis?" Geez. Her FB Fans are such suck ups.
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:39 pm (UTC)The abortion thing sickened me. Truly sickened me. That her vile stupidity will be republished and republished for generations to come is horrible.
Do you know that not one person did take her to task about the names? Man, if I had a brother with a troll account on Facebook, I'd totally ask him to post right now-- oh, dear.
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Date: 2011-10-30 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 09:31 pm (UTC)I can't spell. But I refuse to use an editor. What the holy hell is with this woman???
Also Grey might be my hero but of course Anne misses the point
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Date: 2011-10-30 09:42 pm (UTC)(ALL OF US.)
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:03 pm (UTC)Silly old cow. This just makes her look even more senile than usual.
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:09 pm (UTC)I'd love you to meet her in the middle of a supermarket one day and have words.
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:06 pm (UTC)How dare they? That's to say every writer who ever wrote something good or beautiful or truly creative, or even something remotely interesting or beloved, must have been from the monied classes because the 'regular folk' know nothing and have never been anywhere. Ugh, this is why I wanna throw rocks at people.
And Anne Rice, seriously, did she bump her head and forget that she used to be imaginative and cool and creative? She's like some kind of bot now, who says the most inane and ridiculous things out of her mouth.
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:11 pm (UTC)She used to be kind of fun. Now she's just someone who really needs a slap, to be honest.
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-29 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-29 09:22 pm (UTC)The film itself (I heard it discussed on NPR yesterday) has many gaping historic holes in it so how on earth can it be taken seriously when there are actual scholars who really have studied the premise in depth and come to the conclusion that OMG, a commoner could actually have the imagination to write the Works. Go back to writing your cruddy Jesus fic , Mater, and leave studying to those who know what it means.
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:42 pm (UTC)She needs to stop trying to opine on history and Things of Which She Knows Little but proclaiming her view as the Word of God. Sometimes I wonder if it was a Freudian slip when she talked of writing Jesus' autobiography.
As for the film, what a load of pants.
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Date: 2011-10-30 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-29 10:14 pm (UTC)OMG, secret door into the 16th century---that made me LOL because that's just exactly how much authoritative weight her words have. As for the fan-worship---I expect it had more to do with the the fandom and your tender age and less about Mater herself, no? I remember first finding the online fandom and at first thinking she was pretty cool for interacting with fans so much---that is until I realized she did it for the ego-stroking sycophants more than any real desire to associate with the rabble.
(Also - load of pants FTW!)
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Date: 2011-10-30 10:06 am (UTC)I hope so!
I remember back in 2000 I was gushing over Rice to my flatmate (and fellow literature undergraduate) and how accessible she was, with her website and her phone line. She pulled a face. 'Doesn't that sound a bit narcissistic to you?'
Oh, Gemma. You were right on the money.
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Date: 2011-10-29 10:26 pm (UTC)Oh wait, the film is called 'Anonymous'. Okay, I get it now!
Oh. I wish I didn't get it. :(
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Date: 2011-10-30 10:01 am (UTC)Yeah. She's annoying.
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Date: 2011-10-30 07:18 pm (UTC)She's probably not quite famous enough for them anymore though.
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Date: 2011-10-30 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 07:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 10:39 am (UTC)I felt incredibly tempted to argue with her (and it doesn't take much; De Vere's fricking birth/death dates don't even match the times when some of Shakespeare's plays were written; HOW ARE SO MANY SUPPOSEDLY SENSIBLE PEOPLE MISSING THIS HUGELY IMPORTANT FACT?) but I knew that way lies madness, so I just directed her to James Shapiro's "Contested Will" and went away to take deep breaths.
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Date: 2011-10-30 11:39 am (UTC)My favourite bit is her repetition about her wanting Kenneth Branagh - whom she insists is an Oxfordian - to make a film about de Vere because he'll prove it.
1. Being an actor who played Hamlet does not make you an expert.
2. Don't you feel she fetishises British people in a weird way with this stuff?
3. HE'S NOT AN OXFORDIAN:
An authoritative source [for Branagh confirms that he has always believed, and still does, that "the plays of Shakespeare were written by the man from Stratford, of the same name." Mr. Branagh is fascinated by the alternative theories, but he is "a Stratfordian through and through and expects to remain so."
That's the very first result if you Google 'Kenneth Branagh Shakespeare authorship.' So much for Anne's ~intensive research.
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Date: 2011-10-30 02:42 pm (UTC)2. Good point. There's a definite emotional thing where "A Brit I admire and who has strong cultural links to Shakespeare" has sway. It's one of the reasons I find Jacobi's position so frustrating; he's (amongst others) Lear to theatregoers and that sadly does have more pull with some people than simple fact.
3. Excellent. We're a skeptical lot, you know... :P Of course this is partisan nonsense on my part. The difference is, I can see it for what it is. For all I know, Liam Neeson or Stephen Rea or somebody will come out as an Oxfordian and then I'll be able to rail about the stubborn illogic of my countrymen. So we're back to "let's all try to think properly".
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Date: 2011-10-30 03:02 pm (UTC)Agreed on Jacobi. It's insane. Look, playing a character fantastically is brilliant. Well done. But it does not make you a historian, or a Shakespeare scholar. I really enjoyed playing the town crier in our school play. It doesn't make me an expert on campology.
So, so agreed on point 3. You know, I am a French Revolution geek. I can go on and on about it for hours (I have) but I can't even pretend to be anywhere near an expert on what happened, and why, and the far-reaching consequences. I can't even make my mind up about Robespierre! I'm always sceptical of self-proclaimed experts when they're just amateur admirers with an agenda.
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