Isebrand

The Screwtape Letters - November 2013: C.S. Lewis 115th and 50th anniversaries

Simon Russell Beale is reading C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters in six parts as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4. 

This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of C.S. Lewis's death, and a memorial stone to the author is due to be unveiled in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Book of the Week marks the occasion with a reading of his famous letters from a senior to a junior devil.

This November marks C.S. Lewis 115th and 50th anniversaries, his birth on November 29, 1898 and his death on November 22, 1963.

I first saw Simon Russell Beale in 1993 on stage at the Swan in Stratford-Upon-Avon in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III, directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Skyfall and the stage revival of Cabaret with Alan Cummings). In January 2014 he will play the title role in King Lear at the National Theatre in London, directed again by Sam Mendes. As a 2003 New York Times article put it, "The Greatest Actor Americans Have Hardly Seen." Beale's virtually unknown in the U.S., but he may well be the greatest British stage actor of his generation.

Photo: C.S. Lewis

 

Alfred Russel Wallace, Natural Selection, Charles Darwin, and Theodosius Dobzhansky's famous statement

The Infinite Monkey Cage (BBC Radio 4), July 23rd, 2013's broadcast (available here) dealt with Alfred Russel Wallace.

Brian Cox and Robin Ince discuss the life and works of Alfred Russel Wallace, the lesser known co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection. They are joined on stage by biologists Steve Jones and Aoife McLysaght and comedian Tony Law to ask whether Wallace is the great unsung hero of biology and why it was Darwin who seems to have walked away with all the glory.

Aoife McLysaght remindes listeners of Theodosius Dobzhansky's important summation: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

(Image: Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS)

via www.blogfordarwin.com

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." - Theodosius Dobzhansky.

Nothing. Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Nothing. The "nothing" to which Dobzhansky refers is an enormous and varied reality--from vestigial limbs and vestigal organs in various species to intercontinental species-similarities, from heredity to human experimentation on animals. (Whatever you think of it morally, experimentation on animals wouldn't even serve as a guide to things like pharmaceutical development if evolution wasn't "real," for goodness sake; it wouldn't work any more than would wind tunnels work as a guide to aircraft construction if physics wasn't "real;" it wouldn't work any than would vaccines work if the Germ Theory of Disease wasn't "real.")

Yet, in the United States (and in countries with strong Islamist segments of society) more than 50% of the population doesn't "believe" in evolution, as if it's something that can reasonably be considered either real or unreal, based on whim or opinion, like whether or not you think ghosts are real or astrology is real. It's like not "believing" that oxygen is "real."

The Infinite Monkey Cage (BBC Radio 4), July 23rd, 2013's broadcast (available here) dealt with Alfred Russel Wallace.

Brian Cox and Robin Ince discuss the life and works of Alfred Russel Wallace, the lesser known co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection. They are joined on stage by biologists Steve Jones and Aoife McLysaght and comedian Tony Law to ask whether Wallace is the great unsung hero of biology and why it was Darwin who seems to have walked away with all the glory.

Aoife McLysaght remindes listeners of Theodosius Dobzhansky's important summation: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

(Image: Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS)

You can hear me on BBC Radio 4's "Any Questions?" this week ask my question to the panel.

Hear me ask my question to the panel of BBC Radio 4's Any Questions? this week. It will be broadcast online and on UK radio at 3:00 p.m. EDT (New York), 20:00 in the UK and available as a free podcast for download.* (Also available for free via iTunes.)

This week's panelists:

Sir Harold Evans of The Sunday Times, US News and World Report, The Atlantic Monthly, and the New York Daily News. In 1986 he founded Conde Nast Traveler. His book The American Century (1998) receiving particular acclaim. He is editor-at-large of The Week Magazine.

Former U.S. Rep. Nan Hayworth (NY 19th Congressional district) who may be considering a re-entry into politics. She was defeated in 2012 by Sean Patrick Maloney (who I've met several times over the course of years, as well as his partner Randy who is a fellow Hawkeye).

Former NY Attorney General and NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a contributor for Slate.com as well as a guest on cable news programs such as, recently, Up With Steve Kornacki; (a clip).

U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards (MD 4th Congressional district) who was elected to the House of Representatives in 2008 and sits on the Committee on Science, Space and Technology  and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

I attended a recording on the evening of April 18th, 2013, of one of my favorite radio shows, BBC Radio 4's Any Questions?, the world's longest-running radio panel discussion program, begun in 1948.** The show traveled across the pond to NYC this week to Columbia University's School of Journalism. Usually the show is broadcast live in the UK, and broadcast from a different location each week.

Attendees' questions are submitted ahead of time and selected by BBC staff. Panelists don't know ahead of time what the questions will be. For this taping, my question was one selected. I got to read my question aloud to the panel. For me this was very exciting.

The show has 3 million listeners a week, and it is part of my BBC Radio 4 triumvirate podcast I listen to each weekend--the other two programs being Friday Night Comedy (The News Quiz hosted by Sandi Toksvig and The Now Show with Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt) and In Our Time with host Melvyn Lord Bragg of Wigton.

*It's rebroadcast at 8:10 a.m. EDT on Saturday, 13:10 in the UK, too. Once archieved, it will be here.

**Technically, Gardeners' Question Time was founded a year earlier, in 1947, but it's a niche program really. ;)

PHOTOS, top to bottom: The panel (in the Pulitzer Building's lecture Hall on campus); me with Congresswoman Donna Edwards; me with Jonathan Dimbleby after the recording.

Mel Brooks, 'Unhinged' And Loving It : NPR

On whether he thinks there's ever been a time where he's gone too far

"Honestly, on a few things I think I was in bad taste. Maybe in Blazing Saddles. But I don't mind it. ... The whole movie's in bad taste. But I like bad taste."

NPR's interview with Brooks: www.npr.org

Well, then I guess I have bad taste, too.

Hedley Lamarr: Meeting adjourned. Oh, I am sorry, sir, I didn't mean to overstep my bounds. You say that.
Governor William J. Le Petomane: What?
Hedley Lamarr: "Meeting is adjourned".
Governor William J. Le Petomane: It is?
Hedley Lamarr: No, you say that, Governor.
Governor William J. Le Petomane: What?
Hedley Lamarr: "Meeting is adjourned".
Governor William J. Le Petomane: It is?
Hedley Lamarr: [sighs, then gives the governor a paddleball] Here, sir, play with this.

Image: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Happy Christmas - Wishing you a Higgs with bows on (BBC Radio 4 - The Infinite Monkey Cage, Series 7, Christmas Special)

Brian Cox and Robin Ince get into the Christmas spirit as they look at the science of Christmas behaviour with actor/writer Mark Gatiss, geneticist Steve Jones, psychologist Richard Wiseman and emeritus Dean of Guildford Cathedral Victor Stock.

via www.bbc.co.uk

America's problem with gun ownership. BBC Radio 4 - Letter from America by Alistair Cooke (1993 broadcast)

A 14-minute rebroadcast version of the 1993 gun ownership program from Alistair Cooke's Letter from America BBC series, which ran for 58 years (2,869 installments), the longest-running speech radio show in history. "Does a multiple murder on a Long Island train prove that America has a problem with guns?" This program is available through December 29, 2012.

The problem of US gun ownership, and why the American constitution doesn't actually guarantee a right to bear arms, as examined by broadcaster and journalist Alistair Cooke in 1993.

Paddy O'Connell introduces a shortened archive edition of Letter from America first broadcast 19 years ago on 29 October 1993.

In this edition, Alistair Cooke took the American nation's temperature on gun control in the midst of that early-90s panic, as Congress was about to pass the Brady Act in 1993, after more than a decade of lobbying by Jim Brady, President Reagan's former press secretary, shot with the President in an assassination attempt in 1981.

Alistair Cooke's talks on American life, history and politics - Letter from America - were broadcast weekly on BBC Radio from 1946 -2004. Over 920 archive editions are available to listen or download for free on the Radio 4 website.

Presenter: Alistair Cooke
Introduced by: Paddy O'Connel
Archive producer: Zillah Watson.

via www.bbc.co.uk

Why is Gangnam Style such a hit? And should it be performed at the DMZ?

The music video "Gangnam Style" is a global phenomenon and the most popular upload in the history of YouTube--449,015,599 views at the time of this writing.

BBC Radio 4 asks in a 3-minute segment of "Profile": why is "Gangnam Style" such a hit? 

The short answer, provided in part by Dr. Hae-kyung Um of Liverpool University, is that the video and its creator South Korean rapper Psy are both perfect for the online era. They both have cross-over appeal to various groups and do not resist parody; in fact, they seem to invite it. Several parody videos of "Gangnam Style" appear on YouTube daily. This trend in turn heightens awareness of the original. "Gangnam Style" is a participatory artistic and pop culture phenomenon for an age of transparency, collaboration, and global connectivity through technology.

YouTube can be a delivery vehicle for global success but it doesn't guarantee it. Less remarked upon in the BBC segment is that by reflecting the Western, specifically American, influence that for years has strongly influenced South Korea (1 in 5 Koreans are Christian, one Korean Pentecostal mega-church famously has 1 million members), Psy and "Gangnam Style" are familiar enough to Western viewers to be non-threatening while still being distinctly South Korean enough to be safely and entertainingly exotic.

So, questions remain. Why is this Psy video a breakout when earlier ones are extremely similar? Do American viewers in particular perceive a tip of the cowboy hat from Psy in his rodeo-evoking moves? Is "Gangnam Style" more popular than his previous videos in non-Western countries, too? If yes, then would non-Western popularity be as strong if the video had not also caught on in the US? Who is influencing whom and how much? I presume it's not particularly popular in Sana'a and Mexico City...or is it?

I suspect that to younger Westerners the video raises curiosity about South Korea in general and perhaps K-pop music in particular, as the Summer Olympics in Seoul might have done if they had been in 2012, not 1988. The 2012 Summer Olympic games had unprecedented Internet presence--much to the benefit of Britain's brand and London tourism--including through social media engagement by spectators and athletes, whose average age was 26. Psy is a bit like a one-man South Korean Olympics, a second one for 2012: flashy, pop-oriented, and if not athletic or very young, at least slightly baby-faced and surprisingly agile and fun to watch. BBC Radio 4 even gives some understandably tempered play to optimistic speculation about Psy's ability to thaw North and South Korean tensions. What would be more Olympic than that? Global goodwill through dance. I would not, however, expect a performance at the DMZ anytime soon.

 

Photo: U.S. Army, Installation Management Command, Korea Region, Public Affairs Office (2008) via Wikipedia

Helen at Ephesus, ep 03 of Troy - "The gods are no more to me than a figure of speech."

From the final episode of the three-part 1998 BBC Radio 3 drama,Troy (Jeremy Mortimer, prod./dir., Andrew Rissik, writer) now available for a limited time on BBC Radio 4 Extra, the words of Klytemnestra (Clytemnestra) portrayed by Lindsay Duncan CBE:

Power or the lack of power; there is nothing else....When you live beside a brutal man, you are frightened all the time. The fear never leaves you completely even when you know you're in favor.... Oh, you gods, revenge means that the weak, the innocent, do not suffer for nothing; the wheel goes on turning; the dead rise up against the living; those who commit crimes pay for them at the end, however powerful they think they are.
.....
Sometimes I think it is better not to forgive.... It is easy...to be mastered by rage or lust, to hate without restraint.

The cast also includes the late Academy-award winner Paul Scofield CH CBE, Julian Glover, Michael Sheen OBE, and Geraldine Somerville.

Words of Helen:

I knew that my husband loved me, yet the more he desired me the colder I became. Something inside of us, to which you give the name God, strives to ruin us. It...seems often to possess a force stronger than our own strength. It haunts us with dreams beyond our scope to fulfill them, and engenders in us lusts and longings which, if we enact them, turn our spirits to vain or evil ends. We call this unquietness of soul by many names.... I say that what divides us against ourselves, what speaks to us in our visions and dreams, is only our own mortal nature.... For everything that we do, we bear the responsibility alone.

Image: Clytemnestra from the Battlements of Argos Watches for the Beacon Fires, (1876). Frederic Leighton (1830 - 1896). Oil on canvas. Leighton House Museum and Art Gallery, London. 35.4" x 54.2".

The Death of Achilles, ep 02 of Troy - "A single night has bound my heart in ice."

From the second episode of the three-part 1998 BBC Radio 3 drama, Troy (Jeremy Mortimer, prod./dir., Andrew Rissik, writer) now available for a limited time on BBC Radio 4 Extra, the words of Helen of Troy (portrayed by Geraldine Somerville, later cast as Harry Potter's mother, Lily, in the Harry Potter films),

I dressed for the first time in memory, alone, with no servants. I wore rough sailor's cloth. I remember, when I kissed Paris in the dark his body would not stay still. It moved under my hands. He took me ashore in a boat which let the water in. He sat in a puddle as he rowed, and when I laughed at him, he lept up like a baboon and stopped my mouth with his kisses. I think I grazed an elbow shouting, "Slower! Slower!" And as he came the thunder came, too. God-light arched across the bay. The cliffs shook. The clouds split open. They pelted arrows of water upon our delighted bodies....

We passed three days and nights on the isle of Cranae, sleeping and making love, eating cheese and black bread, drinking only goats' milk and rough local wine.

As the bird flies home to its nest, as the soul returns at last to god, so the spirit in love finds and receives the beloved.

The cast also includes the late Academy-award winner* Paul Scofield CH CBE, Julian Glover, Michael Sheen OBE, Lindsay Duncan CBE, and as Achilles, Toby Stephens, the son of Dame Maggie Smith and Sir Robert Stephens.

Achilles: 

We are wretched creatures, ignorant, selfish, and cruel. My life has gone by and the time has been wretchedly used. I have been ungentle and unloving, and serving myself above all others, I have wasted my best days. 

In wine there is some oblivion, yet it does not last. In sleep there is some rest, yet it is not perfect. In memory there is some peace, yet it is fleeting. In love there is some ecstasy, yet it is changeable and shifting. Forgetfulness is ever denied us, for the imagination does not forget except briefly, but possesses its own inequities until the end of consciousness, which if the gods are kind is death, a sleep secure and senseless--inanimate as the earth. 

After each episode's initial Saturday broadcast it will be available for seven days to listen to on demand using BBC iPlayer.

*Best Actor, won for his portrayal of Sir Thomas More in the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons, for which he also was awarded a BAFTA Award and a Tony Award.

Image: promotional photo of Whatanui Flavell and Roimata Fox as Paris and Helen in the Ngakau Toa Company's Maori production of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressdia (Toroihi raua ko Kahira), which represented New Zealand at The Globe to Globe Festival as part of the Cultural Olympiad in London, April 2012.

Britishisms in American English? Brilliant! | DD Guttenplan | Comment is free

in a recent report by the magnificently monikered Cordelia Hebblethwaite. It seems that more and more British words are entering the American language. Now of course some Americans have always favoured a bit of British to try and raise the tone of their discourse. We call such people "stuffed shirts", though "toffs" is close enough. Indeed the shame of being seen as a linguistic striver is strong enough that despite 17 years in London, I still cringe at the memory of being caught offering to "hold the lift" for my sister last year.

via www.guardian.co.uk

As the Churchill insurance dog would say, "Oooooh, yes!" This may be the only trend I was ever ahead of. Thanks to Iowa PTV's broadcasts of Doctor Who in the 1970s and 1980s, living in London 1993-4, several visits back, Brit friends both Over There and stateside, a Radio 4 habit, and VPN access to a UK/domestic BBC iPlayer, I was "sat" instead of "sitting", whinge instead of complain, "agree" instead of "agreeing to", gingers instead of red-heads, trousers instead of pants, and crikey instead of....instead of I'm-not-sure-what for nearly the last twenty years, albeit not consistently, and mostly in the last nine or ten years.

No, not affectation, just weird imprinting on someone weirdly impressionable. Okay, I confess "trousers" is a bit of an affectation, or at least it's an Isebrand Britishism born not entirely of repeated exposure but helped a bit by me along the way. I think it's in part because "pants" in the UK was also slang for unfashionable, undesirable, and sometimes I'd hear fellow countrymen say pants or I see it in print and for an instant feel like giggling. I admit that this may be a treasonous reaction. But there it is. For me, pants has become a funny word, and I frequently have to actually stop myself from saying trousers when I mean...pants. (Tee-hee.)

The absences are just as odd, I suppose. I don't think I have uttered "blimey" once, though a Brit friend of mine says it often. I've been known to say the occasional "washing-up" though. And once--once--I actually said "ta-ra" instead of goodbye, not only a Britishism but a somewhat regional one. You'll rarely if ever hear a native Londoner say "ta-ra"!

Guttenplan's correct. Especially since the Second World War especially, American English influences British English more than the other way around--though the influence really began with the talkies, I assume. America's greatest weapon: Hollywood. You don't have to look too long online to find Brits complaining about instances of Americanisms creeping into British news broadcast or anachronistic ones in UK television programs set in Britain before the middle of the 20th century.... And disproportionate number of British television programs seem to be set before the middle of the 20th century!

My own early-ish anecdotal evidence that Ben Yagoda of Not One-Off Britishisms might be right was noted in this 2010 Isebrand.com post on "bespoke" and "agreed," though I'm not sure if "bespoke" is purely a Britishism or is also found regionally in American English; I certainly never heard the word while growing up in the Midwest.

A couple of weeks ago, I was with friends in NYC from the UK when one got a "Cheers!"--in an American accent--from someone he'd held the door open for at a Chelsea restaurant. My friend asked, "How'd he know I was British?" My answer: "He didn't." Since then, I've heard a "Cheers!" exit an American mouth instead of "Thank you!" at least once more. And so it goes . . . . linguistic trans-Pond cross-pollination.