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Sex and Shakespeare will be the subjects of a lecture tonight at the Jayhawk Room.
By Jake Arnold Kansan staff writer
S ex. Oh yeah, Shakespeare and politics, too. Bruce Smith, George-town University professor of English, will lecture at 8 tonight at the Jayhawk Room in the Kansas Union.
The lecture's title; "Shakespeare's Sexual Politics"
Bruce R. Smith
Smith will examine plays, social histories, diaries and legal documents to relate the differences in attitudes between the times of William Shakespeare and the present day.
"Sex is not the same at all times and in all places," Smith said. "It is different in different cultures."
Smith tries to find political and social lessons for the present day from past solutions. In particular, Smith examines homosexuality during the Elizabethan period.
"Controversies and issues seem to be new, but they are not new," he said.
"I don't pull any punches on what I think should be talked about," he said.
And Smith isn't afraid of controversy.
of English.
Smith is the author of Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England. The book discusses homosexuality from the viewpoint of several authors of the time. Smith looks at homosexuality not only from a political and moral perspective but also from a poetic standpoint.
"I think it is the most remarkable book published on the subject," said David Bergeron, KU professor
Smith is being sponsored by KU's department of English. In addition to the free lecture, he will also visit several Shakespeare classes.
Smith said that the class he teaches was studying the same play as one of the undergraduate classes he would visit.
"I am interested to see how their views of the play will compare," he said.
Bergerson, who teaches Shakespearean literature, is a long-time associate of Smith and invited him to speak.
"I think it is an unusual opportunity," Bergeron said. "You don't have many scholars who are experts on Shakespeare come to the University."
Smith said that he is excited about his visit.
"Kansas has a long-established tradition of excellence in Shakespeare studies," he said.
Smith will lecture for about 45 minutes and then have a questionand-answer session. The lecture will be the same one that he gave at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.
Smith is president of the Shakespeare Association of America, an organization of about 1,000 college teachers and scholars in the United States and Canada.
'Bones' funny, but 'Jefferson' miscast
By Dolores Barclay The Associated Press
One of the more inventive — and remarkably funny — movies this season is Hollywood Pictures" "Funny Bones."
It's a difficult film to digest because of its brooding darkness and probably difficult to market because it doesn't have the mass appeal of broad comedy or pander to the adolescent stupidity of "Dumb and Dumber" or the slew of bombs made by "Saturday Night Live" personnel.
Rather, "Funny Bones" relies on physical comedy, on the type of siliness that made vaudeville so popular generations ago and the type of humor that has influenced some of comedy's most profound clowns: Sid Caesar, Milton Berle and Jerry Lewis.
Blackpool is Tommy's salvation, he thinks. And so he holds an open audition for every act — real or phony — in the city, as he searches for the best physical comedy material. The audition plays like the early days of "The Ed Sullivan Show" — you almost expect to see someone hold up a talking fist with bright, red lipstick painted in the crack between the thumb and index finger.
Lewis stars in "Funny Bones" as George Fawkes, a superstar comic whose failure-of-a-son Tommy bombs excruciatingly on stage in Las Vegas and then disappears.
Tommy retreats to Blackpool, England, a rundown coastal resort that once was a mecca for comics.
There's a guy who dances with biscuit tins on his feet, and then there are the Parker Brothers, Bruno and Thomas, a weird duo whose very demeanors bring laughter. They're known as the funniest people Blackpool ever had.
Tommy's life becomes entwined with the Parkers' and with Bruno's ex-wife, Katie, and her talented and troubled son, Jack, who turns out to be Tommy's half-brother.
But there's more to this bittersweet story of betrayal, honor and show biz: George Fawkes stole the brilliant routines of the Parker Brothers to build his own career after he had bedded Bruno's wife and produced Jack.
Peter Chelsom, who directed the acclaimed "Hear My Song," weaves a worthy tapestry of dark humor as he interconnects characters and events. There are lots of surprises and a dazzlingly stunning, amusing and heart-stopping finale.
There also are movies that tell funny
As George tells his son, Tommy: You either have funny bones or you don't; there are people who tell funny and people who are funny.
and movies that are funny. This one is very funny.
Produced by Simon Fields and Peter Chelsom, "Funny Bones" is rated R.
"Jefferson in Paris"
From 1784 to 1789, Thomas Jefferson served as U.S. ambassador to France. Armed with his slaves and Virginia ways, he was an oddity in a country seething with the spirit of liberty and freedom.
Nolte is a man of the 20th century, not an aristocratic statesman of the 18th century. His visage, his speech patterns and his mannerisms are all wrong. He no more fits into the 1700s than Jefferson would in a mosh pit. Appearing vague and lost, he also lacks the intellectual sharpness Jefferson possessed and seems uncomfortable with the material.
An even greater oddity is Nick Nolte, cast as the future president in Merchant-Ivory's opulent but questionable "Jefferson in Paris."
A widower who had vowed on his wife's deathbed never to remarry, Jefferson is swept into the romantic thrall of the glamorous and bored Maria Cosway (Greta Scacchi), whose foppish artist husband, Richard (Simon Callow), shows little affection or lust.
James Ivory, who directed the film from a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, moves things along at a painfully slow pace as he illuminates Jefferson's Parisian experience.
Another thorn in their side is Jefferson's petulant older daughter, Patsy (Gwyneth Paltrow), with whom he has an almost questionable relationship. Patsy wants nothing to tarnish her mother's memory.
Jefferson throws his support behind the Revolution, but has much to learn from those who oppose tyranny. It is slavery — illegal in France, legal in America — that brings his credibility into question. As long as slavery exists, he is told by the French, the American Revolution is not complete.
When Jefferson's younger daughter Polly, arrives from Virginia with her nursemaid-slave Sally Hemings (Thandle Newton), all of his beliefs crash around him.
Jefferson and Sally become lovers, though there's little motive for Sally to take up with him. For his part, Jefferson is homesick, longing for a taste of Virginia; he's also frustrated in his thwarted affair with Maria Cosway.
There is good support all the way around, from Callow, Charlotte de Turckheim as Marie Antoinette, Nancy Marchand as the Abbesse, Seth Gilliam as Sally's brother James, and Paltrow, who as pouting, troubled Patsy easily steals scenes from the confused Nolte.
The only exception is Scacchi, who never really adds an luster to Maria. Ismail Merchant and Ivory have a keen eye for detail and costume and fill their sets with such flourishes. There's even a rather bizarre scene that pays tribute to Mesmer, the German doctor whose hypnotic attractions added a new word to the lexicon
— mesmerize.
But rich detail cannot compensate for weak material and a miscast lead. And for all its pageantry, "Jefferson in Paris," beautifully photographed by Pierre Lhomme, never springs to life.
The Touchstone Pictures release is rated PG-13.
First things first
Last spring, two Canadian prisoners had time added to their sentences for brief escapes. Robert Lavergne got 60 more days behind bars in Kingston, Ontario, because he couldn't resist sneaking out to get a bottle of whiskey, and Donald Snow had 15 days added to his sentence in New Brunswick after he ran out to a convenience store to buy a lottery ticket.
In August, Sanford, Fla., judge Newman Brock picked up hair clippers and went to the local Seminole County Jail for his regular haircut from his longtime hairstylist Rick Thrower, who was serving 45 days for DUI violations. Said Thrower, "[The judge is] a very loyal customer."
the winning lottery number and then return to buy a ticket.
Things you thought didn't happen anymore
Michael E. Marcum, 21, was arrested for theft of six 350-pound power company transformers in Stanberry, Mo., in January. Marcum said he needed the transformers for the time machine he was building. He said he wanted to transform himself into the future a few days, find out
In January in Ludlow, England, town crier Bary McQueen complained to a reporter that he had been shut out of news of the town since 1990, when he began having an affair with Pat Middleton, who is the wife of the mayor.
In January,
Pamela Baker
asked a judge in
Beaufort, S.C., to
excuse her from
Compelling explanation
jury duty in a murder trial because her husband, Baptist pastor Karl Baker, forbids her from speaking in public.
■ Warwick, N.Y., judge Daniel Coleman imposed a light sentence on a man in December for a speeding ticket because the man had soiled his underpants in court to lend credence to his claim that he needed to rush home to deal with his diarrhea. However, Coleman said he feared there was a danger if people learned about the successful defense: "Everybody," said the judge, "will start walking into court with [soiled] drawers."
OOPS!
Recent highway spills: 324,000 eggs from a truck near New Hampton, Iowa, in December; 22,000 kilograms of vegetable oil on Highway 401 in Toronto in November; thousands of gallons of molasses, near Springfield, Mo., in January; and about $1,000 in trade association dues, in Portland, Ore., in December, caused by the treasurer's leaving the cash box on top of his car when he drove off.
Recent surgical errors: the wrong leg amputated, and a wrong knee operated on (different patients) at the same hospital in Tampa, Fla., in February; the wrong ear of a vertigo sufferer operated on in Iowa City, Iowa, in 1991 and the subject of a February 1995 lawsuit; and the wrong breast removed in a mastectomy in Grand Rapids, Mich., in February.
A pilot and his passenger were arrested in December when the pilot, flying a small plane running methamphetamines, got confused and missed his intended nighttime landing at the small airstrip in Turlock, Calif. Instead, he landed at nearby Castle Air Force Base.