Final Scene Research Articles

Listening to First Quartos: The Women of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry V

ABSTRACT The so-called ‘bad’ quarto editions of Shakespeare’s plays have long been treated as superfluous. However, recent debates suggest that these publications are not corrupt but may instead be Shakespeare’s early drafts, opening up a conversation about how to treat the textual disparities between the early quartos and the 1623 folio. This article examines two variant texts in light of this assessment. The early quartos of The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602) and Henry V (1600) offer moments where female characters display an agency that is silenced and controlled in the more canonical texts of the folio, suggesting that, as he revised the plays, Shakespeare moved to restrict women’s behaviour. For example, the titular Merry Wives design and orchestrate the final masque in the quarto text of that play, while they cede artistic control to their husbands in the later folio version. So too, in Henry V, Katherine’s final scene in the quarto gives her the opportunity to speak more and to assert an equality with Henry in a passage unique to that text. Attention to the gender dynamics of revision demonstrates that, to understand the full range of feminist potential within Shakespeare’s canon, scholars must explore his plays’ textual variation.

‘Fairest show’: Dramatic entrapment in Macbeth and Measure for Measure

This article reconsiders metatheatre in Macbeth and Measure for Measure, examining how characters find themselves entrapped in scenarios not of their own making, and how the creators of such scenarios can lose control of them. It examines the plays’ metatheatrical language, with a particular focus on the word ‘show’; argues that Macbeth's cauldron scene and the final scene of Measure for Measure function as these plays’ equivalents of the familiar ‘play-within-the-play’; and tentatively suggests how the two plays’ engagement with dramatic entrapment might resonate with the manipulative control facilitated by twenty-first-century social media platforms.

This Woman’s Memory Work: Futurity, Family and Photography in Pedro Almodóvar’s Madres paralelas (2021)

Pedro Almodóvar’s Madres paralelas (2021) is arguably his most politically engaged work yet, with the protagonist Janis (Penélope Cruz) leading a project to exhume a Civil War mass grave. This essay begins by exploring previous engagement by Almodóvar with memorialization practices, including the short film Cultura contra la impunidad (2010). The analysis of Madres paralelas tackles the privileging of memory work and familial inheritances, with attention to the role of photography and the final scenes at the exhumed graveside. Ultimately, Almodóvar’s film, diegetically and as material object, intervenes in the current ‘memory economy’ as an act of justice.

Marriage, comedy, and the patristic tradition in the first Ptochoprodromic poem

The present paper deals with the first Ptochoprodromic poem's treatment of the early patristic tradition. Its focus is on the conjugal life of the Ptochoprodromic couple, whose interaction is compared to the precepts of the Byzantine Fathers on the ideal Christian marital life. Evidently, the poet parodies the tradition to which the said precepts belong, offering a comic image of the ideal Christian couple in which gender roles have been reversed. Moreover, the final scene of the poem, where the husband disguises himself, is linked to the hagiographical tradition of cross-dressing women, as well as of male saints in disguise.

(анти)колоніальні стратегії художнього мислення Євгена гребінки В поемІ «богдан»

Evhen Hrebinka’s oeuvre, particularly his Russian-language works and the poem “Bohdan” (1843), have not been studied well. The theme of this historical poem is Bohdan Khmelnytskyi’s decision to get political protection from the Tsardom of Muscovy. (Anti-)colonial moods of art implementation of this theme can be rethought with the help of a postcolonial approach. It is important to recognize the influence of psychical and mental backgrounds in the author’s consciousness and literary aesthetics onto the juxtaposition of anti-colonial and colonial art thinking in the 19th century Ukrainian literature in general, and Hrebinka’s works in particular. Purpose of the article. The article seeks to study (anti-)colonial poetics in Evhen Hrebinka’s poem “Bohdan” through the view of the author’s consciousness as well as through Romanticism art and aesthetical paradigm in intertextual relations with Ukrainian romantic historical literature. The article employs techniques of postcolonial deconstruction (the methodology is based on Russian imperialism studies by E. Tompson, M. Shkandrii, O. Yurchuk grounded in the West postcolonialism theory), intertextological and other literary analysis methods. Evhen Hrebinka’s poem “Bohdan” as well as his other Russian-language works have not been appropriately read because of its ideological points. In the view of postcolonialism, the balancing between imperial and Ukrainophilical narratives is the symptom of deformation of mental (art) consciousness under cultural and political imperial pressing, which is shown in the oeuvre of Hrebinka and his contemporaries. On the one hand, the appreciation of the past in the works of Ukrainian writers, particularly Hrebinka, was shaped by Russian historiographical doctrine which negotiated the state-creating capacity of Cossack Hetmanate leaders and spread fakes about “one-blood nations”, “happy life under the reign of Tsar of Muscovy”, and on the other hand, their reception of the Cossack history was steered by romantic anti-colonial resentment. This ambiguity determines the poetics of the poem “Bohdan” by Evhen Hrebinka. In the poem, on the discursive level of writing both pro-imperial and pro-national creative intentions are evident. Their counterposition is most prominent in the collision of the historical (Chapters 1-9) and mythopoetic (the Prologue) plans of the poem. In the historical plot (Chapters 1-9), the neocolonial idea of agreement with Moscow`s imperial authority to protect the Ukrainian lands from numerous enemies is dissonant with the anti-colonial narrative of the oppressed nation, in the Prologue. The discursive “non-alignment” of these plans is reflected in the compositionally unjustified retardation of the prologue (the scene of the mermaids` game), in the multiplicity of characters/images embodying sense of national resentment – the girl, Nalyvayko, Pavlyuk, Ostryanitsa, the oak tree, the Voice from under the stone, and the Spirit of Midnight. In the Prologue of Hrebinka’s poem “Bohdan”, the pathos of anti-colonial resentment prevails while it is re-extrapolated from Muscovy to Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for the sake of compromise. In this part of the poem, mythological features of poetics are determined by a mental unconscious desire for vengeance cultivated by Ukrainian (Pre)romanticism. The Prologue can be seen as a separate mini-poem about anti-colonial resentment, while in the main part of the poem, the search for a compromise between the national and imperial perspectives is pursued. In the main part of the poem, the elements of colonial poetics are present: 1) in the speeches of hetman Khmelnitskyi, who is ready to surrender his regalia to the Moscow tsar, 2) in the narrative emphasis on the cultural and religious closeness of Ukrainians and Muscovites, and 3) in the readiness of the community to submit to the (potential) imperial center as well as 4) in the ideological assertion of Moscow’s historically determined rule over Ukraine as a blessing for it. However, the final scene of the people`s decision to submit to the Moscow tsar can be interpreted both as a definitive victory of the pro-imperial colonial worldview and as a reproach to Moscow for the betrayed “brotherhood”, which is voiced by the author from a distance of time, similar to the corresponding scenes in Cossack chronicles and the literary works of Ukrainian Romanticism. In the historical plot of the poem, it has been recognized the fluctuation between anticolonial resentment redirected on the Ukrainian-Polish fighting and actualized as the reason for the rebellion led by Khmelnytskyi, and glorification of the Tsardom of Muscovy as the only ally and defender (in consonant with imperial doctrine and the XVIII century Ukrainian Chronicles based on it). The postcolonial deconstruction of the poem “Bogdan” by E. Hrebinka highlights the problem of balancing the artistic consciousness of the Romantic era between anti-colonial and colonial poetic coordinates. The intertextual juxtaposition of the poem with significant works of the time it was written as well as texts relevant to its author, demonstrates the typicality of the situation of ideological “duality” and reveals the extensive influence of imperial narratives and colonial stagnation on the Ukrainian literary process of that epoch. In Evhen Hrebinka’s poem “Bohdan”, the balancing between anti-colonial and colonial poetic strategies is driven by the authors’ (split) consciousness, the influences of romanticism cultural paradigm and Russian imperial doctrine as well. These multi-directional influences on writing are being deconstructed in the view of postcolonial studies. This approach can be helpful in understanding the threat of imperial propaganda framework in national cultural and literary process in the past. It is promising to further apply postcolonial methodology to texts from both the 18th and 19th centuries in order to gain a deeper knowledge of the specificity of the evolution of national self-consciousness and its reflection in literature.

Roman comedy and the final dance

Dance pervaded Roman theater, and in Plautus’ Persa, Pseudolus, and Stichus characters refer explicitly to their own dancing very near the end of the play. Of the remaining twenty-three extant plays of Plautus and Terence, twenty include scenes of lively motion performed in accompanied meters either in their final scenes or just before, or at the moment of the play’s climactic crisis or its resolution. These scenes of lively motion near the ends of plays often share metrical features with the scenes of explicit dance, and some plays may include metatheatrical allusions to a final dance. It therefore seems very likely that Roman comic playwrights almost always made a point of including an exuberant dance at a significant moment at or near the ends of their plays.

The Transformative Magic of Education in Walt Disney’s <em>The Sword in the Stone</em>

Introduction The Disney brand has become synonymous with magic through its numerous depictions of spells, curses, prophecies, and pixie dust. Thus, it is ironic that in 2023, the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Studio’s founding (“Disney History”), the final film released during Walt Disney’s life, The Sword in the Stone (celebrating its 60th anniversary) remains stuck in obscurity (Aronstein 129) despite being steeped in magic and wizardry. The Sword in the Stone is regarded as “one of the most obscure [films] in the Disney animated canon” (Booker 38). Although it performed moderately well during its debut in 1963, its 1983 re-release and home video sales failed to renew public interest. To date, The Sword in the Stone has no games, comic series, or even Disneyland merchandise (Aronstein 129). The film is hardly a technical marvel; its sketchy animation style and blue-slate backgrounds create a dingy, unfinished look (Beck 272), while its simplistic storyline and anachronistic humour have been criticised for being ill-matched with its Arthurian subject matter (Gossedge 115). Despite these flaws, The Sword in the Stone offers the studio’s most fully rendered representation of Disney magic as benevolent forces sourced in learning and discipline that enable good-hearted protagonists to prepare for future leadership roles. By approaching the film as a didactic text separate from its Arthurian origins, I will demonstrate how The Sword in the Stone defines magic, not by nebulous spells or hexes, but by its facilitation of societal advancement and transformative powers via the educated mind. Young Arthur’s Humble Beginnings Based loosely on T.H. White’s 1938 novel of the same name (Valle 224), The Sword in the Stone takes place in medieval Europe, with most of its action occurring in a rotting castle and surrounding wolf-infested forests. In this threatening world, magic takes many forms, from powerful acts of “sorcery” to comical displays of “Latin business”. The first allusion to magic occurs during the film’s opening song, which establishes its setting (“when England was young”) and primary conflict (“the good king had died, and no one could decide who was rightful heir”). Without a ruler, England will be destroyed by civil war unless miraculous forces intervene on its behalf. This ‘miracle’ is the eponymous sword in the stone that the rightful ruler of England will free. The sword is destined for King Arthur, but as he is only an orphaned child living in obscurity at the film’s beginning, no one manages to retrieve the sword in his stead, and so the ‘miracle’ seemingly fails. The film’s off-screen narrator describes this leaderless period as “a dark age … where the strong preyed upon the weak”. As a force that trumps brute strength, magic is prized by those who can wield it, particularly the wizard Merlin. Magic is regarded with suspicion by the majority who cannot practice it (Valle 234), though they still recognise its legitimacy. Even Arthur’s practical stepfather, Sir Ector, begs Merlin not to practice any “black magic” on his family after Merlin creates an indoor “wizard blizzard” to prove his seriousness in tutoring Arthur. Merlin is a far cry from the mysterious soothsayer of Arthurian legend. He has been Disneyfied into a caricature of the famed wizard, appearing more like an eccentric academic than an all-seeing mystic (Beck 272). Susan Aronstein describes him as “the reification of Disney’s post-World War II rebranding of itself as a leader in education in the wake of a postwar shift in American child rearing” (130)—a playful pedagogue who makes learning fun for Arthur and audiences. After meeting Arthur in the woods near his home, Merlin becomes determined to rectify the boy’s educational deficiencies. It is not yet clear whether Merlin knows who Arthur is or will become; Merlin merely repeats to his owl companion, Archimedes, that the boy needs an education—specifically, a modern education. In addition to presenting Arthur with evidence of his travels to the future, such as helicopter models, Merlin rattles off a litany of subjects common to twentieth-century American curricula (English, science, mathematics) but hardly the sort of fare pages of Arthur’s status would study in fifth-century England. Because Arthur’s royal lineage is unknown to him, he aspires to be a squire for his soon-to-be-knighted stepbrother and so must learn the rules of jousting and horsemanship when not otherwise preoccupied with page duties. These include scrubbing pots and pans, cleaning floors, and fetching anything his stepfather requests. While Arthur is not resistant to Merlin’s attempts to teach him, he struggles to balance Merlin’s demands on his time with Sir Ector’s (Pinsky 85). Young Arthur’s gangly stature conveys how stretched the boy is between his indentured servitude to Ector and Merlin’s insistence upon his liberation through education. Arthur is constantly in motion, scurrying from one task to the next to please all parties involved and often failing to do so. Each time Merlin’s instruction causes the boy to miss Sir Ector’s call, Arthur is punished with additional duties (Holcomb et al.). Merlin’s Instructive Magic Merlin uses magic to bridge the gap between Arthur’s responsibilities to his present and his future. The word “magic” is spoken fifteen times in the film, six by Merlin himself. The wizard first utters the word after packing his entire house (furniture and all) into a carpet bag. Arthur is impressed, but Merlin warns him that magic is no panacea: “don’t you get any foolish ideas that magic will solve all your problems”. Even Merlin struggles to convince Sir Ector to let him tutor Arthur and to prevent predatory animals from killing the boy during their adventures together. Magic has limits. It cannot penetrate the minds of humans nor quell the instincts of wild animals. Its impact seems restricted to the physical world. Merlin primarily uses magic for physical transformation; his lessons centre on changing Arthur into different animals to enable the future king to experience life from others’ perspectives. Merlin turns Arthur into a fish, a squirrel, and a bird, with each animal’s situation representing increasingly complex problems that Arthur must overcome. Each lesson also corresponds with one or more levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: (1) safety and survival, (2) love and belonging, and (3) self-esteem and self-actualisation (Lester 15). As a perch swimming around the castle moat, Arthur learns to use his intellect to evade a toothy pike that nearly eats him alive. As a squirrel, Arthur observes the heartbreak of unrequited love, foreshadowing his complicated love triangle with Guinevere and Lancelot (Grellner 125). In avian form, Arthur experiences a much-needed boost in his self-worth after Sir Ector strips him of his squire-in-training status. In flight, Arthur seems most in his element. After struggling with the logistics of swimming as a fish and navigating trees as a squirrel, Arthur soars over the countryside, even showing off his acrobatics to Archimedes flying alongside him. Although Arthur relishes these experiences, he does not seem to grasp their broader implications. He describes his first magical lesson as “so much fun” (despite having nearly died) and pauses only momentarily at the end of his second lesson to reflect on the emotional damage he causes a heartbroken female squirrel who falls madly in love with him. Still, Arthur faces mortal danger with each lesson, so one could argue that by transforming the young boy into different animals, Merlin is honing Arthur’s problem-solving skills (Holcomb et al.). Madam Mim’s Destructive Magic When Arthur is turned into a bird, his third lesson takes an unexpected turn. After narrowly escaping a hawk, Arthur flies into the forest and falls down the chimney of a rival magician named Mad Madam Mim. After introducing herself, Mim insists to Arthur that she has far more magic “in one little finger” than Merlin possesses in his entire repertoire. She displays her powers by killing plants, changing sizes, and making herself monstrous or lovely according to her whims. Mim’s demonstrations suggest a breezy familiarity with magic that Merlin lacks. Whereas Merlin sometimes forgets the “Latin business” needed to invoke spells, Mim effortlessly transitions from one transformation to another without any spell use. The source of her power soon becomes apparent. “Black sorcery is my dish of tea”, she croons to Arthur. Compared to Merlin’s Latin-based magic, Mim’s “black sorcery” is easier to master and well-suited to her undisciplined lifestyle. Mim’s cottage is filthy and in disrepair, yet she is playing solitaire (and cheating) when Arthur stumbles into her fireplace. This anachronism (since playing cards would not be introduced to Europeans until the fourteenth century; DeBold) characterises, through visual shorthand, Mim’s idle hands as the Devil’s workshop; she also possesses a modern dartboard that she throws Arthur against. Unlike Merlin’s domicile, Mim’s cottage contains no books, scientific instruments, or other props of study, indicating that there is no deeper understanding behind her magic. As Latin is the root language of science and law, it seems fitting that Latin is not part of Mim’s repertoire. She simply points a finger at an unfortunate subject, and it bends to her will—or dies. Efficient though Mim’s magic may be, its power is fleeting. Mim briefly changes herself into a beautiful young woman. But she concedes that her magic is “only skin deep” and turns herself back into “an ugly old creep”. Evidently, her magic’s potency does not last long, nor is it capable of improving her situation, as she continues living in her broken-down cottage as a bored, friendless hermit. Her black magic may be easy to master but cannot impart meaningful change. And so, while Merlin can use his magic to improve Arthur’s life, Mim’s magic can only serve the status quo described at the film’s beginning: the strong preying upon the weak. Although Mim lives outside the feudal social hierarchy, she uses her magic to terrorise any unfortunate creatures who wander into her clutches, including Arthur. When Arthur (still in bird form) states that he prefers the benevolence and usefulness of Merlin’s magic, an infuriated Mim transforms herself into a hungry cat and chases Arthur around the cottage until Merlin arrives to save the boy. Merlin then challenges Mim to a wizard’s duel, during which he and Mim attack each other in animal forms ranging from foxes and caterpillars to tigers, goats, and elephants. Each time Mim transforms, she does so seamlessly, requiring no momentary pause to recall a spell, unlike Merlin, who stumbles across the Latin phrases necessary to change himself into something faster or bigger. But after Merlin transforms into a walrus and squashes a clucking chicken Mim, the momentum shifts in his favour. Her magic becomes tinged with rage that causes her to make mistakes, including biting herself as a snake and ramming herself into a tree in rhinoceros form. Merlin’s disciplined playing style is nearly errorless. Although he becomes frightened when Mim transforms into a fire-breathing dragon, Merlin continues to play sensibly and courageously. His final winning move is to transform himself into a measle-like germ that incapacitates Mim with violent sneezing and cold flashes (Perciaccante and Coralli 1171). Arthur is astonished by the brilliant manoeuvring of his mentor, who manages to win the duel fairly “by dint of his knowledge and study” (Pinsky 86). After stating the lesson’s summative point for Merlin—“knowledge and wisdom is the real power”—Arthur vows to redouble his efforts to complete his education. Education: The Film’s Real Magic The lesson for viewers is simple enough: an education has a magical impact on one’s life. Put more succinctly, education is magic. Merlin defeats Mim because of his greater knowledge and cleverer use of spells. Arthur will overcome his low social status and ascend to the throne by becoming literate and sharpening his intellect. But as with Merlin’s acquisition of magical knowledge through intense study, Arthur’s royal ascension must be earned. He must learn the literal ABCs of language acquisition to gain others’ shared knowledge, as illustrated by a scene in which Archimedes painstakingly teaches Arthur how to write the alphabet in preparation for reading an enormous stack of books. Merlin cannot magically impart such knowledge to the future king; Arthur must learn it through sustained effort. He also must learn to make informed decisions rather than respond to panic or anger as Mim does during her duel with Merlin. Herein lies the distinction between Mim’s and Merlin’s magic: transformative impact. Mim’s black magic has locked her into her chosen fate. By using her powers to amuse herself or cause others harm, Mim perpetuates her outcast status as the stereotypical witch to be feared (Valle 234). While her cottage contains anachronistic elements such as playing cards (suggesting that she, like Merlin, has time-travelled), it contains no evidence of the modern advances that Merlin shares with Arthur, like aeroplane models, nor anything that might improve their feudal society. Merlin’s magic, by contrast, facilitates immediate changes to Arthur’s world and offers the promise of technological advancements in the centuries to come. To reduce the boy’s workload, for instance, Merlin magically conjures up a factory-style assembly line of brushes, tubs, and mops to wash dishes and scrub kitchen floors. Merlin also shares his knowledge of humankind’s future achievements with Arthur to advance his education, providing him with models, maps, globes, and hundreds of books. To become a proper king, Arthur must learn how to use such information to others’ advantage, not just his own. As Caroline Buts and Jose Luis Buendia Sierra observe of magic’s paradox, “using the wand without knowing properly the rules may sometimes lead to catastrophic situations” (509). This point is reaffirmed in the film’s final sequence, which takes place in London on New Year’s Day at a jousting tournament, the winner of which will be crowned king of England. Arthur, now a squire to his recently knighted stepbrother, forgets to bring his stepbrother’s sword to the tournament grounds. He attempts to replace the missing weapon with the sword in the stone when he spots the aging relic in a nearby churchyard. As Arthur pulls out the sword, angelic choral music swells, signalling that the rightful ruler of England has fulfilled the prophecy. After some scepticism from the assembled masses, Sir Ector and the other knights and spectators bow to the befuddled twelve-year-old. The film’s final scene shows a panic-stricken Arthur conceding that he does not know how to rule England and crying out for Merlin. When the wizard blows in from his most recent trip to the twentieth century, he confirms that he has known all along who Arthur is and assures the boy that he will become a great king. Arthur seems ready to put in the work, recognising that his knowledge and wisdom will improve the lives of England’s inhabitants. Conclusion Magic is thus portrayed as an intervening force that either facilitates or stymies societal progress. Good magic ensures that intelligent, educated individuals such as Arthur become great leaders, while those who would attain positions of power through brute force are thwarted from doing so. At the film’s conclusion, Arthur has not been fully transformed into a great leader because his education is far from finished; he has only learned enough to realise that he knows too little to rule effectively. Yet, from the Socratic perspective, such self-awareness is the germination for attaining true wisdom (Tarrant 263). Arthur also already knows that he will not be able to learn how to rule well through trickery or shortcuts, even with a powerful magician by his side. But the film’s closing scene reiterates this point with Merlin promising Arthur that he will succeed. “Why, they might even make a motion picture about you!” he exclaims in a clever fourth-wall joke (Gellner 120). The Sword in the Stone’s mere existence proves that Arthur will acquire the knowledge and wisdom necessary to become a truly great monarch. The fledgling pupil will live long and rule well, not because of pixie dust or magic spells, but because of his willingness to learn and to be transformed by his education into a wise and fair ruler.

The Parable of the People's Faith and the Motive of the Crusade Fraternization in F.M. Dostoevsky's Novel "The Idiot".

The author studied the episode of fraternization by Myshkin and Rogozhin in several aspects: 1) as a specific literary transformation of folk’s legends about fraternization with Christ 2) both as the central episode of the novel’s plot and a reference to its final scene 3) ideologically as a spiritual unit between the protagonists and the Russian folk 4) as a symbolic description of internal contradictions of the Russian national character. The episode is closely connected with the preceding talk about belief in God, in whose course Myshkin refusing to directly answer if he believed in God, tells about his meetings with “common people” and arrives at a conclusion about the chaotic and enigmatic depths of the folk’s consciousness. This was the only discourse about religious belief in the whole Dostoevsky’s Pentateuch preceding “the Brothers Karamazov” which makes Myshkin conclude that religious belief can be obtained from Russian folk as a bearer of religious mission, notwithstanding the dark abyss in his soul. The conclusions based on the analysis lets us rethink and reconstruct Myshkin’s ideological evolution in the whole novel. The article traces Dostoevsky’s reliance on folk legends about fraternization with Christ. It is a pioneering research as it points to parallels with the novel’s final in terms of symbolic gestures, paradoxically completing the rite of exchanging crosses in the second chapter of the novel. Myshkin’s thoughts are proved in the next episode when Rogozhin attempts to kill Myshkin – which would have seemed impossible after the characters exchanged their crosses. Thus the imminent catastrophe outlined in the episode dooms the novel’s final, yet not in terms of religious belief and the author’s dependence on Russian folk.

Monstrous Masculinities: Characters' Reactions to Abjection Point to Conflicted Truths in Historical Memory and Gender in Insensibles (2012)

Abstract: Critics read the children with congenital insensitivity in Juan Carlos Medina's Insensibles (2012) as an allegory for Spaniards born into democracy. Just as the film's children cannot feel physical pain, later generations cannot comprehend the trauma of living through the civil war and/or ensuing dictatorship. This article expands this interpretation to note how the postmemory thriller's use of traditional gender markers and abjection offers further insight into the film's disputed ending. Feminine-presenting characters react to abjection (confrontations of the non-self) in ways that exemplify Matt Hills's pleasures of horror and reflect how Spain perpetually grapples with its fascist legacy. These characters react to abject's pain and violence with simultaneous attraction and repulsion, much like Spain's morbid fascination with reexamining its past. In contrast, masculine-presenting characters' disengagement speaks to politically conservative efforts to stymie historical memory campaigns. Protagonist David's "feminization" appears to support these efforts to recover memory. However, the final scene erases all affiliations between gender, abjection, and memory in a timeless, spaceless void, containing David's symbolic confrontation of the past to the hypothetical.

"It Is Enough": St. Ogg and Caring Through the Gap

ABSTRACT: This essay argues that the understudied micronarrative of St. Ogg in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss serves as a hermeneutic key to the significance of the novel's affectively perplexing conclusion. In this way, it also offers a productive, if difficult, model for ethical action in the world beyond the text. Integrating Talia Schaffer's insights on the ethics of care with narratological analysis and personal reflection, I show that care—as an action, not an emotion—can both catalyze and result from the narratively informed recognition of the gaps in one's knowledge about the lives of others. In the tale of Ogg's beatification—a passage regularly overlooked by critics of the novel—he aids a stranger precisely because he recognizes that he does not understand the reason for the needs she expresses. "It is enough that thy heart needs it," Ogg declares, and he is divinely rewarded when he accepts her unknowability and provides the material care the stranger requests. In this process, which I call "caring through the gap," Ogg's narratively informed awareness of his lack of knowledge stimulates, rather than stymies, his care-action. Caring through the gap is further developed as a flexible, intersubjective narrative process in the wrenching final scene between protagonists Maggie and Tom Tulliver. By refusing an affectively satisfying conclusion, Eliot's novel enacts the realist truth that giving and receiving care is ethically meaningful, even—perhaps especially—when resolution remains elusive. This dynamic also illuminates how the adaptable process of caring through the gap becomes urgently relevant in today's divided social worlds.

Analysis of the fusion development of traditional culture concept and interior art design based on 3D scene analysis

Abstract In this paper, by collecting a large number of 3D scenes with traditional cultural styles, after pre-processing, the style analysis task of 3D scenes is realized through two stages of model style element discovery and scene style pattern mining. In the style pattern mining stage, the maximum frequent pattern mining algorithm is used to get the style pattern of the final scene, and the part is visualized. To reduce the user’s selection time, a 3D interior layout recommendation system based on style rule mining is designed using collaborative filtering. Based on the previous work on scene style pattern mining, the style association rules are further mined, and the user is provided with candidate layouts and furniture dynamically and in real-time by introducing user interaction. Comparing the text-improved recommendation algorithm with the traditional recommendation algorithm, the accuracy rate of the traditional algorithm starts to saturate to 65% after TopN>20, while the algorithm in this paper is higher than 80%. In the analysis of traditional cultural contexts of interior art, in terms of the aesthetic acquisition, the highest proportion of aesthetic association is 63.7%. In terms of emotional expression, the proportion of symbolization of emotion is 73.1%. In terms of object comparison, the highest proportion of plurality and flexibility of combinations was 57.5%. Therefore, this paper provides good research ideas for how to better integrate traditional culture into interior design.

Rewriting the Indian other

Abstract This article reexamines the colonial representation of Indians in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Story of Muhammad Din” through a postcolonial resistant translation from English to Arabic. Set in India, Kipling’s short story depicts the buried Anglo-Indian conflict between the world perspectives of an adult Englishman and an Indian child. To this Indian child, Muhammad Din, existence is situated at the crossroads of an intense personal and national struggle for power, freedom, and independence. The dominant presence of the colonial law, which is embodied in the English doctor’s presumed authority and strict medical discourse in Kipling’s narrative, fashions a negative and inferior representation of Muhammad Din and his father Imam. Moreover, the impersonal style of narration, which is noted in the final scene of Muhammad’s death, enhances a colonial desire of the English to accentuate a rigorous sense of Englishness and national superiority that cannot be compromised. By offering a postcolonial translation of Kipling’s story in Arabic, however, Arab readers re-conceptualize or re-imagine othered Indians – here Muhammad Din – as central post-colonial agents who also function as vital sources of artistic or creative power that is necessary to deflate colonial authoritative agency in Kipling’s colonial text.

On land, memory, and masculinity: unearthing silences around myths of Gallipoli in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Ahlat Ağacı (The Wild Pear Tree)

AbstractThis article offers a critical reading of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Ahlat Ağacı (The Wild Pear Tree) through an exploration and critique of the mythmaking and monumentalization surrounding the Gallipoli Battle and the multiple ways in which Ceylan’s film unsettles the foundational myths of the last century in Turkey. Ceylan’s scenes and characters are constructed in such a way that the male characters and particularly Sinan (the main character) refuse to succumb to hegemonic codes of masculinity. Through this cinematic refusal by an anti-hero (Sinan), the film addresses the crisis of hegemonic masculinities in their interconnectedness to militarism, nationalism, capitalism, and heteronormativity. Through Sinan’s quest for self-realization, the film signals not only the impotence and vanity of nationalist masculinities but also the caesuras and instabilities in national myths. As the last film of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s new Land of Ghosts trilogy, which started with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and Winter Sleep, Ahlat Ağacı seems to close the cycle with a final scene that bespeaks the possibility of unearthing lost others of national mythmaking, bringing fertility and hope to the lands in which collective amnesia reigns supreme.

The influence of the Noh play Tamura on Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood

This paper analyses the impact of the traditional Japanese Noh play Tamura on Akira Kurosawa's film adaptation of Macbeth, Throne of Blood. It examines the presence of Noh elements in the banquet scene, where a solo dance from Tamura is performed, and explores the connection between Tamura's conclusion and the film's final scene, in which the protagonist Washizu is bombarded with arrows. By identifying the banquet scene's dancer with the rebel leader and examining its implications, this study provides a nuanced analysis of the film's ending.

Good

On 28 October 2022, I attended a production of Good by C. P. Taylor at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End. The COVID-19 pandemic had delayed the now revived production. Although the theater does not limit itself to productions that resonate with Pinter’s work, I had Pinter in mind as I entered the theater. Having read the play beforehand, I was aware of the Jewish heritage that both playwrights shared. Taylor, born one year before Pinter in 1929, was brought up in a working-class area near Glasgow and was influenced by his Jewish culture much as Pinter was in Hackney, in London’s East End. In his biography, Harold Pinter, Michael Billington comments that it was, paradoxically, after the Germans were defeated in the Second World War that Pinter first encountered antisemitism and experienced ugly confrontations with fascist gangs (17, 18).It is the antisemitism at the heart of Taylor’s play that offers a chilling portrait of Nazi ideology seducing a well-intentioned man during the early years of Hitler’s Third Reich. Liberally minded John Halder is a literature professor at a Frankfurt University. He is burdened with a wife, Helen, who suffers from pathological depression, three children, and a blind mother with advanced dementia. Among his companions are his best friend, Maurice, a Jewish psychiatrist who is rightly worried about the antisemitism exhibited by the Nazi government, and his mistress, Anne, a young student at the university who supplies the loving support his wife is unable to provide. He meets a variety of minor personages during the play, including Adolf Eichmann, whose presence recalls Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem in which she uses the phrase “the banality of evil” when assessing Eichmann’s criminality. It is also distressingly apt to describe Halder’s slide into Nazism.The word “Good” as it applies to the play’s title and subject matter begs for clarification. Is it a matter of being good, but not good enough, or is it that evil is what happens when good people remain silent? Or when one thinks only of what is good for oneself? David Tennant’s performance in the pivotal role of Halder conveys the complexity involved. His handling of Halder’s mood changes effectively portrays the internal conflicts and contradictions inherent in the character that defy any firm conclusion as to his “goodness.” He is often affable but at times brooding, guilt ridden at his lack of true commitment to others, but at times delightfully, if incongruously, charming when embracing a joyous moment, and all the while his Scottish accent disarmingly exudes sincerity. While never pretending total innocence, and at times confessing to self-interest as his prime motivation, he makes us painfully aware that his failings may well be our own.For this production, Vicki Mortimer designed a minimalist set: a simple walled-in section of the stage with two benches arranged in a loose V formation, appropriately suggesting a prison-like enclosure and the unrelenting entrapment of Halder in the Nazi net. Dominic Cooke’s decision to have actors Elliot Levey and Sharon Small play all the characters that cross Halder’s path complemented the set’s economical construction. Notably, the last major London revival of the play at the Donmar theater in 1999 featured a cast of ten. Both Levey and Small remained on stage the whole time, indicating change in character and place with body language and variations in vocal pitch, inflection, and intonation. No additional props or costumes were introduced to help these transitions. Initially, this pared-down casting was confusing, and I found myself having to concentrate to follow the plot. However, focusing on the dialog had its own rewards, and the skill Levey and Small demonstrated enacting these sometimes very fast character changes quickly enabled me to keep it all straight. In fact, the skill they demonstrated added to the production’s performative excellence. I particularly appreciated Small’s outstanding representations of both Halder’s wife and mother. Besieged in turn by each, Halder must cope with his mother’s incontinence and blindness and his wife’s inability to handle even the simplest of household chores. With consummate skill, Small, playing both roles, shifted effortlessly between them and provided a welcome comic relief.Maurice’s commentary on his day-to-day life as a Jew in Nazi Frankfurt alternates between a fearful paranoia and a darkly comic distaste for his fellow Jews. All his friends are gentiles or Nazis, he confesses. When buying Jewish cheesecake at Epstein’s, spending a whole thirty-five marks at one go, the salesperson couldn’t even wish him a “good afternoon.” He caustically adds, “There’s something seriously wrong with the Jews. I can see Hitler’s point!” (47). The audience tittered. I recalled that Pinter’s comedy also entertains with the same incongruity and providing a similar relief from tension.In addition to the comic elements, the play’s musical score contributes to its success. As indicated in the script, a medley of orchestral pieces, dance bands, and popular songs play in Halder’s head as he responds to events. Arranged by Will Stuart, the music accompanies Halder’s expression of his innermost thoughts, signifying his ability to detach from reality and turn any inconvenience into fantasy. Some of the music is lightheartedly whimsical, such as Marlene Dietrich’s “Falling in Love,” which is played while Halder guiltily yields to Anne’s advances. More disturbingly inappropriate are the strains of “Carolina in the Morning” that punctuate Halder’s conversation about the correct way to euthanize the mentally and physically handicapped. The end of act 1 sees Halder enthusiastically joining the Nazi SS. He relishes the sense of belonging to this uniformed band of brothers. His delight is demonstrated in the jig he spontaneously performs to the ebullient “Drinking Song” from The Student Prince. This last display of euphoria brings down the curtain. As I made my way to a very crowded bar, I noted that there were many young people. I presumed they were attracted by Tennant’s television fame as the loveable Dr. Who. But their presence at this abstract and discursive play was encouraging to see.Act 2 presented a roller coaster ride that culminated in the play’s sinister finale. Maurice becomes more and more frantic to leave Germany. Couldn’t Halder, now an invested Nazi, arrange an exit visa or even a ticket to Switzerland? But Halder, increasingly entangled in the Nazi net, dodges all of Maurice’s requests.As a party member and a professor of literature, Halder finds himself participating in the 1933 student book burning. Cooke represents this theatrically with a chute pouring out an avalanche of books onto the stage, while Halder and fellow Nazi toss them as fast as they can through a hole in the wall where the flames of a bonfire can be seen. With a touch of shame, Tennant weakly suggests that maybe students should learn from life and not from books!Quickly on the heels of the book burning, we see Halder actively engaging in the monstrous attack on Jews known as Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass. Halder demurs from taking a moral stance by resorting to philosophy. He proceeds to pontificate that the Jewish religion, unlike Nazi ideology, has always mistakenly placed the individual over the common good. He perversely quotes the Talmud: “If I am not for myself, then who is for me” (56). The irony is not lost on the audience, for it is self-interest that has primarily motivated Halder’s compliance with Nazism. A galvanizing moment comes when Halder admits to his crime. He argues that he is essentially a happy man and that concern for the Jews isn’t a high priority. It would be more worrisome if he had cancer or if Anne left him for another man. Excepting immediate danger to himself, he is content to accept things as they are. What makes this confession so pertinent is that I, as I’m sure many, found myself admitting that maybe I too would turn a convenient blind eye to such events to safeguard my survival and that of my family.Maurice shockingly disappears from the story and with him so does his role as Halder’s conscience. As in a vision, he informs Halder that he was gunned down, his balls cut off and his wife raped during the Kristallnacht terror. Now, as Eichmann, Levey emerges prominent as a seducer. Appealing to Halder’s vanity, Eichmann considers him perfect to advise the camps on how to “humanely” rid the country of the sick, the diseased, and the antisocial Jews. While happily tending to his garden, Halder hears that he is to travel to Auschwitz. Small, as Anne, demonstrates the appropriate touch of domestic care as she lovingly helps him into his SS uniform. Putting on his swastika armband, she soothes Halder’s last flickering embers of guilt, reminding him that they are basically good people. They are good to each other. By now the audience is keenly alert to the word “good.”The final scene sees Halder arrive at Auschwitz. As he greets the camp commandant, he notices the strange lack of emotion in the man. With a dumbfounding naivety, he comments that he finds this disturbing, given that the man’s job is killing fellow human beings. He hears music, and at this point Halder, and the audience along with him, becomes aware that this time the music is not just playing in his head—but that it is significantly real. A group of inmates play an incongruously upbeat Schubert march to welcome Halder to the camp. He and the audience are stunned into silence as the curtain falls and the band plays on. The meaning of this moment is a matter for speculation. Will the fantasies that have been playing in Halder’s head now be replaced by realities? What does this mean for him? What does it all mean for us in the audience? I remembered Taylor’s preface to the play in which he hoped that, like all good plays, this one would have a special meaning, or shades of meaning, for each person who experienced it.When the curtain rose again for the actors to take their curtain call, Tennant is no longer in the forbidding SS uniform. The costume change was appropriate since otherwise the audience would have found themselves applauding a Nazi stooge!Leaving the theater, I wondered what Harold Pinter would have thought of this production. It is apparent that Taylor’s play was revived in the context of current violent, right wing, populist politics, and I recalled Pinter’s short political plays, performed at this theater in 2018, which presented a similarly disturbing picture of compliance with fascism. I concluded that Pinter would have approved.As a footnote, this production will be videotaped and streamed on National Theatre Live in 2023.

‘Please Don’t Do This to Us’: TV Show Illustrates Importance of Families in SUD Care of Youth

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Residents’ ForumFull Access‘Please Don’t Do This to Us’: TV Show Illustrates Importance of Families in SUD Care of YouthNicholas Apping, M.D.Nicholas AppingSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:25 May 2023https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2023.06.6.39In season 2, episode 5 of “Euphoria,” Leslie Bennet, the mother of the series’ protagonist, Rue Bennet, confronts her daughter regarding her relapse on opioids. Rue devolves into an emotionally abusive tirade, placing responsibility on all in her path and culminating in her running away from home to evade admission to a rehabilitation center. Following a series of chaotic events, Rue returns home to the care of her mother and sister. It’s at this stage that we are given an opportunity to glean the perspective of those most directly affected by her substance use: her family.We see her sister, Gia, reconciling how to support Rue with her dwindling faith in Rue’s potential to recover. Her mother must reconcile these feelings as well, with the added challenge of not alienating Gia in the process. In the final scene, Leslie is pleading with an inpatient rehabilitation facility, requesting a bed for Rue out of fear that Rue will kill herself if left as an outpatient. At this moment she emphatically and repeatedly states, “Please don’t do this to us.”While many television shows attempt to portray life with a substance use disorder (SUD), few capture the deleterious effects that these disorders have on one’s relationships. Family members experience higher rates of medical and psychiatric comorbidities, directly correlated with the severity of our patients’ SUD. While a majority of patients are in contact with family at the point of entering treatment, the strain on these relationships brought on by substance use can inhibit integration of family members into the treatment.Yet engagement of patients’ families is critical in both initiation and continuation of patient care. Management of SUDs within the adolescent population presents special considerations, particularly regarding patient engagement, alliance, and confidentiality. If they are involved, families can monitor and report on the patient’s behaviors, perform in-the-moment interventions, and even provide at-home withdrawal management, as displayed on the series. A 2018 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology found that ecological and behavioral family-based therapies improve patient engagement and the therapeutic alliance. There was also a decrease in rates of externalizing behaviors, serious crimes, and arrests.Although we don’t follow Rue into adulthood, we get a glimpse into how life may progress through her sponsor, Ali. Ali is a middle-aged man with multiple SUDs, raised in a household with parental substance use and domestic violence. His battle with substance use began in adolescence, inevitably leading to conflict throughout adulthood, particularly in his family life. His reported low points involved domestic violence, divorce, incarceration, and estrangement from his children. His depiction is one of a sympathetic and reformed character, flawed in just the right way to aid our young protagonist. The story of Ali is not uncommon to both providers and patients alike. In spite of the negative life events he has experienced, he manages to engage in treatment and achieve years of sustained remission.I wonder how things would have differed if Ali and his family had received treatment earlier in his clinical course, perhaps with the community reinforcement approach and family training (CRAFT) intervention. CRAFT aims to engage families and/or significant others, with the following goals: providing substance use education, teaching effective communication skills, rewarding positive behaviors, and encouraging treatment-seeking behaviors. This intervention may have led to an earlier, sustained remission for Ali, with the potential benefit of allowing his family to maintain healthy relationships.“Euphoria” not only tackles adolescent substance use, but also the overall increased complexities of adolescent life in the present age. The show attempts to portray the relationship between loved ones and teens who have SUDs, balancing trust, love, support, altruism, frustration, and resentment. In response to Gia’s skepticism of Rue’s renewed commitment to sobriety, Ali states, “I don’t think it’s a question of support. When you’ve let someone down again and again, I think it’s fair to lose a little faith.”It becomes our responsibility as providers to align with families, providing psychoeducation and resources, with the goal of rebuilding their faith in loved ones and ultimately improving outcomes for patients and families alike. ■Resource“Evidence Base on Outpatient Behavioral Treatments for Adolescent Substance Use, 2014–2017: Outcomes, Treatment Delivery, and Promising Horizons”Nicholas Apping, M.D., is a PGY-3 psychiatry resident at New York University. He is also an APA Public Psychiatry Fellow, REACH grant fellow, the co-chair of the Residents Committee of the New York County Psychiatric Society, and a member of APA’s Committee on Advocacy and Government Relations. Prior to entering residency, he volunteered with harm reduction organizations within New York City and more recently has presented on methadone prescribing practices during COVID-19. ISSUES NewArchived

"I Look Straight into His Eyes … For the Last Time": Intimacy and Indifference in Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight

Abstract: There are many unsettling encounters within Jean Rhys's novels, but perhaps the most difficult for readers is Sasha Jansen's final intimate act in Good Morning, Midnight . The novel depicts Sasha's lost subjectivity through moments of sexual intimacy, ultimately demonstrating how she cultivates a sense of indifference to prescriptive femininity by rebelling against the stratified anxiousness that has haunted her position as a precarious woman in society. The final scene between Sasha and her neighbour, the "commis voyager," is often read as a dark mimicking of James Joyce's Molly Bloom in Ulysses , with Sasha's intimate affirmation of "yes—yes—yes …" as a mode of self-annihilation. Missing from these readings is a consideration of Sasha's encounter with herself, as she stares "straight into [the commis's] eyes" to see a vision of herself reflected there, one that recuperates her split subjectivity and solidifies her indifference to normative rhythms of life.

Clever little tricks: A socio-technical history of text-to-image generative models

The emergence of text-to-image generative models (e.g., Midjourney, DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion) in the summer of 2022 impacted architectural visual culture suddenly, severely, and seemingly out of nowhere. To contextualize this phenomenon, this text offers a socio-technical history of text-to-image generative systems. Three moments in time, or “scenes,” are presented here: the first at the advent of AI in the middle of the last century; the second at the “reawakening” of a specific approach to machine learning at the turn of this century; the third that documents a rapid sequence of innovations, dubbed “clever little tricks,” that occurred across just 18 months. This final scene is the crux, and represents the first formal documentation of the recent history of a specific set of informal innovations. These innovations were produced by non-affiliated researchers and communities of creative contributors, and directly led to the technologies that so compellingly captured the architectural imagination in the summer of 2022. Across these scenes, we examine the technologies, application domains, infrastructures, social contexts, and practices that drive technical research and shape creative practice in this space.

"I Look Straight into His Eyes … For the Last Time": Intimacy and Indifference in Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight

Abstract: There are many unsettling encounters within Jean Rhys's novels, but perhaps the most difficult for readers is Sasha Jansen's final intimate act in Good Morning, Midnight . The novel depicts Sasha's lost subjectivity through moments of sexual intimacy, ultimately demonstrating how she cultivates a sense of indifference to prescriptive femininity by rebelling against the stratified anxiousness that has haunted her position as a precarious woman in society. The final scene between Sasha and her neighbour, the "commis voyager," is often read as a dark mimicking of James Joyce's Molly Bloom in Ulysses , with Sasha's intimate affirmation of "yes—yes—yes …" as a mode of self-annihilation. Missing from these readings is a consideration of Sasha's encounter with herself, as she stares "straight into [the commis's] eyes" to see a vision of herself reflected there, one that recuperates her split subjectivity and solidifies her indifference to normative rhythms of life.

AESCHYLUS’, EURIPIDES’, CACOYANNIS'S—AND SHORTER-SPALDING'S IPHIGENIAS

Like Euripides’ play, Iphigenia at Aulis, the Shorter-spalding opera is open-ended and unresolved—partly because, again like the Euripidean version, it is multi-authored and somewhat incomplete. Euripides’ play, in the form(s) in which we possess it, presents at least three different endings, none of which is likely to come from Euripides’ own pen; other authors certainly contributed to various sections of the final scene. Euripides himself also had a musical collaborator, Cephisophon, who presumably continued to work on finishing and rehearsing the play after Euripides himself died, up to its first production. The Shorter-spalding opera, …(Iphigenia), likewise is the result of collaboration—often at a distance, and over several years—between musicians, writers, and designers (as Morales describes in her Introduction to this issue). At least six different authors altogether are identified in the program notes as contributing to the libretto, including the three poets whose lyrics were sung in Act II: Ganavya Doraiswamy, Joy Harjo, and Safiya Sinclair, respectively South Asian, Native American, and Jamaican. As for the opera's ending—the most notoriously uncertain aspect of this myth ever since archaic Greek times—esperanza spalding states in her notes on the opera that the process of creating an ending has been one of constant adjustment, wholesale rewriting, and improvisation, and that even through the rehearsals the singers themselves onstage, as well as the instrumental jazz trio, were still trying out new things, right up to and including perhaps the performance that we saw. (I attended the Berkeley performance on February 12, 2022.) The opera is, we may say, unfinished.