Private Idaho Research Articles

"It Means Possibility"

Following the cataclysmic AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, a defiant embrace of the word "queer" and new technology sparked an influx of films by independent filmmakers that were later termed "New Queer Cinema." As a product of its time, New Queer Cinema interrogates the heteronormativity it conflicts with and thus breeds a reimagining of what queer film can look like. The conflict between queer identity and its heteronormative surroundings drives distance between queer individuals and their communities, as well as larger social structures. This distance leads to a sense of isolation. This article explores themes of isolation within select New Queer Cinema films and offers a potential reference point from which we can understand queer life and cultural production in the midst of yet another global illness—COVID-19. Gus Van Sant’s 'My Own Private Idaho' (1991) highlights isolation from heteronormative social structures, particularly the nuclear family unit. Cheryl Dunye’s 'The Watermelon Woman' (1996) focuses on a curation of queer kinship as a survival tactic in the face of this isolation. Gregg Araki’s 'Totally Fucked Up' (1993) and Thomas Bezucha’s 'Big Eden' (2000) both explore themes of self-imposed isolation. 'Totally Fucked Up' provides an essential New Queer Cinema perspective of this phenomenon; meanwhile, 'Big Eden' challenges assumptions that queer individuals are destined to be isolated by imagining a future in which this is not the case. Themes of isolation are essential to the New Queer Cinema genre as a product of its circumstances. Yet, it also provides a basis from which the possibilities of future queer cinema and culture can be imagined. Understanding this relationship is critical as we begin to understand the effects of structural and social isolation on the queer community as exacerbated by COVID-19.

“My Own Private Aberdeen: Grunge Politics in the Films of Gus Van Sant”

This article revisits the films My Own Private Idaho (1991) and Last Days (2005) through the lens of grunge and politics, showing how Gus Van Sant portrays grunge as an unstable aesthetic continually in flight from closure. The films’ protagonists are silenced either by the forces that co-opt them or by their own violent rejection of those forces, suggesting Van Sant does not envision a way out of corporate culture via a grunge ethic apart from death, madness, or a refusal to participate in social politics altogether. However, reading the form of these films reveals a road map for a more viable political vision than their plots—and grunge’s detractors—suggest.

Pharmacy students' perceptions of the effectiveness of a film-based mental health elective course

IntroductionStigmatizing attitudes of pharmacists can contribute to poor outcomes in individuals with mental illness. Direct contact with patients during pharmacy experiential education helps establish positive attitudes toward people with mental illness yet may not be available to all students. The use of film in pharmacy education has the potential to facilitate learning and improve attitudes. MethodsWe evaluated students' perceptions regarding the impact of an elective course for pharmacy students which incorporated feature films about mental illnesses. Students completed surveys addressing their perceptions of each film's role in facilitation of learning, attitudes about mental illness, and comfort level for interacting with patients with mental illness. ResultsA total of 125 students completed a course featuring 17 films over the four-year study period. The films with the highest weighted positive rankings were Temple Grandin, Helen, As Good As It Gets, Born on the Fourth of July, Iris, A Beautiful Mind, and Silver Linings Playbook. Less favored films included One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Prozac Nation, and My Own Private Idaho. ConclusionsDirect contact with patients may best prepare future pharmacists to serve the needs of people with mental illness. This study suggests that students perceive feature films used in an elective course may have a positive impact on facilitating learning and improving attitudes of pharmacy students toward individuals with mental illness. Further well-designed studies are warranted, including in other health professions students, to substantiate and define the role of film as a tool to teach and address stigma.

Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s English History Plays ed. by Laurie Ellinghausen

Reviewed by: Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s English History Plays ed. by Laurie Ellinghausen Marina J. Bergenstock Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s English History Plays. Edited by Laurie Ellinghausen. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2017. Pp. 249 + illus. $24.00, paper. Google the term “Teaching Shakespeare” and among the top hits will be: “How to Teach Shakespeare so Your Students Won’t Hate It,” “Teaching Shakespeare the Fun Way,” “How to Teach Shakespeare and Make It Understandable for Your Students,” and “Using Humor to Teach Shakespeare.” If this search is any indication, it seems clear that instructors want (or are required to) include Shakespeare in their curriculum, but how to do it in a way that engages students is not always evident. That’s where Laurie Ellinghausen’s Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s English History Plays comes in. In this book, Ellinghausen has assembled a selection of excellent essays that collectively provide a thorough and innovative guide to bringing Shakespeare’s history plays to life in the modern classroom. The book is broken up into two parts. Part 1, “Materials,” provides instructors with resources for primary texts, performance, many branches of critical tradition based on the instructor’s interests, and digital resources. Part 2, “Approaches,” presents nearly thirty essays that provide exciting new material that is informative and accessible for everyone from a novice teacher to even the most seasoned instructor of Shakespeare, covering everything from the geography of the still-emerging Britain of Shakespeare’s time to land use, political power, ecological stewardship, and visualizing stagecraft. In Rebecca Ann Bach’s essay “Queering Richard II: Teaching Love, Sex, and Gender Historically,” the author takes us through an example close read of the text with a class. Bach points out that, in recent years, so much has changed in the United States in regards to gender and sexuality that students must take care not to make one-to-one comparisons in our modern thinking with what people in England thought four hundred years ago. In Lisa Siefker Bailey’s essay “Hustling Masculinity: Teaching 1 Henry IV with My Own Private Idaho,” the reader learns about the experiences Bailey’s students have had putting these two works in conversation with each other. Bailey notes that confronting the issues presented to them in Shakespeare’s text and Gus Van Sant’s movie emboldens students to engage in challenging dialogues. When asked about the challenges this particular aspect of Shakespeare’s canon poses for students, one respondent talked about the fact that, when it comes to the comedies, students seem to come in with relatively positive ideas about them and “with tragedies, students seem to come to class knowing they [End Page 239] are important and that they will be good” (24). However, with the history plays, students come in not understanding them or wanting to read them. Shakespeare’s history plays were written in a particular political and religious context that isn’t generally taught to students in the twenty-first century. Also, the issues don’t just begin and end there. It’s not difficult to see why students would be frustrated, with so many kinds of history at work in Shakespeare’s plays including (but not limited to) “medieval fabulae, urban history, chronicle history, classical allusion, and typological biblical history” (24). The essays compiled by Ellinghausen provide readers with specific approaches, relevant topic expansion, and additional resources. Moreover, the book is laid out in a way that is both intuitive and user-friendly. Each essay offers unique perspectives and arguments that contribute to the reader’s sense of security and possibility. Using each essay as a jumping-off point leaves readers easily able to imagine additional activities and topics for exploration on their own. Hugh Macrae Richmond’s essay, “Teaching Shakespeare’s Histories Using the Internet,” provides a remarkably clear and concrete path to using the internet in tandem with the history plays. In “Teaching Shakespeare’s History Plays in the Composition Classroom,” by Diane K. Jakacki, the reader is presented with specific examples of assignments and even evaluation from Jakacki’s own classroom. With this essay in particular, it’s easy to see how an instructor can...

Queer Shakespeare: Desire & Sexuality ed. by Goran Stanivukovic, and: Queer Philologies: Sex, Language, and Affect in Shakespeare's Time by Jeffrey Masten, and: Queering the Shakespeare Film: Gender Trouble, Gay Spectatorship and Male Homoeroticism by Anthony Guy Patricia

Reviewed by: Queer Shakespeare: Desire & Sexuality ed. by Goran Stanivukovic, and: Queer Philologies: Sex, Language, and Affect in Shakespeare's Time by Jeffrey Masten, and: Queering the Shakespeare Film: Gender Trouble, Gay Spectatorship and Male Homoeroticism by Anthony Guy Patricia Peter Kuling Queer Shakespeare: Desire & Sexuality. Edited by Goran Stanivukovic. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. $110 (hardback), $34 (paperback), $31 (eBook). Queer Philologies: Sex, Language, and Affect in Shakespeare's Time. By Jeffrey Masten. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. $60 (hardback), $28 (paperback). Queering the Shakespeare Film: Gender Trouble, Gay Spectatorship and Male Homoeroticism. By Anthony Guy Patricia. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. $120 (hardback), $34 (paperback), $31 (eBook). These three recent examples of new queer scholarship are exciting contributions to a thriving subfield of Shakespeare Studies, reflecting insights into understanding queer worlds of the past and queerness as it exists now and approaches that can equip all scholars to find clear queer entry points into new trajectories for their own research. This rich and important work on queerness and Shakespeare emerging within our scholarly community will no doubt serve to strengthen this research area. Queer Shakespeare: Desire & Sexuality engages with crucial yet subversive queerness throughout Shakespearean poetry and performance. Unifying past scholarship with vital queer theory, this collection reveals necessary insights into our evolving relationship with Shakespeare. As Goran Stanivukovic states in the introduction, "Queer Shakespeare recaptures some of the existing understanding of desire and sexuality prevalent in queer early modern criticism, but it also focuses on style, formalism, community, and objects as subjects of analysis which produce new and varied kinds of desire" (7). This editorial approach, woven through his introduction and evident, also, in the work of his contributors, not only uncovers and corrects years of heteronormative research, but further teases out queer elements that typically remain unexplored. From queer interplay with social hierarchies and persistent heteronormativity in Shakespeare's Cymbeline, explored by Stephen Guy-Bray, to non-normative natural phenomena and queer environmental messaging in Macbeth, researched by Christine Varnado, this well-curated collection merits a place on every Shakespeare scholar's shelf. [End Page 163] Stanivukovic reminds us in his afterword focused on questions of the Anthropocene that readers should persist in imagining queer possibilities within, as well as beyond, Shakespeare. While Puck may not have been a climate champion, this collection fervently reminds us that our largely underused queer imaginations may find productive new avenues to explore. Jeffrey Masten's Queer Philologies contains rich analysis and intrepid readings of diverse queer letters, words, phrases, and textual resonances from the early modern period and therefore his book is essential queer studies reading, as well as a necessary compendium of queer language history. He starts with the letter Q to offer diverse philological accounts in order "to draw attention to some of the assumptions and problems of traditional philology as it emerges out of classical textual recovery, editing, correction, errata sheets, and 'castigation' in the Renaissance" (16–17). Discussions of words like "sweet," used as a form of often-misconstrued affection, are here linked across the works of Shakespeare, Jonson, and others throughout decades of early modern history. Masten observes linguistic recurrences of words and language with queer undertones in Shakespeare but also in ephemeral texts, ornamental letters, and woodcuts. His table of contents includes a glossary of specific words with historical and contemporary queer resonances like "shame," "girl-boy," "kinship," and "bottom." While Stanivukovic's contributors focus on how entire plays are themselves larger enterprises of queerness, Masten applies himself to more isolated instances of unique sounds, letters, and words with elements of queerness. Anthony Guy Patricia describes his own research on Shakespearean films as covering a wide array of examples of cinematic adaptation spawning from the flood of queerly observed films in the 1990s, such as Derek Jarman's Edward II (1991) and Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991). Recognizing the staggering number of new films connected to queerness, Patricia states "it is striking that, comparatively speaking, there seems to be a dearth of scholarship on Shakespearean cinema that address the subject from a queer perspective" (xviii-xix). Queering the Shakespeare Film invests in an overview of extant Hollywood, BBC, and other popular productions...

Шекспир в кино: национальное и глобальное

<p>В статье рассматривается специфика влияния творчества У. Шекспира на современный кинематограф на примере двух художественных фильмов («Мой личный штат Айдахо» Гаса Ван Сента и «Изображая жертву» К. С. Серебренникова). Автор затрагивает проблему определения понятия «мировое кино» и анализирует характер соединения национального и глобального в «шекспировском кино». Отмечается, что шекспировское наследие может проявляться в кинематографе не только в диалоге режиссера с Шекспиром, но и в полилоге с другими режиссерами, писателями, исследователями, деятелями культуры и искусства, которые внесли свой вклад в национальные традиции рецепции сочинений британского драматурга и поэта. Различные отсылки к Шекспиру, по мнению автора, могут использоваться для подчеркивания наднационального характера проблематики, затрагиваемой режиссерами в своих кинокартинах.</p>

Identidades fragmentadas em Garotos de Programa de Gus Van Sant

This article aims to explore Gus Van Sant’s film My Own Private Idaho (1991) starting from different approaches on the perception of the fragmentation of contemporary cultural identity from the perspective of cultural studies. We use especially the propositions from the authors Stuart Hall and Tomaz Tadeu da Silva in order to understand how this fragmentation condition configured in the film and its characters. Keywords : identity, fragmentation, My Own Private Idaho, Gus Van Sant.

Roman Fever: Anarchiving Eternal Rome, from Roman Holiday to Petrolio

Canonical interpretations and representations of Rome appear to be dependent on its image as the ‘Eternal City’. This article presents these images as a dominant narrative that guides the ‘archive’ of the city’s images. Drawing on theoretical concepts that threaten the constitution of such an archive, this article reads queer images of Rome as disturbances that go against the ‘eternal’ archiving principle. With reference to Roman Holiday, it illustrates the close intertwining of eternality in Rome with heteronormativity and reproductive futurity. This connection allows the reading of queer texts and images, such as Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s novel Petrolio, as what we call ‘Roman fever’, that is, the deactivation of ‘eternality’ as the central driver of Rome’s archive.

Language and Liminality in the Italian Section of Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho

Language and Liminality in the Italian Section of Gus Van Sant’s <i>My Own Private Idaho</i>

Sisters In Sin: Brothel Drama In America, 1900-1920 (review)

Reviewed by: Sisters In Sin: Brothel Drama In America, 1900–1920 Dorothy Chansky Sisters In Sin: Brothel Drama In America, 1900–1920. By Katie N. Johnson . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006; pp. xii + 265. $85.00 cloth. American audiences love safe slumming. Nowadays it's movies about the "underworld," mostly focused on drugs (Do the Right Thing, Traffic, My Own Private Idaho, the opening of Citizen Ruth). In the first two decades of the twentieth century it was plays about the "demi-monde," focused on multiple versions of sullied female chastity. Why and how some of the fifty plays that appeared about this nexus of subjects between 1899 and 1922 succeeded while others flopped or were closed down is the subject of Katie Johnson's meticulously researched and fascinating book. Sisters in Sin abounds in irony and paradoxes. Johnson works "not only to reintroduce forgotten texts to the cultural consciousness, but also to explicate the cultural work of those texts . . . in affirming and resisting cultural and legal discourses" (16). The fallen-woman-with-a-sympathetic-story was hardly new. Camille was the grandmammy of them all. The new element in Progressive Era (1890–1920) treatments of this character was "an increased emphasis on depicting the social conditions leading to, and the consequences of, prostitution, rather than the whore's repentance and punishment" (10). The era treated in Sisters in Sin opened with the creation of New York City's first vice commission in 1900, and concluded with the closing of many red-light districts in 1920, just on the eve of the Pulitzer [End Page 153] Prize committee giving its drama award to Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie in 1922. Johnson focuses on about a dozen plays that she slots in four categories. "The Female Performer as Prostitute" discusses plays in which actresses, models, and singers are read as scarlet women—a popular conflation, though research of the day showed that very few women who turned to prostitution did so for "easy money," with only a minuscule percentage of these coming from the ranks of artists or performers (74). "Working Girls" treats department-store salesgirls as both a new demographic and a cultural conundrum; they could neither afford most of what they were selling nor could they go astray (for money, necessities, or little luxuries) and expect to keep the gainful employment that did not provide enough (money, necessities, or little luxuries). "Opium Dens and Urban Brothels" is devoted to a discussion of a kind of play in which an unsuspecting white girl, often from a rural area, is drugged or otherwise enticed without her awareness into a house of prostitution. In "The Legitimation and Decline of the Brothel Drama," the author shows how plays that were putatively direct and shocking in their discussion of hidden realities (syphilis and prostitutes as ordinary women) were in fact conservative and recuperative in their politics. So what determined whether a play would sizzle or fizzle? Much had to do with performers and performance. In the 1899 Zaza, producer David Belasco featured socialite divorcée Mrs. Leslie Carter as a French music-hall singer who, "transformed by love . . . becomes monogamous" (32), only to be betrayed by her married lover who returns to his wife. Zaza is spoiling for a confrontation until a meeting with the lover's little daughter melts her heart. She sacrifices herself not for love, but for family. Belasco built a publicity machine on the son Mrs. Carter had had to give up when she divorced, making hits of both star and vehicle. Less lucky was actress/producer Olga Nethersole. Her 1900 production of Clyde Fitch's Sapho depicted an artist's model, Fanny, who, like Zaza, goes good when she falls in love for real. Sapho, however, was closed by police order and Nethersole and her company were put on trial. At issue was not so much the subject matter of the play as Nethersole's high-dudgeon acting, revealing costumes, and a nifty production device in which the curtain fell and rose as many as five times to indicate a passage of time during which there was no question in anyone's mind that what was happening...

I Was a Teenage Classic: Literary Adaptation in Turn‐of‐the‐Millennium Teen Films

In Amy Heckerling's Clueless (1995), film's young protagonist and narrator Cher (Alicia Silverstone) gets into an argument with rival Heather (Susan Mohun), and nerdy Heather attempts to quote Shakespeare: (Harvard-bound) Heather: It's like Hamlet said: To thine ownself be true. Cher (correcting her): Uh, Hamlet didn't say that. Heather: I think I remember Hamlet accurately. Cher: Well, I remember MeI Gibson accurately, and he didn't say that. That Polonius guy did. Within film, this exchange signifies Cher's superior knowledge of Shakespeare through pop cultural manifestations, thus allowing her to trump her rival.1 This debate is also a reminder of students' tendencies to rely upon film adaptations of literary classics for their cultural knowledge, as high school students plea-Couldn't we watch movie? -and who often are first introduced to literary texts through film and television adaptations. Such a reminder is appropriately found in Heckerling's film, itself an adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma (1816), albeit for mall set. However, even more interestingly, this reminder reveals a recent trend in literary adaptation, as several late 1990s films have offered teen-based versions of classic literary texts, thus offering students several chances to just watch movie, and academics should consider these adaptations' possibilities, particularly given that these films have shaped turn-of-the-millennium teen culture. Literary works are often conservatively made as straight adaptations to screen, part of a grand tradition of period films and art-house pictures. However, there are also sub-genres that reset their adapted texts. Works might be recast as westerns (as with The Christmas Carol-variation Ebenezer [1997], or Yellow Sky [1948], a sagebrush version of The Tempest, or The Claim [2000], which westernizes The Mayor of Casterbridge), modernized (e.g., A Simple Twist of Fate [1994], which retells Silas Marner, or My Own Private Idaho [1991], which updates Henry IV, Parts I&II),2 or futurized in science-fiction retellings (such as Tempest-rewrite Forbidden Planet [1956], postapocalyptic version of Beowulf [1999], or Twain-inspired A Spaceman in King Arthur's Court [1979]). This fairly recent cinematic trend has offered a sub-genre based in a movement, with nlmmakers following Clueless example, updating selections from canon for adaptation and transformation into high school-based productions. This movement is not surprising, as the world is getting younger, with over half earth's population under 20 years of age starting in mid-1990s (Lewis 1), and with Hollywood recognizing potential audience and cultivating an interest in youth films in an effort to lure youth to theaters (and away from cable and Internet) (Shary 10). With demographic research from groups such as Teen Research Unlimited showing that going to movies ranked as number one social activity among teens, moviemakers increased output of teen roles (10). The Austen variation Clueless was a hit in summer of 1995. The film, which had its release coincide with a renaissance of popularity for Jane Austen with filmmakers (although Clueless stands out as most radical transformation of text and most commercially successful), grossed $77.3 million worldwide and has earned a further $26 million in video/DVD rentals.3 The film also proved so popular that it was followed by a spinoff television sitcom, which lasted for three seasons and 61 episodes spanning two networks (ABC and UPN).4 Several filmmakers seemed to take note of commercial success of Clueless, as multiple films were released following its pattern. Within roughly 20 months at turn of millenium, filmgoers were treated, knowingly or not, to two versions of Pygmalion (1913), with She's All That (1999) and gender-reversed Drive Me Crazy (1999), as well as an adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons/Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782),5 called Cruel Intentions (1999), a recast Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), titled Whatever It Takes (2000), a gender reverse of As You Like It (1599), named Never Been Kissed (1999), a revisited Taming of Shrew (1593), called 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), and a basketball-based Othello (1604), entitled simply O (2001). …

Almost Shakespeare: reinventing his works for cinema and television

In the past two decades, Othello has tried out for the basketball team, Macbeth has taken over a fast food joint, and King Lear has moved to an lowa farm - Shakespeare is everywhere in popular culture. This collection of essays addresses the use of Shakespearean narratives, themes, imagery, and characterizations in non-Shakespearian cinema. The essays explore how Shakespeare and his work are manipulated within the popular media and explore topics such as racism, jealousy, misogyny and nationality. The question of whether a contemporary production is influenced by Shakespeare or by an earlier piece that influenced Shakespeare is also addressed. The submissions concentrate on film and television programs that are adaptations of Shakespearean plays, including My Own Private Idaho, CSI-Miami, A Thousand Acres, Prospero's Books, O, 10 Things I Hate About You, Withnail and I, Get Over It, and The West Wing. Each chapter includes notes and a list of works cited. A full bibliography completes the work; it is divided into bibliographies and filmographies, general studies and essays, derivatives based on a single play, derivatives based on several, and derivatives based on Shakespeare as a character.

Their Own Private Idaho: Transience in Marilynne Robinson's "Housekeeping"

irst published in 1981, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is a dreamlike, quirky novel, sustaining terse social commentary while describing intense, interior lives. Robinson's narrator, Ruth Stone, loses her mother, becomes estranged from her only sibling, and, finally, drifts into vagrancy under the tutelage of her Aunt Sylvie. Because Housekeeping challenges traditional notions of motherhood and domesticity, it is most often analyzed through a feminist lens. Yet Robinson's novel also offers another sort of narrative, one that reaches beyond real-life boundaries and literary convention in order to write the lives of female characters who live on

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and: William Shakespeare, 1564-1616 (review)

Reviewed by: The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare, and: William Shakespeare 1564–1616 Janet L. Gupton The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare. [Internet, WWW], ADDRESS: www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/table William Shakespeare 1564–1616. [Internet, WWW], ADDRESS: www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/%Ematsuoka/Shakespeare Two sites on the Bard, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (MIT Site) and William Shakespeare 1564–1616 (Matsuoka Site), provide quick and relatively easy access to information on Shakespeare. The MIT Site was the first site to provide free access to the complete works of Shakespeare on-line, while the Matsuoka Site provides a more comprehensive list of links to the various home pages that exist on William Shakespeare. Depending on the type of information one wishes to access, either site can be a tremendous resource. Visually, both sites are “no-nonsense” and neither site contains many illustrations or photographs, although the sites linked to either of the two sites often do include both. Maneuverability within each of the sites is fairly straightforward and comprehensible for the user and each site requests suggestions and feedback for future improvements. Both sites appear to be maintained and updated fairly regularly. The MIT Site offers not only the complete works of Shakespeare on-line, it also provides the ability to search the complete works through a key word search. Another unique characteristic of this site is the Shakespeare discussion area. This feature allows readers to interact with each other regarding Shakespeare and to discuss anything from the use of the Prince Hal/Falstaff story line in the film My Own Private Idaho to desperate pleas for help from high school students who have yet to write their English papers on Romeo & Juliet. The discussion area is arranged by play title and employs a few types of icons to indicate the content of the inquiry. Otherwise, the queries appear in the order they are posted. Because the queries and messages can add up rather quickly, the discussion area also features an archive section for older messages. At times, the issues raised for discussion on some of the plays ranged from scintillating and thought-provoking to the banal and even asinine. What would improve this feature of the site is more categorization of the types of discussions being conducted rather than only listing the messages under the umbrella of the play title. The on-line access of Shakespeare’s complete works provided by the MIT Site can also be useful to directors who wish to edit and/or cut a version of a play for performance and provide this version for the cast and crew. Likewise, actors making cuts to monologues can appreciate the ability to download and cut and paste a monologue to fit strict audition time limits. Scholars and students will be attracted to the key word search for its ease and quickness in locating passages or familiar quotations. The MIT Site also provides a listing of other Shakespeare resources on the Internet that includes The International Globe Center; Shakespeare courses (and sometimes syllabuses) conducted in either a conventional setting or on-line; Shakespeare on Film; and Shakespeare Festivals (if a home page is available). The MIT Site seems most useful to those who want access to the works of Shakespeare and the ability to search the works quickly and to those who enjoy discussing their thoughts and ideas with others about the Shakespeare canon and all its derivatives. The Matsuoka Site encompasses a larger array of material than the MIT Site and impressively links its site with many other sites on Shakespeare. Through the Matsuoka Site, one can access the complete works of Shakespeare as well as secondary types of information such as biographical data, a time-line of coinciding events at the time of the plays’ publications, and monologue files for men and women to name only a few. Related topics and areas of interest are also linked with the Matsuoka Site. For example, this site provides a link to the Renaissance Forum—an electronic, refereed journal specializing in early modern English literary and historical scholarship to which Renaissance scholars can submit articles for publication and find a platform for scholarly/theoretical debate in...

The "Ozification" of American Children's Fantasy Films: The Blue Bird, Alice in Wonderland , and Jumanji

The "Ozification" of American Children's Fantasy Films:The Blue Bird, Alice in Wonderland, and Jumanji Joel D. Chaston (bio) Recently a national touring company presented a stage version of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) at the Juanita K. Hammons Center for the Performing Arts in Springfield, Missouri, where I live, a surprising event since the town's major community theater had performed the same play a few months before. Despite a long-standing interest in Baum's novel, however, I did not go to either production. I had already attended the play a couple of years before in Toronto. More to the point, since all of these productions were based on the script of the 1939 MGM film version of The Wizard of Oz, I had seen it done better on television virtually every year since I was a child.1 That new dramatizations of The Wizard of Oz should be inspired by the MGM film instead of Baum's book will not surprise anyone who has ever tried to teach the latter. Students often mistakenly refer to the film as the "original" text and think of the novel as the "adaptation." The popularity of the film, which Jonathan Fricke suggests is "the most widely seen and most familiar film in history," has, for many viewers, eclipsed the work that inspired it (241). Indeed, Carol Billman's article on The Wizard of Oz, "I've Seen the Movie," argues that the film "transcends its original in American popular culture," producing a vision that "overlays and conditions readers' responses to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (100). As a result, many subsequent literary sequels and film adaptations draw on the 1939 film. While The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has inspired a multitude of sequels, several recent novels about Oz, including Geoff Ryman's Was (1992), Thomas L. Tedrow's Dorothy: Return to Oz (1993), and Gregory Maguire's Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995), incorporate elements of the MGM film into their vision of Oz.2 Filmation's Journey Back to Oz (1971), ABC's television series The Wizard of Oz (1990-91, recently rebroadcast on cable by Home Box Office), and Disney's Return to Oz (1985) are, in reality, sequels to the MGM film and not the novel.3 On 22 November 1995, the movie script and its songs were reincarnated as Turner Network Television's The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Can Come True (directed by Louis J. Horvitz and featuring Jewel as Dorothy, Joel Grey as the Wizard, and Natalie Cole as Glinda), and in 1996 the film metamorphosed into CBS's The Wizard of Oz on Ice, with Olympic gold medalists Oksana Baiul as Dorothy and Victor Petrenko as the Scarecrow.4 Perhaps the greatest influence of the film version of The Wizard of Oz has been on other non-Oz motion pictures. In Over the Rainbow: The Wizard of Oz as a Secular Myth of America (1991), Paul Nathanson notes some of the many allusions to MGM's Oz in films as diverse as Labyrinth (1986), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), and Made in Heaven (1987), to which one could add more recent references in Wild at Heart (1990), Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1993), Rockadoodle (1994), and Twister (1996). As Alan C. Elms has noted in a 1983 article in The Baum Bugle, a number of science fiction films, in particular, seem to have borrowed their plots from MGM's Oz, including Star Wars (1977), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Time Bandits (1981), and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).5 The overpowering impact of The Wizard of Oz on film adaptations of other children's fantasy novels, however, has only been treated superficially. Since the 1939 release of the MGM film, a number of filmmakers have attempted to recreate its popularity (and eventual monetary success) when adapting other works of fantasy to the screen. In creating these adaptations, Hollywood has recast sometimes very different literary fantasies as new versions of...

Correction: My Own Private Idaho

Correction: My Own Private Idaho

Correction: My Own Private Idaho

Correction: My Own Private Idaho

Review: My Own Private Idaho by Gus van Sant, Laurie Parker

Review: My Own Private Idaho by Gus van Sant, Laurie Parker