A Teacher's Job Is To Making Life Difficult

One of the things I believe about science fiction is that it should be challenging. This is why I tend to get down on the Star Wars-type space operas; they're not particularly challenging. The hero fights the villains in spectacular ways, at the end there is a showdown, and then the good guys go have a party. The engagement is in the action, and that's fine for a certain level of entertainment (and I likes me my stupid entertainment every now and then), but what we should be teaching in schools is something high-level than that.

This is why I believe in science fiction and fantasy works as something to be taught in the classroom. These works should challenge students to think. They should engage the intellect and make you consider that which you haven't considered before. They should be hard.

During the last couple of months I've been teaching the Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing to my eighth-graders. After we learn the play, we perform it in the original language to the community. To be clear, this is hard. Students need to memorize many, difficult lines of Shakespeare. Students will need to speak these lines in a convincing manner. They will need to act on stage, speaking lines completely artificial in a way which must convince the audience that it's natural.

What's the goal of this? In the end, it's to show students what the literate life is about. It's about making much-loved classics alive. It's about cultivating a love for great works by showing young people that they are certainly not dead. Not only are they relevant, but these great works can be translated into modern settings easily, and they work. Now the goal of the teacher is to makes great works relevant and not approach them in a boring fashion (a mistake too often done). Yet once that hurdle is overcome, then miracles can happen.

Great Poster for “Much Ado About Nothing”

Two amazing women have helped to make a gorgeous poster for my upcoming play Much Ado About Nothing. The first is the photographer Lori Adams, who generously donated her time to photograph my students. The second person is my lovely wife Kirsten who designed the poster for the play.

Here is the poster. You may click to make it bigger.

Gorgeous, isn't it! The characters are, from right to left, Benedick, Beatrice, Don Pedro, Claudio and Don John (Dame Joanna).

An Excellent Article About, Well, Me!

The news website Philipstown.info just published a very complimentary article about my upcoming play Much Ado About Nothing. It's a great description of the kind of teaching I do and my philosophy about teaching Shakespeare.

Contrary the perceived focus of this blog, I love teaching Shakespeare. It's my second favorite subject to teach. Sometimes I find myself just getting drunk on the language, it's so rich and beautiful.

The performance will be on Friday, April 8th, at 7 PM. Admission is free.

“The Tempest” and Science Fiction

While as a teacher you may be teaching The Tempest as a fantasy novel, or, as it's categorized in the Shakespeare canon, as a romance, the play also has some decent science fiction cred as well. The 1956 classic science fiction movie Forbidden Planet is a really fun remake of the story. In it, the space ship C-57D lands on the planet Altair IV (captained by the late Leslie Neilson) to check up on a colony that landed there twenty years before. All members of the colony are dead except for a Doctor Morbius and his daughter Altaira. Without going into the plot too much, suffice to say the movie is a satisfying retelling of this classic story.

My favorite parts of the movie are the way Ariel and Caliban are transformed into science fiction ideas. Ariel, the faithful, powerful servant, is transformed into Robbie the Robot. Instead of the ethereal and graceful “airy spirit”, we get a clumsy but impressive creation. The most notable scene with him, perhaps, is when Morbius demonstrates to the visiting crew of the ship Robbie's power and limitations. Robbie has the power to lift tons, but his programming makes him unable to hurt a living human being, shades of Isaac Azimov's I Robot books.

Caliban seems nowhere to be found at first, except for a trouble fact the crew of the C-57D are bothered by: the mysterious deaths of all the other members of the expedition. As Morbius reveals more and more about his life on the planet, we learn that Morbius has discovered the remnants of a fabulously advanced civilization that once existed on Altair IV, the Krell. The Doctor has even learned how to harness some of the Krell's technology, increasing his own intellect far beyond what is was. Here we have the science fiction analog to Prospero's magic, advanced alien technology. This a trope used perhaps far too often here, but the presentation of it in this movie, combined with the still impressive special effects of the underground Krell technology, make it work.

But back to Caliban. We learn that the colonists' deaths seemed to coincide with a plan to leave Altair IV, a move Morbius disagreed with intensely. Concurrent with these events, a strange, invisible creature begins wrecking havoc with the landed space sip. An important part disappears, then a crewman dies. After a defensive perimeter is set up around the ship, the creature is halted, but not after its horrifying silhouette appears in a blaze of laser fire. This creature, the ship's doctor exclaims after examining its footsteps, cannot exist. It doesn't follow any known rule of evolution. As Morbius is confronted, the ship's captain realizes that the creature is a projection of Morbius's own personality, his “id” in Freudian terms, amplified by the Krell apparatus inside the planet. This means that the original colonists died because Morbius killed them subconsciously because they disagreed with his decision to leave the planet.

While students may argue or not whether Freud's concept of the “id” actually exists, this movie does present a good basis for that conversation. Caliban here is the unconscious, and what teenager cannot relate to anger or other emotions which cannot be expressed publicly? Caliban too in The Tempest occupies that same emotional space, displaying the savage base desires that Prospero fears. While the “id” creature in Forbidden Planet is far more savage than Prospero's servant/slave, the science fiction setting with it's advanced weapons and scanning instruments seems to allow for the more dangerous foe.

From Shakespeare to Fantasy Literature

I don't think it's a stretch to call Shakespeare's The Tempest a work of fantasy. In it we have a wizard (Prospero), a monster (Caliban), magic spells, an invisible spirit (Ariel), and a dead witch (Sycorax). Combine all this with some of the most beautiful language ever, it's a perfect book for fantasy lovers.

As well, including The Tempest in a curriculum of fantasy works would have a dual function. It would raise the status of any course of that name, making it easier to sell to a perhaps unwilling administration. After all, how bad could a course be if Shakespeare is in it, right? As well, The Tempest is a great gateway play to get fantasy lovers interested in Shakespeare. If a fantasy lover enjoys the play, then the rest of Shakespeare's are an easy sell.

A great play to go to after The Tempest is Macbeth. Here you have the rise of a king foretold by three strange, magical witches and this same king's death predicted by a confusing prophecy. In the middle are murders galore, madness, and revenge. What's not to like?

What fantasy lover can resist Macbeth's meditation on a dagger in his hand, contemplating the murder of his king in act 2, scene 1?

Is this a dagger which I see before me, 

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. 

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. 

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible 

To feeling as to sight? or art thou but 

A dagger of the mind, a false creation, 

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? 

I see thee yet, in form as palpable 

As this which now I draw. 

Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; 

And such an instrument I was to use. 

Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, 

Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still, 

And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, 

Which was not so before. There's no such thing: 

It is the bloody business which informs 

Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld 

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse 

The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates 

Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder, 

Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, 

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. 

With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design 

Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, 

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear 

Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, 

And take the present horror from the time, 

Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives: 

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

Come on, this is great stuff! The man is half-way already to madness, raving about witchcraft and dreams. The language too shouldn't present too much problem for the average fantasy lover, already used to somewhat archaic language from the like of Tolkien and Howard Pyle.

Macbeth is an especially great choice of a play for someone who likes George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books. These are mostly non-magical fantasy novels (so far, at book 4), focussing on the murder and succession of kings. All the elements of Macbeth are in these novels, except that Macbeth has the advantage of being about 1,500 pages shorter. That's not an exaggeration, by the way; these books are long! And there are still three more coming!