Great Works I: Remixing Memory

The film version of Othello featuring Laurence Fishburne  had several adaptations that were not in the book we read. The one I will focus on is the scene where Iago is alone and speaking to the camera. He has a chess board in front of him with a black piece and 2 white pieces. Iago then says how he is going to take down the Moor which is signified by the black chess piece. I thought this is important because it signifies that Othello is most identifiable by the color of his skin. It also mirrors the complexity of a chess game with the plan that Iago concocts. Iago plans his actions and has a plan for each way that Othello or somebody can react. This is similar to a chess game where players will think of every possible outcome to ensure they make the right move going as far as to make a move now that will come in handy 5 turns after. This scene captures how Iago plotted to go after Othello from the very beginning and was also able to show how race plays a part in the whole thing.

Titan is the resident theater company at Queens Theater in Flushing Meadow Park. Titan’s production of Othello was unique to a lot of others because Titan is composed of only female actors. I thought these women were good performers for each of their parts. They showed emotion through their voice, their face, face and their mannerisms. The production was also unique because they didn’t perform on a typical stage. This production was right in front of the audience. The actors were within fifteen of the audience at all times. It felt like you were actually in the performance with the actors. I was also impressed by the actresses abilities to simulate slaps and fights so well. When they pretended to slap each other they slap sounded incredibly real and the reaction to the slap was great too. Even the fighting where the actresses shoved each other was acted out well. The actresses that were shoved threw themselves to the floor or into the walls like they were actually shoved.
I thought the performance was good but I would personally have preferred if men played the role of the men. The women playing Othello and Iago and all of the male characters threw me off for the first couple minutes of the play. I wasn’t able to remember who each actress was supposed to be until I realized that the women playing women were wearing dresses and the ones playing men were dressed similar to how men would dress in the time. Overall I thought the performance was good and if it wasn’t over already I would recommend it to anybody who wanted to see a production of Othello.

There was a couple of common themes at the museum. There was a lot of art of nature, being about animals or just leaves as part of the design. Those were present in a lot of the pieces at the met. Another theme was the massive amounts of carpets. There were so many carpets and they were very large too. I also noticed a lot of religious artifacts such as prayer niches which are used to pray in.
A way the book can be compared to the artifacts at the met is through animals. There is a story about an ox and a donkey. It is the first story after the prologue which is showing how important nature was to the arabians. A story about a husband and a parrot appears a little further into the book as well. Another story is about a merchant and a demon and demon is a religious word which relates to the religious artifacts at the met. The use animals and religious tones of the artifacts and the stories in the book show that the arabians valued these things greatly.

One of the differences in the versions that I noticed right away was that Wai-Lim Yip wrote his version in a way that it resembles a list. He numbered each line like he was listing them in an order. I am not sure why he lists them in this way because the lines tell a story more than list events. Another difference I noticed was the first line was never same in each of the different translations. One says the authors hair barely covered her forehead, and in another it is said the authors hair is cut straight across her forehead. Another difference I noticed was that one version said “You might call me a thousand times, not once would I turn round.” and another version said “Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.” This is very different because one is saying that she was being called a thousand times and never looked, but the other is saying she won’t look if she is called. In one version is can’t look back when she is called, and in the other version she says that she won’t, but the action never occurs so when reading just one of the versions instead of multiple, you may not be getting the actual meaning.

My favorite version is Witter Bynner’s version. This version makes the most sense to me. The lines aren’t numbered and there isn’t any unnecessarily weird way of saying some of the lines so I can understand it without reading the line a couple times to fully get it.

I’m looking at the passage in book 12 lines 349-378, when Eurylochus convinces the crew to go after the Sun God’s cattle. I had a few questions when reading this passage. Some of the questions were, why did Eurylochus disobey Odysseus when he has been right basically the while voyage, why did Eurylochus go after Helios’ cattle knowing they are Helios’ cattle and that a God would be unhappy about his cattle being slaughtered and why does Odysseus have so bad luck on his voyage?
Right before this passage Odysseus says these are the Sun God’s cattle and he sees and hears everything and if they harm his herd the price will be paid (Homer, book 12 lines 345-48). A few lines later when Odysseus isn’t paying attention Eurylochus convinces everybody to go after the cattle anyway. Eurylochus must have a problem with Odysseus’s leadership because when Odysseus was given the bag of winds from the God, the crew thought it was gold and silver and distrusted Odysseus to share the wealth with them. As a crew they ripped open the bag and brought them far from home which they were near to. When they were blown far from their course Eurylochus should have seen that Odysseus isn’t lying to the crew. When Odysseus said don’t go after the cattle, Eurylochus should have believed him when Odysseus said leave the cattle alone.
Even if Eurylochus didn’t believe Odysseus, before attacking the cattle he should have thought about how the God will be upset with those who slaughtered his cattle. This entire trip has been having setback after setback for upsetting various different Gods. Eurylochus is showing more examples that he believes that he is better than the rest of the crew. He is making decisions without considering the possible repercussions and getting the crew into trouble.
This whole voyage for Odysseus has been one of just horrible luck. He battles multiple storms, fights cyclopes, a whirlpool, six headed monster, sails by an island of sirens and upsets almost every God there is. He continues to fight through hardships over and over that are mostly caused by his crew and not him. He is just suffering through other peoples mistakes. The Great Odysseus cannot seem to catch a break.

A pattern I noticed is the constant suffering of Odysseus. He first fights in a war that lasts for nearly a decade. After this long war he then sets sail home. His ship is destroyed and his crew lost, but on top of that he is basically kidnapped by the goddess Calypso. He his held on her island for several years against his will as her property. After Zeus learns that she is holding Odysseus there against his will, Zeus commands Calypso to release him. After he is released, he is given a ship, which while sailing, is destroyed again when Poseidon spots him on the open sea. After being helped again he finds his way to a kingdom where the king promises him a ship. But while at his celebration, a man sings of the Trojan War. He sings specifically about an event Odysseus was involved in. This reliving of the battle sends Odysseus into sadness.

I also wondered if Odysseus knew that a god was responsible for the mist that surrounded him on his journey to the palace. He must of known that he was followed by a cloud of fog for the duration of his walk. Was it more like invisibility rather than just a cloud of mist? Also when he kneeled before the king and was suddenly visible why wasn’t he aware that he must have been helped by a God or Goddess. And why did Athena make Odysseus look more attractive to the princess? Was it so she would help him? Is Homer trying to say that she would only help a pretty face and not somebody who is in need of help. Seems like a shallow kind of ideology that homer inserted saying that only pretty people are deserving of help. One more question would be why he was naked when he was first seen. He wasn’t originally bathing, in the river so he should have at least had clothes on when he got there. Was it just Athena trying to make him seem more attractive?

In Phaedrus, Socrates’ tells a myth about Theuth, who invented writing, and shared his invention with the God Thamus. Theuth believes that writing will allow easier learning in students and increased memory. Thamus believes that it will do the opposite. It will cause the mind to rely on writing to be able to remember things. Without writing you would have to be able to remember everything and have no written reminders. I can relate to Theuth because I have grown up with a written language my whole life and know firsthand how my memory works. I can also believe what Thamus said because it makes sense. Before the invention of a written language, stories and events that happened to a person were only stored in memory, with no written reminder. I recall being told by an old teacher that some of the books we read that year used to be told by mouth because the stories predated written language. If people were able to recall by memory an entire story that is now a 200 page book, I believe that not having a written language and remembering everything is a good way to keep the mind sharp and preserve memory.

I believe that while writing Phaedrus, Plato saw the irony in it. He was writing about a conversation about whether writing spoiled the brain or not. Plato’s opinion must of been that writing did not ruin memory or intelligence because if he believed it did, he would want to stay away from it. I believe that Socrates’ made a good argument about writing, he says “You have found a specific not for memory but for reminiscence, and you give your disciples only the pretense of wisdom…”(First paragraph of Socrates)   It makes sense that somebody can think that having writing to remind you of things sounds like false knowledge. This is a age before writing was a foundation in learning and he didn’t know its uses.

In The Oral World vs. The Written World  Carr quotes McLuhan, “When we learned to read, he argued, we suffered a “considerable detachment from the feelings or emotional involvement that a nonliterate man or society would experience.””(Second page of article last paragraph) This quote makes a lot of sense to me because if you are listening to the emotion in a voice telling a story you feel more involved than when you read because there is less emotion involved in reading.

“I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading.” (Second Carr article second paragraph) This makes a lot of sense to me because even though I am only 19 years old, the way I read has changed over my life. I used to read and comprehend what I read better. Now I find myself having to reread passages because I don’t remember anything from it despite just reading it. I now also prefer to read things on a screen rather than a printed book. I find it more enjoyable, even if its the same writing I would rather read it on my phone or on my laptop.