Music Matters: The William and Mary Choir

The back rubs.

Movie Matters: Aladdin: More Othello than Hamlet

"This is no ordinary lamp," our narrator exclaims, "It once changed the course of a young man's life. A young man, who, like this lamp, was more than what he seemed. A diamond in the rough."

This opening suggests that this is a story about Aladdin. There are many great arguments for that particular reading of the film. After all, we meet Aladdin, we follow him through his trials, tribulations, reconciliations and we revel in his joy and wish fulfillment. But there are parts of the Aladdin character that are not fully formed. The crux of his character arc is that he starts off as a thief with a heart of gold. Then, through magic, he becomes a prince. During the second act of the film, he struggles with reconciling his new found royalty with his humble past. While this is somewhat compelling, Aladdin's realization that he should just be the great guy that he's always been, is a somewhat hollow epiphany.

What makes Aladdin such a great film is the Jafar story. Jafar is always the smartest guy in the room. He's ambitious and cunning. He is much more than your average cartoon villain painted merely to accentuate the purity of the hero.

The Sultanate of Agrabah is in shambles. Orphans go hungry and often resort to crime in order to live, yet the Sultan spends his days playing with toys. The future of the kingdom rests in the hands of the man who can win the heart of a spoiled princess who feels trapped in her palace fantasy land and doesn't like princes who've come calling. In context, Jafar's choice to take the throne, by means suited to his understanding of the dark arts, seems somewhat rational. He is a man of great intellect and motivation. He defiantly has the stuff of an effective leader. And as the clip above shows, he is wittier and more ruthless than his foes.

We can quibble over the cruelty Jafar inflicts on the Sultan and Jasmain, but suffice to say, and the end of the movie proves, given a similar option, the "good guys" treat him the same way (as Queen Cersei Lannister would say, "In the game of thrones, you either win or you die."). Where Jafar does fail, is in his pride that he, alone, should weld ultimate power. Blind to any danger in gaining more, he is goaded by Aladdin to wish to become a genie. He ascends to that zenith of power but fails to realize a simple and universal truth said rather eloquently by Jesus in the gospel of Mark, "If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all." 

Poetry Matters: On the Occasion of the 125th Anniversary of Poet Lore

O.B. Hardison Poetry Series 
Poet Lore Celebrates 125 Years of Literary Discovery 
September 15, 2014 
Folger Elizabethan Theatre

On the Occasion of the 125th Anniversary of Poet Lore

Our pens rest quietly atop shuddered Moleskins

As Jody Bolz encounters kindred spirits in ancient volumes 

And Ethelbert Miller extols the nourishment of editing

And Traci Brimhall conjures a forgotten heteronym

And Terrance Hayes dances with James Brown

And Cornelius Eady guards a soggy couch

And Linda Pastan charts a safe path towards death

I should be taking notes 

But the syncopation and the staccato 

Of the music floating from the podium

Eludes notation 

There, a quotation I want to remember

There, a stanza I want to ponder

There, an anecdote I want to re-render

But like a hummingbird hovering at petal's edge 

Each phrase arrests movement

And the surfeited fairy escapes uncaptured

Music Matters: Lana Del Ray: Born To Die

Lana Del Ray, Born to Die, Interscope Records, 2012
Download Now: Video Games

Lana Del Ray's debut album, "Born to Die," reminds a jaded, pessimistic generation, acutely aware of its civilizations's harbingers of doom, to relax. The album, at it's core, is a Rorschach test that measures the listener's ability to "stop worrying and love the bomb."

Del Ray has created an album that accepts that the end is nigh but refuses to accept hopelessness. It's true that the laconic orchestration that buttresses each track is more "Requiem" than "He is Risen." An ominous church bell rings out in the opening measures of "Video Games," as a few lonely chords drone out of the piano, but then, like a joke in a eulogy, a few strums from the harp subtlety alter the mood.

The lyrics weave the story of a fantasy women who says things like,

"...this is my idea of fun/ Playing video games/It's you, It's you it's all for you / Everything I do. I tell you all the time/Heaven is a place on earth with you/ Tell me all the things you wanna do..."

When I first heard these lyrics I frantically sent the song to a friend and said, "Finally, a love song for the men of our generation." But Del Ray's vocals suggest that my enthusiasm should have been somewhat tempered. While there are moments of loving lilts in her vocalization the artificial echo effect added to her voice creates a sense of distance and her husky nasal tone sounds more resigned than passionate (for more blatant cues see the video above). When the lyrics are examined under this light they seem to suggest that loving a man who loves video games is more best-available-option than first choice, and a militaristic snare drum rift  toward the end of the track signifies that she will march on content in this reality.

But Del Ray is not merely interested in putting a happy face on a less than desirable situation, she is interested in why we buy into the facade. The violin arrangement at the top of "National Anthem," is reminiscent of The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony," a song that laments, "You're a slave to money then you die." Del Ray reframes the sentiment with the lyric, "Money is the reason we exist / Everybody knows this, kiss, kiss." While the tone echoes The Verve's nihilism, there is an undertone of cheekiness that suggests that although we are all hopelessly consumed by masking our problems with money and things, deep down we all know this does not work. In a track entitled "Carmen" the heroine "...doesn't have a problem/ Lying to herself because her liquor's top-shelf," and neither do we.

"Born to Die" is the soundtrack for Millennials who never expected to receive a Social Security check or find more happiness than unboxing a new iThing. We have a keen sense that our money is going to run out and the comfort afforded to us by our stuff will not last. Del Ray reminds us that, while all of that is true, we can always have our "Pabst Blue Ribbon on ice," and laugh in the face of despair.

YouTube Matters: Heather Traska's A Cappella Disney Song Inspired Masterpiece

Heather Traska is the one-woman a cappella Girl Talk of Disney songs. A star is born.

Predictions: 1) She will get her wish of being on Ellen (Tweet Ellen!); 2) She will be on an episode of Glee and 3) She will be the voice of the next Disney princess (this is obviously the boldness prophecy). My favorite part starts at 2:50 and goes to 4:35 (Let's Get Down to Business, Mulan melting into the greatest Disney song of all time, Reprise to One Jump Ahead, Aladdin). I would have ended the video here, but she's from a younger Disney-movie-watching generation who saw movies like Hercules and Tangled (a movie that brought tears to my 16 year-old brother's eyes because, he said, "Some parts [of Tangled] are just so deep") so she had to pack in more songs.

So, take a trip down memory lane and listen to Heather Traska sing Disney songs like you've never heard them before.

Movie Matters: 10 Things I Hate About You

I just popped in the shiny 10th Anniversary Blu Ray of 10 Things I Hate About You. This is the hands down the best Julie-Stiles-plays-90s-teenager-version-of-a-Shakespearian-heroine movie ever made. 

Couple of great things about the 10th Anniversary edition.

1. Heath Ledger gets a lot of love on the back cover for being the Joker, which is fair because he got the Oscar and he died a glamorous death of a young famous mega star on the top
2. Inflation is a bitch. Two movie tickets cost $15 (with popcorn, $53).Verona does all of his dirt for less than $500.00, the cost of an iPad. 
3. There are so many songs in this movie that I don't remember at all - from the movie, from the radio, from anywhere. 

Quotes that are still really awesome...

"And I'm back in the game"

"Kisses don't keep me elbow deep in placenta."

"Normal? Like those damn Dawson's River kids?"

"And go hear a band that blows by rule?"

Local News Matters: Starburst Dress

I hope KARE 11 ran this story to make fun of people from Wisconsin, but it doesn't really matter because people out East don't know the difference between Minnesota, Wisconsin or any of the other northern midwestern state. As a kid, I used to save Starburst wrappers and I'm not really sure why. Maybe it was because I was living in Minnesota and during the harsh winter months going outside was not an option and we didn't have cable. I kept my wrappers in a box and organized them by color and that was about it. At least this women made something out of her hoard of wrappers. Mine ended up in a pile of stuff I left in Minnesota before I left for warmer climes.