Thursday, August 14, 2008

Hi Lo Silver Lining

The Times Literary Supplement - bastion of what is good and what is not and if you disagree you're some sort of imbecilic pleb - has deemed a review of the Tennant-starring Hamlet necessary.

This is the Times' fourth review of Hamlet. It's also the one that would most likely put you on the back foot:

Tennant’s
television role as the Time Lord Doctor Who and as Hamlet has dominated
media coverage – and ticket sales – as an irresistibly unlikely coupling of
high and low culture.

That's right - the day after a report declares the north of England as worthless, the Times then tells us that if you don't do Shakespeare you're a proponent of what they call "low culture".

That they also include Doctor Who in this description is particularly bewildering. That there is a high and a low is also rather puzzling.

Dismissing a universe of alien foes and friends and wonder and deceit and redemption is, however, nothing more than snobbery. Small minded, self-absorbed demeaning snobbery and frankly in this day and age, with a fractured society and increasingly remote elite, the Times have done an injustice not only to one of the most successful fictional worlds ever created, but to their own credibility.

2 comments:

Mark H Wilkinson said...

And what's wrong with a bit of snobbery? Sorry, I don't understand the problem here -- people are always going to make a distinction between popular culture and that which thrives in more rarified environs. You might just as well complain that cheeseburgers don't get the same respect as charbroiled ribeye steak with dauphnoise gratin pepper sauce.

(Having said that, remember, kids: just say "No!" to MacDonalds. Think Burger King. 'Nuff said.)

Christian-Mark Cawley said...

Nah - say no to em all, get a bit of culture and go to Pizza Hut :D