On Rewatching “Monty Python” and Mocking the French

 

In the first moments of the television documentary Typically British, director Stephen Frears mentions French auteur Francois Truffaut’s famous suggestion that there was “a certain incompatibility between the terms ‘cinema’ and ‘Britain’.” Frears’ response? “Bollocks to Truffaut.”[1] Indeed as Alan Lovell declares in his essay “The British Cinema: The Known Cinema?” while critics often offer the belief that “comparable cinemas like the French or Italian have, over their whole history, been superior to the British cinema … the differences are only relative ones. British cinema isn’t a special case. There isn’t some fundamental British cinematic deficiency which needs to be accounted for.”[2] While I don’t want to pit the merits of French and British film against each other—I love Brief Encounter and La Règle du jeu equally— I begin to think about the ways in which which one aspect of English cinematic tradition excavates and illuminates the longstanding quagmire of tension between the two schools…after a recent tear of watching British parodies on YouTube.

Now: the British satirical system is anchored both by acute identification of pretense

Some Notes on the Acquisition of Books at the Library

1. The evening (it must be evening, for that is when the sense of book starvation is most acute) is now twilight. You leave the house in a light sweater and find that for the first time in several months, all of your internal organs are still functioning after 7PM in the great outdoors.
2. You leave your smartphone at home and hope that there are at least ten crisis-bearing texts when you get back, to demonstrate how much you have Left the Grid and are Above The Concerns of Everyday Life. You recognize that you might have a slight iAddiction.

In Conversation With: Relationships Are More Important Than Ambition, According To…

Are relationships or ambition more important, and according to whom? The Spire of Dublin, 2012 (Gabrielle Linnell)

In Conversation With is our new series reflecting on and responding to pieces in the national news. Today we’re considering the nature of cultural authority in “Relationships Are More Important Than Ambition“ by Emily Esfahani Smith for The Atlantic.

I first heard about Rod Dreher in a David Brooks column in December 2011. Since then Dreher has written The Little Way of Ruthie Leming (2013) about his moving experiences with his sister’s death and their small town. Emily Esfahani Smith wrote a piece this week about Dreher’s story in the context of a larger question: are relationships more important than ambition?

As Dreher himself noted, Smith relies heavily on social scientific studies to illustrate her observations. There’s nothing wrong with this; she’d be foolish not to avail herself of research on the topic. Yet Smith’s use of these sources sometimes appears as a reluctance

What Kind of Day Has It Been.

I know, I know, we’ve been terrible and delinquent for months on end now. But with one editor completing a monumental thesis, and the other settling her graduate school plans (more as these stories continue) we’ve been barely treading water in our other lives. This ends today. This is too important, and too much fun not to keep up. No joke. Furthermore, you all (and by “you all” I mean the three people still reading—hi mom) should know that this “comeback” post was meant to be an intellectual view of Suzy Lee Weiss’ recent article (read it here) and how I was once there and thought I should have gotten into Brown and didn’t because of a one-legged Eskimo and then I grew up and realized how entitled that actually sounded, so maybe we shouldn’t let 18-year-olds publish stupid things like that…it just isn’t appropriate anymore. So instead, if you’ll forgive the interlude before we get back to business, I’d like to just leave this picture here, as an ode to Boston. An elegy for those who died, but not for the city herself; she will live and thrive and move forward as the people move forward. So if you’ll indulge me for a bit, then we’ll get back to what we do best; sharing the cultural news and finding the integrity in the media elite. This was taken around noon in Wellesley. Keep running the race, fighting the good fight.

Mile 12, Wellesley College, 15 April 2013 at 11:56

In 1992, my parents moved from our North Shore hamlet to the MetroWest cluster of Massachusetts, and most of my life has been spent within that 20-mile radius of Boston. I went to Wellesley College and stayed well after graduation in part because I couldn’t really imagine settling anywhere else for the time being. I’m a die-hard Red Sox fan, I love the Brattle Theatre’s Classic Cinema series, and most people know that they way to my heart involves a trip to the Gardner and a picnic on the Commons. The city’s traditions and landmarks became ingrained in me like any cultural rituals or iconographies: the Freedom Trail, the Swan Boats, reenactments of Lexington and Concord, followed by the great Boston marathon. I’ve watched this race for 21 years straight, and this was to be my last year for a while; moving away from home, however exciting the new adventure may be, has its consequences. Boston is, in effect, my third parent. Today felts like an unspeakable role reversal, where you watched in horror as something beyond your control, reach, or comprehension starts to attack that which you once thought invincible. Things could happen to cities elsewhere—from New York to Newtown to New Orleans to London to Bangladesh to Mumbai—but to Boston? The Cradle of the Liberty, who was celebrating her mark as the hotbed of the American Revolution? Things can happen to your city, but to mine?

And then it does. And then it did.

We know little about the cause or effect of this event. The only thing I know is what I gather from scattered text messages, the barrage of news reports on CNN, and whatever I can glean from refreshing my twitter feed every twelve seconds. I also know this: first responders didn’t hesitate before they ran towards the explosion, towards the wounded, towards the chaos. And runners kept running to the hospitals to give blood. Boston residents welcomed marathoners into their homes for tea, warmth, comfort, and commiseration. There are no strangers in Boston. And when she starts to falter, her children are there to carry the torch.

We’re praying for you, Boston—for the city, the injured, the devastated, the torn, and for ourselves—and we look to tomorrow.

–ht

The Best Pride and Prejudice Quiz/Flowchart Redux

Test yourself, and enjoy. Apparently, I’m a Darcy.

Thanks to The Anglerfish Magazine for this magical, magical piece of fandom.

Happy Birthday, Pride and Prejudice!

Hello, world!

We’ve been absolutely terrible bloggers, it’s true. But we’re back to kick of the greatest week in the last hundred years: yes, it’s Jane Austen week here at Gaudy, to celebrate the 200^th anniversary of the publication of Austen’s seminal classic, Pride and Prejudice (with regards to the word seminal: no offense intended to those of you who contend that Emma is the best Austen—and props to your scholarship as well.)

Throughout the week, we’ll be offering meditations on varying aspects of this novel, including views on Darcy’s estate prowess, the modern-day phenomenon attached to the love story, and books you could have been reading instead of rereading this (all-too-addictive) novel 5,000 times.

See you soon!

-Hannah and Gabrielle

Letters of Love or Something Like It: Hampton Court Palace, or, more accurately, Lucy Worsley

After walking approximately seven miles yesterday, today’s journey into the bowels of English life was no less exhilarating, but perhaps slightly less physically strenuous. We became intimately acquainted with the British public transit system and, three trains, two Underground lines, and a five minute walk later, we were at Hampton Court Palace, the seat of the late, great, large Henry VIII and several of his (ill-fated) wives. The last British Monarch to reside there was George II, back when America was still England and the Tube didn’t exist, so people got from place to place by carriage or boat. The house itself, a grade I listed building that has undergone extensive renovation over the last 300 years, now stands as an interactive, tactile monument to English Royal history. The kitchens and bedrooms offer kinetic interaction, while the gardens were breathtaking, and obviously inspired by Le Nôtre’s design at Versailles. It is living history, and while the research evolves, the buildings maintain their ancient luster.

Having said this, I went into the estate excited about the grounds themselves, but also hoping to glimpse