Plain View #70 - May 29, 2007

Bufe

Alice Cooper

Van Detailing

New Garden

28 Days Later

The Italian

Senior Trip - Demolition Ball

Angelina Jolie

Studio 60

Last Comic Standing?

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This week we launched the redesign of AdrianJournal.com. The site is now powered by Drupal and features a modern look, online classifieds, more interactive features and larger photos (click on the thumbnails). It's much easier to update than the old PostNuke version was, and the pages load faster, too. While b2evolution is still my blogging tool of choice, Drupal is a very nice, flexible web app for making online community sites.

Thanks to Nobody's mention of this movie after reading my review of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, I thought this might be fun to check out. It's filled with many stars, not quite as many as MMMMW, but leads played by Carl Reiner and Alan Arkin are enough to steal the show. The story is set during the Cold War, and a soviet submarine accidentally runs aground on the coast of a New England island. When the Russian soldiers go searching for a boat to tow them back into the water, chaos spreads quickly throughout the small island, whose townspeople are convinced that war with the soviet union is close at hand.

I liked this one a lot and am surprised I had never heard of it. The actors are all great, from Reiner and Arkin to Eva Marie Saint, Robert Mitchum, Jonathan Winters, Brian Keith, and many more. Comic timing is key, and from the actors to the editing, it's spot-on. Another thing I appreciated a lot about the movie was that it wasn't just about laughs; every shot of the small town and the coast was beautiful and in vibrant color--too bad I could only find a black and white photo online. Also, the character of the small town and its people were captured perfectly.

Where IAMMMMW went haywire at the end, I think TRACTRAC (yes, I'm a lazy typist) built up quite a bit but never went too far. The ending they chose was perfect to keep the mood light and not get too serious about the cold war (it was, after all, 1967 when this came out). I had a lot of fun watching it and would definitely recommend it for some good laughs.

Reason #2: The Pilgrims

The concept behind The Canterbury Tales is that a group of people are making a religious pilgrimage from Southwark, England to Canterbury. At the onset of their journey they agree to a contest in which they all tell tales to pass the time and the winner has his or her lodgings and food paid for by the rest of the company. It's a simple frame device, but it's also much more than that. To me, the pilgrims themselves are the most interesting part of the book. They represent nearly all levels of society in 14th century England, from a noble knight to a simple miller, to various religious clergy, to a wealthy widow of several husbands, and a host of others in between.

Scholars have speculated that the variety of people represented in the group of pilgrims is a direct result of Chaucer's own firsthand experiences. Throughout his life he was a soldier, a diplomat, a civil servant, a messenger, a comptroller, and a foreman. It is believed that these experiences familiarized Chaucer with the full range of social classes, which uniquely qualified him to write a work of literature that creates interaction between characters who would otherwise never associate with one another.

The mix of upper and lower classes of people on the trip is by itself interesting, but Chaucer spices things up a bit in his depictions of the individual characters, which he begins in the General Prologue. Chaucer has a way of talking about them in a way that can seem complimentary but hints at scandalous acts and character flaws, and he is particularly hard on those in the employ of the church. Here are a few lines from his description of the Friar (in Modern English, borrowed from the side-by-side translation here):

Highly liked by all and intimate was he
With franklins everywhere in his country,
And with the worthy women living in the city:
For his power of confession met no equality
That's what he said, in the confession to a curate,
For his order he was a licentiate.
He heard confession gently, it was said,
Gently absolved too, leaving no dread.
He was an easy man in penance-giving
He knew how to gain a fair living;
For to a begging friar, money given
Is sign that any man has been well shriven.
For if one gave, he dared to boast bluntly,
He took the man's repentance not lightly.
For many a man there is so hard of heart
He cannot weep however pains may smart.
Therefore, instead of weeping and of prayers,
Men should give silver to the poor friars.

In towns he knew the taverns, every one,
And every good host and each barmaid too -
Better than needy lepers and beggars, these he knew.
For unto no such a worthy man as he
It's unsuitable, as far as he could see,
To have sick lepers for acquaintances.
There is no honest advantageousness
In dealing with such poor beggars;
It's with the rich victual-buyers and sellers.

Perhaps I have a warped view of what was acceptable in Chaucer's time, but passages like this are a little shocking to me. From the beginning we see the pilgrims as people who feign devout faith or nobility, but are corrupt beneath, and the clergy are the worst of them. The General Prologue deals mostly with superficial qualities, though. The pilgrims' characters are developed more fully through the tales they tell, which is one of the most interesting things Chaucer does. See, the pilgrims are not merely mouthpieces for Chaucer's storytelling. The stories vary in style, content, and quality, depending on who is telling them, and some are even intentionally bad. For the rest of this series of posts I will discuss some of the more interesting ones, beginning with...

Reason #3: The Knight's Tale

Of the Knight, Chaucer says, "He was a verray, parfit gentil knyght" (he was a truly perfect, gentle knight), who is the portrait of medieval nobility. He is cultured and refined, but also a formidable fighter, as evidenced by his experience on the battlefield. This knight kicks off the pilgrimage with a high-minded tale that incorporates old-fashioned nobility with Greek Mythology and Medieval Philosophy.

The Knight's Tale tells about two young knights, Arcite and Palamon, who are captured by an enemy king and imprisoned for life. While locked in a tower they see Emelye, the king's daughter, walk by, and they both fall instantly in love with her. In time Arcite is freed at the request of a friend, but is cast into exile, while Palamon remains imprisoned. Each one envies the other's position: Arcite has his freedom, Palamon remains geographically close to Emelye.

Eventually, Arcite disguises himself and gains a position in the king's court, while Palamon escapes from his prison. The two meet by chance one day and begin to fight over Emelye. The king stops their fight then, but he arranges a contest between the two. They are each to raise an army of 100 men to fight on a predetermined day, and the winner is awarded the hand of Emelye in marriage. The men raise their forces and on the night before the battle they each pray to the god of their choice, who proceed to argue amongst themselves the fate of the men and Emelye.

On the day of battle it is agreed that no man shall suffer a mortal blow: if a man is struck down he will be allowed to exit the battlefield. Ultimately Arcite wins, but Pluto sends an earthquake that causes Arcite to be thrown from his horse and die. There is much mourning and talk of the great man Arcite was. Emelye then marries Palamon and loves him for the rest of their lives.

The whole tale is told with lots of flowery language and extensive descriptions of the people's clothing, the arena of battle, and the greatness and vastness of the armies. The knight also interjects a liberal amount of philosophy, commenting on the wheel of fortune (it's not just a game show) that turns us all so that when we are at the top one moment, it's only a matter of time before we are once again at the bottom.

This tale is all so high-minded and romanticized that it seems completely over the top to me. The knights go from beloved kin to sworn enemies over their infatuation with Emelye, only to renew their love for each other in the moment of Arcite's death. Emelye at first prays to Diana to allow her to remain single, but she seems all too quick to pledge her love for whichever man wins the prize. And finally, the king who imprisoned the two knights in the first place ends up welcoming one as a son-in-law and honoring the other in his death.

I'm really not sure what Chaucer had in mind in writing this: Is it a sincerely written work of epic poetry or a subtle parody of the popular style? In the context of The Canterbury Tales I like to think it's a little of both, but I suppose it doesn't really matter. What matters is that the Knight takes the story very seriously, as do the rest of the pilgrims, who all consider it to be an illustration of the lofty ideals of chivalry and nobility. It was probably equally well-received by readers in Chaucer's time and has remained perhaps the most popular tale even to our modern age, a fact I find very interesting. It seems that old-fashioned notions of nobility prove enduring in every age, even up to the 20th century, when people began embracing more realistic depictions of people in literature.

It's tempting, then, to think that all literature of the past was as high-minded as The Knight's Tale, but that's simply not true, as we see from the rest of the tales.

Up next: Chaucer gets dirty.

To read my complete series on The Canterbury Tales, follow the links below.

Introduction and Reason #1: The Language

Reason #10: Chaucer's Tales of Sir Topas and Melibee and Wrap-up