Christian's Blog: Mai Zetterling

On Wednesday morning I finished working out the chords for “Disk Jockey” by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through the song in French.

During song practice it got increasingly difficult to tune my B string. My rehearsal usually ends around 8:30 but because of the tuning problem I wasn’t done until after 9:00. I was going to have to try to find the time to change the string to see if that would help.

Just before 10:00 I logged onto my Introduction to British Literature tutorial.

Alexandra reminded us that our short response assignment would be due on Friday. The professor told me he would inform her that I have an extension.

She let us know that we should pay attention to analysis, evidence, argument, grammar, style and clarity.

We looked at the York Crucifixion.

I started to make the first comment but my mic jack was screwing up and I was only coming through broken up. This happened a few times with me trying to push the jack in and finally I came through okay.

I commented that the York Crucifixion reads like a Monty Python sketch. There’s a lot of humour. The focus is on the soldiers as workers. I said the joke seems to be on the soldiers but the audience is in on it. I pointed out that many Christian texts state that the soldiers were not to blame because they had to perform their duty.

Reality and representation is blended.

I said the play is user friendly and draws the audience in to the Biblical experience. Details are added to the stories to capture the interest of the audience such as the difficulties of nailing someone to a cross or in another play Noah having to drag his wife kicking and screaming into the ark.

Alexandra asked for volunteers to read a section of the York Crucifixion. I volunteered and eventually so did two others. I think there were only five students in the whole tutorial this morning. Alexandra played one of the soldiers and I was soldier #4.

Some people said it was disturbing to read these parts as they are talking about driving the nails into Jesus.

I said that it was easy to get into my character when he was getting emotional about getting his job done.

I commented that in addition to the Biblical message the audience is being instructed through the play to do their jobs and work hard.

The soldiers are bad at their jobs.

It occurred to me that these actors were probably illiterate and so they must be improvising after some coaching but without having memorized a script.

We looked at Thomas More’s Utopia.

We were asked about labour in that society and I said that farming is treated as so centrally important that everyone has to serve time as a farmer and that those who particularly like it can do it full time. More’s character Raphael had said that one of the deepest flaws in the British system is land enclosure. There used to be common land for grazing and farming but then the rich began to fence it off and use it for agriculture as a business. I said that a lot of the Romantic poets and writers spoke out against land enclosure and I learned about that when I took Romantic Literature.

Goldsmiths were seen as a negative thing.

I said that most gold work went to make the fine possessions of the nobility. It didn’t do much good for the people. I said that Raphael also talked about the issue of security for people who were too old to work. More’s character "More" says the nobility put their wealth and craftsmen's artistic achievements on display and the people like to be able to look up to and admire these fine things. I said that argument against private property and money is more convincing than the one in defence of the people liking to see the nobility in their finery. I admitted that it is even to some extent true today that people like to witness the opulence and pageantry of the British Royal Family.

The book opens with a critique of the British system and the second book brings in Utopia as an alternative.

I pointed out that there is irony in the strong arguments for religious tolerance when they are looked at in the historical context of More as Grand Chancellor of England ordering the execution of Protestants. There is further irony in that anyone who doesn’t believe in god being publicly shunned in Utopia. There seemed to be a belief in general at that time that without fear of god people would all become criminals.

Alexandra reminded us that there is a mixing of reality and fiction in both texts.

I changed the B string on my guitar and it took a long time to tune afterwards. Hopefully it’s just a matter of the string stretching.

I had rice crackers and cheddar for lunch.

I got caught up on typing my lecture notes.

I went out to buy a six-pack of Creemore.

I finished writing this week’s required discussion piece for my Canadian Literature tutorial:

In her poem “Discourse on the Logic of Language” NorbeSe Philip describes the tongue both clinically and physically in ways that add to its traditional symbolism as meaning language. The tongue is removed to suppress language. She emphasizes this by severing the reader from the poem by adding glosses on either side of it. The one on the left recounts cultural traditions relating to the tongue practiced mothers after giving birth with the tongue of the mother blowing ancient grandmother words from her tongue to her baby's tongue rather than to her ear. This gloss is turned on its side to separate the reader from the poem. But while one reads it the rest of the text relating to recent history and the present of language suppression is turned on its side. The gloss on the right recounts how some slave keeping cultures removed the tongues of slaves and hung them high to see rather than hear as a symbol of not speaking. Certain words that rhyme with “tongue” such as "dumb" emphasize non speaking while "hung" elevates the suppression of the tongue as being the most prominent means of oppression, as in telling an immigrant to, “Speak English!”

She speaks of English being a mother tongue but also a father tongue and by father she seems to mean foreign oppressor. She mentions “dub tongue” as in Dub Poetry which is another tongue or another way of altering the English tongue to render it native because foreign words cannot be tasted.

For dinner I heated the other steak that I’d grilled on Monday and toasted a lengthwise slice of a loaf of bread. I added barbecue and hot sauce and had my meal with a beer while watching Interpol Calling.

This was the best episode so far because it featured a very beautiful thief who outsmarted Duval on a few occasions before he finally caught her. The story begins with a Princess Carlotta buying jewellery. She signs a cheque but the jeweller has been tipped off by the police that she is an impostor. The police come in and arrest her, taking her away, but also taking the jewellery as evidence. As they drive away we see that these are not cops but rather her gang. Interpol is notified and Duval is familiar with this criminal’s operations although he has yet to outsmart her. He thinks she has outsmarted herself this time because she has made her plane reservations under “Princess Carlotta”. But Duval is embarrassed when the woman he grabs at the airport is the real Princess Carlotta. Duval goes to the International Society Service of London, which keeps track of the type of celebrities this mastermind imitates. She somehow learns from the society the movements of a given celebrity in a time and place that would fit with one of her planned robberies. The director of the society reluctantly allows Duval to look through his files. Duval learns that the crook always uses general delivery addresses but with different names in different cities. He thinks the most recent name is E Prentice in Rome. Duval goes to Rome to watch the post office with a man inside waiting for Prentice to pick up her mail. When she does the man follows her but she knows she is being tailed. She enters a hotel and Duval asks for the room of E Prentice but it turns out to be the room of a middle aged woman with that name. But he finds that the woman they are after was staying at the hotel and abandoned her luggage to escape. Duval confiscates her clothes and asks for help from Interpol scientist Helene. She asks, “You want me to analyze them?” “I want the girl analyzed.” “But I’m a scientist.” “You’re a woman.” “So you noticed that?” Moray says, “He had to look it up in records.” Since the criminal gets her clothes from the top fashion houses the measurements are worked out so everything fits perfectly. Duval asks Helene to figure out her measurements from the dresses. He figures that since she has just lost her wardrobe she will need to restock The fashion houses are given her measurements and they notify Interpol when they match. But at the fashion show the criminal leaves early. Helene follows her to her hotel where she is staying under the name of Carol Minaise but the police can’t arrest her until she is caught in the act. She goes to a jewellery shop and asks the jeweller to bring the jewellery to her hotel room for her to choose. After he agrees and she leaves the fake police arrive, telling the jeweller she is a crook and for him to help them catch her. But this time when the fake police come to arrest her, Duval and the real police arrive to arrest her and them. When Duval asks why she used her real name she says she thought it would be a disguise he couldn’t figure out.

Carol was played by Swedish film star and later renowned director Mai Zetterling, who started film acting during the war when she was in her teens. She started becoming well known when she starred in two Ingmar Bergman films, “Torment” and “Music in Darkness”. She moved to England and co-starred in “Frieda”, “The Bad Lord Byron”, “Blackmailed”, “The Ringer”, “A Prize of Gold”, “Seven Waves Away”, “Faces in the Dark”, “Offbeat”, “The Man Who Finally Died” and “Only Two Can Play”. She went to Hollywood but found it so fake that she left very quickly. In the 60s she abandoned acting to become a director of movies with themes that were ahead of their time: “Loving Couples” dealt with homosexual themes and was banned from Cannes because of explicit scenes and nudity, “Night Games “ dealt with sexual decadence, and “The Girls” explored women’s liberation.