Today’s Plots
Jacobean Scenarios from Articles, Reviews & Headlines of the Day
March 2009 update…
While this page will be maintained, it`s prime function can be better enhanced using the recently developed Twittter application…so regular updates on this theme are to be found – and joined - there!
http://twitter.com/jacobeanvisions
March 2008: Hypocrisy and Hubris. “On March 13, less than a week after the breaking of a sex scandal, democratic New York Governor Eliot Spitzer announced his resignation. Officially, he will quit his office on March 17. Unofficially, it was clear that 48-year-old Spitzer, who was considered presidential material two years ago, ruined his political career and probably lost his family on the day that the New York Times published the spicy bits of his phone order for a small brunette…”
“The web, the politician and the prostitute…”
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“As the creator of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, warned: “Imagine that everything you are typing is being read by the person you are applying to for your first job. Imagine that it’s all going to be seen by your parents and your grandparents and your grandchildren as well.” :http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7302968.stm
March 2008: Just found, Research Analysis from First Monday on respective usage of community networks, ie:-
“From a three-step analysis of online communities, a set of five heuristics emerged: interactive creativity; selection hierarchy; identity construction; rewards and costs; and, artistic forms. These heuristics were generated from concepts appearing in past research, and then tested by a content analysis with focus groups using the case examples of two well-developed Web-based communities, Facebook and MySpace…”. The essay is here: http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_3/gallant/index.html
February 2008:
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| “The most spied upon people in Europe: Germany’s highest court has ruled that spying on personal computers violates privacy, but governments across Europe are under pressure to help their security services fight terrorism and organised crime. Here, BBC reporters give a snapshot of the extent of surveillance across Europe…” | ||
February 2008: “A microphone hidden in a table, it’s hardly James Bond but it has got the police and the government in hot water…”
January 2008: Carneval Masks and Magic:-“The Surva International Festival of Masquerade Games honours a Bulgarian tradition going back centuries, and includes the rest of the world in the process. Photo: MAGDALENA RAHN/DEYAN VURBANOV
”The Surva International Festival of Masquerade Games happens only once every second January, and is the largest such event on the Balkan Peninsula. This year, the 17th time that the games have been held, 98 groups comprising more than 5400 people from 13 countries participated. The scholarly conference Masquerade – Cultural Heritage and Social Practices on January 25…”
January 2008: British intelligence service recorded Diana’s conversations, says her former guard: “The controversial “squidgygate” tapes were the work of the British intelligence listening station GCHQ, which routinely bugged the conversations of Diana, Princess of Wales, her inquest was told today…”
January 2008: “Social networking site Facebook says it has taken down two bogus profiles of Bilawal Bhutto, son of the murdered Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto. An investigation found the entries “not authentic” and in breach of Facebook terms of use, a company statement said. A number of news organisations were fooled, reporting details from the profiles before they were taken down…”
December 2007:
“Privacy International, a UK privacy group, and the U.S.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center have put together a world map of surveillance societies, rating various nations for their civil liberties records. Both the U.S. and the UK are colored black for “endemic surveillance,” as are Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Russia, China and Malaysia…”
November 2007: And Shakespeare? Growing doubts about the actual identity of who wrote all those plays, if anyone:- http://www.doubtaboutwill.org/about_us
October 2007: We’re all journalists now:
“The United States Federal Emergency Management Administration has apologised for having its employees pose as reporters at a hastily arranged news conference…”
And then heads rolled….http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7064909.stm
August 2007: National Public Radio Podcast: Online interview and discussion with:-Dmitri 
Williams, Annenberg School, Annenberg Program in Online Communities, University of Southern California, Cory Ondrejka, co-founder and chief technology officer, Linden Lab, San Francisco, Ca. & Sherry Turkle, director, MIT Initiative on Technology and Self Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
June 2007: Vertigo Rising. 
The American Film Institute top 100 is released, to reveal that Vertigo (1958) has broken through to the top ten (number 9), having risen no less than 52 places since the last poll. The full list is here:afi-100-2007.pdf
June 2007: Hirst’s grim defiance on gaudy death: “The Hoxton gallery will be the outer circle of hell, ringing with the howls of those lost beyond hope of redemption. The St James’s gallery will merely be purgatory, filled with the penitent believing that once they have served their time, they will rise in the jealously guarded lift to the shrine, joining those who have been admitted to the true presence – the £50m platinum skull completely covered by 8,601 diamonds. The most expensive piece of contemporary art ever created…”
2006 BBC Podcast on women’s roles in Jacobean Drama with Lisa Hopkins (Professor, English Literature at Sheffield Hallam University):
Disturbia (2007) interesting to see this update of Rear Window (1954) now emerging…
Also, uncanny echoes of Vertigo (1958) from, The Bridge (2007). Unsettling documentary on the San Francisco Bridge as a regular location for lonely suicides.
Cyberspace Tyranny…“And the same goes for my partners in cyberspace communication. I can never be sure who they are: are they really the way they describe themselves, is there a “real” person at all behind a screen persona, is the screen persona a mask for a multiplicity of people, or am I simply dealing with a digitised entity which does not stand for any “real” person…”? From Zizek, December, 30th, 2006, The Guardian
Grades of Allegiance in UK Media: “Michael Grade’s sudden departure from the BBC is expected to condemn his former employer to defeat in its battle to win an above-inflation rise in the licence fee”, The Times, Nov 29th 2006:-
Women, Representation and Digital Fakery: “An Iranian actor at the centre of a video sex scandal has spoken for the first time publicly to deny being a collaborator in the now notorious home-made film”, Robert Tait, Nov 23rd, 2006:-
London’s Deadly Intrigues: “Unanswered questions over the polonium poisoning”…
On the frail nature of identity: “The destruction of a reputation through the media is a tactic we have seen before when serious police errors have come into the public domain…” Victoria Brittain, Nov. 25th, 2006:-
Press for Truth, 9/11: “…to stitch together rare overlooked news clips, buried stories, and government press conferences, revealing a pattern of official lies, deception and spin…”
Spies, Boardrooms and Pretexting….“You know a company is in deep trouble when both its general counsel and its chief ethics officer resign on the eve of their congressional testimony…”, Walter Shapiro, Salon:-
YouTube Icon Revealed as Fictive in Public Confession: 
“…Bree’s inventors went public after fans of the two- to three-minute videos began questioning her existence and expressing disappointment that the seemingly genuine video diaries were a hoax.” Gary Gentile, Sept 13th 2006:-
The Google Panspectron: “They know all about you: Every time you use an internet search engine, your inquiry is stored in a huge database. Would you like such personal information to become public knowledge? Yet for thousands of AOL customers, that nightmare has just become a reality”, Andrew Brown, Aug 28th 2006:-
The Corporate Erasing of Memory: “At the most abstract level, the key political battle of the 21st century may not be between particular political parties or ideologies but, rather, the war between mathematics and narrative creativity”, Sandra Braman, 10th Aug, 2006, First Monday:-
2003: Alex Cox updates Middleton to Liverpool…”From “Repo Man” to “Sid and Nancy”and “Straight to Hell”, Alex Cox has made some of the most original movies of recent years. His latest film, “Revengers Tragedy”, is an updated version of Thomas Middleton’s 17th century play that’s set in post-apocalypse Liverpool…”
- http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/feature.jsp?id=111813
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2003/01/24/eddie_izzard_revengers_tragedy_interview.shtml
2002: Play Reviews of Some Note: “Jacobean Drama Is A Mirror of Our Times: The cynicism and hypocrisy satirised by the Jacobean playwrights reek of Blair’s Britain. Malevolence rules in public life as critics rail at a regime grown rickety. At the centre of government there is inconsistency, intrigue and hypocrisy.”
“The dominant classes in early industrial society sought to get their inferiors to do what they wanted them to do. In contemporary society, elites try to make their subordinates be what they want them to be.” (Brown, 1987, p. 52)
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Now how about some theory, Brown et al…? http://jacobeanvisions.edublogs.org/source-references/
..and CUT
