Spock is Charlotte Brontë

Yesterday must have been the exception to the rule, because today we're back to our daily dose of Tamasha review. Well, just a brief one today, from the Independent:

I was greatly looking forward to Tamasha's adaptation of Wuthering Heights, which marketed itself as a Bollywood take on Brontë's classic, shifting the action to the deserts of Rajasthan. In the event, the execution was a bit disappointing and distinctly under-spiced. Money is probably one explanation for this, it being rather expensive to field a 50-strong troupe of dancing girls for a touring production. But I wondered whether timidity about the concept had also played a part – a feeling that if you were going to tinker with an English classic, you had better make the result as tasteful as possible. If so, it was an error of judgement. You get a hint of what might have been in the evening's only ensemble number – a kind of Indianised version of the Ascot-races scene from My Fair Lady – which has the right bounce and zing and colour to it, even though it's still a little under-populated. In an interview, Kristine Landon-Smith, the director, hinted that there had been enquiries about transferring it to the West End. Given that the central concept works quite well, one can only hope that she finds a collaborator who, along with the money, will bring a sufficient degree of shameless vulgarity to do it justice. (Tom Sutcliffe)

The Irish Times has an article on Lara Newton, author of the book Brothers and Sisters: Discovering the Psychology of Companionship. Impossible not to bring up the Brontës in that context, of course.

As a student of English, Newton was struck by the “incredible brother-sister collaborators” she found in literature, including the Wordsworths, Brontës and Lambs. (Peter Cunningham)

The New York Review of Books writes about, and suggests a few books on, Madame de Staël.

Around her crowd the shades of a noble company: Madame de Charrière, Madame du Châtelet, Mary Wollstonecraft, Madame Lavoisier, Sophie Germain, Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, George Sand.... Her biography is slowly becoming part of a broader, more generous social history. (Richard Holmes)

The 'noble company' was such as that which we keep with Charlotte Brontë herself: all in the mind, as Madame de Staël died when Charlotte was a little over a year old.

The Penn Current interviews Deborah Burnham, lecturer and Associate Undergraduate Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania.

Q. A colleague of yours noted that you seem to be comfortable teaching any period of literature to students.
A. [...] This semester and next semester, both, I’m teaching Victorian courses and I’m really enjoying that. It’s just such a wonderful feeling. There’s something about that tension between earnestness and skepticism that I find really interesting—not to mention the fact that these are enormous, vast, roomy novels that you kind of get lost in.
Q. What’s included in those courses?
A. I created a course which was on the novel of development and called it ‘Orphans and Martyrs’ because so many of the characters don’t have parents, so [we’re reading] ‘Jane Eyre,’ ‘Great Expectations,’ ‘Middlemarch.’ Just for a little bit of lightness in the middle of the semester we read ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ which is strictly speaking not a novel of development, but it was fascinating to read it in this context. ... We read a memoir about a child whose parents were extremely energetic evangelical Christians. His mother dies and he and his father are kind of a dyad for many years. ... It’s an absolutely wonderful book because what this man does is write about a very painful childhood with great tenderness and forgiveness. We read ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles,’ which is a sort of martyr story. Next semester, I’m teaching a course called, ‘Duty and Decadence.’ We’re reading three great big books in which the central characters have to find their way. We’re reading Charlotte Bronte’s last novel, ‘Villette,’ which is a very dark and complex piece that I love, and then George Eliot’s last novel, ‘Daniel Deronda,’ which is also very dark and serious. Then we’re reading, as a kind of bridge into the decadence piece, ‘Bleak House,’ which is a surpassingly great book and complicated beyond description, yet when you look at it carefully, you realize everything fits together. To end up, we’re reading for decadence, ‘Dracula,’ ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.’ (Heather A. Davis)

And now for some pop culture. It looks like mixing the Brontë and Star Trek is the latest cool trend and so we bring you the following from The Huffington Post.

Kirk: Find out what the alien wants. Do the Vulcan mind meld.
Spock places his hands on the woman's head.
Kirk: What's in there, Spock? Spock?
Spock: Sorry, Captain. Her head is filled with something called Facebook. I was taking a quiz called Which 19th Century Novelist Are You? Turns out I'm Charlotte Brontë - (John Marshall)

Quite funny actually. And much, much more believable than this scary, unreal statement from the Daily Mail:

He [singer Enrique Iglesias] released his first English language album, Enrique, in 1999. In 2001 came Escape. The single, Hero, was a British number one. The media couldn't get enough of him. He became a darkling Heathcliff, irresistible to women. (Petronella Wyatt)

Now there's yet another reason to pity Heathcliff next time you read Wuthering Heights: he tends to be compared to all sorts of implausible people but this one has to be the worst comparison ever.

Style Council, an LA Weekly blog, posts about the forthcoming auction of Battlestar Galactica props. A couple of jackets are described like this:

Must Haves for the Perpetual 'Shipper: Look, it's like this: Starbuck and Apollo were never going to end up together, people. We dig the hot Sackhoff/Bamber chemistry as much as anyone, but they were the epitome of star-crossed lovers, burning torridly in the wake of their angst like Wuthering Heights in space. (He's Cathy and she's Heathcliff, clearly.) Still, for those who remain all torn up over the lack of a stroll into the sunset together, you can get Kara's Caprica Buccaneers jacket and Lee's Viper squadron bomber jacket, put one inside the other and hang them in your closet, Brokeback Mountain-style. Awww. (Nicole Campos)

Oh, and before we forget: an alert to see Jane Eyre 1944 from The News & Observer:

At the N.C. Museum of Art tonight, museum film curator Laura Boyes will introduce the 1941 [sic] version of Charlotte Bronte's oft-replicated classic "Jane Eyre," starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine. The movie starts at 8, and tickets are $5 ($3.50 for students, museum, Cinema Inc. and Galaxy Cinema members). Details: 839-6262; ncartmuseum.org/events/films.shtml. (Craig D. Lindsey)

Blogs, etc.: LibriVox has just announced the completion of the audio version of The Professor. readergal1004 reviews Villette. Leyli Hernandez AP Lit Blog has a post comparing Wuthering Heights and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. KatrinaJaneLermontov recites Charlotte Brontë's 'He saw my heart's woe' on YouTube.

Categories: Alert, Books, Humour, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Poetry, The Professor, Theatre, Victorian Era, Villette, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights