Re: The Forbidden Planet

Jerry Diakiw (jkonopak who-is-at ou.edu)
Sun, 22 Mar 1998 10:57:41 -0600

diane celia hodges wrote:
>
> good news for you fans - I've heard now from two different sources that the
> script for the 1950s sci-fi film-classic is, in actuality, based on
> Shakespeare's "The Tempest"...
>
> Walter Pidgeon being, of course, Prospero,
> and the Id representing .... well, you get the point.
>
> interesting though. how information like this can completely re-invent
> my perspective of the film as 14-yr-old boy-sexist-tech-fantasy... I mean,
>
> watching it again, as The Tempest, is quite extraordinary.
>
> Something for a nerd to do on a rainy day eh?

Hi, Diane--
I like that observation; I'm a sunny day nerd if I am nowhere near a
beach. I always thought 14-year-old boys' sexist-tech-fantasies had a
better than average chance of being realized. People seem to be looking
back on Heinlein as something more than a jingoist "authoritarian."
You'll of course have groked to the Hamlet thread in "The Lion King."
And if you rearrange Caliban, he becomes Can(n)ibal, which turns the
play into a meditation on colonialism and imperialism and the role and
relation of the "modern" in contact with the "primitive." I take great
pleasure in the fact that this discussion would be anathema to George
Will. Cheers, anyhooo!!!
john 

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