2008 SEMESTER 1 WK2 - Zeitgeist 1 (Part II: All the world's a stage - a)
"All the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts"
I was really intrigued by what we were talking about in class about Shakespeare's notion that the world is a stage and i could not believe that this was the title of the 2nd part of this documentary that I have discovered on the internet: Zeitgeist
The documentary is made up off three parts:
-The first part is a theory of how the story of Jesus is really just an astrological story made up from the way certrain constellations of stars are located and how institutionalised religion is used as a cntrol tool.
-The second part which is the part entitled "All the world's a stage" has a very George Orwell/"Nineteen-Eighty-Four" style about how the government just fabricates stories and makes society believe whatever they like.
- The third part is also about the control of the government and sums up the first two parts.
I found this documentary fascinating and I could not believe how much it made me value George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Last semester I got carried away with that story and found myself unable to study much for anything else. I could not believe how intelligent and insightful Orwell was in his time (60 years ago!!!!) this documentary really freaked me out because it showed so many issues that Orwell addresses in his book 60 years ago and their actual existence in our world today. I think that if everybody read Nineteen-Eighty-Four and watched Zeitgeist the people of the world would be enpowered. It is funny how some literature really can change the world. I strongly suggest that anyone who's reading this or anyone who couldn't be bothered reading Nineteen-Eighty-Four last semester check the movie out. I added a snippet of the 2nd part entitled "All the world's a stage" here in my journal but this does not do the documentary justice. If you'd like to watch trhe whole 2 hour documentary for free I strongly recommend you go to:
http://zeitgeistmovie.com/
Anyways so I’d like to just mention something I found interesting in our tutorials. Shakespeare’s philosophy that “All the world’s a stage” was genius,. He was so enmeshed in the theatre that he saw the stage as a metaphor for the world. This has two meanings. Shakespeare’s stage had characters from all walks of life. There were people of all classes in most of his plays and so in a way the stage is a reflection of the world. But the second meaning is deeper in its philosophical implications. Not only does the stage mirror the world but everyone in the actual world is acting like they are on stage. We are always “prepar[ing] a face to meet the faces that we meet”. This means that we always look the way that other people expect us to look. For example if you havea car accident and get out to talk to the other person you always put on a worried face to go and speak to them.
Another interesting fact that I heard in our tutorials is that at the end of The Tempest (which is Shakespeare’s last play) the character at the end of the play takes off his costume and leaves the stage and this is seen as a dramatic representation of how Shakespeare retires from his character that he has played all his life of the playwright, leaving London, and returning to the real world of Stratford. From the quote above he played his “part” and took his “exit” from the stage of the world. I found this such a powerful artistic expression with which to finish his career. He really was a remarkable man.
OK here’s the snippet of the documentary I mentioned:
I was really intrigued by what we were talking about in class about Shakespeare's notion that the world is a stage and i could not believe that this was the title of the 2nd part of this documentary that I have discovered on the internet: Zeitgeist
The documentary is made up off three parts:
-The first part is a theory of how the story of Jesus is really just an astrological story made up from the way certrain constellations of stars are located and how institutionalised religion is used as a cntrol tool.
-The second part which is the part entitled "All the world's a stage" has a very George Orwell/"Nineteen-Eighty-Four" style about how the government just fabricates stories and makes society believe whatever they like.
- The third part is also about the control of the government and sums up the first two parts.
I found this documentary fascinating and I could not believe how much it made me value George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Last semester I got carried away with that story and found myself unable to study much for anything else. I could not believe how intelligent and insightful Orwell was in his time (60 years ago!!!!) this documentary really freaked me out because it showed so many issues that Orwell addresses in his book 60 years ago and their actual existence in our world today. I think that if everybody read Nineteen-Eighty-Four and watched Zeitgeist the people of the world would be enpowered. It is funny how some literature really can change the world. I strongly suggest that anyone who's reading this or anyone who couldn't be bothered reading Nineteen-Eighty-Four last semester check the movie out. I added a snippet of the 2nd part entitled "All the world's a stage" here in my journal but this does not do the documentary justice. If you'd like to watch trhe whole 2 hour documentary for free I strongly recommend you go to:
http://zeitgeistmovie.com/
Anyways so I’d like to just mention something I found interesting in our tutorials. Shakespeare’s philosophy that “All the world’s a stage” was genius,. He was so enmeshed in the theatre that he saw the stage as a metaphor for the world. This has two meanings. Shakespeare’s stage had characters from all walks of life. There were people of all classes in most of his plays and so in a way the stage is a reflection of the world. But the second meaning is deeper in its philosophical implications. Not only does the stage mirror the world but everyone in the actual world is acting like they are on stage. We are always “prepar[ing] a face to meet the faces that we meet”. This means that we always look the way that other people expect us to look. For example if you havea car accident and get out to talk to the other person you always put on a worried face to go and speak to them.
Another interesting fact that I heard in our tutorials is that at the end of The Tempest (which is Shakespeare’s last play) the character at the end of the play takes off his costume and leaves the stage and this is seen as a dramatic representation of how Shakespeare retires from his character that he has played all his life of the playwright, leaving London, and returning to the real world of Stratford. From the quote above he played his “part” and took his “exit” from the stage of the world. I found this such a powerful artistic expression with which to finish his career. He really was a remarkable man.
OK here’s the snippet of the documentary I mentioned: