Okay, so I don't have a tumblr account (about 10 yrs too old for that stuff) and thus can't "ask you anything", so I'm asking you here.
I was reading your analysis of Amok Time on ff.net. I think your take on the stage direction (the trembling, etc) and the timing/pacing/sequence clues that you point out are very interesting. Sturgeon was a writer and an editor (despite being semi-blacklisted he remained employed and was primarily known as an editor) but didn't have much TV experience and both Shore Leave and Amok Time read as being very "stagey." But being a telePLAY and not the more polished, stylized teevee we are now familiar with, it's not ridiculous to assume that these details you bring out are very deliberate.
I wanted to ask you about Walt Whitman, however. I don't understand what you mean about Whitman hiding the eroticism in his poetry.
My understanding is that Whitman initially published some of his bigger works as a younger man and that they include a lot of sensuality and eroticism. He uses the term "brother" and "sister" to quite explicitly mean lover and there is quite a bit of homoeroticism. I've read that after the Civil War, societal attitudes started to change and there was a heightened awareness in society of homosexuality--and not in a good way. Great Britain passed some draconian anti-Sodomy laws. German academics were writing treatises about the etiology of the "psychopathy" of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered. Homosexuality was now an aberration and a disease and homosocial expressions of affection for the first time become suspect. (Oddly, they would remain socially acceptable between women for a few decades longer.) Whitman's work was censored.
I've read quite a bit of Whitman, and while although I'm not an English major or anything like that, I feel like his eroticism is explicit and celebrated. This is the poet who wrote, "I sing the body electric," after all, and he wasn't talking about the miracle of electric lighting. So I'm just curious about what you were referring to.
I was reading your analysis of Amok Time on ff.net. I think your take on the stage direction (the trembling, etc) and the timing/pacing/sequence clues that you point out are very interesting. Sturgeon was a writer and an editor (despite being semi-blacklisted he remained employed and was primarily known as an editor) but didn't have much TV experience and both Shore Leave and Amok Time read as being very "stagey." But being a telePLAY and not the more polished, stylized teevee we are now familiar with, it's not ridiculous to assume that these details you bring out are very deliberate.
I wanted to ask you about Walt Whitman, however. I don't understand what you mean about Whitman hiding the eroticism in his poetry.
My understanding is that Whitman initially published some of his bigger works as a younger man and that they include a lot of sensuality and eroticism. He uses the term "brother" and "sister" to quite explicitly mean lover and there is quite a bit of homoeroticism. I've read that after the Civil War, societal attitudes started to change and there was a heightened awareness in society of homosexuality--and not in a good way. Great Britain passed some draconian anti-Sodomy laws. German academics were writing treatises about the etiology of the "psychopathy" of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered. Homosexuality was now an aberration and a disease and homosocial expressions of affection for the first time become suspect. (Oddly, they would remain socially acceptable between women for a few decades longer.) Whitman's work was censored.
I've read quite a bit of Whitman, and while although I'm not an English major or anything like that, I feel like his eroticism is explicit and celebrated. This is the poet who wrote, "I sing the body electric," after all, and he wasn't talking about the miracle of electric lighting. So I'm just curious about what you were referring to.
Reply
Leave a comment