“Art is about building a new foundation, not just laying something on top of what’s already there.” — Prince

Posted on June 7, 2026 by sheila

It’s his birthday today.

It still doesn’t seem real. I still have moments where I think, “…. wait a second … he’s dead?”

In April of 2016, I attended Ebertfest. Directly following that, I flew to Albuquerque to attend the Albuquerque Film and Music Experience, where my short film – July and Half of August – was having its premiere. I arrived and my friend Stevie (he who stalked Dean Stockwell with me) picked me up at the airport, with much shrieking of joy at seeing one another again. We went to his house, he cooked me dinner, we hung out, it was wonderful. Then he drove me to the big hotel where I would be staying. Mum was flying in to attend the festival with me. I walked into the hotel and there were all these guests, wearing badges, and you knew they were there for the festival. Somehow, as if by osmosis, after I checked in, I got the sense that something had happened. Everyone was talking very intensely and checking their phones. I can’t remember who told me the news. I am sure I checked my phone. Maybe Mitchell texted me: “have you heard?” The bottom dropped out. Literally everyone in that lobby was thinking about the same thing, talking about the same thing, huddled in upset groups. I couldn’t BELIEVE it. I texted five friends. I needed to be with my Prince people. I texted my brother. I was in a state of shock. I got in the elevator to go up to my room, stunned, and a couple of other people got in, and I said, “Prince.” And they all – strangers to me – nodded and shook their heads and said things like “I can’t believe it”. I’ll never forget it. I was in the perfect place for news like this – unwelcome as it was – to come down. These were all artists and professional musicians. Everyone feels connected to Prince. He was only 57 years old.

The festival’s closing night was a concert by its special guest, studio musician/genius guitarist Nathan East, who’s played with literally everybody. His whole family was there, musicians many of them. Mum and I still talk about that concert. There was a FEELING in that theatre, a connectivity and love and power. I wrote a piece about the spontaneous tribute that occurred.

As awful as Prince’s passing was, and as weird as it was to hear the news in a place I’d never been before, surrounded by strangers … it was the perfect place for me to grieve, feel the loss, and also just be thankful I was on the planet at the same time, that I got to experience his rise, his music, in real time.

Personal Prologue over:

The Syncopated Ladies are a tap-dancing group based in Los Angeles, headed up by Chloe Arnold (she and her sister Maud were both featured in the wonderful documentary Tap World). They have a Facebook group where you can see their latest videos.

Here is their tap-dancing tribute to Prince. Tapping away to “When Doves Cry.”

One of the fun things in the wake of his death – if you could call it fun – were all of these crazy stories emerging of Prince’s behavior, random Prince sightings, who he was “out in the wild”. This was a persona he maintained, a persona that went so deep it WAS him. Because that’s how you get to be as huge as Prince was. Jimmy Fallon’s encounter with him is my favorite:

Everyone covers Radiohead’s “Creep.” I wrote a whole post about it. The song is an anthem for the weirdos of the world, the isolated outcasts, the lonely, the self-loathing. Prince did an absolutely epic 8 minute version of it at Coachella in 2008. I can’t even describe where he goes with it, what he does with it. The self-loathing is gone. It’s a celebration, a “fuck you” to the normals – it’s better to be a creep! – and he digs deeper and deeper into it, deeper than even Radiohead itself can go. “Creep” is one of those malleable songs where you can put so much stuff onto it. I still remember the first time I watched this performance. I could barely process it.

A couple years back, I had a blast talking with Film Comment editor-in-chief Nicolas Rapold and writer/Criterion editor Andrew Chan about “concert films” on the Film Comment podcast, and one of the films we discussed was Prince’s awesome Sign o’ the Times. Have a listen!

I’ve posted a bunch of my brother Brendan’s music writing here on this site and he wrote quite a bit about Prince. They’re excellent pieces, so here they are:
on Purple Rain
on Under the Cherry Moon
Seeing Prince at Jones Beach
Seeing Prince at Madison Square Garden

At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2004 ceremony, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne, George Harrison’s son and a host of others performed “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” And that’s awesome enough, right?

But wait for it.

My cousin Liam said on Facebook in regards to this guitar solo by Prince:

Everyone onstage here is completely astonished and delighted. Look at George’s son Dani’s expressions. Widely claimed as the greatest guitar solo ever played. Which is of course ridiculous as that’s done every night somewhere from someone’s bedroom to a dingy dive to a soccer stadium, but this NIGHT, HERE, it was done by Prince. And it is incredible.

You keep thinking it couldn’t possibly get more epic … and then, of course, it DOES.

Prince was the music of my adolescence. I lost my virginity to a Prince song. I am a Gen X cliche, and proud of it. Even if you didn’t choose Prince specifically for your own virginity-loss, Prince would have been on the radio in the background ANYWAY. He was the biggest genius who was actually active during my lifetime. If you were in high school in the 80s, he was everything. He IS everything. And what was the song playing? “International Lover”. lol

He can’t be replaced.

prince

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

Posted in Music, On This Day | Tagged | 4 Comments

“I dread to think about life without singing.” — Tom Jones

Posted on June 7, 2026 by sheila

I’ve written about him before, mostly here.

He’s still out there. His voice is not only intact but as powerful as it ever was. He is recently a widow after 59 years of marriage. He is beloved by his fan base who have been following him for 50, 60 years now. Let’s see who, of your young musicians today, will inspire that kind of loyalty. There will be some, I guarantee it, but you never know who it will be. Longevity is the name of the game. Staying power. Generosity. Integrity. Doing what you WANT to do. Not resting on your laurels. Continuing to create. Continuing to be generous.

Tom Jones’ cover of Gillian Welch’s killer song “Elvis Presley Blues” blows my socks off and I didn’t think anything could compare to Gillian’s version. The arrangement of Jones’ version is startling, intense, with no catharsis in it, no resolution, no let-up except in Jones’ vocals … the cover is an ongoing pulse of sound, never varying, a tightrope wire of electricity. But I am also struck by Jones’ performance. Of course, he knew Elvis. He and his wife would vacation with Elvis and Priscilla. So there’s a smile on Jones’ face, in his eyes, as he thinks of Elvis. As sad as it is that Elvis died so young, it is my belief that people should smile when they think of him. His entire life was an act of generosity. It wore him out.

As Gillian Welch so gorgeously wrote in her lyrics: Elvis went out onstage “with his soul at stake.” His SOUL at stake.

As I always say, It’s got to cost you something. Otherwise, why do it? And so someone who didn’t know any other way to do it, like Elvis … should be celebrated, admired.

Jones’ smile, as he watches the footage of Elvis, is soft and open, tender.

Powerhouse.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

Posted in Music, On This Day | Tagged , | 22 Comments

“I want them to think ‘He was a nice guy. He did pretty good and we loved him’.” — Dean Martin

Posted on June 7, 2026 by sheila

From Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, by Nick Tosches. Getting to the heart of it all.

His schoolmates had never really known him. Even his loving family could not tell for sure what lay within this kid who moseyed around among them with a hat on, singing. There was a pin-tumbler sidebar lock on his guts that no one could pick. That was just the way he was, and it was just the way he always would be.

Unlettered and rough-cut, Dino possessed both wiles and wisdom beyond his years – anyone trying to fuck with his mind or his body or his soul found this out forthwith. But the wisdom served by those wiles was an annihilating wisdom. It was the wisdom of the old ways, a wisdom through which the seductions of reason and love and truth and all such frail and flimsy lepidoptera would in their seasons emerge and thrive, wither and die. The sum of Dino’s instincts had to do with the old ways, those ways that were like a wall, ways that kept the world lontano, as the mafiosi would say: distant, safely and wisely at bay. That was how he liked it: lontano, like the flickering images on the theater screen that gave him pleasure as he sat alone, apart from them and unknown to them, in the dark.

Those close to him could sense it: He was there, but he was not really there; a part of them, but apart from them as well. The glint in his eye was disarming, so captivating and so chilling at once, like lantern-light gleaming on nighttime sea: the tiny soft twinkling so gaily inviting, belying for an instant, then illuminating, a vast unseen cold blackness beneath and beyond. The secret in its depth seemed to be the most horrible secret of all: that there was no secret, no mystery other than that which resides, not as a puzzle to be solved or a revelation to be discovered, but as blank immanence, in emptiness itself.

There was a picnic in Beatty Park. Roozy had gotten hold of an eight-millimeter movie camera, and they were all going to be in pictures. No one who saw that movie ever forgot it. The camera captured the silent laughter of the Crocettis and the Barrs. It followed Dino’s friends back and forth as they ran and fumbled, threw and jumped in a makeshift football game. There was merriment everywhere, but there was no Dino. Then the camera scanned to the right, to a tree off in the distance, and there he was by himself under the tree, away from it all, caught unawares and expressionless, abstractedly toying with a twig, sort of mind-whittling it. That was Dino, all right; the Dino inside the Dino who sang and swore and loafed and laughed.

He was born alone. He would die alone. These truths, he, like every punk, took to heart. But in him they framed another truth, another solitary, stubborn stone in the eye of nothing. There was something, a knowing, in him that others did not apprehend. He was born alone, and he would die alone, yes. But in between — somehow — the world in all its glory would hunker down before him like a sweet-lipped High Street whore.

Jesus GOD, Tosches.

Now whether or not that really is the real Dean Martin is up for debate. It’s really Nick Tosches’ Dino but the writing is so definitive it’s almost impossible to shake. I have always loved Dean Martin, I especially love how he seems to treat everything as an amusing joke, even his talent, his voice. He’s so easy with it. It’s like he’s doing something else, not performing live. I don’t know how he does it.

a rio bravo se PDVD_013

Here’s a bit from Peter Bogdonavich’s superb essay about Dean Martin, included in his book Who the Hell’s in It: Conversations with Hollywood’s Legendary Actors. Bogdonavich talks to Howard Hawks about directing Dean Martin in Rio Bravo, where Martin gives an excellent performance. According to Hawks, Martin was afraid he couldn’t do it, afraid it would be “too dramatic”, that he would fail.

Hawks told me how he had happened to cast Martin in what would remain the finest dramatic performance of his career. “I always liked him,” Hawks said. “I’d met him personally.” Martin’s agent had asked if Hawks would consider Dean for the role of the drunken deputy and talk with him. Hawks said, “OK, nine-thirty tomorrow morning.” When the agent said he wasn’t sure Martin could get there quite that early, Hawks just closed him off: “Look, if he wants to get here at all, have him get here at nine-thirty.” Hawks grinned, remembering that Dean had come in the next day right on time and said, “Well, I’m kind of shufflin’. I did a show till midnight over in Vegas — got up early, hired an airplane to get down here and I’ve had a lot of trouble gettin’ ‘cross town.” Hawks shook his head. “You went to all that trouble to get here at nine-thirty?” Martin answered, “Yes,” and they talked for a minutes until Hawks abruptly said, “Well, you’d better go up and get your wardrobe.” Dean looked confused. “What do you mean>” he asked, and Hawks replied, “Well, you’re going to do it – go get your wardrobe.” Howard went on to me, “And that’s what we did. I knew that if he’d do all that, he’d work hard, and I knew that if he’d work we’d have no trouble because he’s such a personality. And he did – he worked hard over that drunk.”

It shows – yet only in the best way – never labored, remarkably natural. Clearly, Martin never worked that hard over a role again, nor did he ever have as layered a part to play. Apart from a cowboy burlesque with Lewis (Pardners), Rio Bravo was also Martin’s first Western, which was by far his own favorite kind of entertainment. Especially John Wayne Westerns. In his last tragic eight years, supposedly all Dean ever did was sit in front of the TV and watch Westerns. Therefore, to co-star with John Wayne (of all cowboy stars, the most popular), and to be directed by Howard Hawks – for the director’s first Western since his triumphant debut epic with Wayne, Red River — must have been for Dean one of the crowning moments of his career. The performance he gave was a kind of committed investment proving to doubters that if he wanted to, Dean could, within his range as an actor, do just about anything.

Dean Martin was smart. He worked. He could have been ruined when he “broke up” with Jerry Lewis. The two of them were such gigantic stars together. Their legendary nightclub act helped make his name, as did the crazy movies they made together.

Dean Martin very easily could have sunk into obscurity, post-Jerry-Lewis. But he was bold. He was smart. He struck out on his own. He began performing solo, opening his act in Vegas on March 6, 1957. All of his friends came out to see him. He rose above what could have been a huge detriment. He was so identified as the straight-man to Jerry Lewis’ manic loony. Many lesser performers can never survive such a loss of identity. Dean Martin not only survived, he flourished.

I love the marquee.

Here’s one of the stills from his first solo performance, the night that would launch a spectacularly successful solo career. I love his goofiness.

sands2

Here’s a clip to glory in:

Observations: They walk to the left. They walk to the right. They walk forward. They are applauded for this as though it is a Rockettes kickline. Why? Because they are awesome. I like to watch this clip just tracking Dino, or then Judy, or, finally, Frank. Watch how they compete with one another, and then silently give each other props, like, “Wow, you just sounded awesome.” The sense of feeling and friendship between the three is genuine. You don’t need to DO much. Well, except have talent and genius. But if you have that? All you need to do is link arms, walk to the left, walk to the right, and you’re home.

He was a hell of an actor, too.

Perfection. Watch how easy he is with himself, with his talent, how freely and gently he shares it. It’s like breathing with him. It’s that simple and that automatic.

Please go read my friend Trav S.D.’s profile of Dino’s career and importance.

Do you know anyone who doesn’t like him? I don’t. I think of him as the embodiment of a certain kind of show biz, with so much charisma that he transcended trends and fashions, yet so low-key and subtle that it wasn’t shoved down your throat.

His variety show is a gold mine of talent. He is amazing solo, but he is equally amazing in duets with people. I love him and Ella together.

And him and Louis …

You can tell he is there to support the genius beside him, but it is in his almost self-effacing quality that he can be most properly perceived. It’s not easy to be a “sidekick”. But sidekicks make the main event possible. Jerry Lewis was best when he had Dean Martin next to him, reacting. Martin is so beautifully and easily supportive, but he can also keep up, vocally. He blended with everyone. He brought out the best in others.

And finally, my brother Brendan’s amazing comments on Dean Martin.

I remember seeing the Dean Martin roasts and being scared, like a drunk friend of a drunk uncle had showed up unannounced at a dinner party and started shoe-horning everyone into singing along to perverted folk songs. I didn’t know what he was famous for and those roasts seemed to hint that he didn’t really know why either.

Then, years later as a grownup, I heard “Ain’t That A Kick In the Head” in some movie, or in a bar. That’s really all you need to do…just listen to that song a few times in a row. It all seems like a joke. Then you start to hear how well he sings the song. Then you realize that someone could have completely fouled the song up. It isn’t a very good song, actually. Think about all the classic standards. Everybody does ’em. But is there another famous version of that song? If there is, I haven’t heard it.

How does he turn a mediocre song around? He doesn’t sound all that invested in the heartbreak aspect of it, there isn’t irony dripping all over the place. I still can’t quite place what makes the song work so well. But I’m going to try:

His presence and personality are so evident that you don’t even need the song. He has sung the song out of existence. All you want to do is hear him make a rumble in his throat and roll his eyes about how much trouble a broad can be. You also somehow realize that no broad ever caused him too much trouble. He causes them trouble. And they love it.

It is almost a taunt. What could be a stupid jokey brushoff of heartache turns into a come-on. It is a magic trick.

Another thing that strikes me about Dean Martin is that you get the sense that he would have behaved exactly the same had he been a truck driver, a grocer, a whatever. Most of the other stars of that era seem to have been transformed in some way by fame and what came along with it. This guy could have strolled around the streets of Rome with his jacket over his shoulder and 10 bucks in his pocket and it would make no difference to him.

The most underrated of all time.

Posted in Actors, Music, On This Day | Tagged | 19 Comments

“I want to write poems that will be non-compromising.” — poet Gwendolyn Brooks

Posted on June 7, 2026 by sheila

Gwendolyn+Brooks+gbrooks

It’s her birthday today.

I first encountered Gwendolyn Brooks’s stuff in Humanities in high school. Let’s hear it for public education. It’s only in retrospect that I can really see how good the curriculum was. We did a unit on the Harlem Renaissance. We did a unit on Japanese haikus. And we had to read “The Bean Eaters”. That was my introduction to Gwendolyn Brooks.

Brooks’ most famous poem is “We Real Cool”.

We Real Cool

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

david-w-jackson-poet-gwendolyn-brooks-with-copy-of-maud-martha-in-1963

You have to hear HER read it!

Born in 1917, she died in 2000. She was the descendant of a runaway slave, and her parents instilled in her the importance of getting an education. She started writing poetry very early, and was publishing stuff regularly as a teenager. She meant business. She went to both white and black high schools, which gave her an interesting perspective on Chicago’s racial divide. Her father encouraged her in her dream to be a writer. When she was a child, her father built her bookshelves and a desk, sending the message: “This is what is valuable”. Brooks wrote in everyday vernacular, and you can hear jazz and blues influence in her phrasing.

images-slides-Hughes_and_Gwendolyn_Brooks_1.jpg

The Harlem Renaissance poets were important to her, as well as to her parents. In the Norton Literary Anthology, the editors write of Brooks’s influences:

Brooks learned the hard discipline of compression from two sources. The modernists famously demanded that superfluities be eliminated, that every word be made to count (le mot juste), and this seems to have been the guiding principle of the Chicago poetry workshop she attended in the early 1940s, in which she read T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and E.E. Cummings. Brooks also learned this lesson from the spare, hard, stripped-down idiom of the blues, which Langston Hughes urged her to study. Like the authors of the blues, she uses insistent rhymes and terse simplicity, and she can be at once understated and robust. Despite Brooks’s reputation for directness, her poetry, like the blues and other African American oral traditions, evinces a sly and ironic indirection.

She wrote a devastating poem called “The Boy Died In My Alley”. She observes, but not from afar. This has happened to her neighbor.

The Boy Died In My Alley
The Boy died in my alley
without my Having Known.
Policeman said, next morning,
“Apparently died Alone.”

“You heard a shot?” Policeman said.
Shots I hear and Shots I hear.
I never see the Dead.

The Shot that killed him yes I heard
as I heard the Thousand shots before;
careening tinnily down the nights
across my years and arteries.

Policeman pounded on my door.
“Who is it?” “POLICE!” Policeman yelled.
“A Boy was dying in your alley.
A Boy is dead, and in your alley.
And have you known this Boy before?”

I have known this Boy before.
I have known this boy before, who ornaments my alley.
I never saw his face at all.
I never saw his futurefall.
But I have known this Boy.

I have always heard him deal with death.
I have always heard the shout, the volley.
I have closed my heart-ears late and early.
And I have killed him ever.

I joined the Wild and killed him
with knowledgeable unknowing.
I saw where he was going.
I saw him Crossed. And seeing,
I did not take him down.

He cried not only “Father!”
but “Mother!
Sister!
Brother.”
The cry climbed up the alley.
It went up to the wind.
It hung upon the heaven
for a long
stretch-strain of Moment.

The red floor of my alley
is a special speech to me.

gwendolyn-brooks

Brooks climbed to the greatest heights any poet can even hope to achieve, being appointed poetry consultant to the Library of Congress in 1985 (the first Black woman to be so honored). Chicago is full of streets named for her. There’s a junior high school named for her in Harvey, Illinois.

In the late 1960s, she went to a Black writer’s conference. By this point she was in her 50s, a published poet, an established voice. But she met and talked with younger poets, many of whom were Black nationalists. She said she found it “uncomfortable”, but she felt that she “woke up”. She put it gorgeously, using words only a writer would use:

“Until 1967, my own blackness did not confront me with a shrill spelling of itself.”

brooks_gwendolyn

Brooks could not turn back. She organized a poetry workshop for young Black kids, and invited the members of a neighborhood gang called the Blackstone Rangers to join. She wrote a lengthy poem about them:

The Blackstone Rangers

I
AS SEEN BY DISCIPLINES

There they are.
Thirty at the corner.
Black, raw, ready.
Sores in the city
that do not want to heal.

II
THE LEADERS

Jeff. Gene. Geronimo. And Bop.
They cancel, cure and curry.
Hardly the dupes of the downtown thing
the cold bonbon,
the rhinestone thing. And hardly
in a hurry.
Hardly Belafonte, King,
Black Jesus, Stokely, Malcolm X or Rap.
Bungled trophies.
Their country is a Nation on no map.

Jeff, Gene, Geronimo and Bop
in the passionate noon,
in bewitching night
are the detailed men, the copious men.
They curry, cure,
they cancel, cancelled images whose Concerts
are not divine, vivacious; the different tins
are intense last entries; pagan argument;
translations of the night.

The Blackstone bitter bureaus
(bureaucracy is footloose) edit, fuse
unfashionable damnations and descent;
and exulting, monstrous hand on monstrous hand,
construct, strangely, a monstrous pearl or grace.

III
GANG GIRLS

A Rangerette

Gang Girls are sweet exotics.
Mary Ann
uses the nutrients of her orient,
but sometimes sighs for Cities of blue and jewel
beyond her Ranger rim of Cottage Grove.
(Bowery Boys, Disciples, Whip-Birds will
dissolve no margins, stop no savory sanctities.)

Mary is
a rose in a whiskey glass.

Mary’s
Februaries shudder and are gone. Aprils
fret frankly, lilac hurries on.
Summer is a hard irregular ridge.
October looks away.
And that’s the Year!
Save for her bugle-love.
Save for the bleat of not-obese devotion.
Save for Somebody Terribly Dying, under
the philanthropy of robins. Save for her Ranger
bringing
an amount of rainbow in a string-drawn bag.
“Where did you get the diamond?” Do not ask:
but swallow, straight, the spirals of his flask
and assist him at your zipper; pet his lips
and help him clutch you.

Love’s another departure.
Will there be any arrivals, confirmations?
Will there be gleaning?

Mary, the Shakedancer’s child
from the rooming-flat, pants carefully, peers at
her laboring lover ….
Mary! Mary Ann!
Settle for sandwiches! settle for stocking caps!
for sudden blood, aborted carnival,
the props and niceties of non-loneliness—
the rhymes of Leaning.

gwendolyn-brooks-1-1

I love her stark poem for Emmett Till.

The Last Quatrain Of the Ballad of Emmett Till

Emmett’s mother is a pretty-faced thing;
the tint of pulled taffy.
She sits in a red room,
drinking black coffee.
She kisses her killed boy.
And she is sorry.
Chaos in windy grays
through a red prairie.

Brooks dazzles, but not by being ostentatious, proclaiming Truths from on high. The editors at the Norton Anthology compare her to Edgar Lee Masters (my excerpt of him here), which I this is so perfect. Brooks wrote of one community, highlighting all of their voices. Her poems – like “The Bean Eaters” – reveal entire lives in a couple of short lines, just like Masters did in Spoon River Anthology.

The Bean Eaters

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.

And remembering . . .
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

QUOTES:

Gwendolyn Brooks, from her autobiography:

I—-who have ‘gone the gamut’ from an almost angry rejection of my dark skin by some of my brainwashed brothers and sisters to a surprised queenhood in the new Black sun—-am qualified to enter at least the kindergarten of new consciousness now. New consciousness and trudge-toward-progress. I have hopes for myself… I know now that I am essentially an essential African, in occupancy here because of an indeed ‘peculiar’ institution…I know that Black fellow-feeling must be the Black man’s encyclopedic Primer. I know that the Black-and-white integration concept, which in the mind of some beaming early saint was a dainty spinning dream, has wound down to farce…I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black. In the Conference-That-Counts, whose date may be 1980 or 2080 (woe betide the Fabric of Man if it is 2080), there will be no looking up nor looking down.

George E. Kent:

[Brooks holds] a unique position in American letters. Not only has she combined a strong commitment to racial identity and equality with a mastery of poetic techniques, but she has also managed to bridge the gap between the academic poets of her generation in the 1940s and the young Black militant writers of the 1960s.

Gwendoly Brooks on her style:

Folksy narrative.

Starr Nelson, Saturday Review of Literature, on A Street in Bronzeville:

A work of art and a poignant social document.

Langston Hughes:

The people and poems in Gwendolyn Brooks’ book are alive, reaching, and very much of today.

Annette Oliver Shands, Black World, review of Brooks’ novel Maud Martha:

Brooks does not specify traits, niceties or assets for members of the Black community to acquire in order to attain their just rights… So, this is not a novel to inspire social advancement on the part of fellow Blacks. Nor does it say be poor, Black and happy. The message is to accept the challenge of being human and to assert humanness with urgency.

Toni Cade Bambara, New York Times Book Review:

[At the age of 50] something happened to Brooks, a something most certainly in evidence in In the Mecca (1968) and subsequent works-—a new movement and energy, intensity, richness, power of statement and a new stripped lean, compressed style. A change of style prompted by a change of mind.

R. Baxter Miller, Black American Poets between Worlds, 1940-1960:

In the Mecca is a most complex and intriguing book; it seeks to balance the sordid realities of urban life with an imaginative process of reconciliation and redemption.

Janet Overmeyer, Christian Science Monitor:

Brooks’s particular, outstanding, genius is her unsentimental regard and respect for all human beings…She neither foolishly pities nor condemns—she creates…From her poet’s craft bursts a whole gallery of wholly alive persons, preening, squabbling, loving, weeping; many a novelist cannot do so well in ten times the space.

David Littlejohn:

The words, lines, and arrangements have been worked and worked and worked again into poised exactness: the unexpected apt metaphor, the mock-colloquial asides amid jewelled phrases, the half-ironic repetitions—-she knows it all.

Gwendolyn Brooks’, on the disappointed critical reaction to her autobiographies:

They wanted a list of domestic spats.

Toni Cade Bambara on Brooks’ autobiography:

It is not a sustained dramatic narrative for the nosey, being neither the confessions of a private woman poet or the usual sort of mahogany-desk memoir public personages inflict upon the populace at the first sign of a cardiac…It documents the growth of Gwen Brooks.

Gwendolyn Brooks:

I don’t want to stop a concern with words doing good jobs, which has always been a concern of mine, but I want to write poems that will be meaningful … things that will touch them.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“When people ask me if I am a feminist film maker, I reply I am a woman and I also make films.” — Chantal Akerman

Posted on June 6, 2026 by sheila

It’s her birthday today.

The news of the death of pioneering Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman in 2015 came as a shock. She was young. 65 years old. Even worse, it was reported as a potential suicide. Either way, it was heartbreaking to lose her.

The impact of Akerman’s 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was such that it almost feels like its consequent fall – like not included on round-ups of great 20th century films, etc. – it’s like people couldn’t deal with the overhauling-revolution in film that Jeanne Dielman represented. It’s almost a call to arms. AND she was only 24 years old when she directed it. As much of a girl-genius as Orson Welles was a boy-genius, and yet we celebrate the boy-geniuses and ignore the girl-geniuses. Ever since, though, Akerman was busy, making films, making work, stirring shit up, giving great interviews.

Here she is in 1975 talking about Jeanne Dielman. Many film-makers have to work decades before they make a film as confident as this one (although there really IS no other film like this one. It stands alone.)

In the film Delphine Seyrig plays the widowed Jeanne, who lives in a flat with her son, filling her day with housewifely tasks (shown in excruciating real time: cleaning the sink, making veal cutlets, peeling potatoes, etc.), and from 5 to 5:30 every day she “entertains” men in her bedroom. It’s a compartmentalized part of her day, a part that seemingly does not touch all of the other parts. The film is considered (not surprisingly) a feminist classic (although Akerman didn’t like being referred to as a “feminist” film-maker – see quote in the title). The majority of the action is banal and may try your patience. Dennis Lim wrote a short essay about the film in the book Defining Events in Movies and his words capture what Ackerman was up to with her style of storytelling:

Covering 48 hours over three days, the film immerses itself in the ritualized minutiae of Jeanne’s household chores. These mundane events are captured with a static camera, often in real time. The viewer is compelled to experience the full monotony of each task …

Akerman so firmly establishes Jeanne’s routine that when the tiniest cracks start to emerge – overcooked potatoes, a dropped spoon – they play like major events.

YES. I wrote about seeing Jeanne Dielman in a crowded theatre and how exhilarating it was.

The film’s portrayal of deadening ritualistic housework is a critique of the concept of “woman’s work.” Alongside that is Jeanne’s matter-of-fact prostitution, also seen as “woman’s work” since time immemorial. What else could women do if they weren’t all tangled up in so-called women’s work? This topic has been covered in many films. But Jeanne Dielman breaks that mold, shatters it, forces us to endure the “homemaker” stuff, endlessly: each day the same, so that we watch the routine, we understand how it should go, we see how meticulous she is … and then, slowly, also mundanely, the routine unravels. How can a spoon dropped on the floor open up a crack revealing an abyss? Watch how Akerman does it. With no dialogue. Sometimes it is not the story that provides fascination or interest. It is the APPROACH, the HOW of it, that breaks new ground, and that’s the case with Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. There are moments of extreme boredom. But then the film’s insistent and ruthless commitment to its own rhythm pulls you along with it. You can’t stop watching because something is going on. And that “something” is not visible, but you can feel it.

We see her through what she does. When things go awry, no matter how small, we know she doesn’t have much time left. The routine will be shattered for good.

Chantal Akerman has made many more films since that masterpiece in 1975. Some I have seen, more I have not. While she spoke eloquently about how Godard inspired her to get into film-making (she and the rest of her generation, amirite?), she was that very rare thing in cinema, or in any art: an artist with a truly unique vision. An original.

Chantal-Akerman_jetuilelle-still-courtesy-akerman

She financed her first film by herself, and also played the lead. It is a 12-minute short called Saute ma ville, and it’s on Youtube. Out of the gate, Akerman was confident, bold, personal, and – most importantly – she believed in the validity of her own perspective, her own voice and vision. She was only 18 years old.

Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote a terrific essay about Akerman entitled “Chantal Akerman: The Integrity of Exile and the Everyday.” Rosenbaum writes:

This desire for normalcy accounts for much of the difficulty of assimilating Akerman’s work to any political program, feminist or otherwise. As an account of domestic oppression and repression, Jeanne Dielman largely escapes these strictures, and Akerman herself has admitted that this film can be regarded as feminist. But she also once refused to allow je tu il elle to be shown in a gay and lesbian film festival and, more generally, has often denied that she considers herself a feminist filmmaker, despite the efforts of certain feminist film critics to claim her as one.

On one hand, her films are extremely varied. Some are in 16 millimetre and some are in 35; some are narrative and some are nonnarrative; the running times range from about 11 minutes to 201 and the genres range from autobiography to personal psychodrama to domestic drama to romantic comedy to musical to documentary – a span that still fails to include a silent, not-exactly-documentary study of a run-down New York hotel (Hotel Monterey, 1972), a vast collection of miniplots covering a single night in a city (Toute une nuit, 1982), and a feature-length string of Jewish jokes recited by immigrants in a vacant lot in Brooklyn at night (Food, Family and Philosophy aka Histoires d’Amérique, 1989), among other oddities.

On the other hand, paradoxically, there are few important contemporary filmmakers whose range is as ruthlessly narrow as Akerman’s, formally and emotionally. Most of her films, regardless of genre, come across as melancholy, narcissistic meditations charged with feelings of loneliness and anxiety; and nearly all of them have the same hard-edged painterly presence and monumentality, the same precise sense of framing, locations and empty space.

More generally, if I had to try to summarise the cinema of Chantal Akerman, thematically and formally, in a single phrase, ‘the discomfort of bodies in rooms’ would probably be my first choice. And ‘the discomfort of bodies inside shots’ might be the second.

From Richard Brody at The New Yorker. The following bit about Jeanne Dielman is so important to keep in mind, especially when you think about how often women’s accomplishments are sidelined, ignored, diminished.

Akerman was younger than Orson Welles was when he made “Citizen Kane,” younger than Jean-Luc Godard was when he made “Breathless.” The three films deserve to be mentioned together. “Jeanne Dielman” is as influential and as important for generations of young filmmakers as Welles’s and Godard’s first films have been.

When she died, someone on Twitter (I can’t remember who) said something along the lines of, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if Jeanne Dielman was eventually recognized as the greatest film of all time?”

It could happen. Give it time.

UPDATE: I wrote this post in 2020. A mere two years later, it happened. Sight & Sound held their critics’ poll, and Jeanne Dielman was voted the greatest film of all time, knocking Vertigo out of its primary spot (which, only recently, had knocked Citizen Kane out of the prized #1 shot.) Now. I am not a list person. And the problem with lists is that it brought out the usual suspects, and it makes the assumption that Jeanne Dielman is “better than” Vertigo or whatever, which … I just am bored by that kind of comparison. It’s pointless. What I WILL say, though, is Jeanne Dielman deserves FAR more attention than it has gotten, as a ground-breaking pioneering sui generis work of art – a masterpiece – and it deserves to be “in the conversation”. As I wrote wayyyy back in 2020:

If you see any extensive list of Great Films of the 20th Century and Jeanne Dielman isn’t on it, or Great Directors of the 20th Century and Chantal Akerman isn’t on it, toss the list, it’s no good.

^^ I stand by that.

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Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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For D-Day: John Ford’s They Were Expendable (1945)

Posted on June 6, 2026 by sheila

In 2019, for D-Day, I wrote about John Ford’s magnificent They Were Expendable, one of the best war movies ever made.

Thank you to all those who sacrificed their lives — not just Americans — in the name of liberty and the sacred – yes, sacred – importance of the dignity of every human life. Your spirit inspires me now. We faced this once, we can face it again.

Here’s a post I put up every year: a compilation of quotes from the men (and boys) “storming the beach” at Normandy.

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Review: Carolina Caroline (2026

Posted on June 5, 2026 by sheila

Reviewing Dinner in America was one of those fortuitous little coincidences that come with this particular racket. I see a lot of good movies, a lot of even great movies, but then there are movies – for whatever reason – which wriggle under my skin and embed themselves in my life. Christmas Again was one of those movies as well. I’ve probably seen it more than fifteen times since I first reviewed it. Dinner in America very quickly became one of “those” movies. I reviewed it, went back immediately and watched it again … and again … put it on my best of 2022 list – a lonely position, until John Waters put it on his list too. EVERYONE looks forward to John Waters’ end of year list. I felt very validated! I’ve written more about the film since the initial review. I was very excited to see Adam Rehmeier’s new film – also with Kyle Gallner – Carolina Caroline, and co-starring Samara Weaving You could look at it and say, “Oh, that’s Bonnie and Clyde”, and of course those cinematic references are present … but the characters are different and I was just so touched by Carolina Caroline‘s love story. Samara Weaving and Gallner create one of the more valid onscreen romances I’ve seen in a long time – like, they feel like a real couple, and how it develops feels authentic and organic. You only realize how rare this is – particularly in our weirdly sexless movie era – when you actually see it done well. Plus, there are bank robberies and costumes and two lovers on the run! I reviewed for Ebert.

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“Rock n’ roll! It’s the music of puberty.” — Suzi Quatro

Posted on June 3, 2026 by sheila

Suzy Quatro was born on this day.

In July of 2020 , I reviewed the documentary Suzi Q, about Suzi Quatro. Because it was July 2020, the tour she had planned, alongside the doc, had to be canceled. Or, at least, postponed. July 2020 was some serious shit. I was bummed because I was so turned on by the documentary I would have definitely bought tickets.

Quatro’s journey is interesting: she knew what she wanted to do when she was very young. She was already touring as a teenage kid. Amazingly, she didn’t get caught up in drugs or men or exploitation: These things were all around her but she wasn’t even tempted. She married young. Had a baby young. Was a rock star (at least in Europe) young. Her fame in Australia almost rivaled the Beatles, and she is – to this day – more famous there than she ever was here in America. When she toured Australia in the 70s, she was greeted by screaming fans at the airport, and transported via motorcade to the venue, throngs of people lining the roadways. She was massive in Europe. #1 hits, all of which – I should mention – were songs she wrote. She is mainly known in America for one shmoopy duet-ballad (the only song of hers that charted in America) as well as her regular appearance on Happy Days as Leather Tuscadero. Also, the song was a departure from her normal aggressive sound. 10 years later, Joan Jett came along, and we embraced Joan Jett, not realizing someone else did it all FIRST.


Debbie Harry, Suzi Quatro, Joan Jett

Joan Jett modeled herself after Suzi Quatro, which she fully admits in the interview she gives in the documentary. She had a poster of Suzi Quatro on her wall as a teenager.


Joan Jett in her bedroom, 1977

Jett was so inspired by this tiny girl playing a huge bass. Suzi Quatro paved the way for Joan Jett and so many others. Understand the continuum, and respect your elders. Or at the very least KNOW ABOUT your elders, because they got there first, and they made possible the things that came after. Do not erase them. Resist recency bias. It’s important always but even more important now, when the powers that be want to erase memory itself.

Just tripped over this and I love it: Quatro discusses her favorite bass riffs.

Posted in Movies, Music, On This Day | Tagged | 12 Comments

2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Twelfth Night: or, What You Will

Posted on June 2, 2026 by sheila

My progress:
Shakespeare Reading Project
Henry VI, parts 1, 2, 3 and Richard III
Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Taming of the Shrew
Titus Andronicus
The Comedy of Errors
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Romeo & Juliet
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Richard II
King John
The Merchant of Venice
Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 2
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Much Ado About Nothing
Henry V
Julius Caesar
As You Like It
Hamlet

Twelfth Night: or, What You Will

I can’t verify this with any certainty but I believe Twelfth Night was the first Shakespeare play I saw. I was in middle school, I think, and my parents took us to see a production at the university (where my dad was a librarian, and where I eventually was an acting major). I don’t remember if my parents clued us in to what was going to be happening, but my memory of the show is vivid. The guy who played Malvolio was Maury Klein, a history professor who also acted in the plays. (One of the cool things about our theatre department was that lead roles obviously went to students, but for bigger shows or musicals they also had open casting, which meant we got to act with older people who had more experience – a great thing for young actors). Maury Klein is a famous historian (look him up). His main area of expertise in 19th century American industrial development, in particular the railroads. There was a great docu-series on the History Channel about the robber barons of the late 19th century, and Maury Klein was one of the experts interviewed. Allison and I watched it together during a weekend away in the country – the weather was gorgeous, there was a pool on the property, and we sat inside glued to the television learning about the Rockefellers and the oil and the railroads. And suddenly, I exclaimed: “That’s Maury! I was in shows with him!!” I also took two classes from him, and the class on the Industrial Revolution was the best class I took in college, not even a close contest. I should write a whole post about Maury Klein. Fascinating guy and GREAT teacher.

So. My introduction to Maury Klein was his performance as the ridiculous Malvolio. I still remember the mincing ridiculous way he tiptoe-stepped daintily down the stairs, displaying his yellow stockings with blue garters criss-crossed, and I remember the howling waves of laughter rolling through the theatre – so much so that the actors couldn’t say their dialogue! The whole show had to stop! And Maury had to just stand there, displaying himself, to let the audience get it out of their system. I had no way of knowing that this scene – where Malvolio follows the devilish Maria’s instructions and “presents” himself to Olivia in this manner – is one of the funniest scenes Shakespeare ever wrote, and one of the funniest scenes in any play period. But KNOWING the history behind it is irrelevant because didn’t I already KNOW that, sitting in my seat in the theatre? Hearing that laughter? Laughing so hard I cried?

The play is so funny I found it hard to excerpt, hard to pull out lines, since the scenes are so perfectly designed, the dialogue so woven together. The motifs and themes are so seamlessly utilized they don’t even feel like themes and motifs. Everything flows. The action of the play is very fluid and loosey-goosey: nothing too set in stone, no “obligation” to hit certain points.Water dominates, from the shipwreck, and the sea coast, the tears, the multiple references to urine (“water”), and Feste the Clown’s haunting final song about the “rain and the wind”. Also present is “epiphany”, operating on multiple levels. Twelfth Night is January 6th, the end of the Christmas festivities, and the celebration of the Magi’s arrival. In Shakespeare’s time, “twelfth night” was a night of “misrule” and mischief, a night when the rules were loosened. So “Epiphany” is obviously religious, but Twelfth Night doesn’t even reference “twelfth night”. The Epiphany doesn’t operate at all in its religious sense. But the pagan celebration of misrule and mischief? Basically, that’s Illyria. There is no sanity in Illyria.

It makes me think of Howard Hawks’ eventual assessment of Bringing Up Baby, of which he had a critique years later: everyone was insane, even the sheriff. There was not one sane person in the film. He said he didn’t make that mistake again. I don’t agree with his assessment, although he has the right to critique his own work! Because Twelfth Night opens on such a painfully beautiful note – Orsino’s “If music be the food of love, play on”, one can consider Twelfth Night a romance more than a comedy, although the “prank” on Malvolio – which takes up so much time, and is, as mentioned, one of the funniest scenes ever – makes the distinction, again, irrelevant.

The main plot involves elements Shakespeare used again and again: a shipwreck, separated twins, a girl in boy’s clothing, love at first sight. Viola and Sebastian are twins, boy and girl but identical, so much so they are mistaken for each other. Viola thinks Sebastian died in the shipwreck, so she puts on men’s clothing and heads to Duke Orsino’s house, to present herself as a servant/assistant. Viola falls in love with the drippy narcissistic Orsino, and Orsino – in love with Olivia – enlists “Cesario” as his go-between. Olivia welcomes Viola (aka Cesario) into her riotous chaotic household and – of course – immediately falls in love with “him”.

Olivia is no shrinking maiden or stereo-typical dignified lady. She is an individual and an absolute screwball. Her brother died seven years before and Olivia has been in ostentatious mourning ever since, draped in black, wandering through her house, living in isolation. Her grief breaks the bounds of what is socially acceptable, but in the general chaos around her it’s barely remarked upon. Olivia is wealthy, and she houses her dissolute uncle, Sir Toby Belch, who spends days and nights sitting around with his best pal, Sir Andrew Aguecheek. The two are in a constant state of inebriation. Slithering among them is Maria, Olivia’s lady-in-waiting and mischief-maker. (It’s hard to imagine Hamlet “hanging out” with other characters in Shakespeare’s other plays. Trying to picture Hamlet meeting Falstaff. Or Rosalind. Or Hal. Hamlet’s so isolated, it’s hard to picture him being with these other people. But I feel like he and Maria might get along. Or at least have enough respects to steer clear of one other. She’s not exactly the “mighty opposite” Hamlet says he longs for but … she operates in similar ways. He might see himself a little bit in her … and Hamlet doesn’t see himself in anyone.)

There’s a sharp demarcation line between two plots, which seem like they’re woven together because they take place in the same location but … On the one side, there are the “love scenes” between Olivia and Viola, on the other side, the shenanigans with Toby, Andrew, and Maria. The two worlds really don’t meet, but the play is so well-constructed you barely notice.

Enter: Malvolio, Olivia’s steward. As the steward, he runs the house. As we have seen in Upstairs Downstairs, Gosford Park and Downton Abbey, stewards are very important figures, they run everything, but class-wise, they are still “downstairs”. Malvolio “puts on airs”, which is really his greatest “crime”. He is a climber, for sure, and he is deluded enough to think Olivia might actually fall in love with him. He is an enemy of everything pleasurable, he is a snooty hoity-toit, who sniffs with disapproval at Toby and Andrew’s revelries. Maybe the most famous line of the play, excepting the first line (“If music be the food of love, play on”) is Sir Toby’s challenge to Malvolio’s prim-and-proper attitude: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” Shakespeare, as a man of the theatre, had to deal with periodic shutdowns of the theatres, either due to plague or to Puritan protests. The holier-than-thous among us have always been among us, and never seem to learn that just because you are virtuous doesn’t mean that OTHER people can’t have fun.

Malvolio is an enemy of fun and this is a capital crime in the madcap Illyria. It’s hard, though, to watch what happens to Malvolio – eventually dragged away and kept in a “dark house” for the insane, where he screams and hollers to be let out. The punishment is out-sized, but not if you consider Shakespeare’s critique to be part of a very specific time when the persecutions of the theatre were about to take on an even more Puritanical (literally) shading, particularly after the death of Queen Elizabeth. Punishing Malvolio must have been cathartic, or – to speak speculatively – it FEELS like it must have been cathartic, because the punishment of Malvolio really takes over the whole play. Viola and Olivia barely register anymore.

Maria sets her sights on cutting Malvolio down to size. Malvolio is a ridiculous unpleasant person but Maria is a “mean girl”: if you were made fun of in middle school you will remember your run-ins with Maria-types. Maria comes up with a plan to write a love note to Malvolio “from” Olivia in Olivia’s handwriting. In this forged note, “Olivia” tells Malvolio how much she loves his smile (he never smiles!) so that when he is in her presence, he should smile non-stop. She also asks him to wear yellow stockings with “cross garters”. Malvolio reads the letter and falls apart in ecstasy, as Maria, Toby, and Andrew cackle in the nearby bushes. The prim and proper man disintegrates into excitement, even declaring at one point, “I am happy!” You can barely pay attention to the next scenes because subconsciously you are waiting for Malvolio to show up. He finally enters, maniacal smile frozen on his face, yellow stockings on his legs. Olivia, of course, is stunned. The man has clearly gone insane!

He hasn’t, though! He’s been tricked!

Naturally, getting to watch this uptight humorless man make a fool of himself is hilarious and cathartic.

However …

Let’s examine our responses to Malvolio. In his own way, he is as bottomless as Bottom.

There’s something painfully touching about Malvolio: his thrill at being loved (or so he thinks), going all to pieces like a teenage girl, how eagerly he runs off to put together his “outfit” for the next time he meets Olivia, his belief that he is finally about to get what he has always desired: validation, love, and belonging!

You feel me? Malvolio is not malevolent, like Iago is malevolent. He doesn’t mean any harm. Yes, he’s a bore, but everyone laughs at him. He doesn’t dictate the laws of the land. He’s just crabby. A drip.

So when I read Malvolio’s expressions of happiness after receiving the forged letter, there’s a bruise in my heart. An old bruise. Because I have been Malvolio. I, too, have felt the thrill when I think something wonderful is going to happen, when I have believed a dream is about to come true … only to find later that … I was mistaken. Maybe I wasn’t tricked, like Malvolio was tricked – although a couple times I could characterize a “romance” as me being essentially tricked (hello, 2009 man, hello, 2012 man) … but still, the heartache and shame at being so gullible, at having been fooled, and – worse – the anger at myself for letting myself believe … is all there in Malvolio – or, perhaps I am projecting. Maybe he doesn’t feel shame. Maybe he just skips the shame and goes to the rage. I wish I could have skipped the shame.

Are we supposed to cackle with glee when Malvolio is locked up in an insane asylum? He is eventually released, and he promises to avenge the wrong done to him before storming off the stage … but I can’t help but feel relieved that at least Shakespeare didn’t throw away the key!

I suggest that if you don’t see yourself in Malvolio, to some degree, well, first of all, consider yourself lucky! But secondly, you can’t truly understand the play. Or at least what might be going on. In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is eventually shunned from society, and it has to be that way because 1. it’s an anti-Semitic society and 2. he is too disruptive to the gentle magical society on display. Malvolio isn’t like that. The society of Illyria will continue on its merry melancholy maniacal way with or without him. The entire play, in fact, could exist without Malvolio in it. He has no impact on the main plot. So … why Malvolio? What is he even DOING in this play?

I always assume Shakespeare knew exactly what he was doing. The effect we get from something is deliberate, and it’s up to us to puzzle it out. We know him by the RESULTS. We have no evidence of what he meant or even thought, except in the plays and sonnets. So you have to just look to the results. I feel, though, that Malvolio might have started out as a smaller part, a caricature, a side-show, and Shakespeare got caught up in him, Malvolio walked off with the play and Shakespeare couldn’t stop him. This is not an original observation. Almost every critic, dating back to the 1800s, feels like Malvolio is one of those characters who “got away” from Shakespeare. Like Falstaff did. Or Faulconbridge. Someone who starts out playing a very specific function – but then blooms into a living breathing complex character, where you can almost feel Shakespeare leaning in to his interest.

Let me just riff. I think the punishment of Malvolio is so severe because we see ourselves in him, and it’s the part of ourselves we never want to acknowledge. We don’t want to be that embarrassing, we don’t want to show our cards so plainly and be made to look a fool. People live their entire lives trying to avoid shame because shame is maybe the worst and most intolerable emotion in existence. You can live with grief. You can’t LIVE with shame. Not forever. You will do what it takes to avoid it.

Malvolio is our softest most vulnerable side. Malvolio is our unprotected desires, our need for belonging, our yearning for love. If we let others see it, what will happen? Will they laugh? Will they mock? Well, yes, they will. And thanks to social media, the fear of mockery is now so rampant it’s having wide societal consequences. My acting teacher friends are kind of amazed, especially those who have been doing it for 20, 30 years, at how different acting classes are now. Suddenly they are confronted – for the first time – with a generation of acting students who don’t want to “put themselves out there” emotionally. They have to spend weeks on just getting them to feel like they can open up. If all emotion expressed is labeled as “cringe”, then what does that leave you? We expect this in regular citizens but actors are supposed to express things for ALL of us! That’s usually been the types of people drawn to that career. Why do you even want to be an actor if you spend your life trying to avoid being “cringe”? I am not putting down a generation. Everyone is formed by the circumstances of the world around you. Gen X kids had our own struggles, and if we had grown up with social media we would be having similar issues. I am acknowledging the new challenges. My nieces and nephews and I talk a lot about these things!

We exert so much energy in avoiding our own inner Malvolio, in attempting to never ever ever be “caught out” like Malvolio is. Frankly, we would rather be locked up in an insane asylum than show the world our most vulnerable needy side. Public shaming is very real thing!

He is who we hope we aren’t. He is who we fear to be. So of course the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Of course the entire household conspires to “reveal” him in all his idiocy, and to destroy his hopes and dreams. None of us can tolerate the thought that we are Malvolio. Everyone thinks they’re a Viola. Everyone wants to believe they are Feste the clown. You can even admit you have a little Toby Belch in you. You can even “relate” to Maria a little bit, even if you’re ashamed of that time you were mean to someone in middle school. We all grow up, most people “grow out” of the Maria phase. But nobody grows out of the Malvolio phase. He’s always there. He’s always threatening to reveal himself. We want to lock him away in the darkest house in our psyches and throw away the key.

A couple summers ago, I went with my nieces and my sister to the local theatre production of Twelfth Night, put on outside by the little river snaking its way through town. My niece Lucy was so upset about Malvolio she could barely “be” with the happy ending. She wanted a redemption arc for him. She is a teenager. She is very very close to the Maria-mean-girl society, and she is very close to the fear of being a Malvolio, of having her peers gang up against her and try to make a fool of her. She almost found the play unbearable because of the mean-ness towards Malvolio. I don’t think Lucy is wrong.

This is not a flaw in the play. I don’t think Malvolio needs a redemption arc. But I do think Malvolio is not a Iago or a Shulock or an Edmund. But his punishment is severe because Malvolio touches a nerve. He exposes a nerve. Nobody wants to be him, but if you are human, you can’t avoid being him.

Let’s reiterate though the weirdness of all of this: Viola “courting” Olivia is extremely engaging and their scenes together are so so good. Great parts. So funny. Viola has fascinations of her own, as does Olivia and Orsino. Feste the clown is the best “jester” yet. But when I think of Twelfth Night I think of Malvolio and his yellow stockings and his girlish glee at the thought that Olivia loves him.

Partially this is because it’s hard to invest in Viola and Orsino. Or Olivia and Orsino. Or Orsino and anyone, really. The ending, when it comes, is swift, brief, and as wacko as the rest of it. Viola – still in boys’ clothes – ends up with Orsino, who 5 seconds before believed Viola was a boy. Olivia, heartbroken for 2 seconds, “accepts” Sebastian – the identical twin – as her mate, and Sebastian – who has no idea what’s been going on – just accepts it. Like, Okay I guess I’m marrying this random woman now. With Rosalind and Orlando, you feel like it’s a good match: they’re good enough pals through all their experiences in the forest – even though she has been in disguise – that you feel like at the very least the marriage will be a fun romp (and a romp for a marriage sounds like Utopia, honestly). The Twelfth Night couples are not like this! Viola is not the same as Rosalind, although they get lumped together. If Rosalind showed up in Illyria, she would have taken one look at the insanity of Orsino and Olivia, and would have set about taking over both houses, making sure everyone ended up with the right person, all while purposefully molding Orsino into a better man, a man worthy of her. Viola does not do any of this. She floats from Orsino to Olivia and back, a victim of circumstances, in love with a man who thinks she’s a boy, and avoiding the love of a woman who also thinks she is a boy. Viola is trapped in her disguise while Rosalind is freed by hers.

Viola is interesting. Olivia is interesting. Orsino is funny in his poseur melancholy almost sickened-by-love way. Feste is wonderful. Toby and Andrew are disgusting. Maria is a little bit scary. Illyria

But Malvolio … Malvolio is a black hole, sucking the rest of the play – and us – into the “dark house” with him.

Quotes on the play

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“Literature is the written expression of revolt against expected things.” Happy Birthday to the least happy man ever, Thomas Hardy

Posted on June 2, 2026 by sheila

“A certain provincialism of feeling is invaluable. It is the essence of individuality, and is largely made up of that crude enthusiasm without which no great thoughts are thought, no great deeds done.” — Thomas Hardy

That quote above from Thomas Hardy is something I have thought of, often, and used quite a bit in my own work, as a critic and also as a writer of other things, here, my script, everywhere. It is a reminder to stay specific, to not worry about being universal, to let that (and the reader) take care of itself.

He was criticized often for the “provincialism” of his novels. They all took place in a 10-mile radius. He delved deep into one particular slice of society and never left it or branched out. But depth is as valuable as WIDTH. I love some of his novels, although I had to come BACK to them after being forced to read them in high school (here is my post on Tess).

The interesting thing is: I think because he’s so firmly established in “the canon”, it makes it seem like he’s part of the status quo or something. I’m not a scholar, I’m just talking about the vibe. He’s seen as one of those Dead White Males who represent gatekeepers and canon and establishment. But that’s just retrospect and a lack of … people actually reading him? lol Hardy’s views were so anti-establishment he was basically perceived as a radical in his day. His first novel was rejected because its satirical lampoon of society was judged too harsh. He did not look around the world and find any of it good. This was then – and is now – a radical standpoint, and in some circles, damn near heretical. It could be seen as a very conservative viewpoint, the kind of conservatives who yearn for the past, seeing it as some sort of Eden, disliking the complexity of modernity – OR it could be seen as a rejection of the status quo, a firm NO to upholding the existing structures – burn it all down, in other words – which is basically the opposite of classical conservatism. The establishment now “claims” him but they rejected him when he was alive. Hardy published all these novels, famous great works – titanically angry and compassionate for the suffering of the “little” people, those with no voice or power – and then – abruptly – switched to poetry. He then wrote VOLUMES of poetry over the last decades of his very long life. He was born in 1840 and died in 1928. Look at the changes he witnessed. He watched an entire world pass away.

More after the jump:

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