Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

A Manga Canon?

By John E. Ingulsrud and Kate Allen

In a recent entry in the blog, The Manga Critic, Katherine Dacey begins a discussion on what titles to include in a manga canon.(i) She raises the questions of how to judge esthetic quality and whether a canon is appropriate for manga. These questions were also considered by cultural studies researcher, Yokota-Murakami Takayuki.(ii) He uses canonicity as a kind of litmus test to distinguish high culture works from those of low culture. He points out that few people are praised for reading manga, while many people are praised for reading canonical literary works, thus emphasizing the notion of a canon being a community’s body of valued or privileged works. In our book Reading Japan Cool, we raise the issue of authority: Who should compile a manga canon? Should it be the commentators, the researchers, or simply the readers in terms of popularity? As decisions are made on the content of the canon, the compilers have the power to include and exclude works and thus determine “good taste.”

These concerns of esthetic assessment and authority obscure the basic motive for having a canon. Historically, canons were developed from a need to teach and consequently to test. The Old Testament canon was developed for teaching and the authority was reflected in degrees of canonicity, with the Pentateuch or the Torah at the center and the Apocrypha on the periphery. The New Testament canon was compiled from a concern to maintain a correct understanding of a focal question: Who is Jesus? While these canons served to define the identities of communities, other canons served to define competencies. Beginning in 5th century China, civil service examinations were administered based on the knowledge of canonical works that spoke to the human condition, thus providing wisdom and morals. After all, successful candidates were assumed to be those who had integrity and the correct values. This idea of testing knowledge of the literary canon to select appropriate personnel was adopted widely in the 19th Century with the training of bureaucrats, such as the colonial Indian civil service.(iii) It also became the basis for centralized school curricula.

In the same way, a manga canon will develop out of a need to teach and to test. A symposium on manga in the university was held in June at the annual conference for the Japan Society for Studies in Cartoon and Comics. Speakers addressed the question of why manga should be taught as an academic subject. They also discussed how such courses could be taught. Yet no one dealt with the issue of what manga should be taught. As English literature professors could simply teach the works they liked, before testing was developed in the 19th Century,(iv) professors of manga studies also make their own personal selection. It is only when a common curriculum across institutions is sought, or when the media industry begins to demand personnel with “broad” and “conversant” knowledge of manga that the question of a manga canon will be addressed in earnest. Perhaps competing lists will be compiled, but eventually a manga canon will evolve. Already the argument has been made to teach manga and indeed several universities in Japan offer these courses, so the next logical question is the choice of manga to teach. This question opens up the knotty question of criteria. Will the manga works be chosen for their esthetic qualities? Or will the works be chosen for their capacity to speak to the human condition?

1. Katherine Dacey, The Manga Critic,(accessed September 25, 2009).
2. Yokota-Murakami Takayuki, Manga wa Yokubō Suru (Manga do desire) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2006), 176-180.
3. Christopher O’Reilly, Post-Colonial Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17.
4. John C. Mathews, Examinations: A Commentary (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985), 13-14.

John E. Ingulsrud is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of International Studies at Meisei University. Kate Allen is Professor of Linguistics in the School of Global Japanese Studies at Meiji University. They are the authors of Reading Japan Cool: Patterns of Manga Literacy and Discourse.

The Journey of Becoming a Writer

By Randy Jurado Ertll

Becoming a writer is a journey of a lifetime. It may start in kindergarten or at time of retirement from the labor market. For me, it began in middle school when I was assigned to write an “essay.” I was intrigued by that word. The Free Online Dictionary states that the word essay means: “A short literary composition on a single subject, usually presenting the personal view of the author.”

Through the years, I also learned that writing is an artistic way of expression. We cannot allow our teachers or others to discourage or put us down if they do not like our style of writing or even the message within what is written.

Sometimes insensitive teachers may feel that an English Language Learner may not be able to write outstanding essays to be accepted into a top notch university. They misjudge the writing abilities of many students who recently arrived from other countries, such as El Salvador.

Not much literature has been written about the Salvadoran community by Salvadoran American writers. Partly, it is due to the reason that the bulk of the Salvadoran immigration into the United States occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. The new generation of U.S. born Salvadorans (Salvadoran Americans) is fairly young.

Through my writing, I want to share with Latino and non Latino students that they can express their thoughts through the written word and that they can include respectful and constructive ideas that will help to improve our society. But even more powerful is the substance and content of what one writes about. Writing should make others think, create discussions, and help others see different points of views.

Writers have many responsibilities – one is to exercise their First Amendment rights. They must have an urge to express themselves and inform the world about what is happening in their home town or country. Even if certain writers critique their own government, this does not mean that they are unpatriotic. It means that they are exercising their right as people who spread ideas and provoke discussions of issues that are rarely discussed in mainstream media outlets -- that may have a left- or right-wing bias.

Therefore, writers who believe in the integrity of spreading news, now have the opportunity to express themselves through blogs – such as this one. Writers are in fact becoming citizen journalists. Some aspiring writers can become well known through a Web site or blogs that are distributed worldwide through the Internet.

Due to the increased access of Internet, being a writer is no longer a dream or an illusion even for kids who come from poor neighborhoods. Some of these children are going to their local public library or community organization to e-mail, go on Face book, MySpace, Twitter, and many are even blogging.

Some kids are learning to design their own Web blogs where they can post or express themselves on any issues related to their families, school, and community. They can write and promote their own stories -- on a first hand basis.

I tell students to write from their heart, soul, and mind. To express themselves in an authentic manner. To not let anyone shatter their dreams of becoming excellent writers.

Keep writing. Write that opinion piece, write that poem, write that essay, even write a book for that matter. Along those similar lines, that is what President Obama advised our youth in his recently nationally televised message to students. He wants all students to believe in themselves and to become productive citizens of our society by obtaining a quality education.

Becoming a writer is a lifelong journey. You need heart and courage to be a writer, therefore write con ganas de vivir (with a zest for life) and be ready to roll with the punches. Don't let anyone discourage you. Believe in yourself.

Randy Jurado Ertll is executive director of El Centro de Accion Social in Pasadena, CA. He is the author of Hope In Times of Darkness: A Salvadoran American Experience forthcoming September 28th, 2009 (Hamilton Books).

Randy Jurado Ertll's Fall Schedule at a Glance

• Book talk and signing at Central American Resource Center/ CARECEN – 2845 W. 7th St. Los Angeles, CA 90005 on Wednesday September 30, 2009--6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
• Book talk and signing at Barnes & Noble Glendale at the Americana– 210 Americana Way Glendale, CA, 91210 on Thursday, October 1, 2009--7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
• Book talk and signing at Instituto Cultural Mexicano/Placita Olvera (next to Mexican Consulate) - 125 Paseo De La Plaza # 500, Los Angeles, CA 90012-2932 on Thursday, October 8, 2009--6:00 p.m to 8:00 p.m.
• Book talk and signing at Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable at Lucy Florence Coffee House 3351 43rd St. in Leimert Park, CA, Saturday, October 17,2009--10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
• Book talk and signing at Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural – 13197 –A Gladstone Ave. Sylmar, CA 91342 on Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
• Book talk and signing at VROMANS Pasadena bookstore - 695 E. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91101 on Thursday, November 12, 2009–-7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Timing is Everything!: The 100th Anniversary of The Legends of Tono

By Ronald A. Morse

In June 2010, there will be an international symposium in the small town of Tono in Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Legends of Tono published in 1910 by the founder of Japanese folklore studies, Kunio Yanagita (1875-1962).

To kick-off the 100th anniversary celebrations, there was a book party for me in Tono on February 21, 2009 to mark the publication of my translation of The Legends of Tono: 100th Anniversary Edition (Lexington Books, September 2008). The book will be a centerpiece of celebrations through 2012, the date of the 50th anniversary of Kunio Yanagita’s death.

In 1910, Yanagita paid to have 350 copies of his short collection of folk legends printed. Like Grimm's Fairy Tales (1812), which he had read, his work was in a standard literary style that any Japanese could understand.

The immediate reaction to Yanagita’s work in Tokyo literary circles in 1910 was mixed and the book was not published again until 1935. In fact, it was really only after World War II, when there was a sense that the old rural traditions of Japan were being lost, that The Legends of Tono gained new prominence as literature and historical record.

In more recent times, The Legends of Tono has generated a broad spectrum of commentary. It has been compared to the Chinese revolutionary writer Lu Xun’s collection of fables from the 1920s and 30s, Old Tales Retold. The leftist Japanese writer, Ryumei (Takaaki) Yoshimoto wrote a Freudian interpretation of the work in his The Psychic World of Shared Fantasies (1969). Yukio Mishima, the famous nationalist writer and politician, has written favorably about the eerie literary qualities of the work. And in 1976, a popular writer also from the Tono region, Hisashi Inoue, poked fun at Yanagita’s work in his A New Reading of the Tales of Tono.

Today Tono City, in part because of The Legends of Tono, but also because of the Tono material in the Lonely Planet travel book for Japan, has become a popular domestic and international tourist destination. Over the years, Tono City has designed an impressive set of cultural facilities to support its popularity – an impressive library and museum complex, a new hotel where chanters recite the legends, a historical village, and a research institute. This month, the Japanese government also issued a commemorative stamp series of Tono landmarks and customs.

The mass media has also picked up on the stories and legends. In 2007, an award-winning animated movie directed by Kenichi Hara, Summer Days with the Kappa Coo used Tono as a setting for a good part of the film. The stories in The Legends of Tono are also currently being serialized in the popular manga magazine Big Comic. The artist, Shigeru Mizuki, famous for his renderings of ghosts and goblins, will display his original drawings in Tono in 2010.

Ronald A. Morse is a leading thinker and commentator on Japan and is the translator of The Legends of Tono: 100th Anniversary Edition.

The Literary Greatness of Atlas Shrugged

By Andrew Bernstein

Professor Salmieri’s recent post regarding Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is dead-on accurate. Atlas, as known to its millions of fans, is deeply philosophical and is, by whole orders of magnitude, the book most relevant to the political-economic crisis of our time. It dramatizes profoundly important truths of epistemology and metaphysics—that reason, not faith or feelings, is man’s sole means of knowledge and that reality is immutable, impervious to the wishes of both Washington politicians and millions of religious believers clinging to their fantasy of a supernatural dimension. Regarding political-economy, Atlas Shrugged provides the philosophical foundation of individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism, the rational antidote to both the socialism of the Democrats and the religious theocracy of the Republicans.

But above all, Atlas Shrugged is the greatest novel ever written. Its plot alone establishes its artistic stature, for it tells the story of “a man who vowed to stop the ‘motor of the world’”—and who then did. It is a story that, in a single integrated fabric, dramatizes the collapse—and rebirth—of advanced modern civilization and the reasons for both down to the deepest level of philosophy.

Further, the book’s dramatis personae includes a colorful and intriguing cast of players who—each in his own way—represents a distinctively etched variation on the book’s complex theme that the mind is man’s instrument of survival and that its proper functioning requires a system of full political-economic freedom. As but one example, nobody but Ayn Rand could have created the character of Ragnar Dannesjkold—philosopher, pirate, international police officer, and collector of internal revenue.

But Ayn Rand’s masterpiece encompasses vastly more. She successfully weaves every imaginable literary device into her story, masterfully integrating irony, mythology, symbolism, and at least one innovative technique that she herself created. Indeed, the book’s very title (and sequence in the story explaining its significance) is derived from a brilliant re-adaptation of an ancient Greek legend for her own moral and philosophical purposes.

For the most part, with notable exceptions, the sad truth is that literary critics and English professors are yet to discover the reason for the book’s immense general popularity: its sizzling, eyeball-popping, “un-put-down-able” story.

Andrew Bernstein is the author of Objectivism in One Lesson: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Ayn Rand (University Press of America), The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire (University Press of America), and is a contributor to Robert Mayhew’s Essays on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (Lexington Books). Additional essays and information about Dr. Bernstein can be found at his website.

From Brokeback to Milk: Progress in Hollywood's Representation of Sexual and Gender Minorities

By Eric Patterson

The 81st Academy Awards on February 22, 2009, were satisfying to a lot of gay people, and not just because the event was hosted by a hunky actor who's been the subject of persistent gay rumors, looks great in a tailored tuxedo, and has a name some jokingly say sounds like it ought to be x-rated, Hugh Jackman. The awards were acclaimed by many who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer and by their straight allies for the amount of progress they indicated Hollywood has made regarding the representation of sexual and gender minorities. Sean Penn received the award for Best Actor for his title role in Gus Van Sant's Milk and the film's screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black, received the award for Best Screenplay; in their acceptance speeches, both men spoke passionately about the significance of the film, which recounts the life of the pioneering gay activist and politician, Harvey Milk, and his assassination in 1978, less than a year after his election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The film and the speeches of the two award recipients expressed unequivocal support for the aspirations of sexual/gender minorities. In his comments, Penn directly challenged current manifestations of the same kind of homophobic bigotry that Milk fought and that ultimately killed him, ridiculing anti-gay prejudice toward Hollywood and condemning the anti-gay protestors outside the awards ceremony: "You Commie, homo-loving sons-of-guns!…For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way of support. We've got to have equal rights for everyone." Black's message focused less on confronting the continuing hostility to sexual/gender minorities, and more on the promise of what glbtq activism can attain: "When I was thirteen years old…I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life. It gave me hope that one day I could live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could even fall in love and one day get married…" The experiences of the two men complemented each other, Penn demonstrating that straight people can become aggressive, outspoken, unapologetic allies of sexual/gender minorities, and Black showing the optimism that the "life-saving story" of Harvey Milk gives to many glbtq people about the possibility of full legal and social equality.

Another award given at last month's ceremony indicated the seriousness of the obstacles Hollywood can pose for those seeking to present sexual/gender minority people in film: for his portrayal of "the Joker" in The Dark Knight, the late Heath Ledger received Best Supporting Actor. Many critics and viewers agreed that Ledger should have received the Best Actor award three years earlier for his brilliant performance in Brokeback Mountain as the repressed, tormented ranch hand, Ennis del Mar, and that the Motion Picture Academy now was belatedly trying to atone for its failure to have recognized his remarkable work. Certainly it wouldn't have been the first time that regret for earlier misjudgments had been part of the Academy's decision-making process. Ledger's untimely death due to an accidental overdose of prescription drugs on January 22, 2008, may well have been a factor in the decision to posthumously award his performance in The Dark Knight, and the complaints elicited by the Academy's failure to recognize his performance in Brokeback also may have caused it to take Milk more seriously.

Of course, the success of Milk is primarily the result of the film's fine script, acting, directing, and photography, but extraneous factors often seem to play a role in the awarding of the Oscars. In 2006, the Academy not only failed to reward Ledger's fine performance as Ennis, but denied Brokeback the Best Picture award, though many critics and viewers, gay and straight, felt it deserved it. During the fall of 2005 and the winter of 2006, as critical and audience praise grew and grew for Brokeback Mountain, many were sure that the film would be the first centered on passionate love between men to win Best Picture. Brokeback eventually was nominated for a total of eight awards, but when the ceremony came on March 5, 2006, Academy members denied any awards to the film's actors, and made a surprising decision for Best Picture that many saw as a cautious and conventional choice that was the result of discomfort with Brokeback's explicit depiction of male-male sex and of homophobic prejudice and violence. As critics and viewers observed, it was difficult to understand how Brokeback's director, Ang Lee, its screenwriters, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, and its composer, Gustavo Santoallala, could earn Academy Awards while the film itself, the result of their award-winning collaboration, was passed over. As has been pointed out by those who know how Hollywood operates, a large number of the approximately six thousand members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are older white men who identity themselves as heterosexual, one of the groups often least supportive of glbtq people. The sense that the Academy's response to Brokeback might have been affected by homophobic prejudice was reinforced by ugly admissions about the film from two prominent Academy members, the elderly actors Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine, who both said they had refused to watch what Curtis dismissed as a movie about "gay cowboys." That some Academy members had voted but had refused to see the main contender for Best Picture raised serious questions about whether the Academy had fairly judged the film, and whether its decisions and awards really carried any validity. Borgnine's bizarre comment in reference to Brokeback, that if "John Wayne were alive he'd be rolling over in his grave," indicates what is perhaps the chief source of hostility to the movie: its presentation of homosexuality in the context of the Western is unbearable to many men for whom that genre is the most central narrative of American masculinity and nationalism. Given some of Curtis's roles, especially as "Josephine" in Some Like It Hot (1959), his indignation was especially hypocritical and laughable. This year, then, many who followed the Oscars expressed the view that perhaps the Hollywood establishment was responding not only to criticism of its failure to recognize the abilities of Heath Ledger but, when it judged Milk, also to criticism of its earlier resistance to the significance of Brokeback Mountain.

The recent awards to Penn, Black, and Ledger certainly seem to show an increased willingness on the part of the Academy to recognize work that represents those aspects of the lives of men who love men that seem to have repelled its members in the past. Though no scene in Milk is as explicit as the scene in Brokeback depicting Ennis and Jack having anal intercourse, several episodes show men having sex, and the filmmakers seem to have sought to present a candid account of the exuberantly liberated world of the Castro in the seventies. The film emphasizes Harvey Milk's extended relationships, but also shows the cruising, casual sex, and affectionate demonstrativeness that was part of daily life for many gay men in that place and time. Also, as with Brokeback, most of the characters don't fit the established stereotypes of effeminacy that Hollywood (and the larger society) seem to want. As commentators and participants have noted, during the seventies many gay men deliberately repudiated constructions of gender that linked male-male desire with femininity, constructing a new, more masculine, often hyper-masculine style. Tracing Harvey Milk's life from the time he moved from New York to San Francisco in 1970, the film shows him and his friends gradually abandoning the more androgynous hippie styles of gender expression, with their ponytails and flowered shirts, and inventing the macho look of the "Castro Street clone," with jeans, flannel shirts, hiking boots, short haircuts, and facial hair. Indeed, because of his entry into mainstream politics, Harvey Milk penetrated even farther into the gender territory of straight men, adopting conservative three piece suits like those worn by Mayor Moscone and Dan White, becoming indistinguishable in dress from the men who sought to dominate the society, though his words and actions loudly asserted gay and lesbian equality. Milk had a sharp wit and frequently made funny, campy cracks, but his gay sense of irony was the opposite of being an expression of some sort of "feminized" despair or futility-- like many gay men, he used it as a weapon, stirring up his supporters and intimidating his rivals. And as his assassination proved, for a fag to begin to become a power broker-- a political boss like Tweed or Daley, as Moscone jokes to Milk just before White shoots them both-- is intolerable for some "real" men. Like Brokeback, Milk refuses to present men who love men at a "safe" distance from heterosexual men, but depicts them right in the middle of the straight male world. Milk demonstrates that gay men can challenge straight men for power and win in the intensely competitive realm of politics, and Brokeback shows that there are man-loving men even in the most archetypically masculine context of all, the American West. Both reject the pattern Hollywood usually has used, when it has depicted gay men at all, of constructing them as feminized figures belonging to the areas of society associated with women. The men in both films are very far from the desperate queens, flamboyant fairies, stylish dandies, silly clowns, and ineffectual eunuchs Hollywood often has favored, which partly accounts for the hostility to Brokeback three years ago and which makes the present success of Milk so impressive.

The Academy Awards to Milk also may have been affected by recent political events that have profoundly disturbing significance for glbtq people in California and throughout the nation. As the film recounts, in 1978 Harvey Milk was one of the leaders in the effort to stop the homophobic Briggs Initiative in California, which would have fired all glbtq teachers who were out about their sexual/gender identification; on November 4, 2008, another homophobic California state initiative, Proposition Eight, was passed, rescinding the right of same-sex couples to have equal access to the status and benefits of legal marriage. Despite efforts to mobilize voters to support the recent California State Supreme Court decision that legal marriage should be available to all adult couples, vast funding from the Catholic and Mormon Churches and other homophobic religious organizations helped to carry the anti-marriage initiative. Perhaps the most important political legacy of Harvey Milk's career is the recognition that the more glbtq people who come out, the more difficult it will be for those who fear and hate them to maintain legal, economic, and social discrimination against them. Indeed, the more difficult it will be for members of the majority to hate and fear them at all, since glbtq people are the majority's relatives, neighbors, and co-workers, though the majority often is unaware of it. The outcry by sexual/gender minorities over the successful effort to re-institute discrimination against them, which attacks the central relationship in the lives of hundreds of thousands of them, moved many straight people, showing them how deeply their glbtq family members and friends are hurt by homophobia. Though many members of the Academy undoubtedly have strong homophobic prejudices, especially against the masculinity and sexuality of gay men, they also undoubtedly know and have worked with many glbtq people, and may have been troubled by their relegation to a class explicitly denied certain basic human rights, and so perhaps may have become more receptive to a film passionately defending them.

The anger of sexual/gender minorities over Proposition Eight isn't the only protest that may have helped to change attitudes in the Academy. Brokeback Mountain elicited an extraordinary response from fans that still continues, and many were outspoken in their disappointment that the film did not receive the Best Picture award in 2006. In addition to the movie's official site, which includes personal testimony from many men who saw striking parallels between the experiences of Ennis and Jack and their own, Brokeback inspired the organizing of several independent fan sites, including the Ultimate Brokeback Forum; Bettermost, Wyoming, and Brokeback Mountain Forum; and Ennisjack.com, which between them have several thousand members. These also include testimony from large numbers of people, men and women, gay and straight, about the impact of the film and the story; members of the Ultimate Brokeback Forum have published a book collecting some of the most eloquent and moving statements, Beyond Brokeback: The Impact of a Film (2007). The failure of the Academy to award the film Best Picture led to thoughtful and constructive forms of protest by fans: the Ultimate Brokeback Forum collected contributions to purchase a full-page advertisement in Daily Variety thanking the creators of Brokeback Mountain, which was widely reported and discussed in the press; they also raised money to buy dvd's of the film and contribute them to rural public libraries around the nation, a highly insightful and compassionate way to try to reach out to and support the kinds of people Brokeback depicts, who struggle in isolation with their sexual/gender difference. And, when Heath Ledger died, they publicly honored him with a moving tribute, again in an advertisement in Daily Variety.

When one explores these fan sites, it's clear just how profoundly the Brokeback narrative affected not only those who recognized themselves in the characters, but members of the majority who have learned from it about the experience of sexual/gender minorities and who aspire to understand more and to be their allies. Interestingly, a large number of fans actively participating in the sites are heterosexual women. It's hard to know why Brokeback has such appeal for straight women, but it's certainly intriguing. Perhaps in part there's a parallel with the interest many straight men have in passionate relationships between women. Certainly it's well-known that, while many straight men feel threatened by sex between men (and employ references to it as a threat, in their ubiquitous use of the "F-bomb" and the middle finger as insults to other men), they often desire pornography that depicts lesbian relationships in ways intended to excite male viewers. As some popular culture scholars have pointed out, there already are well-established patterns in which heterosexual female fans fantasize about passionate relationships between men, as in the extensive community of straight women who write and read sexual fantasy material about the Star Trek characters Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. Indeed, women started creating Kirk/Spock sexual fantasy material nearly forty years ago, and it now is widely available through the Internet. The Brokeback sites include much fan fiction, often written by women, that is inspired by Proulx's story and particularly by Lee's film, but that reimagines the narrative, extends it, elaborates the sexual and emotional relationship between Jack and Ennis, and sometimes provides alternate, happy endings. Such fan fiction may not only be analogous to male voyeurism regarding lesbianism, but also may be motivated by a desire on the part of straight women to wishfully imagine an alternative form of masculinity more sensitive and vulnerable than what they experience in actual relationships with men. In a widely publicized interview last fall, Annie Proulx expressed her impatience with fans who send her such materials, dismissing their unsolicited writings as "ghastly" and "pornish," and observing that a considerable amount of what she had received was from men who seemed to desire more extended descriptions of male-male sex than her story included. Of course, such communications must be an annoying distraction from her writing, particularly if they foolishly seek to "correct" her superb story, but they do indicate just how profoundly and powerfully the story and the film based on it have affected people, and they need to be recognized, however clumsy some may be, as a proof of the significance of her work and its impact in awakening readers and viewers to the experience and perspective of sexual/gender minorities and especially of men who love men. Annie Proulx clearly is an ally of gay men, but she seems to have been surprised to learn just how raw a nerve her creation has touched.

Though the recent forms of protest described here may well have caused the Motion Picture Academy to be more respectful of Milk than of Brokeback, it should be emphasized that Milk's success also is due in part to the continuing impact of a much larger effort, the remarkable series of achievements over the past several decades by independent filmmakers concerned to present the lives of sexual/gender minority people. Until relatively recently, the larger Hollywood organizations usually either have avoided glbtq-themed films or have constructed sexual/gender minority characters and issues as they are perceived by the majority, but independent directors, writers, and actors, some out gay men and lesbians, some straight allies, all struggling with a wide range of obstacles, especially lack of funding or adequate distribution, have explored the experience of sexual/gender minorities. From the mid to late eighties on, the New Queer Cinema, as it's been called, has challenged the boundaries of both content and form, going far beyond Hollywood's usual approaches to sexual and gender difference. Though the movement necessarily has produced small-budget, limited release films, these have helped to create the space that has made possible larger-scale films dealing directly with same-sex passion and political issues such as Brokeback Mountain and Milk.

The history of the representation of glbtq people in mainstream movies has become familiar to many through the research of film scholars, particularly the pioneering gay film historian Vito Russo and other more recent writers, such as Harry Benshoff, Sean Griffin, and Richard Barrios. Early movies, both in the United States and abroad, were notable for frequent-- if usually highly stereotypical-- depictions of sexual/gender minorities, but from the early thirties to about 1960 Hollywood's Film Production Code severely limited representation of glbtq characters, though filmmakers still found ways to hint at sexual and gender difference. With the collapse of the Code in the sixties, large-scale films began to depict sexual/gender minorities, but through the sixties, seventies, and eighties tended to trivialize and demonize them, constructing them according to established stereotypes and associating them with depravity, psychosis, crime, and violence. Notable examples are the treatment of sexual/gender minority characters in films such as Advise and Consent (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), The Detective (1968), The Sergeant (1968), The Fox (1968), Freebie and the Bean (1974), The Eiger Sanction (1975), Cruising (1980), Deathtrap (1982), Beverley Hills Cop (1984), Silence of the Lambs (1991), Basic Instinct (1992), and Braveheart (1995); of course, there are many more. Though in this period the Motion Picture Academy sometimes honored films that include significant glbtq content, those it chose tended to reflect prejudices against explicit sex, especially between men, and against aggressive political content, and stayed within the confines of established gender stereotypes. Midnight Cowboy (1969) won Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay, but the film carefully heterosexualized John Voight's hustler character and constructed his relationship with Dustin Hoffman as a bond between straight buddies. Dog Day Afternoon (1975) won Best Screenplay, going to the other extreme, presenting the two main characters, Al Pacino as a manic bank robber and Chris Sarandon as his transexual partner, as bizarrely entertaining freaks. For his role in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) William Hurt won Best Actor, but again the character, an overwrought, highly effeminate windowdresser, was a stereotype far removed from the experience of most straight-- or gay-- people. The massive suffering of the AIDS Pandemic produced Philadelphia (1993), for which Tom Hanks won Best Actor in a role as a successful lawyer struggling with the disease, but as many gay viewers noted, the empathy of those who made the movie didn't extend to a willingness to depict the sexual relationship between the gay male characters.

The history of independent filmmaking on glbtq themes goes back to the mid-Twentieth Century in the experimental films of Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, Maya Deren, and others. Between the mid eighties and mid nineties the development of film education and the gay and lesbian liberation movements led to a wave of work by independent filmmakers such as Lizzie Borden (Born in Flames, 1983), Bill Sherwood (Parting Glances 1986, ), Gregg Araki (The Living End, 1992), Todd Haynes (Poison, 1991), Tom Kalin (Swoon, 1992), Rose Troche (Go Fish, 1995), Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman, 1996), and others that challenged Hollywood's approach to glbtq experience, both in terms of cinematic technique and subject matter. Independent British and European filmmakers (such as James Ivory, Ismail Merchant, Stephen Frears, Derek Jarman, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder) also showed new possibilities, and the outpouring of glbtq-related foreign and domestic films, and their success at independent film festivals and at awards ceremonies, demonstrated that there was a market for such films. Eventually this led to larger independent projects and to the development of special art film divisions at major studios which undertook production and distribution of more glbtq-themed films. These changes led to even more movies addressing sexual/gender minority subjects, such as Boys Don't Cry (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), The Hours (2002), Far From Heaven (2002), Monster (2003), A Home at the End of the World (2004), and Brokeback Mountain (2005). Of course, Gus Van Sant, the director of Milk, was an important figure in the New Queer Cinema, with movies like Mala Noche (1985) and My Own Private Idaho (1991), and has successfully become involved in bigger projects while continuing to make more experimental films (such as Elephant (2003)). Milk itself owes a substantial debt to Rob Epstein's excellent documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), which won an academy award at a time when the industry was not receptive to a feature film on the topic. While the ongoing progress in the movie business toward more perceptive and innovative representations of glbtq people is clear, it has to be noted that Hollywood continues to maintain some of the traditional stereotypes. Though demonic gay killers like those of the past probably would meet with protests dwarfing those elicited by Cruising or Basic Instinct and so may be gone at last, effeminate stereotypes and tired fag jokes stressing straight male insecurity about gay men have been perpetuated by movies such as The Birdcage (1996), To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), In and Out (1997), There's Something About Mary (1998), and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007). Indeed, films such as My Best Friend's Wedding (1997) have established a new pattern for de-sexualizing gay men and rendering them non-threatening to straight audiences, the gay man-heterosexual woman comedy (paralleled by other films and by TV's Will and Grace).

During the buildup to the Oscars in 2005-2006, when Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger discussed their roles as Jack and Ennis, both unfortunately indicated some discomfort and defensiveness about playing male lovers, and others, such as Gyllenhaal's friend Lance Armstrong, openly ridiculed and insulted their roles. Much to his credit, Sean Penn has done what the two Brokeback stars did not, explicitly and unequivocally affirming his commitment to playing a gay man, and articulately asserting the right of glbtq people to the same legal rights, benefits, and status as everyone else. He's a real ally, a straight man who's secure in his own identity, doesn't fear glbtq people and their sexuality, but respects them and wants them to have the same rights he has. I hope that this marks a shift toward a climate in which more and more members of the heterosexual majority will speak up as allies of sexual/gender minorities. The recent change in national politics seems finally to indicate that a majority in the nation want to affirm diversity and basic human rights, and will reject the many prejudices, including the overt exploitation of homophobia, that have been such a central part of political and social discourse in America. Many still resist seeing the parallels between the irrationality and inhumanity of racism and of homophobia, but perhaps the eloquence of allies like Penn, of gay artists like Black, and of films like Milk will help to change this. Although the administration of George W. Bush finally-- finally!-- is over, his supporters, especially the many "religious" homophobes, undoubtedly will continue and probably intensify their efforts to attack the rights of glbtq people, but as more sexual/gender minority people and real allies stand up to them, it may be possible to stop them. More and more young people today, straight and glbtq, seem to agree with Penn and Black, and to be fed up with those latter-day successors to Anita Bryant and John Briggs who want to impose their "religious" rules on the personal and sexual lives of others. The success of Milk may herald a substantial change in attitudes that finally will end discriminatory policies such as "Don't Ask-Don't Tell" and the "Defense of Marriage Act." As Dustin Lance Black said in his speech at the Academy Awards ceremony, "if Harvey had not been taken from us thirty years ago, I think he'd want me to say to all the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are 'less than' by their churches, by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures who have value. And no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you, and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours. Thank you, God, for giving us Harvey Milk."

Eric Patterson is associate professor of American studies and American literature at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He is the author of On Brokeback Mountain: Meditations about Masculinity, Fear, and Love in the Story and the Film.

Excerpt from Lake of Heaven in World Literature Today

An excerpt from Lake of Heaven by Michiko Ishimure and translated by Bruce Allen, to be published by Lexington Books in the AsiaWorld series in late September, is available in the online journal World Literature Today.

Pre-order your copy here.

What Christmas in Wales or Anywhere Is Really All About

By Megan Lloyd

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”

“All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find…”

“Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang ‘Cherry Ripe,’ and another uncle sang ‘Drake's Drum.’ It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.”  So writes Dylan Thomas in his A Child’s Christmas in Wales, originally written for radio. In what became a short story, Thomas captures the reminiscences and remembrances of many Christmases and at times no real Christmases, a piece full of memory and imagination, perhaps what Christmas in Wales or anywhere is really all about.

My family in Wales continues to celebrate much like the characters out of Thomas’ story. Lots of songs, food, coal fires, and uncles make up our Christmases. Oh, and crackers. We have picture after picture of everyone sitting around the Christmas table enjoying their Christmas goose and wearing a paper crown. To celebrate Boxing Day, (December 26, originally celebrated as a day to give gifts to tenants, employees, and the poor) my family again rolls out the food, no crowns this time, and hangs out, glad for another day off. They may sit and sing and certainly recall past holidays, thinking about favorite gifts and favorite relatives no longer here.

As Dylan Thomas’ story begins--was it six days of snow when he was twelve, or twelve days when he six--he captures not only Welsh Christmas tradition but universal Christmas tradition. The memories mingle, fade and often are recreated into something more special that never was. In Wales, in the U.S., or anywhere, we, too, plunge our hands into the snow of Christmas memory and pull out whatever we may find. May your handfuls of memories be joyous and full of wonder. Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.

Megan S. Lloyd is associate professor at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, PA, and author of "Speak It in Welsh": Wales and the Welsh Language in Shakespeare.

What Would Higgins Think of Two World Series Victories by Boston Red Sox?

By Peter Wolfe

Were George V. Higgins to come back to us from the grave, he’d stumble immediately into his obsession—his love-hate relationship with the Boston Red Sox. Then he’d hear the news that his Sox, bereft of a championship for some 80 years, swept the St. Louis Cardinals in 2004 and the Colorado Rockies in 2007 to win two World Series in 4 years.

He’d have good reason to doubt his ears. His 1989 book, The Progress of the Seasons: Forty Years of Baseball in Our Town, consists of one long lament about his home-towners’ failure both on the field and in the front office. His history with those home-towners has deep roots. Like his father and grandfather, who took him to his first Red Sox game in 1946, at age 6, he spent a lifetime suffering from the curse boiling up from the Bosox’s 1919 sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees, the home run by Yankee shortstop Bucky Dent that ended the Sox’s season in 1978, and the error by first baseman Bill Buckner that cost the Sox the 1986 World Series.

Even Higgins’s fictional characters, looking for an emblem of futility, will invoke the Red Sox. A judge, during a long criminal trial in Sandra Nichols Found Dead (1996), tries to comfort the sequestered jury members who have lost time with their friends, family, and co-workers by reminding them that living in the same town as “those blasted Red Sox” has already schooled them in hardship. Few of the jury members would protest. Higgins recalls in Progress of the Seasons a friend groaning that the failures of the Red Sox have exceeded his ability to withstand pain.

So if you spot Higgins either near Fenway Park or the Locke Ober Café, his favorite Boston restaurant, be advised to change the subject when he starts talking baseball. Learning of his favorites’ recent success might shock him back to his grave, screaming that no novelist would violate probability with so outrageous a tale.

Peter Wolfe is the Curators' Professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and author of Havoc in the Hub: A Reading of George V. Higgins forthcoming from Lexington Books.

Brokeback Mountain: A Short Story, a Film, Now an Opera?

By Eric Patterson

            During the summer of 2007, fans of Brokeback Mountain, the short story and the film, may have noticed rumors in the press and on the internet about the possible production of Brokeback Mountain, the musical. Many assumed it must just be another "joke" generated by the endemic discomfort the movie's success seems to have caused, at least for some, and dismissed the additional gossip that movie stars Hugh Jackman and James Marsden might be cast as Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist as wishful thinking on the part of gay fans. Then at the end of the summer, it turned out that what actually might be in the works was Brokeback Mountain, the opera. This came from an unlikely source for opera information, the "Rush and Molloy" gossip column in the tabloid New York Daily News. But it was confirmed when representatives of the distinguished modernist composer, Charles Wuorinen, announced that he had received permission from Annie Proulx to compose an opera based on her short story. For all those who were moved by the story and the movie, and particularly for opera lovers, this raises intriguing possibilities about what the next representation of the lives of Ennis and Jack may be like.

First, a little about the composer. Over the past half-century Charles Wuorinen has composed an extraordinary array of music, much of it in the challenging twelve-tone or serial style that originates in the work of Arnold Schoenberg, although Wuorinen has a highly distinctive individual voice, and in recent years has composed some music that is less strictly atonal. He has created works in virtually every form, including eight numbered symphonies, a "microsymphony," an "ecclesiastical" symphony, four piano concerti, tone poems, chamber and solo works, and vocal and choral pieces; some of his works have descriptive religious titles, such as Theologoumenon and Pentecost. Wuorinen already has done one opera, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, based on the novel by Sir Salman Rushdie, with a libretto by the British poet James Fenton. Haroun is a highly imaginative children's story on the serious subject of freedom of imagination and expression, which Rushdie published in 1990, after the Ayatollahs had issued their notorious fatwa ordering his assassination. The opera first was staged in 2004 by the New York City Opera, and has met with considerable critical success. Like Annie Proulx, Wuorinen is a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, which he won in 1970 for Time's Encomium.

The news that Wuorinen is working on an opera based on Proulx's story has led to speculation about what such a work might be like. The film already has a subtle, beautiful, and evocative score in a style quite different from Wuorinen's, which raises the question of what relationship his opera might have, if any, to the music from the movie. Using a small group of players, including guitar, pump organ, pedal steel guitar, and percussion, the Argentine composer Gustavo Santaolalla created music wonderfully suggestive of the beautiful, lonesome landscapes in the film, the awakening desire between Ennis and Jack, and the fear, frustration, and sadness they and their wives endure. Santaolalla's own instrumental compositions are integrated with popular country hits of the Sixties and Seventies, such as "King of the Road," "The Devil's Right Hand," "It's So Easy to Fall in Love," and "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," performed by artists including Rufus Wainwright, Teddy Thompson, Roger Miller, Steve Earle, Linda Ronstadt, and Tammy Wynette, along with traditional songs such as "He Was a Friend of Mine," sung by Willie Nelson. Santaolalla and his collaborators also composed original songs in an appropriate country style, including "A Love That Will Never Grow Old," "No One's Ever Gonna Love You Like Me," "I Will Never Let You Go," and "I Don't Want To Say Goodbye," which are performed by Emmylou Harris, Mary McBride, Jackie Greene, and Teddy Thompson. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences certainly demonstrated its limitations in its failure to recognize the quality of the acting in Brokeback Mountain or the overall quality of the film (which may well have been the result of the widely reported failure of many of its members even to watch the film), but it did honor Santaolalla with the award for Best Score. Given the success and popularity of Santaolalla's music, those who are curious about the possible opera wonder whether it would refer to the film score. Would Wuorinen use a similar tonal style, or even quote Santaolalla's music, or quote some of the country music characteristic of the time and place in which the story is set? Or would he compose completely original and different music? Though the film music is beautiful, probably the best approach would be to create something entirely new.

                Some have suggested that the spare, restrained nature of the story and the lyrical, subdued quality of Ang Lee's film should incline the composer toward a work on a small scale, a chamber opera, but Howard Stokar, Wuorinen's manager, has said instead that "It would be a big piece, something for an actual opera house." What sort of big opera would Brokeback make? Opera is perhaps the most wonderfully complex and artificial of art forms, and for many Americans is almost synonymous with extravagance, with music, singing, acting, and staging on a giant scale. Though some of the most moving and popular operas, such as La Boheme or Tosca, are in the verismo style, presenting relatively realistic characters and situations, they often have gorgeously dramatic music, and of course many other operas transport their audiences to utterly fantastic realms inhabited by kings and princesses, gods and valkyries. Apart from the magnificent landscape, the world of Brokeback Mountain is about as far from the mythological grandeur of The Ring or Turandot as you can get. Certainly the brilliant technical staging skills of a major opera company could evoke a sense of the rough beauty of the mountain wildernesses where Jack and Ennis are able to be together, and could effectively contrast this with the shabbiness of the places they live in Wyoming and the gaudiness of the Newsomes' world in Texas, but what would the singing be like? Even operas with realistic settings usually have powerful music to express the characters' big emotions. Jack certainly has his share of these, but central to the tragedy is Ennis's fear to express what he feels. He's naturally a man of few words, and though he opens up to Jack, and eventually feels overwhelming loss and grief, he does so without grand gestures that would seem to lend themselves to a big operatic performance. In the film, perhaps the most powerful of many powerful scenes comes when Heath Ledger depicts Ennis finding the two shirts Jack has saved and hidden for twenty years in what amounts to a closet within a closet at the Twists's ranch house. Ledger's understated acting is superb, but in the scene he is virtually silent. How do you write a music drama about a character who's inherently so inexpressive and undramatic as Ennis?

So far no libretto has been completed for Wuorinen's project. The composer must decide what his relationship to Santaolalla's music will be, but the writer of a libretto will have to decide how to respond to both the story and the screenplay. The film has an outstanding screenplay, in which Larry McMurtry and Diana Osanna perceptively and subtlely adapted and expanded Annie Proulx's brilliant story. They treated her work with great respect, for the most part only adding sections that developed the implications of what Proulx had written, as in their development of Alma and her daughters and Lureen and her family. As those who've read about the making of the film are aware, when it was shot some episodes not in the story, particularly one involving Ennis and Jack assisting a group of hippies whose van gets stuck, wisely were dropped. Some have criticized the movie for not presenting more scenes depicting the love between Jack and Ennis, though it does have the courage to affirm the directness of the story's depiction of their sexual relationship in several important scenes, one of which-- their second night together in the tent-- is original to the film. Others have noted that one of the sources of the power of the story is Proulx's use of a frame at the beginning and end, describing Ennis's thoughts about Jack some months after Jack's murder; she implicitly presents her account of the love between Ennis and Jack as Ennis's nostalgic recollection, and this quality is lost in the film, since it presents the story in simple chronological sequence, beginning in 1963. Writing the libretto provides the opportunity to respond to such criticisms, but does pose the danger of expanding or changing the narrative in ways that may not work. Also, though one of the richest aspects of the story is Proulx's extraordinary ear for the Western vernacular, and the filmmakers bring this to the screen effectively in the dialogue, you have to wonder how the ungrammatical, earthy, pungent, vivid language of the characters will sound when it's sung.

An opera performance, of course, is very different from a film. The filmmakers show much of what goes on between Ennis and Jack, and their families as well, through close-ups rather than through dialogue. Fortunately, all of the actors are gifted, and succeed effectively, often eloquently, in presenting what their characters feel and think through looks, gestures, posture, and expressions. For those who liked the film, so many moments stay in the mind: the way Jake Gyllenhaal sits and concentrates on peeling potatoes by the campfire, resolutely not looking, but entirely aware, as Ledger washes, naked, behind him; the way Ledger's face becomes more relaxed and open, expressing Ennis's attraction to his friend, and then how severe and closed it becomes when they part at the end of their summer together; the look of mingled fear and dying hope in Gyllenhaal's beautiful eyes as Ennis dismisses him… The movie shows rather than tells. But there are no close-ups in an opera. It takes place on a stage far away from the audience, and the performers must signal what their characters feel and think through big gestures and powerful singing in order to reach those watching and listening. There's little possibility of the kind of quiet, subtle intensity that distinguishes the movie. Indeed, opera often requires considerable resolve on the part of the audience in suspending disbelief, particularly depending on who the performers are; even though certain opera stars may have great voices and histrionic ability, it can be challenging for some viewers to believe that they are the delicate maidens and athletic heroes they're meant to portray. Those who watch video recordings of opera sometimes wish that those operating the cameras would recognize this, and avoid close-ups in an art whose performers are meant to be seen from far away.

               Gay opera fan sites on the internet are full of speculation about what Wuorinen's opera may be like and who might be cast. Clearly the principals need to be right in age, appearance, acting ability, and, perhaps most important, the apparent chemistry between their characters. Many seem to perceive Ennis as a baritone, and Jack as a tenor, a discussion that's led to some interesting speculation about whether baritones should be thought of as "tops" and tenors as "bottoms." Names that have been mentioned (with enthusiastic acclamation by various fans) are those of Stephen Costello, Nathan Gunn, Scott Hendricks, and Norman Reinhardt. Not surprisingly, there continues to be discussion of the rumor that Hugh Jackman and James Marsden might be cast, though neither is an opera singer. Perhaps this isn't as far-fetched as it may seem. Jackman has substantial successful experience in stage performance in musicals, including his role as Curley in the London production of Oklahoma!, and was acclaimed for his portrayal on Broadway of fellow Australian Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, for which he won a Tony Award. Not only can he sing, but he also seems quite capable of playing a role a lot gayer than either Ennis or Jack. (It's a little scary to think of what Jack and especially Ennis might have thought of Peter Allen.) Marsden-- a former Versace model-- has played gay characters in two movies, Heights, with Jesse Bradford, and The 24^th Day, with Scott Speedman. Marsden's also worked with Jackman in the three X-men films, playing cool, leather-clad Cyclops to Jackman's lupinely hirsute Wolverine. And he can sing, as demonstrated in his performance as Corny Collins in Hairspray. Still, it's quite a ways from a John Waters musical to the opera house. Nonetheless, the speculation and anticipation continue. At least for all the fans of the X-men comics and movies who perceive a gay subtext in the stories about misunderstood mutants with special powers, it's gratifying to imagine Cyclops and Wolverine finally locked in each other's arms. And Jackman and Marsden certainly would look good in cowboy hats and jeans. Or out of them.

The United States has great opera companies and American composers have contributed to an impressive list of varied and distinctively American operas: Scott Joplin's Treemonisha, George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, Howard Hanson's Merrymount, Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe, Carlisle Floyd's Susannah, Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All, Aaron Copeland's The Tender Land, Gian Carlo Menotti's The Saint of Bleeker Street, John Adams's Nixon in China, Phillip Glass's Einstein on the Beach, to name just a few. With Brokeback Mountain Charles Wuorinen has the opportunity to contribute another, and to address the subject of love between men, a theme that's been marginalized in too many areas of artistic expression for far too long. It's high time for a great American opera about men who love men, especially considering the number of gay opera fans. So we'll have to wait and see-- and listen.

Eric Patterson is associate professor of American studies and American literature at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He is the author of an upcoming book On Brokeback Mountain: Meditations about Masculinity, Fear, and Love in the Story and the Film.

Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru Sir Fflint a'r Cyffiniau, Awst 4 - 11, 2007

By  Megan Lloyd

The Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru or Welsh National Eisteddfod is now underway in a maes or field near Flint, North Wales. While other eisteddfodau occur throughout Wales, the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru is Wales’ largest and most important arts competition. Here, this week every August, poets, musicians, dramatists, artists, actors and dancers come to compete all in yr iaith Gymraeg, the Welsh language. To recognize this long-standing arts festival, here are a few words about its history.

Eistedd, in Welsh means to sit. Thus the highest honor given to any artist in Wales is for him or her to sit or be chaired. The climax to the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru is the chairing of the bard ceremony where the poet who has won the competition for the best poem in strict meters is chaired. The second best award is the crown, given to the winner of the free verse competition.

Poets in Wales have always been highly regarded. Today’s contemporary chaired bard, and all those who compete in the competition for the chair, follow some of the strict poetic meters established in the earliest Welsh poetry we have record of, coming from the bards Taliesin and Aneirin writing in the sixth century. The chairing aspect of today’s eisteddfod may go back to the place of prominence the head poet or Pencerdd was given at the Welsh Court. Hywel Dda or ‘Hywel the Good’(d. 950) created Wales’ first uniform legal system which established twenty-four offices at court, for advisors, counselors, the clergy, with two given to poets. The highest honor was given to the Pencerdd or head singer who took his place beside the prince himself. The Pencerdd was in the immediate entourage of the king or Prince.* The head poet was not only given this prominent place at court, he was given land and the ability to license other poets.** An elite profession, belonging to the bardic order, poets learned their craft and became licensed once they mastered traditional meters and vocabulary. The court included a number of these other poets called the Bardd Teulu, or “family poets” – both a family of poets and poets for the family or lord or household. Also attached to the courts of Wales in the medieval period were the Cerddorion or apprentices. These men were the more popular singers who were learning their craft and waiting for a license from the Pencerdd. The Pencerdd and Bardd Teulu all had a job to pass along their craft. To become a member of the Bardd Teulu, a poet had to complete a rigorous poetical test. Once you were a member of the Bardd Teulu or became the Pencerdd, you had it made – a secure position and the necessities of life. The power of Welsh poetry can be seen by looking at this rule: If you were of lower class, you were not permitted to teach your son to be a scholar, a blacksmith or a poet. If you became any of these without detection, you would become a free man.***

Welsh bards held eisteddfodau to test and license apprentice poets, to review rules governing the craft of poet and musician, and to protect and promote the professional status of these artists. The earliest eisteddfod may be traced back to 1176 Cardigan where Lord Rhys invited poets and musicians from all over the country and awarded the best poet and musician a chair at his table. Medieval records show that eisteddfodau were held in 1450, 1523, and 1567 to license poets and musicians and to examine the rules of poetry and music. One specific aim of the 1567 Caerwys Eisteddfod was to control wandering minstrelsy. The gentry petitioned the crown for an eisteddfod in 1594, but nothing came of it.

The Caerwys Eisteddfod of 1567 was the last “official” eisteddfod until those of the “modern era” established during the nineteenth century and filled with druidic trappings, for example, the Gorsedd who, aided by maidens adorned in flowing garments, perform the chairing and crowning ceremonies. While today’s eisteddfod does not evaluate the rules governing behavior of Welsh artists nor does it test upcoming artists so they may one day become licensed, it still preserves the purity of form established in the oldest Welsh verse, and it sustains the rich heritage of the Welsh language through the arts themselves.

  * Of the fourteen offices at court and chairs next to the King, one was occupied by the Pencerdd. Dafydd Jenkins, Hywel Dda: The Law (Llandysul, Dyfed, Wales: Gomer Press, 1986) 7-8.

** Jenkins, Hywel Dda: The Law, 38-39.

*** Jenkins, Hywel Dda: The Law, 40.

Megan S. Lloyd, PhD, is Associate Professor at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, PA. She is the author of upcoming  "Speak It in Welsh": Wales and the Welsh Language in Shakespeare, published by Lexington Books.