Individuals are Lovers and Lovers are Individuals

I recently wrote about Taming of the Shrew on Votaries--or, rather, I reposted a post from 2005.

My point: how pointless and sad it is to get so bothered about Shakespeare's sexism that the power and magnificence of what he wrote/crafted is lost.

People who focus on the -isms of art not only lose the fun and energy and magnificence and poetry and wit and beauty of art, they actually further the -isms. Art gives way to a petty mindset--tiny really--that can only see the world in terms of political power. The mindset is small and cramped and mean-spirited. It cannot see beauty and transcendence; therefore, it thinks no one else can ever find anything transcendent in what it has determined others should despise.

I saw the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton version when I was in my teens. I did not go home, thinking, "My parents were wrong! I shouldn't go to college! I should stay home and find a man and place my hands under his feet!"

I never saw the play as a LESSON with a MODERN APPLICATION for two reasons:

(1) I'm not stupid (and I was not stupid as a teen). The play was by a guy from the (mostly) late 1500s who was both a reflection of his time and an artist who managed to transcend his time, which all the great critics from C.S. Lewis to Camille Paglia confirmed to me is possible.

But I got that confirmation later. At 15 or 16, I already knew it. I wasn't aghast or appalled that a person from a different time period and mindset and way of thinking than me once existed. ("Oh, does this mean I'm not the center of the universe?! Oh, shock, shock!") I was capable of appreciating what I was faced with.

Really gung-ho appalled types would argue that I was covertly brainwashed by inherently sexist ideas. I should have stopped that from happening by spending my childhood and teens in a sterile room faced with properly vetted images. (Who is properly vetting these images?)

The world of After School Specials. Yup, that's what the gung-ho offended types have to offer! A sterile world of After School Specials.

I just vomited into a bucket.

Okay, I'm back.

The other reason that I wasn't scarred for life by Burton and Taylor (granted, they scarred other people) is (2) I saw Katerina and Petruchio as individuals.

I realize that "individualism" has become a dirty word. It happens to also be reality. We are born into individual bodies. We mature in individual bodies. We have individual brains. We die in individual bodies. Theories that insist that we don't truly exist as individuals are pure sophistry.

However, I will grant that my perception was a little unusual even within the context of my teen years/culture. I found that many people around me, including other teens, were willing to see everything as APPLICATION. Everything was about something bigger. Everything was about the LESSON. Everything was about everybody.

I honestly didn't see life that way (I guess my libertarianism was showing). To me, Petruchio and Katerina were...Petruchio and Katerina. They weren't stand-ins for all men and all women. They were two separate people, just as Katerina's sister Bianca--far more wily and manipulative than Katerina--wasn't a stand-in for women either. She was Bianca.

I still think this way--it is the only honest way, I believe, to truly appreciate the past, to give credit to the sacrifices of people of the past even when we no longer agree with everything (or anything) they believed. It is the only way to appreciate art without having to start all over from scratch with every new generation (watch out for After School Specials!). It is the only way to move forward with science or any other field--by appreciating the work and discoveries of individuals, because no matter how many groups a person belongs to, each person did something.

Romance is no different. Romance is about one person meeting another person (and another person, if you are into polyamorous relationships). Each person matters. Each person has something to offer.