Turns out the most dangerous element in the Arab world isn't Western military force. It's Shakespeare. A few home-made bombs can handle the first threat, but Shakespeare - well, that's another kettle of tabouleh. In this article by Sulayman Al-Bassam in yesterday's The Guardian the drama of Shakespeare is a "walking toolkit of dissent," covering all sorts of political and human situations. So if Arab dramatists can keep the Big Bard on the boards throughout the region, all sorts of crazy notions could take hold. Think about it.Fortunately for heavily-censored societies (but unfortunately for 9th graders everywhere), Shakespeare's language and meaning are often ambiguous - "slippery" - obscuring his many blatent and inflammatory messages. ( Remember my posting a few weeks ago on Clare Asquith's new book Shadowplay, about the subversive political messages in Shakespeare's plays?)
From the Al-Bassam article:
"On a micro-political level, Shakespeare's plays converge with a host of social and local issues at the forefront of Arab debate. Notions of marriage (arranged versus free), parent-child relationships, ambiguities of sexuality and gender, women's rights and the quest of the massive youth population for freedom in love, expression, individuality - all of these are burning issues of live debate in the Arab world. A fundamental pre-modernity is at the core of both the Shakespearian world and today's Arab world, linking the two along a palpable line of tension."
Just confirms my firm belief that in any society the artists are the truth-tellers and earth-shakers - not the politicians and preachers.
Wonder what could be made of Chaucer? Now there's a dangerous mind!
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