Sensei Richard BurtBusiness Card

circa 1998

*TACKY SHAKESPEARE

Originally Proposed Conference Title

The title of my paper pays homage to this lost title, this title not entitled to be a conference title.

Here is the title of my paper:

Sensei Richard Burt

*“ITA-TACKY-

MASU SHAKE-U-

SPEARE”

My title, *“ITA-TACKY-MASU SHAKE-U-SPEARE” in English means—sort of--“Let’s

eat Shakespeare.”

My title is meant to activate two translingual puns that translate the two additional meanings of my title. I want to spell these two puns out now in order to provoke, in a preliminary manner, thought and questions about what “Tacky” (or “Tackey,” an alternate spelling) Shakespeare, as opposed to “popular” Shakespeare.

The syllable “taki” in the Japanese word Itatakimasu and the English word “Tacky.”

Ichiban Pun: “Taki” and “Tacky”

“Let’s eat tacky Shakespeare.”

Inchiban English retranslation of

*“ITA-TACKY-MASU

SHAKE-U-SPEARE”

Does it taste good? Is tacky Shakespeare in good taste or bad taste? How may tacky Shakespeare and Asian Shakespeare be related?

Questions My First Pun Raises about Tacky Shakespeare

Let’s turn to the O.E.D.’s definition of “tacky” as an adjective to respond to these questions.

The origin of the word “tacky” is obscure.

Is Tacky Shakespeare Tasteless?

The syllable “masu” in the Japanese word “Ita-taki-mas” and the English word “mass.”As you have no doubt noticed, the rhymes of the Japanese and English sounds do not exact rhyme. So let’s just say that both of my translingual puns are tacky.

Ni Translingual Pun: “Masu” and

“Mass”

In English, one of the meanings of “mass” is a religious ritual preformed in Catholic, Anglican, and episcopal churches during which the parishioners take Holy communion, or High Communion, and eat the Eucharist, a wafer that incarnates the body of Jesus and recalls the last supper.

A priest performing the liturgy of the

Mass.

Priest holding up the Eucharist to bless it before

breaking it so it may be eaten.

A portrait of Jesus holding the Eucharist and pointing

to its design. It is a wafer. It doesn’t taste good, but it is

good for you.

“We humbly receive Shakespeare’s Eucharist, or wafer (in remembrance of

him and thereby be redeemed).”

Ni, more exact English retranslation of

*“ITA-TACKY-MASU SHAKE-U-SPEARE”

If understand the Japanse sentence “Itatackimasu” as “I” or “we” “humbly receive this” and we emphasize the pun on “mas” and “mass,” then “eating” tacky Shakespeare would be a good thing, a kind of Shakespeare soup for your soul.

DEMO! Mate! Mate! There is always the possibility of parody, of receiving communion becoming

something tacky. The wafer has to be fashioned, marked, even trademarked. It can’t be left blank.

In the photo above is an example of a designer wafer. The “mass” production of wafers, if I may precipitate a pun in English, is always potentially

a problem for performing the religious Mass.

Compare and contrast:

Icon of the cross on the wafer,

supersize.

Here is something like an iconoclastic wafer a parody of the designer wafer, mass, the sense of a multitude, produced wafers. In this photo, communion wafers look like anti-anxiety pills because the both wafers and pills share very similar marks. Is receiving the Eucharist roughly the same thing as Pill Popping, a kind of intoxication? Is the wafer’s tastelessness a the condition of the believers’ religious ecstasy?

Is tacky Shakespeare good for you? Does it

make you a better person if you eat it?

Some More Questions Raised by My Ni Pun on “Mas” and “Mass” and on the more exact English word “receiving”:

Some tentative thoughts about tacky Shakespeare:

It may be tasteless, but so are communion wafers. Hence consuming tacky Shakespeare may be a way of forming a community, not exactly a religious community, nor a heretical community, but an intoxicated community, a community getting high by consuming the tasty pleasures of tastelessness.

To clarify and to conclude these preliminary remarks :

Tacky Shakespeare may be likened to two Japanese kinds of Shakespeare.

*Kawaii Shakespeare

(“Dreamin Passport” for

Richard-o)

Kawaii Shakespeare

Perhaps

analogous to East Shingiku

Shakespeare-o, or Omoide Yokochio

Shakespeare.

OR

Sleazy Shakespeare

Annetuwa nanika tacky tabemasen?

You may be thinking “So des ne.”

Or maybe you may find yourself using the polite, and ambiguous Japanese expression:

“Daijoubu desu.”

Perhaps you hope you may later say

“Oschi” or GOCHISOSAMA.”

“Let’s eat (receive) some

tacky Shakespeare.”

*“ITA-TACKY-MASU

SHAKE-U-SPEARE”

If this Burt-o has offended,

This but this, and all is mended,

That you have but lagged here, as in a jet.

(That’s the official title of my paper.)

*“Anonymess”

That was the serious part of my paper. Now for something more silly.

Anonymous dir. Roland Emmerich

2011

*The premise of the film Anonymous is that Edward de Vere the Earl of Oxford anonymously wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare supposedly did not write Shakespeare’s plays. The films takes a position in the Shakespeare authorship debate.

*Today, I will make three main points about Roland Emmerich’s film, Anonymous:

*1. Anonymity is not reducible to a variation of pseudonymity, but something more.

*2. Anonymous is a disaster film, not a conspiracy thriller.

*3. Disaster plays out in Anonymous as a question about the archive, the archive as a disaster of writing.

Anonymous is not organized like a bento box. It is a mess, more like a beef curry rice..