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Over 
the course of his career as a filmmaker, Roland Emmerich has displayed, many times over, a firm commitment to the fine art of bullshit. I mean this in a good way. His movies, from “Universal Soldier” to “Independence Day” on through “10,000 BC” and “2012,” have featured such implausibilities as Jeff Goldblum hacking the alien mothership with a MacBook, ziggurats and shit ten millenia before the birth of Christ, and Jean-Claude Van Damme, and they're (mostly) fun as hell. The absurdity of Emmerich's pictures is almost an auteurist signature. This tendency sees its culmination in his latest, Anonymous, which features the most ridiculous premise yet tackled by this cinematic poet of the ridiculous: the idea that William Shakespeare was not the author of his own plays.
Shakespeare is, to put it mildly, kind of a big deal. Harold Bloom wrote a book based on the premise that our conception of what it is to be human beings was created by William Shakespeare, and while that may be taking things a bit far, the man was and is large. His contributions to the English language are so numerous and fundamental that you (yes, you) probably quoted him TODAY without even knowing you were doing it. As a result, his work is widely and intensely studied, which has led to just about every possible theory about where he was coming from to be proposed at some point or other, one of which—the foundation of “Anonymous”—is that Shakespeare's poetry and plays were written by someone other than William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare Truthers all claim, appealingly, to be interested in setting the historical record straight, which is a fine thing and absolutely should be done. The way one does this is by collecting and then corroborating data, and only after having very carefully completed that part of the process does analysis and the formation of hypotheses follow. Not every historian is as meticulous with all this as s/he could be, which is why when making a go of any serious kind of historical analysis, one always always always consults multiple sources. Also, never make assumptions based on anachronistic cultural norms. Oh, and don't let politics cloud your perspective. And never, EVER start with a hypothesis and reverse engineer all your research so that it conforms to the answer you want it to get. The reason why you do all the things you're supposed to do and don't do what you're not supposed to do is because you DON'T want to be walking around claiming Shakespeare didn't write his own plays.
Some who do so claim are just looking to stir up shit to cause controversy, sell books, make money, all that jazz. That's one thing. It's another entirely to believe it sincerely. That requires the claimant to be party to a massive array of logical fallacies, class prejudices, and faulty, baseless assumptions. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had his good moments but who could also be a bit of a dipshit on occasion, was one of the first to question Shakespeare's authorship, based on nothing more than the fact he couldn't reconcile the image of Shakespeare being an actor and theater manager with the guy Emerson imagined writing all that great poetry (though, in fairness, Emerson never went terribly far with it, and certainly not as far as claiming Shakespeare didn't write his own plays). The whole thing snowballed from there, with many others joining in and going “yeah, poets are these supernatural magical word creatures, some guy with a job who farts and scratches his balls can't possibly be a POET.”
From there, the core assumptions of the Shakespeare Truthers coalesced: Shakespeare couldn't possibly have written his poetry and plays because the real author would have had to be a member of the aristocracy, there are internal inconsistencies in the style of x play and y play, et cetera, ad infinitum. This is all frustrating for people who can read, because there are tons of contemporary accounts of this guy William Shakespeare (spelled a few different ways, but all clearly the same guy) who all the other playwrights of the day respected, who was quite popular, who performed for the court, and who worked with a co-author a couple times when he got old and needed a little help. He knew who people like Ovid and Tacitus were because that was what kids learned in school back then, and there are records of him going to a pretty good school. It's all there.
“Anonymous” came to be because screenwriter John Orloff thought a story about the Earl of Oxford having some actor named Shakespeare front for him would make a fun historical potboiler. Orloff's history is flamboyantly, Roland Emmerich-ly full of shit—he has his aristocrat hero writing “A Midsummer Night's Dream” at the age of about 8, and performing as Puck for young Queen Elizabeth's court—but nothing any more far-fetched than other “historical” movies. Remember “Gladiator?” Commodus didn't murder Marcus Aurelius and he didn't get killed in a swordfight with Russell Crowe, but “Gladiator” was still lots of fun, and was open about being “loosely” based on history.
The problem is, Sony is preparing and distributing lesson plans for teachers, encouraging them to discuss “Anonymous” in their classes. This cannot stand. Orloff is on record as saying “There’s no evidence that Shakespeare actually wrote anything and I don’t think anyone can be totally convinced either way,” which is basically the same as saying “There's no evidence that gravity actually exists, and I don't think anyone can be totally convinced either way.” While America is—for the time being, anyway—a free country and people are free to believe whatever bullshit they like, forcing provable untruths down kids' throats in school is wrong. One is entitled to one's own opinions, not one's own facts.
It's almost a shame that Roland Emmerich is caught up in the middle of all this, because while his movies are ridiculous and dumb, he's a nice, guilelessly enthusiastic guy by all accounts, and he uses the mountains of money he makes from his movies to support a lot of cool progressive causes, particularly LGBT causes, which is awesome, and he's one of the most vocal advocates of the Oscars creating a category for stuntmen, which is an incredibly noble effort. It's only “almost” a shame because the act of signing on to this picture is a tacit endorsement of its dangerous falsehoods. But hey. Work is work.
And also, in between my having the idea for this column and writing it, Sony decided to bury “Anonymous,” only releasing it on 200 screens. They SAY they're doing that to generate word of mouth pursuant to a wider release, but they know they've got a commercial non-starter on their hands. They have a script that makes Dianetics look like “The Wire,” and a director whose arguably most iconic moment is Will Smith punching an alien in the face, then lighting up a cigar and saying “Welcome to Earf.” Sony's covering their ass. But once they try and pimp the DVD, remember these words, and repeat them then: you cannot call fiction fact. Or, since I randomly brought up “The Wire” for no apparent reason, I'll re-purpose a great Slim Charles line: if you want to lie to kids, “then we fight on that lie.”
William Shakespeare is the author of the plays that bear his name. Arguing otherwise isn't some cute little Devil's Advocate rhetorical game, it's wrong. He was good enough (and as Robert Graves once said, “The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good — in spite of all the people who say he is very good”) to warrant a degree of respect, even if that respect merely extends to letting him have credit for the things he did. Because he did them.
Danny Bowes' is a prolific writer and critic who lives in New York City. You can look for his column every Wednesday, and read him online at moviesbybowes.blogspot.com.
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KitMurphy
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... I agree Sony shouldn't be passing out lesson plans as they are a movie studio and not a historian but I had heard the rumor that Shakespeare had not written all of his plays. I do believe that he did but one of the few pieces of evidence that I remember hearing back in school was just the pure fact that some of his work came in with his name spelled differently. It happened more than once and it was spelled more than two different ways. The only other thing I can say in things that have happened in history that I know of is, people have gotten to greatness on the backs of others by stealing or just patenting something they put no work into. People also just take stories and rework them into their own for a profit (cough cough Hollywood cough). This film is just entertainment and in the end people will always have random opinions |
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