One thing I notice reading Shakespeare, though, aside from those phrases rife with double meaning, is how pure a form of writing it is. That's not speaking to the characterizations or the plot, but simply the format. There are only two things you'll find in reading Shakespeare's plays, dialog and monologues. You either find two or more characters speaking to each other, or one character speaking to the crowd. When reading the plays, the two formats tend to blend. They are both, after all, simply characters speaking words. On paper, it wouldn't seem to matter if there was only one character or multiple characters speaking. In person, however, during the performance, the differences between dialog and monologues becomes abundantly clear: viewpoints.
A dialog offers multiple viewpoints. One of Shakespeare's greatest talents was playing these multiple viewpoints against each other, with one or the other coming out on top. Lady MacBeth convincing her husband to take up the throne in her own lust for power comes to mind. A monologue, converserly, offers one in-depth look at a single viewpoint. Hamlet's "Sleep, perchance to dream" speech is famous, but it only persents one side of the idealogical argument. Ophelia, before she goes mad, would probably have had something to say about Hamlet's infamous rant of internal suffering.
Shakespeare's plays don't end with monologues, and there's a reason for that. Any story worth telling, any idea worth paying attention to, needs objective assessment. Often the topics that Shakespeare's characters spend their monologues droning on about are the very topics which end up ending their lives, or at least spiraling them into tragedy, either dramatic or comedic in nature. Shakespeare knew that no moral he was trying to present could be adequately told from only one perspective, it was either through dialog or action that the point was driven home.
This past weekend, I went to see The Social Network. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, and Armie Hammer, directed by David Fincher of Fight Club, Se7en, and Zodiac fame, and written by A Few Good Men, West Wing, and Sportsnight writer Aaron Sorkin. It's a fascinating portrayal of the roots of maybe the most ubiquitous thing of our modern times: Facebook.
But to say The Social Network is a movie about Facebook is a bit of a misnomer. It's not about the website Facebook, it's about the creators of Facebook. Their tale is expertly woven together, and through their sordid web we see all sorts of sub-stories that are implied but never revealed. Through the story of the people who created Facebook, you can see a story about the people who use Facebook, you can see a story about Facebook as a concept, and you can see a story about the pitfalls of modern society.
The roots of Facebook are grounded-- like many great ideas from men-- in the base objectification of women. And, in a way, objectification is still the name of Facebook's game. People use it to reconnect with lost acquaintences and plan gatherings, yes, but they also use it to ogle attractive members of the opposite sex and creep on the recently single. For all its genuinely useful aspects and respectable manner, Facebook even in its most current incanation still owes most of its popularity to the same things that garnered FaceSmash 22,000 hits in one hour.
Still, you can't deny the social impact that Facebook has had. I've talked about its ability both to help and harm the modern marketplace of ideas, and thats only the tip of the social iceberg. What Facebook has the ability to do is become the most massive dialog every constructed. It has connections to one twelfth of the world's population, crossing continents and spanning the globe.
Of course, what it's meant for and what it is are two different things.
This is a blog post. I hope that's obvious. What's less obvious is that this is a monologue. This is one voice giving you a single set of ideas. Every time I post I strive to present my viewpoints in an objective manner, one with the perspective necessary to make it worthwhile. But the truth of any monologue is that it requires dialog around it to make it powerful. Shakespeare didn't write extended monologues, because he knew that a cast of characters, with a myriad of viewpoints, coming into a specific situation is what created the most affecting message. What I say doesn't-- can't-- have any power without dialog around it, without an exchange of opinions taking place. A monologue is essentially preaching to the converted. It's of no practical use.
I still do it, of course, in the hopes of engendering dialog. I like getting other people's opinions. I like being wrong. I like being right, too, but mostly I like the multiple viewpoints involved in both options. I may be preaching to the converted right now, but the Internet means that the message can get out there to those who aren't converted. There is every opportunity for this monologue to become a dialog, even weeks, months, years later.
What gets me about Facebook, hell social networking in general, is that its a parade of monologues masquerading as dialogs. Every status update, every Tumbler post, every tweet is a monlogue of some type. Even replies to posts are at least 75% monologues. The posts that get the most replies-- celebrity Facebook pages, mostly-- rarely engender discussion, but rather are a series of people giving their own opinion to the post in question. The original poster rarely comments, and subsequent posters give their own pocket opinions. It looks like a dialog, but it's instead a series of monologues tacked together, a spotlight that flits around the room from voice to voice, without ever revealing the scenery, or even the fact that the actors are on the same stage.
Our society has become one of monologues. Bill O'Reilly takes callers and guests but doesn't engage them in meaningful discussion. Keith Obermann pontificates without context. C-Span shows our political system as one that allows each person their own say, but then involves no civil discussion or discourse of what was said. Watching a session of Congress is an exercise in vanity, with each person offering their own monologue, their own version of reality, to attempt to serve as the ending of the political play. All of this serves as symptoms of a society more concerned with saying something than with hearing anything.
The thing we forget is that those who spoke Shakespeare's best monologues were the ones who died the most tragically.
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