Reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) story about the Ginza
store not long after VJ-Day trying to get US culture right in a
store window by featuring a Santa Claus nailed to a cross.
As urban legends (if it is so) go, this is right up there with the
one about the banner strung across the Ginza just after the
MacArthur-Truman blow-up and when MacArthur drew a bead
on the Oval Office himself: We Pray for MacArthur's Erection.
Hal
"My experience is what I agree to attend to."
--William James
Halvard Johnson
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On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Martin Walker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Last time I saw Parsifal there was nobody on a cross - sounds like an
> interesting interpretation...One could have Kundry hanging naked on the
> cross all the way through, while Parsifal carries his monster albatross (or
> is it a swan? the swans are reserved for the dons) on his back, sorta
> neo-existentialist. The Grail knights all wear fishnet stockings, and
> Amfortas is heavily into S&M. Probably been done - I've seen versions with
> two each of Parsifal & Kundry, with Parsifal changing sex in the middle of
> the 2nd act, etc, but they can't make it weirder than it already is. It
> certainly weirded out Nietzsche, who claimed he preferred Carmen - liar...
> mj
> Wenn vollkommene Herrschaft über seinen Gegenstand die freie kunstreiche
> Ausbildung desselben möglich macht, so können doch die künstlichen
> Schraubengänge der Polemik nicht die Form der Philosophie sein.
> If perfect mastery of one's subject makes its free, artistic development
> possible, then the merely artificial turns of the polemical screw cannot be
> the form of philosophy.
> F.W.J. Schelling
>
>
> No one does. I was making a desperate effort at a comparison. Oh
> well. We have titling here too, sub- and sur-. But way back when if
> you didn't know the basic libretto outlines, it could be a long day.
> Easter Sunday 1960 I sat through *Parsifal* without knowing squat about
> what was going on. Who was on the cross again?....
>
> k
>
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