'The Truman Show': an Everyman for the late 1990s

In the lead-up to the Sydney opening of The Truman Show (Paramount, 1998), the film was described in a newspaper interview with its Australian director, Peter Weir, as “the new millennium’s Everyman.” Just over a year after its release, Truman was in the news again when it was re-screened at the Vatican-authorized Millennium Spiritual Film Festival, a selection of films chosen on the basis of their perceived capacity to “nourish souls and edify culture.” The official word from the Vatican was that Jim Carrey’s character in the film was to be admired for his fight to retain his human dignity in the face of the “daunting odds” of “a technologically empowered media.” How literally are we to take the journalistic comment linking Truman and Everyman

A Table of Contents for the York Corpus Christi Play

Fifteenth-century civic records from York provide detailed information about the contents of the Corpus Christi Play presented by the guilds under the supervision of the council. This information is found in two entries in the A/Y Memorandum Book (a civic memorandum) and in the council's register of the texts of the episodes of the play. The A/Y Memorandum Book entries were compiled by Roger Burton, who was the Common Clerk from 1415 to 1433; one, the Ordo Paginarum (1415), contains guild names and brief descriptions of 51 episodes in the play; the other, a second list of pageants (c. 1420), gives guild names and titles of 56 episodes. The council's register of the texts belonging to the guilds (1463-1477) contains 48 episodes with space for another 3. These sources suggest a total play captaining at least 51 episodes

The Wife of Bath: Standup Comic

In this article I argue that the prologue to The Wife of Bath's Tale is also an exercise in carnival, and that rather than being a true autobiography of Alisoun of Bath, it is a joke routine for a standup comic. My reading of both prologue and tale as a comedy act has been influenced by the scholarly work of feminist film and television critic, Kathleen Rowe, whose studies of unruly women in modern comedy help to explain the appeal of Chaucer’s Wife for medieval audiences and for those who observe her at the end of the twentieth century. Following Rowe’s lead, I propose that the Wife of Bath is in some ways a Roseanne Barr of the Middle Ages, who exploits the comedy inherent in the figure of the unruly ‘woman on top’, who is ‘too fat, too mouthy, too old ... too sexual ... for the norms of conventional gender representation’. The compelling energy that Rowe has noted in Roseanne, a television sitcom star of the 1980s and 1990s, is similar to the attraction of the Wife of Bath. Both ladies exude the excesses of the archetypal grotesque woman who can be a focus for comedy in any period. It is also important to observe that the creator and original live performer of the Wife of Bath was not a woman, but Chaucer, a member of the medieval male patriarchy. As Peter Beidler has pointed out, Chaucerian scholars assume that the Wife’s prologue and tale were ‘designed initially to be presented orally by Chaucer himself, either in the royal court or at some other gathering—a bachelor party, for example, or a visit by a diplomat, or a trade guild festival’.4 The ‘Wife’ was, then, conceived of as a female role to be presented by a male reader, possibly for an all male audience, and I contend that ‘she’ can be interpreted as a foremother of Dame Edna Everage, Australia’s own ‘housewife-superstar’,5 as created and performed by Barry Humphries

Prime-time Drama: 'Canterbury Tales' for the Small Screen

There have been many attempts to popularize Chaucer in modern times. In his informative study entitled Chaucer at Large, Steve Ellis has provided a detailed account of the progress of such efforts over roughly a hundred years to the end of the twentieth century. But despite his claim that ‘Chaucer has not really taken hold of the public in any sustained manner’, interest in reinventing the poet and, in particular, appropriating his most famous literary undertaking, The Canterbury Tales, is so great that further important developments have already occurred in the few years since the publication of Ellis’s book, especially in the area of performance. The Chaucer industry continues to offer its wares in the public market place and within the walls of the academy, but there remains a consensus of opinion, both general and academic, that Chaucer is ‘very under-read’. Peter Mack, reviewing no less than four new books of Chaucerian scholarship in 1996, lamented that the medieval poet ‘has the misfortune to be read today mainly by professionals’ and called for a ‘good television adaptation’ to redress the situation. By the turn of the century the British Broadcasting Corporation had produced no less than three major television versions of Chaucer’s best known work, two of these long before Mack was writing (in 1969 and 1975) and the third, shortly afterwards, an educational series of animated Canterbury Tales completed over a two year period (1998-2000) that was distinguished by being nominated for an Academy Award in 1999.

Corpus Christi Plays and the Stations of the Cross: Medieval York and Modern Sydney

Theatre scholars have much to learn about medieval audience responses to the secular performance of religious drama in cities like York as well as actors' approaches to their roles. Although centuries apart, the Sydney Stations of the Cross for Catholic World Youth Day 2008 and the York Corpus Christi Plays have much in common. The audience and actors in Sydney exhibited what was known in the Middle Ages as 'affective piety'. Margery Kempe, a medieval mystic, who practiced an affective piety focused on the Passion, was both audience and actor in her imaginative engagement with the Stations. Her responses as audience and her involvement as actor are compared with audience and actor responses to the Sydney Stations. Observations of the event itself and evidence in the Compass television program on the making of the Stations show how this modern event enhances an understanding of the devotional theatre of the past

Acanthamoeba in the Domestic Water Supply of Huntington, West Virginia, U.S.A.

The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of Acanthamoeba in the domestic water supply in Huntington, West Virginia (U.S.A.) and the factors that may contribute to their presence or absence. One hundred sixty-two one liter tap water samples were collected over eight months. Amoebae in the samples (cysts or trophozoites) were harvested by passively filtering onto 5 μm pore size filters and enriching for amoebae on non-nutrient amoeba saline agar plates seeded with Escherichia coli for cultivation. Thirteen percent of all samples were positive for amoebae and 9.3% were positive for the amoeba of interest, Acanthamoeba. Chlorine levels were determined for samples at the time of collection, yielding a mean level of 1.56 mg l–1 chlorine in the distribution system ca. 8 kilometers from the water treatment plant. Cysts and trophozoites of Acanthamoeba clonal isolates were found to tolerate up to 50 mg l–1 and 4 mg l–1 chlorine respectively. This study showed that Acanthamoeba were present in the domestic water supply in Huntington, WV and although no attempt was made to count cells in liter samples, their frequency of occurrence (9.3%) and failure to be present in all replicates, suggests they were present at background levels of perhaps a few cells per five liters. This is only the second U.S. study to consider amoebae in tap water and is unique since the source water was river water. Acanthamoeba trophozoites and cysts were able to withstand levels of chlorine higher than those typically found in tap water suggesting they may be present in either form in the distribution system. Acanthamoeba are opportunistic pathogens capable of causing eye infections and their presence in tap water is a potential risk factor for susceptible individuals, particularly contact lens wearers who may use tap water to clean lenses and storage cases

Risk Factors for and Clinical Outcome of Congenital Cytomegalovirus Infection in a Peri-Urban West-African Birth Cohort

BACKGROUND: Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is the most prevalent congenital infection worldwide. Epidemiology and clinical outcomes are known to vary with socio-economic background, but few data are available from developing countries, where the overall burden of infectious diseases is frequently high. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: As part of an ongoing birth cohort study in The Gambia among term infants, urine samples were collected at birth and tested by PCR for the presence of CMV DNA. Risk factors for transmission and clinical outcome were assessed, including placental malaria infection. Babies were followed up at home monthly for morbidity and anthropometry, and at one year of age a clinical evaluation was performed. The prevalence of congenital CMV infection was 5.4% (40/741). A higher prevalence of hepatomegaly was the only significant clinical difference at birth. Congenitally infected children were more often first born babies (adjusted odds ratio (OR) 5.3, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.0-13.7), more frequently born in crowded compounds (adjusted OR 2.9, 95%CI 1.0-8.3) and active placental malaria was more prevalent (adjusted OR 2.9, 95%CI 1.0-8.4). These associations were corrected for maternal age, bed net use and season of birth. During the first year of follow up, mothers of congenitally infected children reported more health complaints for their child. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: In this study, the prevalence of congenital CMV among healthy neonates was much higher than previously reported in industrialised countries, and was associated with active placental malaria infection. There were no obvious clinical implications during the first year of life. The effect of early life CMV on the developing infant in the Gambia could be mitigated by environmental factors, such as the high burden of other infections.Journal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Differential antibody responses to Plasmodium falciparum merozoite proteins in Malawian children with severe malaria

Cerebral malaria (CM) and severe malarial anemia (SMA) are 2 major causes of death in African children infected with Plasmodium falciparum. We investigated levels of naturally acquired antibody to conserved and variable regions of merozoite surface protein (MSP)-1 and MSP-2, apical membrane antigen (AMA)-1, and rhoptry-associated protein 1 in plasma samples from 126 children admitted to the hospital with CM, 59 with SMA, and 84 with uncomplicated malaria (UM) in Malawi. Children with SMA were distinguished by very low levels of immunoglobulin (Ig) G to the conserved C-terminus of MSP-1 and MSP-2 and to full-length AMA-1. Conversely, children with CM had significantly higher levels of IgG to the conserved regions of all antigens examined than did children with UM (for MSP-1 and AMA-1, P< .005; for MSP-2, P< .05) or SMA (for MSP-1 and MSP-2, P<.001; for AMA-1, P< .005). These distinct IgG patterns might reflect differences in age, exposure to P. falciparum, and/or genetic factors affecting immune responses