Response 1 - Ava Solina
February 21, 2018, by Ava
Before I moved uptown, I lived in the East Village in Stuyvessant Town, which involved a lot of walking to get to NYU. Most days, the shuttle wasn’t running early enough to take me to class, and I was too petrified to take the subway, so I toughed it out with my heavy backpack on the thirty-minute walk to Bobst. Most days, I would walk straight up 14th street and cut down University Place to get there, but twice a week I would get up early and take a spinning class at Soul Cycle, so I would walk through Astor Place. I didn’t know anything about this place and didn’t know that there was anything to know about this place. However, one thought would come to my mind every time I passed Starbucks; what is the mysterious man in the cube up to today? But other than that, it was just another busy place in the city I avoided, so naturally, the Account of the Terrific and Fatal Riot at the New-York Astor Place Opera House shocked me.
First, I was surprised to learn that this riot was based around Shakespeare and his work. Previously, I had thought that Shakespeare was the glue keeping everything together and something that bonded classes, ages, and even generations. I was not surprised that actors, and popular culture, somehow found a way to take something great and use it as a type of weapon. I found the relationship between Forrest and Macready interesting as well because they literally had the entire world to co exist in, as they were both the prominent names in theater, but couldn’t make it work, even with just the two of them. I can’t begin to imagine how they would fare in media today.
This made me think about pop- culture and media. I realized, surprisingly, that today’s media sphere is not so different from the media sphere back then. For example, the question of who was a superior actor, Macready or Forrest, flooded British and American media. Newspaper columns discussed the actors and took sides. This can be seen with almost any feud today, for example, Kanye West and Jay-Z, who are arguably the biggest names in the music industry. The media followed this dispute shot for shot and claimed that Kanye West was hurt Jay Z didn’t visit his wife after she was robbed at gunpoint in Paris. The media later revealed that Kanye was mad because of a contract dispute over money regarding their music streaming service, Tidal. The media pitted these two against each other, just like it did with Macready and Forrest and followed both stories- creating a whole other performance besides the performances these figures were supposed to be saving for the sage. It pushed the shows out of opera houses and concert halls into the public where it permeated into the daily lives of “average people,” making them the audience to a show they didn’t even buy a ticket for.
In the beginning of the reading, for some reason- actually no reason at all- I was not a Macready fan. Maybe I wanted to side with the more “rough and tumble” American, I’m not sure, but Macready was rubbing me the wrong way. As I read on, however, I began to realize how petty Forrest was. I found it juvenile and spiteful that his supporters bought tickets on the top level of the Astor Opera House and pelted the stage with eggs, potatoes (which seems dangerous), and other various food items during Macready’s performance. I also found it petty that Forrest followed Macready around the country and to the same plays in order to challenge him and even hissed at him during his performance. Macready was right- this is a tasteless thing to do; also the carcass of a dead sheep was honestly just overkill. Forrest’s actions made me feel somewhat relieved that pettiness is not just something that we have developed due to society becoming self consumed over time, but rather something that has been around long before Taylor Swift’s Kim Kardashian disses on Twitter.
I enjoyed this reading due to its similarities to society and culture today. I also find it particularly relevant because the riots put immigrants and nativists against each other, which is currently a topic present in every daily news source. It also revolutionized the police force by creating the first police force armed with deadly weapons. Unfortunately, many lives were lost or injured, partially due to some words penned by William Shakespeare. In this case, the pen might not have been mightier than the sword.