How to watch judo: A guide for the layperson

This isn't what I normally do, but I've been excited about judo in this year's Olympics, especially since Kayla Harrison stands a good chance of winning the United States' first ever Olympic gold in the sport. And some of the write-ups I've seen of the sport have been sloppy or downright wrong, like the one in my hometown newspaper. Even last year's commentators seemed resigned to the idea that no one watching had any idea what was going on, and that's sad.

Judo is a deep and exciting sport, and I think the public deserves at least an attempt to explain it. Most of the information out there on martial arts generally is geared toward learning how to do it—what I hope to do in this post is to give someone who has never learned judo enough information to watch the sport and enjoy it, without having to sign up for lessons or learn Japanese.

The beauty of judo is that it has relatively few, simple rules, but the sport that grows out of them is wonderfully complex. You don’t need to know the Japanese names of all 77 throws in the Kodokan syllabus to follow what’s going on. Hopefully, you just need to read this post.

So what the heck is judo anyway?
Judo is a combat sport, like boxing or wrestling. The goal is to defeat your opponent by throwing him onto his back, pinning him down, or using a submission hold to make him give up. The techniques of judo are descended from the empty-handed fighting methods of Japan's warrior class during the country's long, long feudal period. Despite its violent origins, the essence of judo is control. It is not a bloodsport—the first thing players learn is how to avoid injury.

There is no punching or kicking in judo. Apparently this needs to be emphasized, because my local paper claimed that judo players use throwing, joint-locking, and striking. So here it is again, to be clear. There is no striking in judo. There are no shivs in boxing. There are no flamethrowers in soccer.

What the heck is going on in a judo match?
I'm going to go through the different phases of a judo match and explain what to look for in each of them. These aren't official phases, like innings in baseball, but the players will be doing different things at different times and this should help you follow along.

A Judo contest is held between two players on a padded mat. The judo uniform is a heavy cotton jacket and pants similar to traditional dress in Japan. This uniform is one of the reasons that Judo plays out so differently from wrestling or MMA fighting: it gives the players something to grab onto as they try to move their opponent.

As I said before, you win a judo match by throw, pin, or submission. A partial throw or pin—I'll explain this later—is worth 1/2 point, and 1 whole point is all you need to win.

The beginning: grip fighting.
The first thing a player needs to do is get a good grip on his opponent. A judo match can begin with a few seconds of tentative grabs, blocks, and pull-aways, as each player tries to get leverage over his opponent without letting his opponent do the same. When someone has a good grip, he'll attack.

The meat: attacks.
Now the players try to throw one another. (It is possible, but extremely difficult and rare, to catch someone in a submission hold while standing; and obviously you can't pin someone while you're both standing up.)  There is a lot of movement here as the players try to get each other off balance. Generally, you can avoid being thrown a certain way by setting your weight against it, but that opens you up to another throw. The players exploit this by attacking with combinations of throws, one after the other.

Pay attention to the players’ postures. Both players want to stay mobile and upright, where they are well-balanced and able to attack. A player leaning one way or another is vulnerable to a throw. A player with legs set wide and their hips low, often keeping their opponent at arm’s length, is in an extremely defensive posture, and will have a hard time attacking.

There are at least 77 recognized judo throws, but you don't need to know them all. I certainly don't yet. All you really need is to recognize three main types of throw.

1. Major throws. Someone on the receiving end of a major throw can catch some serious air. These are throws where thrower turns his back on his opponent and pulls him over a part of his own body. This includes the shoulder throw, which is the classic "judo throw," e.g. the throw you've seen if you've only seen one judo throw in your entire life.
   
   That’s throwing someone over your shoulder. Sometimes the throw goes over the hip or the leg instead, bus the result is about the same.
   
   It’s easiest to catch someone in a major throw as they are moving forward, or pushing forward.
    
2. Leg reaps. These are where the thrower wraps one his his legs around one of his opponent’s legs and sweeps it out from under him. In a way, these are the opposite of the major throws, because it is easiest to catch someone in one of these when they are moving backward or pulling you. The most common reap looks like this:
   
3. Trips. Tripping is a perfectly valid attack in judo. Trips are subtle attacks that require good timing. Players often attempt trips to provoke a reaction that opens their opponent up for another throw. Honestly, you probably already know what it looks like when you trip a guy, but here's how it goes in judo:

There are a few throws that don’t fall into these three categories, but they aren’t common. If someone pulls out something interesting and esoteric, now you at least know enough to turn to the person next to you and say, "Hey, that was an interesting and esoteric throw!"

For the throw to be worth a full point (and end the match) the thrower has to throw with speed and force, and the throwee needs to land on his back. If one of these doesn't happen, the thrower gets 1/2 point (or no point, if the throw was really sloppy) and the match continues.

Going to the mat: Grappling
When one or both players are on the mat a whole other dimension opens up. Sometimes a player will try to stand back up rather than engage a formidable grappler on the mat. This is where pins and submission holds become a factor. If the action comes to a standstill on the mat, the referee will separate the players and stand them back up to continue the match.

There are two defensive positions you should recognize on the mat.

1. The “turtle” position is very defensive. The player “turtling” essentially curls into a ball so he can't be thrown, pinned, or put in a submission hold. The player attacking will try to turn the turtling player over, or find a way to attack his arms or neck. The referee will often halt the match when a player proves unable to break this position.
    
2. The “guard” position is where a player is on his back and has the other player between his legs. This allows the guarding player to control his opponent’s hips and provides a lot of offensive options. A player in this position isn't pinned, even if his opponent is on top.

Pins in judo are fluid; the pinning player can change position, as long as he is still holding his opponent down. The person being pinned will usually buck and roll, trying to make enough space to get free. Holding a pin for 25 seconds gets 1 point; 20 seconds gets 1/2 point, and 15 seconds gets a tiny fraction of a point that's only good for breaking ties.

There are two types of legal submission holds in judo: chokes and arm locks. The player on the receiving end of one of these can tap the mat three times to signal that he gives up.

Judo has a lot of techniques that involve choking an opponent with his own jacket. If you see a player on the ground working his hands into his opponent’s lapel, that’s what he’s trying to do. They can also choke by wrapping their arms (or legs) around their opponent’s neck.

(An interesting point about choking in judo is that the players don’t try to close off their opponents’ air supply—they try to cut off the circulation of blood to their opponents’ brains by squeezing the sides of the neck. This works faster than attacking the windpipe, and it’s also safer for the person being choked. As a result, players caught in chokes often choose to keep fighting until they pass out instead of tapping. They usually come to a few seconds after the choke is released, a bit disoriented but uninjured. But please, please, don't go strangling your friends now because you read here that it was okay. People do die from this when it's done wrong—judo players know what they are doing.)

An arm lock is a technique that will break the other player’s elbow if applied with enough force. The elbow is the only joint that it’s legal to attack this way in judo; elbows are pretty durable, and they have a lot of nerves in them so a player knows when they need to  tap out. Judo players—especially Olympic-level ones—can tell when they’re caught, so arm locks hardly ever result in injuries.

When you see a player trying to get control of one of his opponent’s arms, he is probably trying for an arm lock.

At the end.
A lot of Olympic judo matches last until time runs out. If nobody has a full point, whoever has the highest score wins. If there's a tie, the match goes into a "golden score" period, which is perhaps a more civilized name for "sudden death overtime." Essentially any score at all is enough to win the game at that point. If that ends and there's still a tie, the referee and two judges vote on the winner.

What the heck are they saying? Some Japanese phrases you'll hear the referees shouting.

The terminology of judo is in Japanese, and though I've avoided using Japanese terms so far, there are a few you'll need to recognize.

“Hajime!” means “begin.” It’s the starting bell.

“Matte!” means “stop.”

“Ippon!” means that a player has won the match.

“Waza-ari!” means a player has gotten 1/2 a point.

“Yuko!” means a player has gotten a fraction of a point for a 15-second pin or a not-very-good throw.

“Osae komi!” means that one player has pinned the other. The clock starts on the pin when the referee announces it.

“Shido!” is a penalty. If the match ends in a draw, the player with a penalty will lose. Some things that can get a player a penalty are: putting their hands in the other player’s face, retreating from the other player, trying to “fake out” the other player with attacks that aren’t serious, or grabbing the opponent’s uniform in certain very aggressive ways without trying to throw. The first penalty called is just a warning. The second a player gets gives a yuko (fractional point) to the other player. A third turns that into 1/2 point.

“Hansoku Make!” is something you shouldn’t hear. It means that a player has broken the rules and is disqualified. Some things that can disqualify a player are: grabbing straight for the opponent’s legs, attempting an illegal submission hold such as a knee lock, or using a flamethrower.

There's more, of course. There's always more. But if your eyes haven't glazed over by this point, you've learned enough to watch some judo! Pick someone and root for them.

Addendum: The scores don't make sense! What the heck do the numbers mean?
For some reason, most scoreboards don't like that an ippon is 1 point, a waza-ari is 1/2 point, and a yuko is 1/∞. The scoreboards try to show the scores using whole numbers, which makes for a hybrid solution that's confusing for everyone. So forget what you know about math. A yuko is scored as 1, a waza-ari is scored as 10, and an ippon is scored as 100. Pretend they never invented numbers without ones or zeroes in them. 1+1=1. 10+1=11. 10+10=100.

Bat-ticipation

The other day I re-watched Batman Begins again, having re-watched The Dark Knight not too long ago for the fourth or fifth time. I was struck again by how much better TDK was than BB. While Begins was a fun and interesting look at how one might build the Batman character in a mostly/relatively realistic world, it wasn't great. You know, not great-great. I probably enjoyed it only slightly more than Superman Returns, all told, though I'm given to understand that I'm the only person in America who thought Superman Returns was any good. Begins was weighed down by overwrought dialogue and scenes that mostly read as the-scene-where-we-establish so-and-so, followed by the-scene-where-now-this-happens. TDK was really just a higher caliber of film. I'm also repeatedly surprised by how detachable it is from its predecessor. The actors are (mostly) the same but look at the city, the tone, the plot threads. It's like the movies are from two closely related but distinct continuities. Is there anything that happens in Begins that you need to know about to follow TDK? Posterity might forget that TDK was a sequel.

Anyway, watching this was part of a lead-up to The Dark Knight Rises. I've resolved to see it on Friday because I've spoiled myself enough for it already and I don't think I'll be able to go one day after it's come out without finding out every damn thing that happens simply by being on the internet. I expect every dimrod and nimwit who went to a midnight showing will wake up Friday afternoon and plaster the internet with OMG BATMAN DIES FROM A BOMB THAT EXPLODES IF HE LETS GO OF IT AND SO HE SWIMS IT TO THE BOTTOM OF GOTHAM HARBOR WITH IT DON'T SPOIL THIS ANYONE!!!?

That is my fear.

One story that I don't worry is going to give me unwanted insight into Rises is this nonsense about Bane representing or corresponding to Bain Capital. Some Democrat tried to draw comparisons between the two because Bane and Bain are homophones and wouldn't it be great if that meant something? Then Rush Limbaugh decided to weigh in, or hit back, or whatever it is he does these days. What baffles me is how he can think the Dark Knight franchise is carrying water for the Obama campaign, when if he couldn't read a neocon allegory into The Dark Knight he just wasn't trying. Maybe that's the answer. And not to brag but I thought of the whole Bain/Bane connection several months ago and decided not to mention it to anyone because it was stupid.

The tickets are purchased. Tomorrow I will go and see this movie with my girlfriend and then eat a delicious hamburger, probably while we gaze devastatedly across the table at each other pondering how Christopher Nolan pulverized the last of our faith in the human race.

Plans and rationalizations

Having a girlfriend and parents in education--and keeping a freelancer's hours oneself--means that summer is once again vacation season; a state of affairs I have regarded as rightful since a young age, like Santa Claus. The irregularity of my habitation should explain the irregularity of my posting as of late; at least, I throw it to the bench to plead for me. Do not cross-examine it too harshly.

Next Saturday I will be in Cape Cod, at my ancestral estate, where there is no internet. I should perhaps endeavor to post something that weekend anyway, from a Panera at least. The flip side of the freewheeling freelancer's schedule is that there are no true vacations, only changes of venue, so I will have to catch gulps of WiFi when I can.

The exciting development of the past couple days is that Girlfriend has simultaneous job offers from three schools, each one a worthy one to the best of our knowledge. She is forced to play the Lucy Westenra between them--not a bad situation, all told, but why can’t they let a girl work at three schools, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? The real answer, as in Miss Westenra's case, is that there are only so many hours in the day, so you have to disappoint someone. (And lest I seem too glib by far, it really is a shame that there aren't three of her to go around.)

Girlfriend is also attempting a truncated JulNoWriMo (which would seem to stand for "July Novel Writing Month," which only almost makes sense), and I find her a compelling example. My current plan is to get the draft of Nenle and Death done in the next couple days, and use the remainder of the week to draft another short story that's been a long time in coming, but in this case never started: my riff on The Twelve Dancing Princesses. I recently encountered an influence that filled out my vision for the story, but it would probably be telling too much to say exactly what that is.

I want to set a more vigorous--even rushed--writing pace if I can. I received a sharp jab from a recent post by an author whose opinions I have been following. It's worth a read, if you're one to read about writing. The upshot is this: the idea of perfection is a danger to a writer. It keeps stories from being finished, and it keeps writers from growing. Now, Kristine Kathryn Rusch is no fan of the MFA style of literary criticism, and she actually does me the favor in her next post of tearing into that school of thought more vigorously than I can fully agree with (When following any pundit, I think it's wholesome to find the limits of your agreement.), but the admonition to get over yourself and just write bears repeating. In a year or so I will probably be sharing how someone else said the same thing and prodded me out of another period of artistic torpor. If I ever have the authority I will probably start saying the same thing. Or perhaps the pendulum will have swung all the way by then, and I will stand astride a pile of self-published kruft crying, "For God's sake, revise, you fools!"

And, really, I haven't been in such a torpor of late. I'd been making actual progress and enjoying it. It's alternately frightening and exhausting, but in between, it's pretty great.

A walk through the ghost trees

Some people wanted to know if I ever got my dwarfpire situation sorted out. (See the end of my last post for the beginning of this story.) Copper ballista arrowheads were slightly more effective than bare wooden arrows. One was enough to knock the vampire down, after that the other arrows just shot over him without hitting him. I gave up on the ballista, and sent miners into the space above the vampire's cell. They mined through their floor/his ceiling until they caused a cave-in. Dropping the ceiling on him did the trick; the vampire mayor was really and sincerely dead.

Now, on to stuff that matters. Last week was a wonderful reunion with college and Seattle friends on the Washington coast. Fun was had; games were played; drink was drunk, and so were we. A Burning Wheel campaign was begun that I hope will find a way to continue; I'm getting better at creating characters that intrigue me. I hope the other players at least find him tolerable.

The house we stayed at was nice, if slightly architecturally surreal. It had no front door. It hovered on columns over a wall-less garage space, from which a spiral staircase took you up into a laundry room. The other door was a glass sliding door opening on a balcony facing the beach. Either of these would have been the back door of a regular house. It was a beach house, so I suppose the side facing the beach was the front.

And how was the weather?

Typical for the Pacific Northwest, I guess. That's the house we stayed at, in the middle.

Not that it stayed that cloudy the whole time, but as I said, we passed more time with games than with frolicking. I did, however, get a chance to walk a little way along the beach and had a pleasant scenic surprise.

You see, the whole beach that you could see from the house pretty much looked like this:

Just out of sight, though, there was a stream that ran into the ocean. Girlfriend and I followed it into what was, for me, the nonsocial highlight of the week.

Here is the stream itself. You can see some of the coloration from the silt, or clay, or whatever the water was full of. In person it was quite vivid and striking: the water was yellow at the edges, then red into carmine, and finally a deep, deep indigo where the blue from the sky took over. The stream cut into hilly forest on the far bank:

You could just see that yellow rock face in the distance from the house; that's what we had set out walking to get a better look at in the first place. But the stream, naturally, kept going, and it had been eating away at the shore for a while.

The trees that the water had undercut were all a ghostly white, essentially driftwood that hadn't drifted anywhere. One fallen tree branched into the bank like it was trying its hand at being a tributary.

The stream had driven people away too. The abandoned posts of several docks marched into the forest, where one supposes houses had stood until the ground fell out from under them.

At least, I assume these supported something because they all come up to the same height. As you can see from some of the lower stumps, someone had cut everything down along the bank, perhaps to get this wood. (A little more searching suggests to me that this used to be a bridge. To where, I wonder.)

Opposite these cliffs the trees came right up to the bank, so that's as far as we went inland. A little farther on, a couple of boys were setting off firecrackers, taking advantage of the natural amphitheater. I wondered if they had climbed through the trees or come from the opposite direction.

It turns out that this area is where the Moclips River empties into the ocean. It's odd, and somehow refreshing, to come to a place and explore it without knowing its name. The whole place felt unspoiled, even though it obviously wasn't. I wish I found places like this by accident more often.

I art when I video game all the time

A friend from college lured Girlfriend and me into Washington D.C. proper, where we ducked into the Smithsonian American Art Museum to look at the Art of Video Games exhibit. Why, yes, we are nerds.

Without being too harsh, it was not what we had hoped for. It partly came down to a grammatical quirk. I had wanted to see art from video games, perhaps concept art, stills, and things of that nature. What I got was more an exhibit explaining how video games could be art themselves. So, you see, it was something like picking up The Art of War expecting it to contain reproductions of the Bayeux Tapestry and Guernica. Something like, but not exactly.

The problem really was that we were well ahead of the exhibit. We needed no convincing that video games were legitimately art, in the same sense that movies are. The question of whether video games deserve to be in a museum is like the question of whether a cheetah deserves to be in a zoo. It's not a matter of classification or merit. Onla a small subset of art is best experienced in a museum.

You'll hear no complaints from me if you assert that video games have narrative, evocative, salutary potential. The booklet accompanying the exhibit, according to Girlfriend (who read it), was a bit breathless about this, praising the medium's achievements with a convert's zeal.

Anyway, we weren't the intended audience, really. In this (and perhaps only this) we were more sophisticated than the mainstream museum crowd. I would have liked to see a room full of stills from Myst, instead of a large cabinet where it could be played, accompanied by a paragraph on how immersive it was.

It was a nice, nostalgic afternoon, though, of the sort I am likely to miss this year when other people go to PAX. And this is not to say that I didn't see or learn anything new. I had not known, for example, that Doom 2 was the first game to employ a "game engine." Girlfriend also pointed out the unusual number of major installments in video game history that are #2 in a series.

Speaking of the narrative potential of video games, though, I've been sucked back into Dwarf Fortress with the last few batches of updates, and more of a story has come of it than I had expected. Though it's not completed, I will share it with you.

My fortress had a vampire. Some dwarves were waking up mysteriously pale, and one was found dead in his room, completely drained of blood. So the search was on.

It was the mayor. I found out by accident that he had come to the fortress under a pseudonym. Examining his history revealed a suspiciously long list of previous residences. Most damning, he couldn't remember the last time he had drunk alcohol, which in a fortress that was practically afloat in booze, was almost proof positive that he had developed an unnatural thirst.

This was dismaying. Here was a mayor who had made himself more useful than mayors usually do. He had come to my attention by single-handedly striking down a rampaging minotaur. Nonetheless, he had to be removed. I convicted him of the murder of the dead dwarf. He was sentenced to 200 days in prison.

Here's where things get tricky. One, in Dwarf Fortress your control over the dwarves is tenuous. I could not, for example, set the mayor's sentence; that was up to the sheriff. Two, you can't just off a dwarf, generally. I couldn't sic the militia on him, but clearly the justice system wasn't going to handle him either.

I spent his jail term building a deathtrap: a mechanical series of glass spikes operated by a lever which I could order the mayor to pull. Unfortunately, when his sentence was up, the mayor didn't get straight to lever-pulling. In fact, his first act as a free dwarf was to chow down on the sheriff. Then, perhaps as an apértif, he helped himself to the fortress's most distinguished chef. This deed, at least, had witnesses. Then he proceeded to my deathtrap. Which, it became apparent, didn't work. It was a simple design error; he stood too close to the lever and the spikes didn't reach him.

At least he was occupied for the time being, diligently pulling the lever back and forth. It gave me the chance to lock him in the room, but I couldn't just keep him there. As the most charismatic dwarf in the fortress, he kept getting re-elected mayor, garnering support, I suppose, by whispering through the keyhole.

We were onto Plan C. I had the dwarves cut a hole in the ceiling directly above the vampire nee mayor, and then ordered them to fill the room with water.

I should have figured that dwarfpires don't drown. There was nothing for it; I had to let him out so the sheriff could arrest him again. The effect of opening a closet completely full of water was about what you would expect.

Justice, which had been Plan A, was now plan D as well. For the mayor's two additional murders, one of which had ten witnesses, he was sentenced to... 400 days in prison. Of course.

So I needed a Plan E. When he was tied securely in his jail cell, I removed the door and built a ballista in the jail cell opposite, so I could fire giant crossbow bolts directly at him. I had my siege engineer sharpen logs for the purpose, figuring that if a 300-pound wooden stake wouldn't fix my vampire problem, nothing would.

I hope that was wrong, because after five wooden ballista arrows, fired at a space of perhaps 15 feet, the vampire is thoroughly bruised and not much else. And that's where I stand now. I'm hoping that copper arrowheads will have more effect, because I'm running out of options.

The Middle.

Gripes and birdsong

The little finger of my right hand has been a study in scarlet, so to speak, this weekend. I'm learning about anatomy. Which is good because Thursday's judo class wasn't all that rewarding otherwise.

Apparently a finger can dislocate and relocate all at once, or at least so quickly that by the time you turn you head to see what the popping sound was, it's where it ought to be again, looking all innocent. (And by "relocated" I mean to its original position; my finger didn't migrate.)

Anyway, ow. My finger is close to the size and color of its opposite again, but I wouldn't mind if it could hurry up again. It makes it hard to grab things or type. Also, the "p" on my keyboard is being troublesome, so that when I write "paper" it tends to come out "aer" and so on.

Oh, what a world, what a world.

Entirely unrelatedly, I have half a mind to try JulNoWriMo--that is, NaNoWriMo in July. It would be exciting and/or foolish because I have absolutely no idea what I would write. One advantage/disadvantage is that it would require me to finish off the story I'm writing now by the end of the month. That would be a good thing to do if I could anyway. So, as you can see, I really am ambivalent.

Yesterday morning I was in Philadelphia, awoken by an intriguing bird. It was cycling from song to song not unlike a car alarm, and it just kept going. I understand that some birds advertise for mates by showing off their extensive musical repertoire. If birds really go for that than this one must have been neck-deep in ladies. He went through what seemed like easily 100 songs.

I got to thinking about whether there were trends or memes in the world of birds. It reminded me of the internet, with people gathering and disgorging vast numbers of words and phrases stripped of context. I'm not sure it increases the odds of mating in humans, but we do it anyway.

This particular bird stuck to bird songs, but I do remember the mockingbird that picked up my mother's alarm clock and things of that nature. I was reminded of the impressive Superb Lyrebird, who adopts his songs indiscriminately. This one, for example, that picked up the sounds of construction at the zoo.

Birds don't understand us or what we do, as a general rule, but apparently they think some of our noises are cool enough to repeat. Is it all one to them, or do they know that human sounds are different from the other songs they pick up? Are these bird memes? Do birds repeat people noises because they're nonsensical to them? Do they think we're hilarious?

The metaconflict: Artist vs. plot

Back in college my friend tried to get me into Evil Dead. I wasn't impressed. Besides the fact that I didn't (and still don't) like horror movies, Evil Dead just didn't seem very good. My friend tried to impress on me that there was another story going on: that a bunch of film students without much in the way of equipment or experience went into the woods and made a whole movie, with plot and editing and makeup and a script and everything.

I didn't see that story, even though I see how he did. I didn't have the interest in the mechanics of film as such to analyze how or if they were done. Besides, I figured, the story of "someone made this thing" necessarily underpins basically everything.

Lately I've noticed myself paying attention to that "someone made this thing" narrative, though, and today I remembered Evil Dead.

If you watch my blog's sidebar (and I don't really know why you would) you've seen that I've been working my way through The X-Files. Girlfriend and I have been watching it in large gulps, almost always while one or both of us are working. As a long-running show, it had its good episodes and its bad episodes, but we noticed an odd and very unscientific correlation: the better written an episode was, the more likely that characters would survive and the problem would actually be resolved. Some weeks, it seemed, the writers stumped themselves completely with whatever terror they had thought up.

Of course, every writer faces this problem to some extent, but most of the time not coming up with a smart solution meant shoehorning in a dumb solution. The structure of The X-Files had the advantage (drawing, maybe, from the horror branch of its genealogy) that failure was an option. The entire supporting cast of an episode could die without upsetting the status quo. There was no guarantee that Mulder and Scully would solve the mystery, either. If the writers wrote themselves into a corner, they didn't necessarily have to write themselves out again.

Sometimes, when an episode didn't seem brilliantly written, Girlfriend and I would start watching the other story--the one about television writers on a deadline trying to think up a solution to their premise in time to save the supporting cast. They won some; they lost some.

I only recently realized how often I do this, though.

Yesterday Girlfriend and I got to see the Folger Shakespeare Theater's production of The Taming of the Shrew (on the very last day, no less). I didn't have any particular need to see The Taming of the Shrew as such, but well-produced Shakespeare is often worth the trouble. We were particularly interested in how they would "handle" it, because there's so much in the play that, taken at face value, is offensive or even disturbing to modern sensibilities. So we went out fully expecting a sort of gladiatorial theater: Folger Theater vs. The Taming of the Shrew; a fight to the finish, perhaps even to the death.

I'm glad to report that both combatants survived. However, there was no clear winner. The theater's strategy was bare-fisted; rather than cut the play deeply they tried to pin it down by laying interpretations on top of it. Two choices in particular were, in retrospect, like breaths of fresh air.

First, a lot hung Petruchio's sincerely exasperated and regretful delivery of "He that knows better how to tame a shrew, now let him speak; 'tis charity to shew."

Second, after the scene where Petruchio denies Kate a a hat and dress, they added a dialogue-less scene in which Kate, alone, discovers that Petruchio has given her an even better dress (well, really a nice duster and a pair of pants, since the whole thing was western-themed). As a rule, I dislike such brazen insertions, but in this case I'll concede that it was welcome.

I'm not sure there's any way around Kate's speech at the end, though. Ultimately we and Shakespeare's audience just have different ideas of what constitutes a happy ending; we have different conceptions of the natural state that needs to be restored. To the first audience, that Kate was unequivocally submissive was an unequivocal good. Petruchio's responsibility, they might have said, was to be a fair and loving master, not to share power. Try as we might to find an ambiguity to hang our own ideas on, Shakespeare didn't give us one. Because ambiguity is a flaw in a happy ending. So, because our ideas have changed, the ending of The Taming of the Shrew is unambiguously uncomfortable.