"The Seasons Alter"

"The Seasons Alter" is a contemporary short film interpretation of a sequence from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The film reinvents classic Shakespeare for a contemporary audience but also delivers one of the most pressingly urgent environmental messages of our time: climate change. The text was only slightly adapted, the apocalyptic imagery is not due to a feud between a divine couple, but Titania's words from ACT II Scene 1 are shared to imply that our dissension, lack of care, frivolous cheer, has had disastorous consequences of which we are the parents, and it is our responsibility to ammend.

See the short movie at Futerra and read along with the text below.


Text

OBERON
Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

TITANIA
These are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle summer's spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.

OBERON
Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?

HERMIA
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;
The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable:
(...)I would my father look'd but with my eyes.
[He is their parent and original]

HERMIA
Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.

THESEUS
The human mortals want their winter CHEER;

TITANIA
No night is now with hymn or carol blest:

HERMIA
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound:
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set:

TITANIA
the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.

OBERON
you amend it then; it lies in you:

TITANIA
No.
We are their parents and original.

US surge in Iraq

How many USAmericans are present in Iraq and taking part in its occupation and exploitation?

In the January/2007 State of the Union address, President Bush announced an increase in over twenty thousand US troops, which raise the total of boots on the ground to over 150,000 (for variation over time see Global Security).

But the Congressional Budget Office says the real troop increase could be as high as 48,000. The estimate is based on the Pentagon’s policy of sending additional support units alongside regular combat troops. At least 15,000 support troops would have to be sent alongside the 21,000 shipping off to Iraq. The same study also estimates the escalation could cost up $27 billion in its first year -- nearly nine times the official estimate. (ref)

To the military presence, one need also add the 100,000 contractors deployed by the Bush administration, 48,000 people working for private security firms, like Blackwater.