First, kudos to this OP, in which Mark Ryle defines ecphrasis as ‘any work of art enhancing and becoming associated with another work of art.’
On Saturday last, the legendary Spinal Tap reformed to give a stellar performance of Stonehenge at the Live Earth concert in Wimbledon. (The YouTube video depicts an earlier but equally stellar performance of similar starlike quality.)
While watching the stage show it slowly dawned upon me that I was witnessing an example of anti-ecphrasis. Far from enhancing the reputation of this ancient prehistoric monument to the ubiquity and versatility of stone in the UK, the band diminishes the standing of Stonehenge in the eyes of the viewer.
Does anyone have their own favourite example of anti-ecphrasis, either worthy of comment or not ? Diminution by the use of imagery or lyrical criticism may be more common than physically bringing a work of art down to size.
The Da Vinci Code reduces Leonardo’s entire body of work, as well as much other art and history, into a scavenger hunt. Never mind what the Mona Lisa looks like – it might have a clue to valuable loot!*
*Yes, I am aware that The Da Vinci Code isn’t really about treaure hunting, but Brown dangles the possibility of ancient treasure before the reader at first.
I’ve heard a certain passage of Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” used in “I Need a Freak” by Sexual Harassment, and more recently in “My Humps”, by the Black Eyed Peas.
Country Joe & The Fish’s anti-war song Feel-Like_I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag uses a section of Kid Ory’s dixieland classic Muskrat Ramble for its chorus. Maybe Country Joe McDonald respects Kid Ory as much as I do, but borrowing a chorus for a black-humor war song does not enhance the original classic.
On Garrison Kiellor’s A Prairie Home Companion radio show, one of the occasional ficticious “sponsors” is Bertha’s Kitty Boutique. The Bertha’s jingle is sung to the “cat theme” of Peter And The Wolf. Do I know the composer? I do not.
Let’s see if I can sorta remember it. If you keep a cat, or keep two or three,
You know that they have needs like you and me.
The next two lines escape me, but
they end in Bertha’s Kitty Boutique.
Help me out, folks. I’m drawing a blank tile. :smack:
Well, if you keep a cat, or keep two or three,
You know that cats are persons, too, like you and me,
And have needs, as we do, and if they could speak,
They’d say “I need some stuff from Bertha’s Kitty Boutique.”
And it’s Prokofiev.
One of the best I’ve seen is Mark Twain’s classic essay "Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses, which makes it impossible to take Cooper (a major author in his time) seriously any more.
Is any parody of a work of art automatically an instance of anti-ecphrasis? If so, there’s the vaudeville spoof of Don Giovanni in Amadeus. And much of the output of Mad magazine.
If anything, “What’s Opera, Doc?” rescues *The Ride of the Valkyries * from being forever associated with scenes of flying bombers, which IMHO is a bigger dilution of meaning.
I would put a reluctant anti-ecpharsis label on most fan fiction, with eager exceptions made for works that make for great reading and intruigue me into reading the rest of the series.
I’m not quite sure if this fits, but it’s quite difficult for a modern listener to understand why My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless was so groundbreaking and impactful because we’ve had other bands incorporate that record’s vibe into their own, such as the way the Smashing Pumpkins did it.
No more than it makes it impossible to take Twain seriously any more. The essay consists basically of a list of the ways in which Twain’s writing is similar to Cooper’s.
My nomination would be Larry Niven’s novels Ringworld and Protector. Ringworld marvels at the grandeur of the titular object, an artificial world the size of a planet’s orbit, whose constructors are a total mystery to all of the protagonists. Then Niven went and wrote Protector, set significantly before Ringworld, which details humanity’s first encounter with the beings who made the Ringworld, such details being known to all of humanity, and being enough to make it blatantly obvious that the Protectors must have been the ones who built the Ring.
