Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography – Language

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4 Responses to “Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography – Language”

1. Proman says:

   April 20, 2011 at 1:43 am

   The kind of enjoyment Fry is so foolishly standing up for, is the kind of joy than can never be shared among people. Much likes puns, these kinds of unrestricted language constructs are mostly only ever enjoyed by the person who utters them, leaving others cringing. Context, as Fry so correctly but completely shortsitedly says, matters. And sometimes, often times, even, that context stays in your head.

   Language is a SHARED medium. It is not meant just for Soliloquies but also for communication. The mere fact some people find certain expressions unacceptible voids Fry’s entire argument. It’s is not more important to please the person uttering statements if it comes at the cost of annoying everyone else. I’m not overtlyu strict when it comes to language myself, but I acknowledge that there is a place for rules. When you have a lot of reading to do, the last thing you want to do is worry about fancy infelctions, capitalization, punctation, (you get the point) getting in the way. While speaking to someone who speaks purely having to adjust your own process of thinking can also be quite taxing.

   I felt this way about the idiotic comment that is the subject of this article:

   http://moviecitynews.com/2011/04/jay-z-lyrical-genius/

   With music at least, you get a certain amount of choice of what you can listen to. And as much as Fry pretends it’s not the case, the matter of person taste plays a role there too.
2. Krillian says:

   April 20, 2011 at 2:41 am

   Listening to Fry makes me want to use more adverbs. Fleetingly so.
3. movielocke says:

   April 20, 2011 at 5:44 pm

   Fry is quite right that there are language police. Rather than worry about the 10 Item or Less sign, which as Fry says, is perfectly understandable and therefore a clear use of language, I find the LPs tend to worry more about enforcing rules of Latin grammer that don’t apply to English grammer as if said rules did, in fact, apply. That’s where we get bullshit about not ending sentences with a preposition. Language is fluid and constantly evolving and we shouldn’t be trying to kill-off changes or box language into a coffin.

   It’s essential to distinguish that rules are necessary, it is the nonsensical enforcement of them that is unnecessary. I find it gratingly difficult and downright painful to read Cormac McCarthy because he eschews standard punctuation. How wonderfully arty, but I don’t give a fuck when it doesn’t communicate. It hurts my head too much to try to decipher punctuation-less prose. But although I don’t like the style, the Road is a masterpiece nonetheless. And I’ll defend McCarthy’s right to use his punctuation-less style as well because he is good enough to manage it, just barely. Hitchcock tried to get rid of Editing, and Rope is still a worthwhile film even without using the grammer of editing.

   on the other hand, the evolution of language is why we have to translate Chaucer and why we SHOULD be translating shakespeare. Ye is all well and good, but no one uses Ye as the second person singular nor do we use it as a plural of thou. So much of the humor of shakespeare is caught up in the idiom of the jokes, and those can be tweaked and modernized to have the same meaning, and even work within the same rhythms, without needing a degree in 16th and 17th century British plebian humor in order to understand that Shakespeare was not at all formal, high, or magisterial in tone, but was rapid fire witty and accessible, Shakespeare was more Wilde than KJV bible. Yet because it is in more or less a foreign language, we tend to treat it like the highest of high art, when it was constantly mucking about with low puns. Our brains are hardwired to look at it that way. We see this foreign way of arranging words and it gets spat out in a more formal tone instead of being approachable. I’m not suggesting we get rid of the sound of shakespeare, but we need to realize it should be akin to a poetry slam when spoken aloud, we’re doing much more damage to the texts of Shakespeare when we slow Hamlet down to four hours to. make. every. word. count. than we would by giving him the slight translation polish to make all his sex etc jokes clear. And you can update the idiom without compromising the rhythm, it’s just most people are so caught up in the Words that they’ve lost sight of the meaning, and deliver the Words so that it changes the whole intent of the play.
4. palmtree says:

   April 20, 2011 at 11:26 pm

   Totally agree. If you had to correct everyone who says they are “doing good” or will “hopefully” be doing good, then you’d never get through your day even though it’s quite obvious what they mean.