Shakespeare and the Infinite Monkeys, or Why Art Isn't an Accident

Some people take their clichés too seriously.

A BBC article this morning, entitled "Virtual Monkeys Write Shakespeare," investigates Jesse Anderson's project to simulate an infinite number of monkeys hammering on an infinite number of typewriters, to see how long these code monkeys take to reproduce the Bard's complete body of work. In short, this is a virtual test of the platitude that an infinite number of monkeys pummeling relentlessly on a battered keyboard can shamble together the prose of a lyrical genius. So how much value is there to this cliché?

"If you put enough monkeys in a room with a typewriter, they'll produce Shakespeare": this concept is called the "infinite monkey theorem." (And yes, there's a Wiki page on it. And no, I will not explain the mathematical proofs.) Jorge Luis Borges, in his essay "The Total Library," traced the idea as far back as Aristotle--so the idea is hardly new. Literary theory uses this concept in one of two general ways: either to argue that art is not an accident, or to contend that anybody has the ability to produce art. In the latter case, the monkey adage swings from our tongues to insinuate contempt at someone else's good fortune, or to compliment a budding talent.

But let's stop for a moment. Anderson's project provides a fun glimpse into a quirky thought experiment--can an infinite monkey actually generate Shakespeare's texts, yet alone any others? There are a few pragmatic issues that weigh down this test, like a monkey on the back. Firstly, nobody--save the titular Doctor of Doctor Who--has an eternity with which to toy around in time and space. Secondly, genuine art is a reaction to life experiences, a considered and developed response to an individual's sense of reality. The collaborative effort necessary for monkeys ad infinitum to gather in a room and produce a text are staggering. In the instance of a single monkey, an eternity could elapse before producing the opening chapter of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight.

Which would leave literature in a sorry place, indeed.

This is to say that the complete works of William Shakespeare are the culmination of the Bard's singular existence. His endeavors as an actor, playwright, father, husband, lover, etc. produces an array of influences far vaster than the random happenstance of monkeys slapping their digits across a typewriter's keys. Furthermore, Shakespeare has a certain social, historical, and political context--Elizabethan England, the rise of empire, the culture of the stage, bowing to the wants of groundlings and nobles alike. Perhaps the only context—political or otherwise—of imprisoning monkeys with typewriters is a pending legal action by the ASPCA, or a series of coy adverts released by PETA.

Let us leave literature to each other, and to our individual talents and insights. And let the monkeys keep their own interests intact. "Monkeys," as the BBC article's photo caption reads, are "more interested in throwing faeces than writing sonnets."

Of Phones and Supermen: A Brief Interlude from Wednesday Poetry

Last night, my brother Joe and I were talking on the phone about (here's the jab of postmodern irony) phones. I mentioned my love for those old Nokia clunkers that could do only three things: make calls, send texts, and let you play that really cool game where the snake eats the apples. Joe may have said something about replacing his cell phone with a clay tablet, a stylus, and a pterodactyl. We both agreed, though, that cell phones have created the best of times and the worst of times.

You can contact people easily, but you can't get away from them. You can have your phone with you everywhere (great for emergencies), but people don't understand that there are reasons as to why you're not answering your phone (meetings, conferences, driving, rendered incoherent courtesy of a fever...need I go on?).

Oh, and have we mentioned that there are places cell phones don't work? Such as subway tunnels or random valleys across the Pennsylvania wilds?

Not only that, cell phones have changed the way our culture works, and I thought about this when I read this morning's Pearls before Swine strip (which is the work of Stephan Pastis). Goat says that he misses phone booths, and Rat--always having a snide comment--retorts with a rhetorical question: "Who needs stupid phone booths when everyone has a cell phone?" In the next panel, Goat and Rat glance over their shoulders toward Superman, a single emo tear dangling from his eye as he pulls open his Clark Kent garb to reveal his logo. Rat then says, "Forgot about that guy."

Yes, I understand that the iPhone 4 has come to Verizon, and I'm sure that its successor, the iPhone 5, will allow us to communicate anywhere across time and space, brew fresh tea or coffee on the go, hover over our shoulders and whisper financial advice into our ears, and...well, you get the picture. Regardless, there are some things that phones, despite their seemingly Kryptonian capabilities, cannot do. Walk into a tunnel, lose signal, and your super iPhone becomes a clunky iPod touch.

And besides--enough of our pop culture figures rely on phone booths and their cousins, police boxes, to save the world time and again.

A Story Is a Dangerous Thing (Review of Doctor Who: The Mind Robber)

Let's not encounter fiction casually. A good story can be a matter of life and death.

This is the lesson we learn from the Doctor Who serial "The Mind Robber," in which the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) uses the Tardis's emergency unit to pull the Tardis out of the approaching path of a lava flow. The Doctor's companions--the Scotsman Jamie McCrimmon (Frazier Hines) and the young genius Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury)--relax, despite the Doctor's warning that the emergency unit has evacuated them to a non-place, a void that exists nowhere in time and space, outside the confines of any known universe.

This non-place evolves from a white void into a realm of stories, which begins with Jamie and Zoe being lured from the Tardis by visions of their homelands. Though his young companions are easily compelled outside the time machine's safety, the Doctor resists the strange, telepathic strength of an unknown force--until, that is, he must exit the Tardis in order to save the hasty Scotsman and the over-analytical Zoe.

This Second Doctor story is rife with what we might expect from the early years of Doctor Who--the Doctor's cleverness saving his companions, a foreign world, a bit of techno-babble, and Patrick Troughton's characteristic playfulness. But this story makes itself unique; across five episodes, this 1968 serial treads on some pretty postmodern territory.

For starters, the non-place that the Tardis arrives in is blank. White. An unmarked page. Once the Doctor and his companions are lured away from the Tardis, though, they begin traveling through a realm where a forest is composed of jagged, printed letters; a world in which Lemuel Gulliver travels and provides the Doctor with random tidbits, all quoted straight from Swift's iconic novel; a land with caverns through which the horrors of Greek mythology wander; and a rugged terrain where past stories--along with future tales not yet written--mingle and encounter the Doctor.

Confronting characters such as the Minotaur and Medusa, the Doctor must teach his companions that these are fictions--creations--which are real only if we allow them to be real. All the while, a sinister force attempts to write the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe, eternally into this world of mingling fictions.

So there we go--not only do we have fictional characters meeting up with the Doctor in an impossible realm, we also have an unlikely conflict between two author-figures: The Doctor, and the controller of this strange realm. But if the Doctor loses out, he and his companions will become text--nothing but ink under the controller's command, nothing but words to be interpreted by somebody else.

The narrative structure of "The Mind Robber" isn't unlike our own adventures in reading. We begin with white space, move on to words, and then encounter a range of characters. But we also have stories to tell ourselves, and what we believe can influence our lives. And through this all, the Doctor guides us to an understanding that we, even when surrounded by stories, have to maintain some storytelling agency of our own in order to survive.

Overall, I'd suggest looking into "The Mind Robber" if you're a fan of the original run of Doctor Who, or if you even have an interest in all the fun postmodern play of stories building into stories building into stories.

Television Review: Doctor Who, "The End of Time" Parts 1 and 2

Screenwriting, much like cooking, requires a proper application of ingredients and a careful use of techniques and tools. When I was in high school, my home economics teacher told an anecdote about how some of her early students cooked pasta; instead of cooking the pasta until it was al dente, the students spooned a noodle from the pot and flung it at the wall. If the noodles stuck, then they figured that the noodles were cooked.

I bring up this anecdote as a way to think of Russell T Davies, the godfather and story editor of the revived Doctor Who, as a screenwriter. There exist two Russell T Davies: The first flings story ideas like half-cooked noodles at the walls, and he uses whatever sticks; the other Russell T Davies is a master chef, capable of combining the essential ingredients of television narratives--character, storytelling, drama, and suspense--in a visual treat.

“The End of Time,” the conclusion of David Tennant’s tenure as the Tenth Doctor, reveals both of these Russell T Davies, apparently in league to cook up Tennant’s final hurrah.

[Note: In deference to those who have not yet seen the episodes, I have attempted to write as spoiler-free a review as possible.]

Part One of “The End of Time” is a smorgasbord of sounds, lights, action, and adventure. The Doctor’s nemesis and rival Time Lord, the Master (played by John Simms), exhibits all the characteristics of a Dragonball Z Super-Saiyan; he gets resurrected, becomes blonde, jumps ridiculous heights, has an insatiable appetite, and shoots energy bolts out of his hands. The episode’s aliens include green cacti (Vinvocchi) that hide their real shapes with a device called a shimmer. And the action of the episode--as Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbens) searches for the Doctor who in turn searches for the Master--seems to be an endless search for a discernible plot.

In the second part, Russell T Davies demonstrates his true aptitude as a storyteller and combines much of the Doctor’s past--the Time Lords (led by Rasillon, portrayed by former-Bond Timothy Dalton), the Master, and the oft-alluded to Time War. Whereas the previous episode mashed explosions, an energy-deprived Master, and a device that repairs the genetic matrices of entire planets, Part Two draws from Davies’s five years with the revived Doctor Who and shows the audience details from the Time War--Dalek saucers strewn about Gallifrey and the Time Lords’ high council--while finally investigating the Master’s recurring insanity. Davies also concludes the episode with a touching series of interactions between the Doctor and his former companions--a send off to both David Tennant and Russell T Davies, as well as their contribution to the Doctor Who mythos.

But the Doctor--who regenerates into the Otter Mullet foppery of Matt Smith at the second part’s conclusion--becomes a new man in more than face and form alone. Regenerations--when the Doctor cheats death by changing every cell in his body--in the revival have often demonstrated the Doctor’s compassion; he exchanges his life for those of his companions. But when the Doctor sacrifices himself this time around, he must destroy his people--the Time Lords--again in order to secure the safety of the universe and of time itself.

The Doctor becomes a man who can sacrifice anything--himself included--because, in “The End of Time,” he realizes that the responsibility of being the last Time Lord means that he must protect those everyday people, friends and companions, who do not have the control and influence over time that the Doctor possesses. And now that the Doctor has become a new man--now that Russell T Davies and David Tennant are leaving the show--we will have to see what the new production team cooks up.

Look for more of David Tennant later this year; PBS is allegedly going to broadcast the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet, in which Tennant plays the famous Prince of Denmark.