After attending a screening of the broadcast (1), I looked through the #coriolanus tag to get a sense of Tumblr users’ experiences and I’ve taken a few examples from there to illustrate not only how Tumblr bloggers use digital tools to get cultural stuff, but also to pose some DH-ish questions that are circulating in that community. Tumblr users are real people using the internet to get cultural stuff, and having real debates that I think are central to the DH discussion.

Tumblr houses a very active Tom Hiddleston fandom, and his return to London theater as Coriolanus in the Donmar production aroused much discussion and anticipation, especially for the NTL broadcast. For Tumblr users, discussion about Coriolanus is tightly bound to the fandom, and this relation has consequences for how people are getting this particular cultural stuff.

I think we can agree that Shakespeare is within the purview of DH - it's definitely 'cultural stuff'. I'll ask you then to grant that the National Theatre Live broadcast of the Donmar Warehouse production of Coriolanus should be seen as a DH project, albeit one quite outside the reach of most scholars. Despite its ambitious scale (the NTL broadcasts selected productions to hundreds of cinemas around the world both 'live' and 'as live'), access to the NTL broadcast is still limited, and it is not the only way people are experiencing this Shakespeare production. One of the most interesting ways people unable to see it in live in London are getting this particular stuff is through the blogging platform Tumblr.

I’ve settled on a working definition of DH as ‘ways people get/make cultural stuff using digital means (the internet)’. This has the advantage being both simply stated and outrageously vague, and gives me room to think and work in Digital Humanities. It also prompted me to spend some time thinking about how people really use the internet to get cultural stuff, outside of what we might call 'academic' projects.

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1. Tumblr users are ‘getting cultural stuff’ any way they can. This video is a clandestine recording of the NTL broadcast. There are also videos floating around from inside the Donmar itself of the live production.(2) Users engage with other community members to gain access to cultural products and use digital tools like this petition to assert their access to them.

There is active discussion on Tumblr about the appropriateness of such action. Users are foregrounding ethical concerns about making and sharing when dealing with digital cultural products Of sepcial relevance, especially for Shakespeare, are discussions about the value of firsthand experience and the primacy of live performance.

Questions: As we all know, reading Shakespeare is free to anyone with an internet connection , but performances generally are not. Yet it is an oft-repeated trusim of Shakespeare that it is meant to be seen in performance. Does that mean live performance? NTL broadcasts? Cell phone videos? Where do notions of the best methods of access to cultural products come from and which of those standards does DH want to abandon or uphold?

2. Perhaps most interestingly, users are debating about who gets ‘permission’ to access cultural content and who is a valid consumer. This discussion is particularly heightened on Tumblr, as you can see in the screencaps below, because of Hiddleston’s involvement with the production. (3)

Questions: Who is 'able' to be interested in Shakespeare, and what form should that interest take? Are there social or cultural barriers to access (especially to traditionally ‘high art’ cultural products like Shakespeare) that DH either (implicitly or explicitly) supports, or has the capacity to remove? What work is the NTL broadcast doing in this respect?

3. The sharing, excerpting and spread of ‘clandestine’ content has begun to take on a life of its own, severed from its 'parent' content. The scene to which the user is referring below is making the rounds in the form of a .gif extracted from a video of the screening of the live play.

Questions: How does DH address itself to the movement of cultural products through media and platforms? Is the .gif of the kiss missing something fundamental of its parent product? What exactly is its parent product (the video? the screening? the live performance? the First Folio?) and what work does such a thing do in the world?

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Notes

(1) At the NTL screening I attended, there was open and audible discussion in the crowd about reasons for attending. It was my own feelings of exasperation with some of the more obviously Hiddleston-inclined viewers that prompted me to consider this question of access and social permission.

(2) For reasons I feel unable to articulate, I take much more issue with people filming inside the Donmar than I do with the videos from the broadcast, which in my mind only serves to illustrate the need for careful thinking on these issues.

(3) The examples above relate to the heat generated by the clandestine videos (one of which features the Coriolanus/Aufidius kiss). There are many more general examples of 'fangirl bashing' and general snobbery to be seen in the #coriolanus tag and elsewhere. Tumblr users have also raised similar questions about The Hollow Crown, and it is worth mentioning that the interim interview during the broadcast contained a lot of discussion (between the lines) about Hiddleston's value as a hook for new Shakespeare fans. I've posted an invitation to interested Tumblr users in the #coriolanus tag to join the discussion here.

EDIT: I've cross-posted to the r/tomhiddleston subreddit, and there's discussion going on there that may be of interest. I've also asked r/shakespeare to join in.

EDIT 2: You can read through a discussion started by the magnificent @hollowcrownfans (who founded #ShakespeareSunday here. This is a great post about fandom and the problems with the crowds at the stage door of the Donmar and touches on many of the things we've been talking about.

EDIT 3: It is quite clear from the quality of Coriolanus .gifs circulating around that there is a high-quality version of the NTL broadcast somewhere out there on the tubes. People aren't going to wait around on institutions to give them what they want, they'll do it themselves. Control, authority, the law and openness are obviously 'classic' DH issues.

Final EDIT: Working on this discussion has consumed most of my workweek, so it's back to other stuff today. I wrote a follow up on my own blog. Thanks to everyone for joining in!