Who Is Peter Sokolowski?
A public internet search answers:
“He is the co-host of Word Matters, a podcast about words by dictionary editors. Peter attended the University of Paris and earned his M.A. in French Literature at the University of Massachusetts. He is also a freelance musician and a music host at New England Public Radio.”
If you ask some folks in the Northeast of the United States of America, they might answer: “He is my kind neighbor.”
If you ask me, I would absolutely reply: “He is a wonderful human I met through my Stanford friend.” Another thing I might share, if someone cared to know more, is how Peter helped me with my crowdfunding campaign for a film about Helen Levitt. 🌈
One thing I love about Peter? His concept of “hooks” for learning hard things. You can’t learn an entire play with one reading. You need building blocks, and in Peter’s idea around words, you need a hook.
Top 10 Hooks and Hugs I wish to share with my daughter.
Sweet child, you are loved for who you are. Here are some hugs and hooks I want to share with you:
- Friends make you feel better about yourself
- Love who you love, and love yourself
- Always ask Why…
- Yes, your name is after a fruit. But the root meaning is “mercy”
- Trust your intuition
- Keep eating as many onions as you like.
- Delight in simple things (you already do)
- Try to keep the wind at your back. (Trying is what matters).
- Fall madly in love with the world
- Remember: Today is the day!
I am blessed also to have multiple languages. With each language, multiple points of view.
“Capricious” = a French origin word into English.
My Icelandic friends tell me, “We do not have a word like that.” Icelanders are blunt and direct compared to French lenses with scents from Marie Antoinette’s perfumes, wafting in and out of the spaces, capricious, like the winds of change. But in Iceland, the winds are beyond blunt! They can kill people. The winds of Frozen, the musical franchise are coming to a live stage in the Nordics and I look forward to hearing the new rhymes and jokes.
Vesturport Theatre, with the Icelandic director Gísli Örn Gardarsson at the helm, will mount a new version of the Disney musical in Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
Working together, a new stage version of the musical, originally produced by Disney Theatrical Productions. Like on Broadway, this production of Frozen will feature the music and lyrics by Academy Award-winning songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, with book by Academy Award-winning writer Jennifer Lee. Gísli Örn Gardarsson will direct this new production, helming a team of designers that include his collaborator Börkur Jonsson, who will design the scenography.
Humor is notoriously difficult to translate across culture and languages.
Songs, too
Frozen musical lyrics translated from English, to Icelandic will be different than if coming from French, to Icelandic.
- frelsi, bræðralag, jafnrétti = liberty, fraternity, equality
Elsa, in English, says:
“The cold never bothered me anyway.”
But Elsa, in French, concludes: “The cold is the price I will pay for my liberty” (it rhymes in the original). “Le froid est pour moi le prix de la liberté.”
“Libérée, delivrée…” is the musical hook and the conclusion is fiercely empowering for the good girl trapped within: They are free now to be who they are. The future is ahead. The past, is past. (So passé, as we could “Say” in English and roll eyes at an outdated style)… and the past rhymes (in French) with the future destination of liberation.
Who Is Ragnar Bragason?
To me, he is a colleague at the Iceland University of the Arts, where we supported the brand new film students, 12 in total, in the first ever accredited Bachelor of Arts degree in Iceland’s history. If I sound like I am bragging, no (Bragason) pun intended. They are all facts. To the Frozen adaptation director Gísli, Ragnar directs and Gísli acts.
For Icelandic actors, Ragnar directs on stage for the live theatre, on TV sets, and for movies. The power couple in his 2006 film “Börn” (Children) is Nína Dogg Filippusdóttir acting in the role of “Karitas” and Gisli Örn Garðarsson in one of the best performances of his career in my opinion. In an email I sent Ragnar in our first weeks teaching, I offered my gratitude. This is what I wrote to Ragnar:
“Thank you for the idea to break from prior ways of working with actors and develop the script together with such a great group of actors. You captured male sensitivity and strength with both leads, and Ólafur is a delight on screen in Börn, smoking, playing fútbol, on Straeto, eating cereal, trying to be normal with a necktie on at the store… It was all such a treasure for me to watch.”
And, I added:
“I’m happy to say that because I have lived in Iceland now for 2 years, I understood the humor, too!”
Who Is Olaf?
In the land of Olafs (Sweden), who will be Olaf? Olaf has an important part in the story — he allows for catharsis, laughter, and humor. Because as Anna and Elsa try to free themselves from the past, the future is within them, and the bridge is whoever wants to build a snowman, in the here and now. And, the irony of a snowman who wants WARM hugs. Dear writers, thank you for the hook of humor. Good luck, Olaf!
Slander
Middle English: from Old French esclandre, alteration of escandle, from late Latin scandalum (see Scandal)
Libel
Middle English (in the general sense ‘a document, a written statement’): via Old French from Latin libellus, diminutive of liber ‘book’.
Defamation
law
: the act of communicating false statements about a person that injure the reputation of that person : the act of defaming another : CALUMNY
defamation of character
a defamation lawsuit
If you’d like, I can ask Peter about it on a podcast. I am also happy to serve you with a letter from my Entertainment Lawyers in Los Angeles, a legal team respected throughout the industry. I am not bragging when I state a fact: My attorney wrote the textbook on clearance and copyright in film and television. In Iceland, where I teach during the academic year, I have a wonderful “District Court Attorney” (their title in Iceland) who I always ask: Is this normal in Iceland? Is this legal? May I do this?
Tools to Learn
As a girl, learning Slander vs Libel for a civics and ethics class, I told myself: Slander — Speak (S, S) and then I could remember! I had a hook.
My friend Peter is very wise. I give The Dictionary Editor the last word:
“First of all, correcting someone’s English (unless you’re a parent or teacher) is bad manners.
Second of all, English is devilish and arbitrary (why is ‘conjurer’ preferred to ‘conjuror’? why is ‘advisor’ used for more high-status titles rather than ‘adviser’?); this is also how we got weird distinctions between etymologically identical words like ‘further/farther’ and ‘principle/principal’ and ‘compliment/complement’ and ‘capital/capitol.’
If comprehension isn’t the question — and it usually isn’t — then all someone accomplishes by pointing out a perceived error is that “I’m in the club that knows that a fine distinction is conventional in edited, published writing, but I otherwise understand perfectly what you were conveying.” In other words: snobbery.
If working with the English language teaches anything to any of us, it is humility.”
