should be writing such an incendiary paper in the first place.” Sorkin quoted an email comment made by Professor Robert J. standards.” Yes sports fans, a sitting SEC commissioner suggested in writing that Harvard had engaged in a securities law violation.Īs Sorkin noted, “there’s the fundamental issue of whether a sitting member of the S.E.C. Bebchuk’s project committed fraud by not fully disclosing the extent of contradictory research, which they say is a “material omission” by S.E.C. Worse.” But here is the kicker and what moves this rather arcane academic debate into the realm of the absurd. Grundfest suggest that companies are dropping their staggered board structures - and shareholders are voting to eliminate them - based, in part, on faulty research by Harvard’s Shareholder Rights Project. Grundfest, a professor at Stanford Law School and a former SEC commissioner, who co-authored a paper entitled “ Did Harvard Violate Federal Securities Law? The Campaign Against Classified Boards of Directors.” The paper is in opposition to Bebchuk’s position. Gallagher, a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Joseph A. On the other side of the dispute are Daniel M. Professor Bebchuk believes staggered election of Board members “silences shareholders, entrenches management and makes it less likely that suitors or activists will emerge, depressing valuations.” Bebchuk, a Harvard Law School professor who has long researched corporate governance issues and has been an outspoken advocate for increased democracy in corporate America’s boardrooms and his group, the Harvard’s Shareholder Rights Project.
#Duck soup marx brothers mirror scene full
On the side of full Board, up or down voting is Professor Lucian A. The question staggered elections of corporate board members or whether the entire slate of Board members be elected, up or down, each year. While you may not find it quite as funny as I did, most probably one thing you will also not find funny is an ongoing debate in both academia and in legal circles involving a question on corporate governance as reported in the New York Times (NYT) in the Dealbook column by Andrew Ross Sorkin, in an article entitled “ An Unusual Boardroom Battle, in Academia”. To this day, I almost cry I laugh so hard when I see that scene. I find it to be absurdist comedy at its ultimate height. Harpo himself did a reprise of this scene, dressed in his usual costume, with Lucille Ball also donning the fright wig and trench coat, in the I Love Lucy episode “Lucy and Harpo Marx”.
#Duck soup marx brothers mirror scene series
This scene has been recreated many times from entertainment as diverse as Bugs Bunny cartoons, to the televisions series Gilligan’s Island and even in a The X-Files episode. Charlie Chaplin used a similar joke in The Floorwalker (1916), though it didn’t involve a mirror. Max Linder included it in Seven Years Bad Luck (1921), where a man’s servants have accidentally broken a mirror and attempt to hide the fact by imitating his actions in the mirror’s frame.
The scene is absolutely silent until Chicolini (Chico), also disguised as Firefly, enters the scene and collides with both of them and sound resumes.Īlthough its appearance in Duck Soup is the best-known instance, the concept of the mirror scene did not originate in this film. In one particularly surreal moment, the two men swap positions, and thus the idea of which is a reflection of the other.
Variations on the skit had been performed by others before but the brothers raised it to undreamt absurdist heights, claiming it for ever as their own.” So you have Pinky (Harpo), dressed as Firefly (Groucho), pretending to be Firefly’s reflection in a missing mirror, matching his every move-including absurd ones that begin out of sight-to near perfection. The result is flawless, the kind of ecstatic comedy in which the world outside the cinema simply falls away. Harpo, the spy and intruder pretends to be Groucho’s reflection, and the two brothers spend the next three minutes locked in a mad dance of mimicry. They chase each other down some stairs and face off in front of each other, dressed identically. Fredonia’s President, Groucho in nightgown and cap finds Harpo, a spy from neighboring Sylvania, in his bedroom.
Danny Leigh, in his article in the Financial Times (FT), entitled “ Souped-up comedy”, wrote, “The set-up is deathlessly simple. I continue my Marx Brothers’ themed week by today looking at what I and many others believe to be their most cherished routine: the Mirror Scene.
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