Art... serving its function of getting us started in that national conversation about race/sex/class we're always crucially in need of having.
Oh, no, wait, it's not a conversation about race/sex/class. It's a conversation around race/sex/class. We've been circling for decades, rotating endlessly, never really getting to whatever the point was.
And it's not a conversation about race/sex/class. It's "race, sexuality, and class." We used to talk about sex...
Now, we talk about sexuality.
I mean... around sexuality.
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49 comments:
Sexuality playwrites? Tennessee Williams FTW.
"crucial national conversations" = "constant condescending prog lectures"
"Great playwriting often helps inform our views on American character and identity."
"I don't think there's a shred of clinical evidence to support that"
Art that makes you think about the art:(the book, the play, the painting, the sculpture), gets you to think about what that art means to you; imagine what the artist is trying to convey....and MOST IMPORTANTLY to admire the skill of the artist is a good thing.
Art that tries to hit you over the head with its artistic club to MAKE you think what they want you to think, is not art. Driving home a point that obscures everything else. It is a lecture, propaganda and coercion disguised as art.
People recognize when they are being forced and pandered to. This is why all the "woke" plays, movies and art shows are tanking. They don't present art. They are clumsy propaganda.
Seems to me that's all we ever talk about. Ever. Everyday. All day. Until we all agree on what it is that should be the 'correct' attitude. And of course, that depends on who's doing the judging and what year it is.
Only the Key Thinkers on the Professional Left seem to think this is something crucial and urgent. The rest of us are too busy trying to live a life.
Starbucks set back these conversations at least a decade.
I've opted out of national conversations about ... anything. "Conversation" in this context is a bullshit euphemism. It's never a conversation, it's a lecture.
Its remarkable how narrow minded these people are.
There is nothing more to art and life and reality than their obsessions, or what their circles consider fashionable.
On Netflix there's a movie called The King. It's a politically correct version of Shakespeare's Henry IV plays. It stinks. There's a kind of morbid fascination in watching it to see just how bad it can get. It's not really campy or anything. It's just stupid and annoying.
The only ones informed by modern plays anymore are the New Yorker audience, and most of those only read the reviews so they can nod their head meaningfully if it by chance were to come up at a cocktail party.
The only playwright in the last one-hundred years to partially accomplish their thesis is Tennessee Williams. And with only two syllables.
"Stella!"
After that: nothing.
Oh - hi, Mark.
I am Laslo.
That must be why the left has abandoned Shakespeare.
I get equally irritated when librarians and "studies" claim that exposure to the arts (reading in particular) inspires empathy, tolerance, compassion, etc.
It doesn't if it's not there in the person in the first place.
I mean, look at the people who create it.
I've heard Ibsen of Doll's House mentioned as FF of women emancipation?!
It's correct, Yes?!
If we have conversations around anything, it's the water cooler or the dinner table.
"Great playwriting often helps inform our views on American character and identity. The work of accomplished writers... has sparked crucial national conversations around issues of race, sexuality, and class."
Kinda like "a very special episode of Blossom"?
Great American Playwrights: T.Williams, O'Neill, Wilder, T.S. Eliot
Good American Playwrights: Miller, Inge, Anderson, Hellman, Albee
The drop from group 1 to group 2 is very large and just shows how hard it is to write great plays as an American (i claim T.S Eliot as 'muerican). Too much politics and pretentious.
William @ 8:38
Dang. I'm sorry to hear this about The King; I was looking forward to it. I adore Henry IV.
Art has always been used to club people over the head. Even great art.
This is particularly true of religious art.
That should be obvious to anyone from a traditional society.
I'd prefer out playwrights give us a little song, a little dance, a little setlzer down the pants to discussions of RACE and CLASS. Hip Hop Hamilton was a step in the right direction.
The advantage religious art has over anything in the modern ideologically obsessive clique is that religion deals in vastly larger concepts. Borobudur is cosmic, not personal.
I watched "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" the other night. After marveling at the ability of Jane Powell and Howard Keel to belt out a tune at the drop of a hat, I realized the movie lacked any sort of message regarding race, sexuality and class. I suspect quite a few of the male dancers were gay, because male dancers, so maybe that counts as some sort of message.
Noises Off is the best modern play I have seen. It sparks conversations about .... sardines.
traditionalguy said...Sexuality playwrites? Tennessee Williams FTW.
Righteous playwrights write rights against rites.
Remember when art used to be about “authenticity”? Great art has always been founded on the artist's authentic struggle. Now art is supposed to be propagandistic confection. Nothing outside the Party. Party uber alles.
"Tennessee Williams FTW.”
He was writing about his own soul. That’s art.
That New Yorker man with the monocle is so much MORE appropriate now than ever before in the magazine's history. Can't you just see him sniffing down his nose at the butterfly telling it all about race, sexuality and class among the humans. Now that would be a conversation. What a woke little man with a monocle. Alas, poor butterfly, fly away fast.
I did kind of enjoy “A Long Play’s Journey Into Night” with Jessica Lange. I think that the playwright had some personal experience there too, even if it was kind of an “afternoon special” about alcoholism.”
Hamilton, however had some disquieting notes of patriotism.
And it's not a conversation about race/sex/class. It's "race, sexuality, and class." We used to talk about sex...
And it won't be a conversation....
Agree with Laslo. Tennessee Williams was America's best playwright by far.
“Conversation” or “national conversation “—a phrase devoid of meaning that has beaten the concept of cliche senseless. A conversation on race involves you scolding me for my shortcomings as perceived by you.
"Whenever I hear the word 'conversation', I flick off the safety of my revolver."
-- updated line from the German play Schlageter.
"I suspect quite a few of the male dancers were gay, because male dancers, so maybe that counts as some sort of message.”
That scene of the dancing sailors in “Hail Caesar” was hysterical.
Art does not have a particular function or purpose, except, perhaps, to reflect the world as experienced by the artist. It certainly should not be used as a tool to promote one or another "right" way of thinking.
"I get equally irritated when librarians and 'studies' claim that exposure to the arts (reading in particular) inspires empathy, tolerance, compassion, etc."
Yep. Look at Joseph Goebbels. He was quite cultured, had a doctorate in philosophy, and even aspired to being a writer, and he wrote a novel. (Hitler, of course, was a failed painter.) In fact, wars are generally started by the leaders of nations, many or most of whom are among the respective nations' elites, products of elite schools, where, presumably, many were exposed to the arts. "Culture" does not civilize people who are brutes to begin with.
Goebbels figured he was fighting the good fight against Degenerate Art, in defense of Culture and Civilization.
7 Brides is bout gang rape, so there’s that.
. "Culture" does not civilize people who are brutes to begin with.
11/3/19, 10:24 AM
You're correct about that, Cookie.
Josef Mengele was both a MD and a PhD. And German universities were, until they were corrupted by the Nazis, considered the best in the world.
Speaking of Plays etc.
Trump as President in **All the World’s a Stage** is one Epic Stolen Scene rewrite by GEOTU from collaborating narrative artists draft script.
Revolvers rarely have safeties.
Except for the most important case, numerically, which were the German military revolvers, which did have safeties.
"It's not really campy or anything. It's just stupid and annoying.”
This is how they lose. Its all angry shouting and finger jabbing and soulless art from the puritan left.
Isn't Art of Trump .. serving its function of getting us started in that national conversation about race/sex/class we're always crucially in need of having.
____&
Open your eyes and mind and you can find reality and life to enjoy.
And German universities were, until they were corrupted by the Nazis, considered the best in the world.
'_"'''"'
This is blaming student for faculty malfeasance.
Americans flocked to those Temples of Learning and brought back what??
Worship of The State
Which pretty much explain USA history for 1900's
7 Brides is bout gang rape, so there’s that.
Actually, it's about abduction. At the end the girls claim to have been ravished, but the only one who actually had been was the Shirley Jones character.
AA, as an ex-NYer, I'm amazed at your love affair of anything emanating from the NY Times, New Yorker, etc. Your point about what they are currently pushing is not correct. There's no conversation with them - nothing but 'lectures'. That's why the average person long ago tuned out from the so-called conversations by 'Elites'.
Art does not have a particular function or purpose, except, perhaps, to reflect the world as experienced by the artist. It certainly should not be used as a tool to promote one or another "right" way of thinking.
You're 100% right, Cookie. If it is used as such a tool, then it is not art, it is propaganda.
Thanks (again) for getting "incredibly irritat[ed]" so that we don't have to.
Separately, +1 to what hstad said @12:54.
buwaya said...
Revolvers rarely have safeties.
Except for the most important case, numerically, which were the German military revolvers, which did have safeties.
I didn't know that, thought it referred to the Webley-Fosbery. But it is irrelevant. The quote actually runs:
"Wenn ich "Kultur" höre...entsichere ich meinen Browning!" Or,
When I hear the word "culture," I unsafe (release the safety catch on) my Browning!
Browning never made revolvers, their only handguns were automatic pistols. It is a solecism made by ignorant hoplophobes.
Except for the most important case, numerically, which were the German military revolvers, which did have safeties.
I saw that earlier. I did not know that and would like a link. Here's one.
The most well known in literary circles would be the British Webley-Fosbery (pictured above). Introduced in 1900, it was a quite unique weapon for more than just it's manual safety—it was a self-cocking revolver. The cylinder and barrel assembly were mounted in a track on the grip frame. With each shot they would recoil backwards, and a mechanical cam would rotate the cylinder and recheck the hammer. This elaborate mechanism served to give the Webley-Fosbery a nice, light, single-action trigger pull on each shot—like an automatic pistol—without requiring manual cocking as on all other revolvers.
Some people in the old West carried an empty chamber under the hammer.
Browning an American running guns to Germany!
__&&&&
Looks like USA culture to arm adversary.
I can't decide more foolish but less embarrassing than shot in foot!?
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