"I am always made uneasy when the conversation turns in my presence upon popular ignorance and the duty of adapting our public haranges and writings to the mind of the people. 'Tis all pedantry and ignorance. The people know as much and reason as well as we do. None so quick as they to discern brilliant genius or solid parts. And I observe that all those who use this cant most, are such as do not rise above mediocrity of understanding... Remember that the hunger of people for truth is immense. The reason why they yawn is because you have it not."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals

As long as we're doing public service announcements...
I'm sorry -- really sorry -- to have to post that on the way to my doctor's appointment this morning, our dog Jenny darted beneath the wheels of our truck. Both her hips were dislocated, and we had to put her down this afternoon. It has not been a good week. Wednesday night, one of my incisions opened up, which resulted in lots of blood and a possible infection.

Scott

Duh.  Yeah, I guess I do, huh?  Go ahead and post the e-mail address where I should send the invite.

Jess

Jess -- Do you need to invite us to your politics blog? --Scott

I just started another blog at www.whiteygotwhacked.blogspot.com if we want to move the political discussion to another board.  Or, we can continue here - I just think that I may tend to get a little over-politicized if we stay on this topic for too long.  It has consumed quite a bit of my time over the past year, and I have a lot to say...

In response to last night's DNC, let me steal shamelessly from my buddy at The DailyKOS:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

This is funny. Obama is clearly beyond reasonable attack, so the talking point of the Right appears to be, "his speech was conservative".

So ludicrous.

Take Andrew Sullivan, for example:

Obama struck many conservative notes: of self-reliance, of opportunity, of hard work, of an immigrant's dream, of the same standards for all of us.
 

Funny. I didn't realize liberals wanted government to serve their every needs. I didn't realize liberals were anti-immigrants. I didn't realize that liberals didn't want the equality of opportunity. I know Sullivan is trying to square away his conservatism with the GOP's gay-hating ways, but the way to do it is not to redefine conservatism. Equality is a very LIBERAL value.

Sullivan quotes the following Obama passage as further proof of "conservative values":

Obama:  "No, people don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all."

How the heck is that "conservative"? What liberal has ever said that government should solve every person's problems? Build that straw man and tear it down. It's fun. It's easy. It's a bunch of poop.

Over at NRO's "The Corner", one of the posts reads:
 
RIGHT SPEECH, WRONG CONVENTION [Roger Clegg]Barack Obama gave a fine speech, but it was not a speech that reflects the current Democratic Party. It celebrated America as "a magical place"; it did not bemoan our racism and imperialism. It professed that this black man "owe[d] a debt to those who came before" him; it did not call for reparations. It spoke of an "awesome God"; it did not banish Him from public discourse. It admitted that black parents, and black culture, need to change the way black children are raised; it did not blame or even mention racism. It quoted "E pluribus unum" and translated it correctly as "Out of many, one"; it did not misquote it, as Al Gore infamously did, as "Many out of one." Most of all, the speech celebrated one America, "one people," and rejected the notion of a black America, a white America, a Latino America, and an Asian America--a notion completely foreign to the multiculturalism that now dominates the Democratic Party.
 
Yeah, right. COLIN POWELL was booed at the RNC convention four years ago, because his speech -- pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, didn't reflect the Republican Party. This is different.

Is reparations a mainstream liberal issue? No. Is unity a conservative value? Laughable, as the Republican Party has fueled its electoral dominance via the Southern Strategy -- using race to scare white southerners to vote Republican against their economic interests -- while attempting to maintain that dominance by demonizing gays.

And funny how Clegg doesn't mention Obama's warm talk of immigration, which is yet another fault line in the GOP's divisive efforts.
 
But that last sentence -- that multiculturalism is somehow incompatible with unity -- is perhaps the most laughable. The notion is as absurd as thinking that men are from Mars, women are from Venus, hence affirming one's sex makes unity impossible.

Heck, it's like saying rural folk and city slickers can't both be part of a united country.
 
Ridiculous.

As for the "Awesome God" line, there's nothing conservative about citing God (unless Republicans are ready to welcome Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson into their fold). Conservatives want to inject religion into public life. Obama doesn't. It's that simple.

The reason Obama has put the Right into a quandry is that he exposed, in one masterful performance, every caricature the Right has of liberalism. He affirmed our belief in government's ability to make life better without conjuring up images of "welfare queens". He affirmed the right every American has to believe in the god of his or her choice, or no god for that matter, without making it a public matter. He affirmed the beauty of multiculturalism, that we are more than white, black, Asian, Latino, or anything else, without feeding the fiction that we all want a balkanized country. He affirmed that unity is an American value, while dividing Americans based on sexual orientation or race is not.

In short, he lay the Right's arguments against liberalism to waste in one relatively short speech.
 
(Oh, and note the slam against Al Gore for a misquote. This Clegg joker likely hasn't heard his president speak, like, within the last four years or so. Fool me once ....)
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Kerry '04, '08 - Edwards '12, '16 - Obama '20, '24 - Republicans are in for a rough next twenty years.  Forget Hillary--most of us liberals wouldn't vote for her anyway.

Jess

p.s. - did you catch Obama invoking Galesburg, IL in his speech?  I lived in Galesburg for six years, went to GHS for my first three years of high school before attending Interlochen.  Obama talked about Maytag leaving - people losing jobs left and right, middle-aged folks competing with their own sons and daughters for seven-dollars-an-hour jobs.  People there have to know that Galesburg is quckly dying because of Republican policies.  It's time for a change.~JW

Brian wrote: "Do you think that progressive or liberal candidates (if we want to stick a label on it) will be able to contend for high offices, like the presidency, again in the future?"

Yes, I do.  I think you saw the future of the Democratic Party last night in Barack Obama.  The key will be to escape the labels.  America loves labels, but also loves it when someone escapes from them.  There needs to be a smart, savvy, powerful progressive.  I loved Dennis Kucinich, too, but what a nerd!  Howard Dean was interesting, but had the temperament of a doctor -- arrogant, and lacking in listening skills.  He made me real uncomfortable the more I watched him.  Obama was great -- he spoke about strong moral principles, which really makes for a powerful speech.

I also think that Terry Heinz Kerry will we a great First Lady!

Gotta run.

Scott

Let's analyze the Woody Allen quotation that Brian provided, as it connects to my formula: Big Metaphysical/Philosophical Topic + Whiny, Everyday Topic = Humor.  Here's the quote:

"The thing to remember is that each time of life has its appropriate rewards, whereas when you're dead it's hard to find the light switch. The chief problem about death, incidentally, is the fear that there may be no afterlife - a depressing thought, particularly for those who have bothered to shave. Also, there is the fear that there is an afterlife but no one will know where it's being held. On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down."

Death + Finding the Light Switch = Humor
Afterlife + Shaving = Humor
Afterlife + No One Knowing It's Location = Humor
Death + Lying Down = Humor

It's like a machine, a formula!  But once you know the trick (or the tic), it takes a lot of the fun out of the game.  I'm afraid I figured out the game too quickly, and lost interest.

Scott

Brian -- I didn't watch last night, although I regret not seeing Clinton, and I may watch a little tonight (I'm curious about the future Senator from Illinois).  As far as your complaint about last night's proceedings, let's think about it:

1) Kerry voted for the war, so hammering Bush too much on that score would easily be chalked up to Kerry doing a "flip-flop," and play into Republican hands.

2) I suspect that when speakers are lined up and scheduled, they are each given areas to concentrate on.  Jimmy Carter is seen as a foreign policy expert, so that's his area; Clinton is a domestic policy wonk, so that's what he talks about; and so on.  So the fact that each speaker didn't wail on Bush's War doesn't surprise me, I guess.

3) Bush is being painted as a crazy lone cowboy who has lowered our image in the eyes of the international community.  This is an issue of pride: Bush made America look stupid.  He went off half-cocked, and manipulated the intelligence reports to support his personal vendetta.  He's a loose cannon. 

Brian, what you want to have happen doesn't connect to the candidate the Democrats have chosen.  He's not Dean, he's not Kucinich.  And they have made a very conscious choice to keep the message positive, which I think is a good decision.  But if I were John Kerry, I would make that explicit.  I'd look the American People in the eye and say, "Listen, you all say you don't like negative campaigning, and so we're not going to do it.  But one of the reasons you get negative campaigning is because you respond to it.  So this is your chance -- when you have a choice between a positive message and a negative one, choose the positive and send the message to our lawmakers that you are tired of the same old mud-slinging.  It's up to you to help change the way we elect Presidents."  I think that might put the Republicans on the defensive, and might undermine their negative on-slaught.

On another issue, I've been thinking about your post concerning Woody Allen, and I've decided not to argue.  If all that you got from my original post was an attack on Woody Allen, then you've missed the point, or at least you don't want to deal with it.  I don't give a rip about Woody Allen (although I do think he is an artistic coward and a cheat, as well as a personal sleazeball), but I used him as an illustration of a larger concept.  It's the larger concept that interests me.  So I'm not ignoring you, I'm just not rising to the bait.

Scott

Kate -- I think it is an important question you ask.  While I am not a cultural historian, I would venture to say that several things happened to lead to our present spiritual bankruptcy among so-called "intellectuals": 1) the Scientific Revolution -- the Church botched that real bad, between its response to Galileo and to Darwin; intellectuals came to see the Church as being anti-intelletual; 2) Existentialism became hip and cool in the 50s; 3) in the 60s, everyone rejected institutions, especially institutions your parents belonged to (while conveniently forgetting that the most effective revolutionary movement, the Civil Right Movement, was centered in the Church -- selective attention); 4) popular media representations of evangelicals, too often supported by the evangelicals themselves, made religion the object of fun and disdain; 5) the rise of the Moral Majority, which made Americans link religion and extreme right-wing intolerance.  Put it all together, it spells "spiritual emptiness" or, in its shortened form, "nihilism."

Listen, I'm not much interested in the institutional church.  I was raised Lutheran (vaguely), married a Methodist's minister's daughter, divorced her, and married a Lutheran minister's daughter (as my father once said, "You can't keep away from them sky pilots, can you!").  But I am smart enough to separate the religious institutions from spirituality.  It seems to me that without a belief in a sense of purpose to the world, a sense of some grand narrative, it is all too easy to be undermined by the media cynicism and nihilism that is mother's milk to corporate greed.  Believing in nothing other than the acquisition of material "wealth" is what our economy is built on -- and I predict it will also be what brings our economy crashing down, and this in the not-too-distance future.

Somehow, it has to become hip to have metaphysical beliefs again.  My opinion -- you mileage may vary.

Scott

John queried: "Do you not believe that tinker toy art is also worthwhile?  Do you not believe that there is value in removing oneself from the Cathedral, simply to stare at the beauty that composes the hubub of the street?  Thousands of life stories intersect every day on the street corner, at the cafe, at the remote country church, and at the isolated grove of trees in the middle of the woods.  Just as the epic stories of the Cathedral are deeply rooted to the very core of what it means to live life as a human being, these snapshots of the indivdual I believe to be just as grand.  It seems to me sometimes that you dismiss this, or obsess over taking these stories and enclosing them in the Cathedral, rather than celebrating their greatness in their own right.  So am I missing something, or do we simply not agree?"

Good question, John.  I think my writing does give that impression.  Shifting the metaphor, am I saying there is no room for string quartets, and there should only be symphonies?  No, I don't believe that.  But when I use the metaphor of the cathedral, I have in mind one particular aspect of the cathedral: the way that everything in a cathedral is created in relation to a sense of God.  Similarly, I think there should be a sense in art that it stands in relation to some larger idea of mankind's purpose.  For example, I just finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's wonderful novel, Prodigal Summer (I recommend it without reservations to you all).  This is the story of three intertwined lives in a small town in Zebulon County, TN.  The narrative is not filled with heroic deeds done on an epic scale.  Nevertheless, the novel is permeated with a sense of mankind's relation to Nature.  So in addition to having a masterful sense of character, dialogue, and narrative, Kingsolver also has a larger idea about mankind to which the action stands in relation.  Similarly, although in a more minor key, a novel such as Russell Banks' The Sweet Hereafter has a similar sense of telling a very small story that illuminates a large sense of life.

On the flip side, there are films such as the recent King Arthur film that portrays epic events, but has lost the sense of a larger philosophical context.  It is a symphony playing "Pop Goes the Weasel."  This is not surprising, since large Hollywood blockbusters are painfully reluctant to build their stories upon any moral or philosophical structure, because the budgets are so huge that the artists are afraid to offend anybody.  Hollywood is best when it adapts a work of art that is permeated with an actual outlook, such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, to which they can apply their formal and contentless wizardry.  Hollywood might also take notice of the HUGE success of The Passion of Christ, which like LotR applies Hollywood wizardry to a story with a strong moral backbone. My appreciation for Con Air rests on the fact that its moral framework is not only present, but stated explicitly at the very beginning of the film (rangers lead, you never leave a fallen comrade behind), and clearly stated throughout (purity and goodness are healing [the little girl singing "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands"], you don't treat women "like that" [i.e., you don't abuse them], violence and destruction is sometimes necessary to defend these values, it is sometimes necessary to risk what is most important to you personally in service to others [Cage risks never seeing his wife and child again because of his deeply-held values about right and wrong], and virtue triumphs and evil fails.  On the downside, the simplicity of these statements leads to a philosophical melodrama that is disquieting -- one wouldn't be surprised if it was reported that it is the favorite movie of George W.  Nevertheless, the cast of that film fully and deeply commits to the moral structure (i.e., no "winking"), especially Nick Cage and John Cusack.  So I respect that film much more than, say, Men in Black (Part 1; Part 2 is an abortion), which is technically competent, kind of fun, but has no values beyond the worship of whiz-bang special effects wizardry.  The artistic equivalent of empty calories.  Which is not to say that I would outlaw empty calories -- I've eaten my share of candy bars in my day -- but I wouldn't offer a Snickers to someone near starvation (unless that was the only thing available), and I think Americans are near spiritual starvation.

Does that clarify my opinion, or make it murkier?

Scott

Scott -

What happened to your title and chapters?  I came back from the closing of Foreigner today with the intention of digressing a bit on those topics.  Are you retracting them?  Coming up with something different?

Brian - Tonight, at the cast party (at Jon Howard and Carrie Howard nee' Hamilton's house) I saw a short mockumentary entitled "Golden Throats of the Twentieth Century" -- I also saw that it was a Harrow Beauty co-production, with your name in the credits.  What did you do for the film?  I thought it was a quirky, and funny, little spoof.  Jon singing "Too Shy" by Kajagoogoo at Fred's Speakeasy was my favorite part....

Jess

I like this new look for the DDS Blog...

Scott -

If you were to write a book on this topic (and I think you should, as it is one way to fight the ground war from the mountain) - what would the title be, what would be the different chapters?  How can we dissect this?  What is the new artistic constitution?  Or is there an old one we are guilty of of betraying?

Jess

Well, I'm sure the appendectomy is making me a little more cranky than usual (hard to imagine, I'm sure).  But lately, I am finding myself more and more disgusted with the values I see in our society, and the art that accepts and reflects those values.  As artists, we make a Big Deal about being "in opposition to the prevailing norms," but we really aren't except on the most superficial level.  Basically, we quibble about minor details, the gap between liberal and conservative -- a gap which continues to get smaller each year  At the deeper level, artists accept the same cynical worldview that permeates corporate culture -- that humanity has no higher self, that there is no purpose beyond a momentary sating of basic needs and drives, that each person is responsible only to themselves for what they do; to this we add a dollop of "iconoclasm" that allows us to remain superiorily aloof from the very people that we should be communicating with, which no doubt makes corporate America quite happy, for what if we actually started talking to the masses?  We have no truck with Nature, nor no understanding of it.  We spend our time thinking we're witty if we piece together in some new way a couple pre-manufactured objects -- put a crucifix in a jar or urine.  Ooooooh!  Daring!  Adolescent, if you ask me -- a gesture that should have been made by a teenager and flushed down the toilet, not taken seriously by the adult world.  But that's where we're at -- we can't think with any depth or wisdom, so we end making pathetic little gestures of "protest" that are as superficial as that which is being protested against.

I used to be a fan of Woody Allen -- I thought his book of essays Without Feathers one of the funniest things I'd read back in the 1970s -- but since then I have come to see that he is doing the same thing as Andres Serrano with his urine and crucifix: trivializing the profound.  He has a trope that he uses over and over again, to the point where it has become a way of avoiding saying something.  Here's the trope: take any large, metaphysical subject or idea (say, "the universe"), and then add to it some trivial, whiny aspect of life (say, "Chinatown" or "finding a good deli") -- suture the two elements together in a sentence, and voila! Instant ironic comedy.  He gets the credit for being an intellectual (after all, doesn't he mention Existentialism and God and Heaven and Hell in his movies), but never has to take the responsibility of actually wrestling with these ideas in any substantive way.  He is the ultimate hipster, all gesture and no wisdom.  Pseudo-intellectuals point at the fact that his films never are very popular as a way to condemn The Masses for being unenlightened, but The Masses know, even if it is at a level they cannot express, that Woody Allen is a coward and cheat.  He worships Ingmar Bergman, but completely lacks Bergman's artistic courage and willingness to look deeply into the abyss in order to communicate what is found there.  It isn't that damn hard to find your way around Chinatown, and partly that is because there are maps available.  Artists should be trying to provide maps of the universe -- even some small corner of the universe.  Yes, I agree, Kate, that we often lose sight of what is under our noses, but to look deeply at what is under our nose is where the universe is revealed.  It is when we stop at simply recognizing what is under our nose -- "Yep, that's a mustache" -- that we stop having anything to say to the rest of the world.  At which point we should just shut the hell up and let people talk who actually look beyond the superficial. 

The problem with artists today is that they keep talking even if they don't have anything to say -- which is most of the time.  Their political statements resonate at the same level as a FOX newscast, and they have no spiritual foundation from which to speak, because you know a sense of spirit just ain't really hip.  Seinfeld's "yada-yada-yada" as a substitute for dialogue would probably be just as good as most plays, when all is said and done.  Or more profound, a play entirely composed of Pinter pauses.

I have spent 2/3 of my life trying to make cathedrals out of the artistic tinker toys.  In the postmodern artistic world, we are being told that tinker toys are really hip and funky, so who needs cathedrals.  Well, I say we all need them.  More than ever.  We need Gothic cathedrals that point high towards the heavens, decorated within with images that encourage the heart of mankind to soar.  We need stories that help us to understand our lives as being part of a larger, noble story playing out in the universe to which we have made a contribution, however small.  Our lives have been robbed of their sacred purpose while we were distracted with the baubles of technology, and our economy is now based on frantically creating more and more baubles so that we don't notice.  But we are starting to sense the hole in our hearts.  I see it reflected in the eyes of my young students, whose sense of hip despair masks a real pain within.  I see it reflected in the reality shows on television, whose primary storyline is about human nature red in tooth and claw.  The rise in worldwide fundamentalism is an attempt to ward off our powerful nihilism, and the rise of suicide bombings shows how much they fear it.  I would not be surprised to see the United States tip over into fundamentalism when the hole in our hearts can't be ignored any longer.  And should that happen, it will be the artists who will have allowed it to happen by ignoring what is their most important job: the creation of meaning, of maps of the universe.

As I have laid around for the past five days, my head pulsing with a low-grade fever, I have had enough time to start thinking about these issues.  (One way we keep people from realizing the extent of their despair is to keep them so busy that they can't think.)  And what has bubbled up from the depths is a white-hot anger accompanied by the wretched bile of disgust.  In an email, Brian wondered whether there was a  a way to help prepare students for what they might encounter when they leave -- for the "real world."  It is a question I ask myself every day, and today I categorically refuse.  I would be betraying everything that I believe in.  I think students should be educated toward a vision of what their role might be, should be.  In many ways, if one of my students goes out and makes it in today's debased theatre world, there is a part of me that feels that I will have failed.  Because I have tried to imbue a sense of the cathedral within, and success as a tinker toy seems to me a failure. 

Which is probably easy for me to say sitting up here on my mountain within the security of my tenured academic position.  And there is some truth there, as there is truth in the fact that I quit pursuing a professional career in theatre because I could no longer give my heartblood to making ever shinier tinker toys. At the time, I lacked the knowledge, wisdom, and stamina to fight that fight on the ground.  I still lack the stamina.  To lay the burden of this battle on my students is probably unfair, and they will hate me for it.  And perhaps when the fever drops, and my hours are filled again with the activities of day-to-day life, I will forget about cathedrals and start seeing the beauty in tinker toys.  I don't know if I can handle the intensity of this vision, of these feelings.

The American Revolution had two parts: the Declaration of Independence, which stated what we were against; and the Constitution, which stated what we were for.  Perhaps I have focused on the former too much, and too little on the latter.  You must have both.  You must have both.

Scott

are you sure it's not the appendectomy that's making you sick to your stomach?  just kidding.  I think you're right.  Hopefully 9mc is not "McTheatre".

Jess

Hmph.  Very true.  For Warhol, being an artist was just a job.  It's probably due to him that we've gotten into this artistic mess.  When hacks and conmen become artists, the coin of the realm is debased beyond usefulness.

For how many centuries were the arts an expression of what was greatest in Man?  Artists served as the point of connection between the gods and man, and strove to create an understanding between the two.  Now, artists are just a bunch of two-bit salesmen who spend their time trying to figure out what the market "wants."  Artistic Willy Loman's who lack the insight to recognize the importance of their contribution to the welfare of humanity, and their responsibility to it.  It is a pathetic diminishment of what it means to create, and it makes me sick to my stomach to think about it.

Scott

From an art review published in Harper's: "Balthus, who died in 2001, said in a 1994 interview that he never wanted to be an 'artist,' adding, 'I have a horror of the word...What I believe is that the people who paint oday are not the same people who painted let's say 200 years ago, or 300 years ago...They're all artists today.  What I find terrible is the need of expressing oneself.  Why express oneself, why not express the universe?" [italics added by me]

Scott

Folks -- Just wanted to let you know that I have just gotten home from having an emergency appendectomy.  Wil be out of commission for at least a weak, but will be checking email and the blog.  All is well, but I am pretty sore.
 
Scott

"In my professional life I've learned that as long as I wrote novels and non-fiction books about strictly human conventions and constructions, I'm taken seriously.  But when my writing strays into that muddy territory where humans are forced to own up to our dependence on the land, I'm apt to be declared quaintly irrelevant by the small, acutely urban clique that decides in this country what will be called worthy literature."
 
Barbara Kingsolver, "The Good Farmer," in The Utne Reader July-August 2004
 
This quotation hints at something that has been increasingly on my mind lately: the limiting effects of having a culture centered in the major cities of NYC and LA.  Having lived several years in NYC, I can testify to the powerful affect that living in an urban area has on one's viewpoint.  Cut off from nature, surrounded by millions of people, forced to assume a pace and rhythm that is unnaturally fast, the mind compensates in any number of ways, and without being conscious it is being changed.  It learns to value the manufactured, the hip and happening, the "intellectual."  You look for peace in bookstores, in coffee shops, in any number of commercial places, all of which replace the peace that is more naturally experienced by watching clouds drift across the sky, or a bonfire glowing in the darkness.  In the city, there is no sense of nature, of community, of reflection and contemplation.  We see this most powerfully whenever we tune into contemporary television shows, which are completely formed according to urban viewpoints, urban pace, urban rhythms.  And I ask myself, as I sit on the deck of my Swannanoa house listening to hummingbirds battle for the sugar water and to the sounds of nature and nothing else, just what relevance does NYPD Blue have for me?  How does rap music reflect my reality?  Where is the television show that explores with any depth a non-urban experience?  What we get is Paris Hilton "down onthe farm,"  ridiculing a style of living that is far beyond her shallow urban hipster sensibilities.  And we, the viewers, are encouraged to share that smirk, that shocked amazement at the very idea of contact with the natural and unprocessed and simple.
 
We define diversity in so many ways, but rarely do we notice the lack of diversity when it comes to the urban sensibility, which completely dominates every aspect of our media.  And this extends to our theatre as well, where it is impossible to tell a North Carolina regional theatre from an Arizona regional theatre from a Maine regional theatre.  Everybody does the same plays, following the modernist injunction toward "cosmopolitanism," by which is meant "the big cities of the world."  I think our arts are impoverished because of this, and I think our communities are too.  Our souls are starving for a view of the world that isn't filled with cement, glass, and steel, a sensibility that is sensitive to the rhythms of nature.  Perhaps storytellers such as David Novak are the last holdouts.  Perhaps we should look to them for another way of creating art, a way that is rooted in the realities of the community.
 
Scott

Dare I try to apply these critical thinking techniques to a recent post to the blog?  I am doing this to try to use some of this stuff.
 
Brian recently posted:
 

"Coming to Broadway next year: Spiderman: The Musical. Direction and Costume Design by Julie Taymor, Original Musical libretto by Bono (of U2). And no, this is not a joke. I saw a special news story tonight about the show. The show recently started the pre-production stage of development. The script and music are very close to nearing completion. The show is reportedly the first of several comic book to stage adaptations expected to pop up in the next few years."

What seems to have been Brian's assumptions the underlie this post?  What was his purpose?  His fundamental inference?  And what was his point of view in relation to this question?
 
 
 

I just returned from Palo Alto, CA and the 24th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking.  I was there for four days of workshops given by the heavy hitters in the critical thinking area: Richard Paul, Linda Elder, and Gerald Nosich.  It was a great experience.
 
I learned several techniques that I can use in the classroom, and also use with my own thinking and reading. But most important is that the goal of a course should be to get the student thinking in that discipline.  So the goal of a history class is to teach the students to think historically; the goal of a mathematics class is to teach the student to think mathematically.  While content is important, what is most important is what the students DO with the content.  They must learn the underlying concepts that organize the field. And they must DO something with those concepts.

Studies have shown that students retain 10% of a lecture immediately following the lecture, and that 10% is in the first part of the class.  So if you lecture for 50 minutes, the last 45 minutes you are talking to yourself.  Students need to do something with the information, and do it immediately. There are multiple steps to actually understanding an idea:

• Read it.
• Hear it.
• Write it.
• Speak it.
• Do it.
  

So I might start with a teacher-led exploration of the topic (hear it), then have students write a summary using SEE-I (see below) (write it), then have students teach the concept to another student (speak it), and then finally apply the idea to another situation (do it).

 
SEE-I is an excellent technique for summarizing the central idea of an article or idea.  S = Statement: put the central idea into your own words; E = Elaborate: expand the statement; E = Exemplify: cite an example that connects to the idea; I = Illustrate: create an analogy or metaphor that connects to the idea.  If you were giving a writing assignment connected to an essay, you would ask students to do four paragraphs: Para 1: Put the idea in your own words. Para #2: "In other words..." Para #3: "For example..." Para #4: "It's like..."
 
 
Another set of ideas that I am hoping will help me to move my in-class discussions from the rather superficial "bull session" approach I currently have to something deeper is to use the intellectual standards:

• Clarity
• Accuracy
• Precision
• Relevance
• Depth
• Breadth
• Logic
• Significance
• Fairness

Each of these have some same questions that might be used.  For instance, Clarity has: Could you elaborate?  Could you give me an example?  Could you illustrate what you mean?  Significance has: Is this the most important problem to consider?  Is this the central idea to focus on?  Which of these facts are most important?

My idea is that occasionally during discussion I will stop when someone has said something that could bear being followed up on, and then ask five randomly-chosen students to: 1) paraphrase what just was said (so you'd better be paying attention to everything), and then ask four questions drawn from the list of intellectual standards.

These standards can also be used as a short-hand when commenting on student papers.

There are also eight elements that make up thinking:

• Purpose
• Question at Issue
• Information
• Interpretation and Inference
• Concepts
• Assumptions
• Implications and Consequences
• Point of View

Each of these can be used to examine an essay, book, play: What do you think the playwright's purpose was in writing this play?  What questions does it raise?  What assumptions underlie the play?  Etc.

One other idea that was very important to me was that creativity is a part of critical thinking.  In fact, creativity is the purpose of critical thinking.  There are three parts to thinking:

• Analysis (breaking an idea down into its parts)
• Assessment (judging it according to intellectual standards)
• Creativity (the improvement of the original idea)

Studying theatre history, for instance, should not simply be learning dates and names, but learning them with a purpose.  If we read a play, we can analyze it and assess its effectiveness, but then we should improve on the original by discussing how it might be rewritten for today's audience, or how it might be performed for today's audience.  Ideas in theatre history would be analyzed and assessed, and then explored in terms of today.  For instance, we might analyze the French neo-classical rules of drama, assess their validity, and then try to figure out how those rules might apply to today's theatre -- are contemporary plays that are recognized as excellent following those rules (you be surprised how many do)?  Are there certain rules that are more relevant or powerful than others?

I am still processing all this information, and by teaching you about it, I am learning it better myself!  Obviously, as a teacher this information is very helpful to me, but I also think that human beings in general would benefit from understanding these concepts and applying them to their lives.  Think of how much more enlightening a political debate or Sunday morning political talk show would be if these ideas were followed.  Maybe we could get past the intellectual gladiator fights and to an actual examination of ideas.  Of course, FOX News would go out of business...

OK, gotta bounce...

Scott

 

Well, everyone rolled their eyes about Taymor directing The Lion King, and she created a theatrical miracle. Where are our contemporary archetypes? Fantasy, science fiction, comic books. Easy to dismiss, but look a bit deeper.

Scott

Advice from Neil Gaimon (about comics, but you make the transformation):

If you want an Eisner award, strive for excellence. If you want one, do it better, if you feel it went to the wrong man, or woman, and it should have been yours, then do it better next year, whatever it is that you do. Strive toward excellence. If the judges don't put you on the Eisner list, then fuck 'em, and let posterity be your judge. If you feel that great work by other people is going unrecognised and unrewarded, then make a noise about it. Tell everyone you know. Word of mouth is still one of the best sales tools there is.

Nobody wants a world of identikit comics. Do the comics only you can do. Tell the stories only you can tell. Do not lose sight of the fact that this is an industry that can create real art.

And in the meanwhile, do it better. And love what you do.

"Were I to choose an auspicious image for the new millenium, I would choose...the sudden agile leap of the poet-philosopher who raises himself above the weight of the world, showing that with all his gravity he has the secret of lightness, and that what many consider to be the vitality of the time -- noisy, aggressive, revving and roaring -- belongs to the realm of death, like a cemetary for rusty old cars."

Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millenium

I finally came across the info on internet theatre. The man's name is Dan Zellner, and his theatre is called "Studio Z" (it performs in Chicago in the Breadline Theatre studio run by my friend, Paul Kampf -- small world). Here is the URL: http://www.studioz.org/index.htm

It looks to me as if Zellner is interested in the integration of digital imagery into performance, as well as using the computer for cyber performances.

Scott

Ah, Brustein. As one who spent years writing about his career, I think the problem with Brustein is also his greatest strength: his consistency. The shadow of consistency is predictability. I could have written that article for him by cutting and pasting from his other writing. He's right (to some extent), just as Shaw was right (to some extent), and both he and Shaw write/wrote with the same sense of confidence/arrogance that make their ideas bracing and sometimes wrong-headed (cf Shaw's dismissal of The Importance of Being Earnest).

While I haven't seen Avenue Q, I have listened to the cast album (thanks to The Dread Pirate Jess), and I give it higher marks than Brustein. I suspect Brustein is just too damned old to grasp what is interesting, and actually kind of daring, about the production. Avenue Q uses renamed characters from Sesame Street to look at the struggles of 20-something kids on the Lower East Side (Alphabet City) of NY. The brilliance (oh, gosh, I said it) is that, by using puppets, Sesame Street voices, and extremely bouncy music, they are able to address pretty edgy ideas. For instance, in Everone's a Little Bit Racist (a song Brsutein ought to be able to appreciate), the characters sing about how destructive it is for everyone to be so PC-touchy about any remarks that seem slighty "unacceptable," and suggests that if we all would just admit that we all were a little racist in one way or another maybe we would get along a lot better. Now, that certainly isn't liberal boilerplate -- it's actually kind of edgy. Now I'm going to really go out on a limb: this technique of contrasting the content of a song with its form was pioneered by Brecht, who used it to create irony -- for instance, the sentimental, rather beautiful song "The Whorehouse Where We Used to Live" in Threepenny Opera. (Of course, before Brecht there was John Gay, who did the same thing.) When all is said and done, Avenue Q is kind of sad, bordering on cynical, and it's main message is to recommend courage in the face of inevitable disappointment (which Brustein would have realized had he stayed through the entire play).

Brustein is right, however, about the Tony's, and if we need any more proof about the irrelevance of Broadway as a venue for theatre, all we have to do is note the number of Hollywood actors that seem to be necessary to light up Broadway's lights. Instead of being the theatrical sun, Broadway is no becoming the moon -- glowing through the reflected light of Hollywood. It is pathetic.

That said (haven't I said enough? Haven't I used enough parentheses?), I think it is time for Brustein to step down. He's gotten to a point where he says the same damned thing time after time, and not even in new and interesting ways. Unlike Stanley Kaufmann in the same magazine, Brustein's ideas haven't changed in years, and he is in danger of critical petrification (if, indeed, it hasn't already set in). Every year he writes an anti-Tony diatribe, and every year he says the same thing, just changing the sames of the musicals and the actors. It is sad to see, because I think he has been one of the most important critical voices of the past 40 years, but I think he is finished.

Scott

John -- I think Brian has summed it up pretty well. There is, however, one other consideration that is much more prosaic: several of Kushner's speeches on posted on the web, either via NY Times or his agent's website, and so the ability to "copy and paste" makes him even more attractive.

That said, I also agree with Brian about Kushner as an artist. In many ways, I think he is one of the best theatre essayists around. I'm not as certain about his plays.

Other people who might serve as DDS mascots? For me: Harold Clurman, Robert Edmond Jones, Peter Hall, Peter Brook, Peter the Great...

You, John? Jess? Kate? (Dare I ask) Jennifer?

Scott

True enough, Kate. How do you think Gaimon did it? What if, say, Tony Kushner had a blog?

Scott

After reading Neil Gaimon's inspiring speech -- a nice mixture of idealism and practicality -- I spent some time looking at the rest of his site. It occurred to me that what Gaimon is doing with his blog is an example of what I have been saying about an artist having a connection to his community. Gaimon has a group of readers with whom he has an ongoing conversation through the blog. He lets them in on the process of creation, and talks to them about any number of topics. There is a real sense of give and take that is the very center of the idea of community. When his novels appear, his blog readers probably have a sense of having been a part (or at least present at) its creation, and so they appreciate it more. For his part, Gaimon likely gains perspective, insight, and a sense of who he is writing for. Think of how beneficial it might be for Drama students, for instance, if a director or actor in a production in town maintained a blog throughout the rehearsal process. Or if a theatre such as NCStage maintained a blog about any number of things connected to the theatre. It takes time, of course, which is what we are most reluctant to give up. But the benefits could be great.

Scott