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posts about #marcshaiman more →
Celebrity-Stuffed "No On 8" Musical Too Little, Way Too Late
| posts about #marcshaiman more → |
Celebrity-Stuffed "No On 8" Musical Too Little, Way Too Late |
12/03/08
In short, this musical was funny and it's better late than never.
12/03/08
"A homosexual is someone who, in 15 years of trying, can’t get a pissant anti-discrimination bill through City Council."
— Character of Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Pt. I
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[en.wikipedia.org]
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Plus, we're not congratulating ourselves about anything.
12/03/08
The battle is far from over. No On 8 made some mistakes and I think this video makes a valiant attempt to address them. I believe that the absence of celebrity outcry before the election was intentional. It only invites ridicule and derision on the internet and distracts from the issue at hand. The fact that these "richies" actually took some of their valuable time out to create this is makes it all the more admirable and hardly ego-driven.
For all you knee-jerk commentators that complain it's not funny, I agree. But who cares? That's not really the point. This isn't some lame SNL skit that deserves ridicule. Get your heads out of the comment sandbox for a minute and ponder how this affects all of us, not just your snark-rating in the bowels of Gawker.
12/03/08
I believe that the absence of celebrity outcry before the election was intentional.
This seems like you're saying that there are good, effective ways to support No on Prop 8, and to fight against the religious right and their evilness. And I agree with that, in principle.
But here you say:
complain it's not funny, I agree. But who cares? That's not really the point. This isn't some lame SNL skit that deserves ridicule.
And that seems like you're saying that we should support any effort on anyone's behalf, even if it's terrible. I guess, more precisely: what's changed? Why were celebrity voices detrimental before, and valuable now? Why were we worried about doing things pre-vote that looked ridiculous, but now we're supposed to pretend that nothing is ridiculous?
Also, I'm curious about this one:
The fact that these "richies" actually took some of their valuable time out to create this is makes it all the more admirable and hardly ego-driven.
How valuable is their time? I was under the impression that the point of being a rich celebrity was that you got to have more leisure than everyone else.
Moreover, aren't "ego-driven" ventures ones that pay you in self-satisfaction? Doesn't something in which you're sacrificing your valuable time (presuming that this was the case), indicate that you're getting a reward in some way other than monetary gain? In that case, something like this would seem like it was more ego-driven, rather than less.
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PS Yes on the Emerging NPH Snark-Meme.
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'So bad art exists. Let it exist! In a hundred years, all of the bad art will be forgotten, and the good will continue to exist'.
The theatre is not at some putrid bursting-point. There has always been bad theatre, and there will always be bad theatre. The point is to occasionally trip and fall into the good stuff.
12/03/08
How many times do you need to see something like that putrid version of The Nation Theater of Scotland's Bacchae before you think that the medium and the plays themselves aren't worth crap?
Good art doesn't just happen. It is the product of socio-cultural conditions that both make it possible and demand its existence. Even if rejecting bad art is ultimately fruitless, complacency is worse.
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And yes, I agree with engineering socio-economic/ cultural conditions in such a way that good art is easy to produce. Wasn't it you, however, who were saying to me that if McCain/ Palin had won, at least protest art would thrive? Socio-economic/ cultural conditions cannot KILL good art- they simply provide obstacles. Are these obstacles bad? Should we oppose them? Yes- but they're not KILLING theatre; in fact, they provide grist for the mill of "oppositional" art.
And yes, I do not like The London Merchant.
12/03/08
Moreover, I actually don't care if the principle of theater literacy is cyclical, because it does not interest me in the slightest that, if we enter a period of lousy art, a good period is going to follow in a hundred years. I am concerned that my era, the one that I'm stuck living in, produces quality art.
And, necessarily this means calling out shitty art when I see it. You cannot accept that there is good art without also acknowledging that there is shitty art. So, what does it mean to "let there be bad art"? It's not like I'm trying to shut the plays down. It's not even like I'm trying to stop people from writing them. I am just encouraging people to think that it's shitty.
Isn't that right? Isn't that exactly what has to happen for us to live in a culture that starts to appreciate worthwhile art? That we also live in a culture that starts to think that some of it is shitty.
You respond to me like I'm arguing that there's some kind of theater apocalypse happening, that I'm complaining that theater is going to die, or I don't know, the eschaton is immanent. But that's not really what I'm talking about: what I'm talking about is that the bulk of American theater is shitty, and I would prefer it if people would stop fucking contributing to that.
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