(no subject)
Michael Chabon. You are the man.
Excerpt from Maps and Legends:
"At some point in it's history, the idea of entertainment lost it's sense of mutuality , of exchange. One either entertains or is entertained, is the actor or the fan. As with all one-way relationships, grave imbalances accrue. The entertainer balloons with a dangerous need for approval, validation, love and box office; while the one entertained sinks into a passive spectatorship, vacantly munching great big salty handfuls right from the bag. We can't take pleasure in a work of art, not in good conscience, without accepting the implicit intention of the artist to please us. But somewhere along the course of the past century or son, as the great machinery of pleasure came online, turning out products that, however pleasurable, suffer increasingly from the ills of mass manufacture-spurious innovation, inferior materials, alienated labor, and excess of market research-that intention came to seem suspect, unworthy, and somehow cold and hungry at its core, like the eyes of a brilliant comedian. Lunch counters, muffler shops, dinner theaters, they aim to please; but writers? No self-respecting literary genius, even an occasional maker of avowed entertainments like Graham Greene, would ever describe him-or herself as primarily an "entertainer." An entertainer is a man in a sequined dinner jacket, singing "She's a Lady" to a hall filled with women rubber-banding their underpants up onto the stage.
Yet entertainment-as I define it, pleasure and all-remains the only sure means we have of bridging, or at least of feeling as if we have bridged, the gulf of consciousness that separates each of us from everybody else. The best response to those who would cheapen and exploit it is not to disparage or repudiate but to reclaim entertainment as a job fit for artists and for audiences, a two-way exchange of attention, experience and the universal hunger for connection."
Excerpt from Maps and Legends:
"At some point in it's history, the idea of entertainment lost it's sense of mutuality , of exchange. One either entertains or is entertained, is the actor or the fan. As with all one-way relationships, grave imbalances accrue. The entertainer balloons with a dangerous need for approval, validation, love and box office; while the one entertained sinks into a passive spectatorship, vacantly munching great big salty handfuls right from the bag. We can't take pleasure in a work of art, not in good conscience, without accepting the implicit intention of the artist to please us. But somewhere along the course of the past century or son, as the great machinery of pleasure came online, turning out products that, however pleasurable, suffer increasingly from the ills of mass manufacture-spurious innovation, inferior materials, alienated labor, and excess of market research-that intention came to seem suspect, unworthy, and somehow cold and hungry at its core, like the eyes of a brilliant comedian. Lunch counters, muffler shops, dinner theaters, they aim to please; but writers? No self-respecting literary genius, even an occasional maker of avowed entertainments like Graham Greene, would ever describe him-or herself as primarily an "entertainer." An entertainer is a man in a sequined dinner jacket, singing "She's a Lady" to a hall filled with women rubber-banding their underpants up onto the stage.
Yet entertainment-as I define it, pleasure and all-remains the only sure means we have of bridging, or at least of feeling as if we have bridged, the gulf of consciousness that separates each of us from everybody else. The best response to those who would cheapen and exploit it is not to disparage or repudiate but to reclaim entertainment as a job fit for artists and for audiences, a two-way exchange of attention, experience and the universal hunger for connection."