Arts and Culture: God of Carnage
Lest my journaling these past few months make you think my life is now devoted only to work, vulgar leisure*, and ROCKING OUT, I'm going to start a new series of posts called Arts and Culture, whose title is self-explanatory.
A few weeks ago I saw God of Carnage, which is a Broadway play that is famous lately because:
The play is about two unhappy Park Slope couple who meet in Tony Soprano's home to discuss the brutal fight their young children got into on the playground. Their attempt to resolve the matter civilly goes horrible awry, and all four parents descend into barbarism during the course of the play. All the while, the value and possibility of civilization's triumph over base instinct is called into question by the occasional pedantic aside, which I guess is "theatrical."
I enjoyed the play, but was not stimulated by it. Most likely my problem is that deeply unhappy marriages and the trials of parenting are too alien for me to appreciate right now. But assuming for the sake of argument that despite this I didn't miss a lot, I found the play's themes shallow. Watching one character who hypocritically defends civilization while jumping up and down screaming and watching another suavely articulate the inexorability of savagery is funny but doesn't resolve the issues at hand either way. Two weeks later you forget how it ended because the ending didn't matter.
I would be less underwhelmed by what was objectively an excellently executed play if I didn't suspect that live theater is a grossly cost-ineffective genre. Luckily I didn't have to pay for my ticket, but that doesn't make me insensitive to the feeling of waste-- something I wouldn't feel about a thematically shallow movie (for example). Feel free to call me out on approving the permeation of society by mechanism, on quantifying quality, on flirting with replacing tactics with optics, etc. But Dammit! You've got to take the instrumental considerations into account with the primary ones. Live plays, which cost a lot to produce and don't reach many people, should be held up to a higher standard before being considered justified. Hell, Stoppard's Rock and Roll was awesome. I'm glad I shelled out the big bucks to see that.
"... and scene."
* A reason why I haven't posted anything interesting lately is because I haven't had stable internet** in my apartment for almost a year. That means that when I've posted, it's been while procrastinating at work, where apparently my inner monologue has a serious T-Rex*** filter. But Summer has come, and with it new neighbors, and with them new neighborly unsecure wifi. So now I can lay on the snoot instead of sleeping.
** My Firefox spell-check plug-in disapproves of "internet" in all lower case. It recommends, marvelously, "INTERNET." In all caps. Something has gone horribly right.
*** The webcomic character, not the glam rock band.
A few weeks ago I saw God of Carnage, which is a Broadway play that is famous lately because:
- The guy who played Tony Soprano on The Sopranos is in it
- All the actors in it were awarded Tony Awards
The play is about two unhappy Park Slope couple who meet in Tony Soprano's home to discuss the brutal fight their young children got into on the playground. Their attempt to resolve the matter civilly goes horrible awry, and all four parents descend into barbarism during the course of the play. All the while, the value and possibility of civilization's triumph over base instinct is called into question by the occasional pedantic aside, which I guess is "theatrical."
I enjoyed the play, but was not stimulated by it. Most likely my problem is that deeply unhappy marriages and the trials of parenting are too alien for me to appreciate right now. But assuming for the sake of argument that despite this I didn't miss a lot, I found the play's themes shallow. Watching one character who hypocritically defends civilization while jumping up and down screaming and watching another suavely articulate the inexorability of savagery is funny but doesn't resolve the issues at hand either way. Two weeks later you forget how it ended because the ending didn't matter.
I would be less underwhelmed by what was objectively an excellently executed play if I didn't suspect that live theater is a grossly cost-ineffective genre. Luckily I didn't have to pay for my ticket, but that doesn't make me insensitive to the feeling of waste-- something I wouldn't feel about a thematically shallow movie (for example). Feel free to call me out on approving the permeation of society by mechanism, on quantifying quality, on flirting with replacing tactics with optics, etc. But Dammit! You've got to take the instrumental considerations into account with the primary ones. Live plays, which cost a lot to produce and don't reach many people, should be held up to a higher standard before being considered justified. Hell, Stoppard's Rock and Roll was awesome. I'm glad I shelled out the big bucks to see that.
"... and scene."
* A reason why I haven't posted anything interesting lately is because I haven't had stable internet** in my apartment for almost a year. That means that when I've posted, it's been while procrastinating at work, where apparently my inner monologue has a serious T-Rex*** filter. But Summer has come, and with it new neighbors, and with them new neighborly unsecure wifi. So now I can lay on the snoot instead of sleeping.
** My Firefox spell-check plug-in disapproves of "internet" in all lower case. It recommends, marvelously, "INTERNET." In all caps. Something has gone horribly right.
*** The webcomic character, not the glam rock band.