tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post114011449434824793..comments2024-02-27T16:59:54.089-05:00Comments on (The New) Theatre Ideas: Demonizing the Middle ClassUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140131284745938552006-02-16T18:08:00.000-05:002006-02-16T18:08:00.000-05:00You snuck in there before me, Scott: I don't quite...You snuck in there before me, Scott: I don't quite get what you're asking here. Isn't George doing just what you say, attacking values? How does one attack the values held by a particular class of people without attacking, in some way, the class itself? This also makes me think of National Theatre director Nicholas Hytner's comment, quoted somewhere recently. during the fuss in Britain over a play by a young Hindu woman: no one has the right not to be offended by art.Alison Croggonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140130992739183962006-02-16T18:03:00.000-05:002006-02-16T18:03:00.000-05:00Okay... this is the problem I'm having with this, ...Okay... this is the problem I'm having with this, Scott, and the problem I have every time you write something about, essentially, how the MIddle Class needs to be protected and insulated from things that challenge/offend their sensibility and how they deserve their entitlement towards said offense etc. Or in this case, that we shouldnt' go about telling our fellow Middle Class peopel that the majority of their taste in art is self-congratulatory masturbatory bullshit.<BR/><BR/>I'm not saying I agree with George (I'm not sure, honestly. I'm not a big high art/low art person, I prefer to distinguish between good art and bullshit art)but... <BR/><BR/>Why for the love of god do you think the middle class needs protection? Why do you feel a need to stick up for us? We run the fucking world. We own it. Esepcially boomer generation middle class. The world exists to not only indulge their eveyr whim and desire, but to tell them that <I>they are entitled to that indulgence</I>.<BR/><BR/>I just don't get it. I don't understand why we should make ourselves feel good about this incredible waste of power and priviledge currently going on in the world. We have a criminally negligent society, and that criminal negligence extends to people's taste in art (they want art that makes them feel good about themselves, which is not always true in all cultures throughout time and can hardly be calleda particularly high purpose for art) and I don't understand the point in not pointing that out for fear that it'll make someone feel bad. Or offend them.<BR/><BR/>Posts like this make me want to do immature bullshit like write "I'm cumming on the face of the virgin mary" over and over and over again simply to tweak your sensibilities. And I think this points to something, namely that a lot of the art you find so distasteful is directly created by your distase, and in rebellion to it. That might be childish (I, for example, wouldn't really want to attend a play where someone shouted "I'm wiping my butt with the face of martin luther king" over and over again), and I'm not a fan of purposefully pissing off the audience for fun and profit, but I think it' all more complicated than we're making it out to be.<BR/><BR/>Okay, that was several thoughts rolled into one, not entirely coherent. I apologize. I respect you greatly, dear fellow, and your ability to press my buttons. And boy did you ever!parabasishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12476856869466695694noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140130143250617462006-02-16T17:49:00.000-05:002006-02-16T17:49:00.000-05:00Over educated and snobbish? Matt, I hope you're no...Over educated and snobbish? Matt, I hope you're not having a swipe at me there. Not only am I innocent of tertiary education, but I write pulp novels for young people that I hope will make me rich. Only it's <I>good</I> pulp...<BR/><BR/>No, Scott, I didn't say the bourgeois doesn't exist: I said that the bourgeois class which powered the Enlightenment and its culture from the 1700s on barely exists any more. What we have instead is a middle class increasingly squeezed by corporate interests and terrified of ending up on the trash heap with the homeless and the smelly mad people they see on the streets, only a job loss away. The middle classes are more and more under pressure, more and more driven by anxieties they barely have time to acknowledge. Hence the phenomena of gated communities, paranoias about attack from Blacks or Muslims or poor people or other "minorities", art that confirms and reassures, the degradation of journalism into opinion (try reading Joseph Roth to see what it could be), blindness and complacency, &c &c...Alison Croggonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140130043556703152006-02-16T17:47:00.000-05:002006-02-16T17:47:00.000-05:00Actually, being of and from the middle class puts ...Actually, being of and from the middle class puts you in the mainstream of intelligentsia middle-class bashing. As Allison says, complacency isn't confined to a class. And having a dead spirit is a symptom, not a choice. We should be attacking the cultural values that lead to deadness, not the people who are deadened.Scott Waltershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04177922467901223790noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140127339672349702006-02-16T17:02:00.000-05:002006-02-16T17:02:00.000-05:00Aww...when you get self-deprecating I just want to...Aww...when you get self-deprecating I just want to get a George Hunka doll.Freemanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01183078884824734105noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140123862515933102006-02-16T16:04:00.000-05:002006-02-16T16:04:00.000-05:00I heroicize no one, of course, you're right Alison...I heroicize no one, of course, you're right Alison, and also that I could have been rather clearer in my terminology.<BR/><BR/>And Matt--you're going to have to show me where I give an easy pass to anyone, let alone the over-educated and snobbish. There are snobs and there are snobs, including those of us who aren't four-eyed, sunken-chested, pale, washed-out creeping creatures of the library like myself.<BR/><BR/>And yes, I am middle-class and white and my parents (my father, anyway) were professional. I was a whole-hearted specimen of the bourgeois (as Marx understood it) class. And so what? If anything, it only means that when I speak of its dead spirit, I do have an inside source.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140122875430214992006-02-16T15:47:00.000-05:002006-02-16T15:47:00.000-05:00I just think that while I totally identify with th...I just think that while I totally identify with the idea that some plays are solidly squalid, palid love letters to the over privileged; George pretty much seems to only give a pass to the over-educated and snobbish. He never saw a Zombie Movie that he liked, but two dollar words seem to be just fine with him.<BR/><BR/>We all have prejudices.Freemanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01183078884824734105noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140121556487870062006-02-16T15:25:00.000-05:002006-02-16T15:25:00.000-05:00Hear that, George? The bourgeois doesn't even exi...Hear that, George? The bourgeois doesn't even exist! ;-)Scott Waltershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04177922467901223790noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140121359817900282006-02-16T15:22:00.000-05:002006-02-16T15:22:00.000-05:00Quite possibly, Scott, George is middle class hims...Quite possibly, Scott, George is middle class himself; and I certainly didn't see him heroicising the Proletariat (George?!); ironically, the tradition George is calling on in attacking middlebrow art is also a bourgeois one (Joyce, Beckett et al were solidly bourgeois artists). I dare say he can be criticised for the vagueness of his terms, but the syndrome he is attacking - complacency and blindness - is nevertheless a real one, and while not confined by any means to those loosely defined as middle class, certainly exists quite strongly there. I'd define it as driven by extreme anxiety (the sociologist Zygmunt Baumann has quite an interesting argument about all this) - the bourgeois as commonly understood since the Enlightenment barely exists any more.Alison Croggonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com