Going by What Works: Or, Judging a Book by Its Back Cover...

It all started with this little posting on the Atlantic. If you have time I highly recommend you read it then follow the rabbit hole that it presents. But in short the commentator was arguing against Roger Ebert's criticism against video games being medium of Art. He was in turn responding to a TED presentation asserting that very fact.

Now some of you know I hold some pretty strong opinions on these matters. I was thinking of writing some responses to any number of these articles, but I can't. There's just too many points to jump off of. But just for the sake of getting them off my chest, I'm going to rattle off a few comments:

1. Both the Atlantic article and the TED presentation annoy me just a little bit. Although the authors have the right rationale to pursue the point, the examples picked are really pretty flimsy in my mind... I especially disagree with the Wikipedia definition of Art that was used as the backbone of the TED presentation. I almost yelled at my computer screen when I read it the first time...

2. Roger Ebert is completely off-base in his criticisms against video games... but his snarky tone doesn't make me even want to argue against it. So I'm just gonna shrug, say he's wrong, and walk away.

Alright, now I've directly addressed those entries, but I'm not quite done yet. It's left me with a little more to think about.

How do you argue whether something is good art or not? Even side-stepping the challenge of agreeing on a single definition... let's just take a step back. I'd say it all comes down to the same question you'd ask of anything. Did it work?

In other words, when you looked at this alleged work of art, did it work? Did it do what it was supposed to? Once you start asking that question, then I think you're not only on to a feasible definition, but you've saved yourself from meaningless banter and gotten down to the question of why.

Looping this back to what I started with: I argue, quite assertively, that video games are Art. (Or rather, can be.) Why? Because I'm playing one right now that works.

I'm in the middle of a game right now (Persona, the Sin Megami Tensei Japanese RPG series) which does everything art should be doing.
-It inspires me to want to do things differently in my own life, to improve, strive, etc.
-It makes me reflect on themes in my life that go unnoticed sometimes.
-It generates empathetic feelings in me for the protagonists, their struggles, and wanting to know if they succeed in the end.
-It generates an aesthetic sense of wonder or fascination at the world it describes/creates.
-It also makes me uncomfortable at times because of it's edgy-ness, either when it hits too close to home, or takes the right idea and goes the wrong way.

I'd challenge anybody to take that list of pre-requisites and say that's not Art doing art's thing.

With that I rest my case. Not by dismantling the essays above, though I still could if somebody wanted to get into it, but by appealing to experience. I find in this case, and in a lot of cases with Art and Stories, it's just better that way.

So how about next time you judge a book, don't judge it by it's front cover, whether it looks like a novel, or a comic book, but judge it by the last page, or better yet, the back cover. Once you close it, take a second to see what it did to you.

Judge by that.

On Endings and Beginnings: Or, fighing the tyrrany of "real life"

In the very first entry of The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis describes an incident where a person's mind was on the cusp of enlightenment, where really important ideas were coming up. This, of course, was met by resistance from Screwtape, his personal demon. I'll just go ahead and put the excerpt below:

"I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control, and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the countersuggestion ... that this was far more important than lunch. At least I think that must have been His line, for when I said, 'Quite. In fact much too important to tackle at the end of a morning,' the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added 'Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind,' he was already halfway to the door. Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a news-boy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of 'real life' (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all 'that sort of thing' just couldn't be true."

This little episode really tells the whole story of what I want to talk about in this entry. In fact, it can be summed up in an even simpler line a few paragraphs above that quote:

"...You don't realize how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary..."

---

My run with MetroWest in The Magic Flute is over, except for two abbreviated productions on Friday and a cast party. While I don't doubt I'll work with them again, this run is finished. A well-meaning friend at lunch today told me, "I bet your relieved now that it's done." My response was something along the lines of "not exactly, but yes, things are quieter now." But really, I have to confess that was out of politeness.

To be more direct and honest, I hate this part of the life-cycle of a show. Doing a staged production is not the same as finishing a painting or successfully writing a paper. Nor is it anything like surviving some kind of ordeal, though we certainly stress ourselves out in the process, that I'll admit. In theater and music, it's the process itself which brings the most fulfillment. Music and theater exist in the moment they're being performed. Afterward, they're gone and only memories. (Don't get me started on recordings. Those are downright painful for artists most of the time...)

I'll let you in on a secret. I have a theory about actors... we don't have cast parties to celebrate. We have cast parties to grieve. Oh sure, we revel in our accomplishments, but on a deep subliminal level, we get together one last time to look around and see those we worked with and it gives us a chance to say good-bye. If we're fortunate we'll work with them again. We usually hope for just that, but it's not a guarantee.

---

The word "inspiration" comes from the Latin root "to breathe life into." We also have the word "spirit" from the same source. Good art, and especially good theater, inspires.

By now you're starting to wonder why I've gone off on this tangent so suddenly after just introducing C.S. Lewis... well, there's more to the end of a show than just the nostalgic realization that it's over. Both for the actor and for the audience.

If art were just a momentary thing, it wouldn't be worth putting the energy into. Come to think of it, you could probably draw the line right there in differentiating Art from Entertainment. No matter how expertly done, one is purely for a moment's pleasure. The other leaves you with something. Or, more accurately, it can.

Doing this past production has left me with a lot of inspirational thoughts and ideas. I'm happy to report that while doing this show I've had a number of my little intellectual prejudices challenged. I've also found that I don't know nearly as much about the art form as I thought I did. I also know that I want to make up for that by doing more. This is what leads me to C.S. Lewis.

The man in that little story had a moment of choice. He could take the inspirational idea that hit him, whatever it was, and run with it... or he could shrug it off and go on with his "real" life. I think it especially helps in this example to point out that a) his inspirational thought was Divinely encouraged and b) that the word life was in quotes for a reason.

In that incident, he chose the latter, and was far the worse for it.

I can even hear that voice in the back of my own head right now. It's saying "oh yes, but wouldn't that be something. Everyone always running off, following half-realized fantasies at their first appearance. Nothing would get done and we'd all just be mad fools." Which is a fair point, but I'm not advocating running-off at every suggestion.

I am advocating that we take a second look at those inspirational ideas we get at the end of good shows. I can't use the phrase "it's safe to say..." because it decidedly isn't a safe suggestion. But I think it's a good one.

So here's the choice: At the end of an artistic show. Is it an ending? Or is it an ending and a beginning?

Back to School: Or, rethinking restaging

I first have to come out and say I'm not usually a fan of "updating" performances. I have a decidedly conservative streak when it comes to reworking scripts.

I usually have two reasons behind this tendency. The first is that I'm not in favor of change for change's sake (which, I suppose, is a good enough definition of conservatism no matter what area you're talking about...). The second is that one often has to do some 'square peg, round hole' work to make it all fit when you mess with the setting. In my humble opinion, it doesn't always work and I think the impulse should be resisted unless you have a really good reason.

I especially dislike it when productions insert new or modern themes that weren't there originally... but that's a whole 'nother post.

All that introductory ranting aside, I've come to find my resolve on this issue getting much weaker. I've seen and performed in quite a few shows now that really pulled off the new setting well. A few years ago when I went to London for a theater study, I read a brilliant essay introducing light and scene design theory, which uses things like light, costuming and setting to reinforce the story's dominant themes and metaphors.

This may be obvious to some of you, but it sure was new to me when I first started. (By the way, if you really want to take this idea and run with it, pay close attention to film soundtracks the next time you go to one...but now I'm digressing) Back to the topic...

This production of the Magic Flute is definitely the best re-staging I've worked on thusfar. By putting it in a 1920s boarding school, all the weird abstract metaphors now have concrete meanings. Tamino's "trials of fire and water" are actual events where he has to face peer pressure and become a man of virtue. The three spirits are upperclassmen who know how to guide those under them in how it's done. Not to mention the fact that for about 20 years, the school building is the fundamental setting of all our "trials" in life. I especially like the fact that the "savage beasts" of the original storyline are portrayed by the Jocks. If that isn't the most apt metaphorical re-staging I've ever seen, I'll buy you a Coke.

On Acting: Or, how you can't always fake it 'till you make it...

Holding off on the literary criticism for a bit, I wanted to share an interesting little experience I had in rehearsal last night...

Sarastro, my character, is in the same class as people like Dumbledore in Harry Potter, Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, or Nelson Mandela in Invictus. In other words, he has serious amounts of prestige, authority and power, but also expresses it gently and humanely. This is a pretty easy concept to grasp and very easy to spot on stage. It's also, as it turns out, very hard to produce... that is to say, hard to produce when you don't have it.

Authority is one of those tricky things. It's subtle. It's a subtext. It's when your posture, your tone of voice, and your very being project a blazing confidence that you are in control. As my staging coach mentioned in rehearsal, it's a lot different from exerting and posturing power over others. It's much more about the awareness that you could.

This is all well and good, and I could write pages explaining the concept. However, something else came up last night... see, I'm younger than most of the cast, new at this level of performance, and generally have been out of my element wandering around rehearsal spaces in the city after rushing there from work. All this put together, plus a few inner personal life issues, and it turns out Steve doesn't have a lot of that inner confidence that needs to be showcased. This makes acting the role rather hard.

Now, this is not going to turn into an emotive post. I'm not writing this to say "hey everyone look at me the emo kid who feels intimidated." Not at all. In fact, I found that very authority-reservoir within myself a bit more on my 10 minute walk back to my car that night, when I was listening to my iPod music and was more in my element...

...But it just served to illustrate pretty clearly to me that acting isn't all, well, acting. In a lot of cases, the only reason actors can pull of what they're doing on the stage is because they're not faking it. They're drawing on their own experiences, their own inner reserves, to go to that place (or show that emotion, or whatever) in the fake environment on the stage. It's the setting that's fictitious, not the actions.

If you think about that, there are huge connotations and implications on the nature of acting, or watching someone act, and the effect of it all on us as people.

For one thing, it raises the bar as to what you are messing with if the material is controversial or disturbing...
For another, it also holds more potential for the actor to discover things about himself or grow in the process of "taking on" a role. Indeed, more than that, it makes the euphemism "taking on a role" really mean something fairly concrete.

Often when coaching someone in public speaking or beginning any position of authority, it's often said "fake it 'till you make it". That points to the fact that we learn by doing more than we learn, then do it. But there's also a flip side to that little phrase... and I think that sometimes it may more true to say that you can't fake it until you've made it.

Introducing the Magic Flute: Or, here we go again, Steve is in a show...

Now that the production of The Magic Flute by MetroWest Opera is kicking into full gear, I've finally had the chance to dig into the story some more and I'm really surprised by how many things I've found in it that I like. (Particularly since the work when staged with its original text and setting is a rather bizarre surrealist Freemason allegory.)

Fortunately the directors of MetroWest are taking a few moves out of the modern theater playbook and are playing fast and loose with it to make it a bit more enjoyable. On most occasions, I'd balk at such things, but in this case, I think it works. We've gotten rid of a lot of the misogynistic and racists spots and with my own few subversive tweaks here and there, there's almost nothing objectionable to it now. In fact, since the plot is admittedly vague and uses a lot of generic symbols (light and darkness, vanity and virtue, "righteousness"...) I'm finding plenty to think and write about while working with it. I hope to share a few of those in the next couple of weeks.

Here's a quick run-down for those of you who don't know the story, so I don't lose anybody later in my musings...

Tamino, a noble and enthusiastic brave lad, is rescued by the servants of the Queen of the Night from a tight spot with a giant dragon... they in turn recruit him to rescue the Queen's daughter Pamina, who has been kidnapped by the ominous Sarastro. Tamino, seeing her picture, is all for it and marches off...along with the help of a goofy and cowardly man named Papageno, a bird catcher with a weird costume. Oh yes, and in order to help them accomplish their mission, they're given a Magic Flute and some Magic Bells.

Once they come to the gates of Sarastro's temple, they are blocked from entering by the guards. There the guards inform Tamino that he was deceived, that Sarastro is actually the paragon of goodness and the queen is evil.

After meeting Sarastro himself and being shown the error of his ways, Tamino agrees to undergo the Three Trials (cue thunder clap and rumble), become an initiate of the Temple of Wisdom (cue angelic choir and shiny lights), and generally rise to the status of brave and upright manly man...

...in the process, the evil queen is vanquished, a sketchy servant is foiled, Tamino gets the girl, Pagageno gets a wife, and lots of pyrotechnics are used.

Next entry I'll talk a little about the big themes that get worked out in the story, and maybe the big ideas of each character... in other words, why we care about such an odd story.

Christ Is Risen!

Indeed He is Risen!

Thy Resurrection, O Christ our Savior, the angels in heaven sing. Enable us on earth to glorify Thee with purity of heart!

Christ is risen from the dead trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!

This is the day of Resurrection! Let us be radiant, o ye people! Pascha, the sacred Pascha of the Lord! From death to life, and from earth to heaven Christ our God has raised us who sing this hymn of victory!

Come, let us drink not drawn from a barren stone but the Fountain of Life, springing forth from the tomb of Christ, in whom we are established!

Divinely speaking Habakuk, now stands with us in vigil, and brings to light an angel saying Christ is risen as all powerful.

Let us arise in the dawn and instead of myrrh offer a hymn to the Lord, and we shall behold Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, who causes life to dawn on all.

Thou didst descend into the nether regions of the earth, O Christ, and didst shatter the eternal bars which held the prisoners captive, and like Jonah from the sea-monster, after three days Thou didst arise from the grave.

He Who delivered the Children from the furnace, and became man and suffers as mortal, and through suffering clothes mortality with the beauty of incorruption, is the only blessed and most glorious God of our fathers.

This is the chosen and holy day, the first of Sabbaths, the Sovereign and Queen of Days. The Feast of Feasts, Holy day of Holy Days, on which let us bless Christ forevermore.

Magnify, O my soul, Christ the Lifegiver, Who rose form the grave of the third day!

-The Matins Canon of Pascha

Methinks Thou Protest Too Much: or, how conservative critics often miss the point by being too detail-oriented

Normally I eschew apologizing for long lapses of absence, but in this case I'll make an exception, sorta. And while I'm at it, I apologize for using the word "eschew" in a sentence... I swear, my language gets 5x more hypocritically high-brow when I write these things... it just kinda comes out...

At any rate, in what little time I have these days (a few operas, Lent, and a job/housing search notwithstanding) I'm working on a project to collect, organize, and synthesize all my posts and essays on the Arts from the past few years. This has been taking me away from writing new posts (because I have the lingering feeling I'm cyclically repeating old arguments without meaning to) but it's also made me want to write more, too many more in one sitting actually... so I suppose it's a pro-and-con situation.

The comments I wanted to (maybe briefly?) make tonight just to get the ball back and rolling again has to do with moderation.

In the past few months I've heard a few really great talks and essays that in their own way have collected into a single theme for me. The paradox is a familiar one, if you think about it:

1. On the one hand, the little details really do matter.
You can have a fantastic story with exciting plot points and great techniques and moments, but as I've pointed out in previous posts, if it twists the final message just a little bit, it can honestly ruin the whole thing. (For an excellent example of this sometime, get me going on the move The Matrix...but I won't get into that now, the second point coming up is more important)

2. On the other hand, almost nothing annoys me more artistically than someone who is offering criticism that goes well beyond the original scope of the work's original intentions.
I was listening to a podcast this week talking about our environmental worldview, and the speaker usually has very good points to bring up, but he's also very often overly hyperbolic in his examples, which to me, very quickly undermines the whole adventure.

Here's a case example of what I mean: The speaker was talking about going too far in our "environmental conservation" mindset that we lapse into demoting humans and their place in the world. This is a really important point. He was denouncing the kind of generic spiritual "mother earth" language that wrongfully deifies Nature. But then he brought in the film Avatar. He then went on to say that the film, through it's Native American-style spiritual content, was promoting a dangerous pantheistic religious worldview which was also suggesting that the only real sollution to man's pollution of the planet is to evict humanity from it. Now I'm gonna stop right there and say, "no it doesn't."

For the record, the film was proposing an fictional alternate ending to the tragedy of the Native American conquest. Yes, it was environmentally based. But the world of Pandora was a direct metaphor for the New World, aka North America. It wasn't saying we ought to take Earth and ship out our people to space. That's just the kind of analysis that goes too far which I'm speaking against here.

From here I want to take one step back and address one more broader point, one that some of you have heard me say many times before... Sometimes for a story to be effective and true to itself, it has to contain elements which are in themselves ...not ideal. In this case, the film contained a Native American style spirituality. Obviously a Christian observer would not endorse converting to animism when (s)he extols the film's environmental message. Would the story even work if the Navi had a monotheistic religion that looked surprisingly like Christianity? This sound ludicrous, but I almost feel like I have to go this far to counteract the points I hear a lot. This is the essence of the whole anti-Harry Potter mania that came out of the Religious Right.

It comes down to misunderstanding a very important rule of Art: In fiction, not every element is a 1-to-1 parallel to the real world.

So a balance has to be made. And I'll admit, it's a tricky balance. The first half of the paradox still stands. Details do matter. If those little elements do manage to push the final message over an edge, then it has to be called out. But let's not go nuts here. Especially when we're talking about art which is made by non-Christians.