Jan 3, 2012

Quick Hits Out of the Gate

The year is but three days old, and I'm already slammed with deadlines, so a link list is the best I can do at the moment...

4 comments:

David Cote said...

Re: Claudia's piece on Seminar. Agreed. Of course, I'm on record as having loved the play as a well-oiled entertainment. I didn't interrogate the material's sexual politics, which means I didn't get them or I endorse them, I guess.

I find it interesting that Claudia, who normally reviews more experimental, interdisciplinary work for the Times, should hold a new mainstream play up to such standards of social-ethics role-modeling. It's a satirical comedy, not a position paper on feminism. Characters might say sexist or piggish things; does that make the play sexist? The men are not glorified; they are just as flawed as the women.

Lastly, I wonder if Claudia holds all the work she reviews up to this moral yardstick. When a performance artist such as Ann Liv Young penetrates a fellow performer with a dildo and then shrieks a song into a microphone between cascades of obscenities, is that a negative representation of women? Or, being so grotesque and extreme, does it negate/supply its own critique, thus making it relieving the critic of the need to make moral judgments?

Scott Walters said...

Good God! Why did it ruin your sleep???

Rob Weinert-Kendt said...

Scott: It provoked me, as intended, and I spent something like half of one night lying awake, brooding about a response. But none of my midnight thoughts cohered in the cold light of the next day, which in any case was soon overtaken by Legos. The throwdown will have to wait.

Scott Walters said...

Legos are more important.