The dramatist and critic critic George Bernard Shaw asserted his right to mount a cart and speak his mind, particularly in regard to the popular drama which, as a professional critic, was killing him. He was reviewing drama in London but found it successively appealed to baser instincts. As a self-professed mountebank, he opined the tragedy of self-absorption in feelings that was compromising good theatre. The romantic view of the world, using sensuousness and diluting expression to sicky sweet, was all about selling theater tickets. It was in effect, music hall entertainment. A theater of constructive thought and expression was the victim.
Today, in th same way, we do have serious theatre, such as Sam Shepard, and others, but an on-going theater of expression is ups for grabs. The need for money compromises everything, and the question is, how far a successful product can really go.
What is at risk is the loss of storytelling. Look at the evolution 100 years later, as Walt Disney and Pixar make animated movies, such as Wall-E, where a trash compactor with a heart saves mankind, AND has a love affair with a "girl" robot. As such, it was when I read Shaw's comment about inserting a love affair in a plot as a mechanism for selling books, tickets, just about anything to the public. By ticket sales/votes, the market takes only ideas that can be sweet, not threatening, romantic, and the drama is twisted to that taste. Creativity, the investigation of response to enlightment, essentially core Art, is lost.
American culture is teaching the world, at least we can say leading them on in a mad flurry for appetite. By packaging the mass appeal products based on our need for romantic drivel, only further and more powerfully than 19th century London because the industry spans and affects the world by mass media interests, we intrude on other's sanctity. Al Quaida have any thoughts as to why? Mass media has virtually free rein to exploit anything, and at the same, through international copyright police, restrict the use of their material. (search Lessig, copyright commons)
Contemporary movies aside, how about the NET? The most powerful presentation by Sir Ken Robinson on www.ted.com is a perfect example of the contemporary hunger for knowledge, presented by an entertaining guy, speaking of "creativity". The content of his talk is 'how society kills creativity by education' is very appealing blame concept. Nothing could be more attractive topeple who do little to change it. Yet, Sir Ken is only entertaining, a great after dinner speaker with an English wit. He is lauded with kudos because, he says everything we know and want to hear. Little is offered to us to change the world.
When the business of comment is merely to point out that a statement is wrong or right, it always answers what is nowadays material from a highly opinionated, dark-sided news industry. The NET has liberated opinion but still devolves into negativity with massive authoritarian publications with questionable viewpoints and political tactics. Information, mini-information is the sea of our nature. We believe what we want or need to believe. It can be quackery, all of it, but IT IS IMPORTANT to speak-out, your identity of intent deserves that much. My candidacy for President (see previous posts, or American Spirituality Party offers my steps to change the world, comments being a lost art of self, the Art of Life about Wyeth, Thoreau, Emerson, Buckminster Fuller and others, show a way we can become the agents of change, a balance ignored in this commercial society. It is better to be entertained, after all, isn't that why we join communities or the church, or vote, or watch sports? Ultimately, that is why we as All Peoples are God.
In this comment, I made to an opinion in NYTimes.com, was really lost on the Americans who reject any view which does not speak to their needs. America suffers from expensive gas, or, because Americans have an over-inflated view of their place on earth, they are lost in their self-cramming appetite of consumerism. Such self-absorption is incredible, and is seen so discouragingly in the Democratic nominating elections, that rather than fulfilling a view of bringing all people into the fold of mother earth, we hold-out for status quo.
Some think we should be fat from the plenty, others think we should be generous to share the plenty, and others, by bringing the goodness of our freedoms and thought to all everywhere, we can begin to justify ourselves. Disney/Pixar are creating the message, maybe we need to build our content, our storytelling, and think about how we can change these Hollywood interests to build and change our world, NOT entertain for the many but by higher planes of vision, engage our future by creative community building on a worldwide level.
Georg Bernard Shaw saw the Puritan in our storytelling. Can we stand it?
Comment 55. July 7th, 2008 12:01 pm
Gas prices are gas prices. Something to beef about. The entire train of thought is well-versed negativity. Nothing is nobodies fault, or manipulation, except for those who view the world in that context. Clear choices are to be made, but ok, so it has always been. Crying about how it isn’t the way you think it ought to be, is pure indulgence. This zeppelin called America is about to float up as conscious grasp of productivity and exchange values build all around the earth. Oil is not an issue. It is one part of the means to productivity, and the biggest part is positive attitude. Why does NYTimes pump negativity up all the time? Because people like to shoot themselves in the foot.
— Posted by ww
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/pumped-up/index.html
Pumped Up By RON KLAIN
William Wheeler Anderson IMYIM, I am why I am
Fundamentals of The American Spirituality Party
