Nevertheless (I
>mentioned the film industry as a glaring example, and I can think of many
>other more subtle examples in all the arts) there are situations where
>cynical pressures are applied to trump other more necessary imperatives.
>There is a fair bit of genre writing that does exactly what it's accused of,
>as well. There's no question that it's a complex question, but it's
>probably clearer as an argument in collaborative art making. Brecht's
>definition of "bourgeois theatre" - theatre that seeks only to confirm its
>audience's complacent beliefs - strikes me as a useful one here. Also
>Adorno's questions about the industrialisation of art, though I'd need to
>reread a couple of essays again to develop that argument.
I don't know, I have this friend, a poet, who has written a couple of screenplays,
the first after a somewhat unusual director contacted her after reading a few of
her poems and being struck by the different voices in them, her vivid sense of
particular intersections of landscape, history and social pressures, etc. She and
the director were engaged in an intensely collaborative project, each bringing
their own 'necessary imperatives' to the work, a stubborn insistence in each
upon his or her own vision, way of engaging with art, each's differing
responsiveness and intensities of preoccupation, and though I haven't read it,
I've heard that other readers find it brilliant and compelling. Whether it becomes
altered due to the pressures of budget, marketing, and filming, all remains to be
seen, those other cynical pressures. But in terms of collaboration, it seems to
me the measure is whether one's real art results from it, if one engages in a
collaborative project and writes real poems or real script or what has real value
to one's work than an honest engagement has occurred. It would have been
relatively easier for my friend to view the director as a cynical pressure, one that
she should try and please or write toward or somehow fit his expectations, an
audience she should try and please in hope of pleasing some imagined, further
down the road, audience. However she has a stubborn sense of her own heart,
and so naturally at first infuriated him.
best,
Rebecca
---- Original message ----
>Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 11:56:20 +1100
>From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Audience
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>On 20/2/05 11:39 AM, "Rebecca Seiferle" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> There is no way to know
>> from outside whether the one writing the story is intensely engaged,
>> imaginatively engaged. If everything that is is holy, and it seems to me it
>> is, then
>> better to act out of that belief and measure one's own heart not everyone
>> else's.
>
>Yes, I think that one's integrity is one's own business. Nevertheless (I
>mentioned the film industry as a glaring example, and I can think of many
>other more subtle examples in all the arts) there are situations where
>cynical pressures are applied to trump other more necessary imperatives.
>There is a fair bit of genre writing that does exactly what it's accused of,
>as well. There's no question that it's a complex question, but it's
>probably clearer as an argument in collaborative art making. Brecht's
>definition of "bourgeois theatre" - theatre that seeks only to confirm its
>audience's complacent beliefs - strikes me as a useful one here. Also
>Adorno's questions about the industrialisation of art, though I'd need to
>reread a couple of essays again to develop that argument.
>
>Best
>
>A
>
>
>
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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