The Arts Fuse Newsletter, June 26
Onward Spring Appeal! Reviews of "Next to Normal," "Janet Planet," and "Awakenings." The Arts Fuse Takes a Vacation.
From The Editor's Desk:
I immediately fell in love with this Ibo Yam Knife mask, the slice-and-dice power emblem of a critic if I ever saw one, when I saw it in the Fitchburg Art Museum. The piece was worn by young people during a performance in which they would critique, most likely sharply, the conduct of the geriatric. It is a beautiful African mask, but it looks to me as if it would fit perfectly on one or more of the ridiculers in the satiric comedies of Aristophanes, particularly The Wasps. The museum’s description is apt: the mask gives the critics in the play “dramatic license” — the freedom to be honest without fear of reprisal. The value of challenging criticism, on stage or off, depends on its independence, protected, in this case, by the anonymity conferred by the mask.
It is a mask, so I wonder -- most likely because I am now in my seniorhood -- if it might be worn by a person of any age. Wouldn’t the chronological age of the wearer be a mystery? Critique needn’t go in any one generational direction. The point is that someone of any age should be free to chop through the obfuscating privilege and nonsense posed by any position. ‘Sharpness is all,’ to adjust a Shakespearean adage. The mask reflects a bedrock reality: criticism must risk being cutting if it is to play its clarifying cultural role.
Alas, criticism of the arts is dulling itself down. Blunting — rather than sharpening — blades has become de rigueur. The image of the critic as “a pig, an uncouth if mildly intelligent animal rolling in its own sweet filth,” as Merve Emre puts it in her “The Critic as Friend” essay for the current Yale Review, is long gone. There is not much cultural capital in being unpleasant, so let’s be pals. As Lauren Oyler concludes in her book No Judgment, “critics have decided that it is no longer a risk to be sincere, soft, banal. It is completely safe.” Artists and critics rolling in the collective ‘sweet filth.’
The Arts Fuse will stop rolling from July 2 to 18. I will be on a well deserved vacation, so the magazine will be on hiatus, aside from a piece or two set to go up during that period. The Spring Appeal will continue through June. To help the Fuse re-flame, please donate here. Or click on one of the “keep the fuse lit!” icons below. Thanks so much for your support.
—Bill Marx, Editor-in-Chief
Theater Review: “Next to Normal” — More Relevant Than Ever
By David Greenham
This musical succeeds, at least in part, because it dares to shine a light on parts of our lives that we don’t like to talk about.
Opera Album Review: A Major New Opera that the Met Has Ignored — Tobias Picker’s “Awakenings”
By Ralph P Locke
This world-premiere BMOP recording lets us hear one of the most effective recent operas, based on the famous book by Dr. Oliver Sacks.
Actor Remembrance: Donald Sutherland — Ten Films to Watch, in Love and Awe
By Peg Aloi
Here are films I’ve most loved watching the late Donald Sutherland in over the years.
Film Review: “Janet Planet” — The Fertile Silence of Awareness
By Tim Jackson
As usual, Annie Baker is more interested in how viewers gather information, gleaned from bits of dialogue, than in wrapping up a neat plot or delivering a message.
Music Preview: Yidstock 2024 — Roots and Branches
By Debra Cash
“The only way to keep the music alive is to view it as a living thing and support artists who approach it that way, rather than as a museum piece.”
Discussing Faulkner Short Stories with Elizabeth Howard
Join Short Fuse podcast host Elizabeth Howard in a virtual Reading Group presented by the Center for Fiction. Four of William Faulkner's short stories will be discussed and participants will be given an opportunity to attend, virtually, the 50th Anniversary of the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, one of the longest held literary conferences in the United States focused on the work of one author.
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Questions, comments, concerns?
Editor-in-Chief
Bill Marx
wmarx103@gmail.com
