Lecture #1, Theatre and Space
John Steppling, with Dennis Riches.
https://cc-catalogo.org/site/pdf/Pallasmaa_EyesoftheSkin.pdf
https://neeta.works/on-graphic-design/readings/Tanizaki-In_Praise_of_Shadows.pdf
https://www.alchemists.com/fb/theatre_its_double.pdf
https://monoskop.org/images/a/a0/Tafuri_Manfredo_The_Sphere_and_the_Labyrinth.pdf
https://john-steppling.com/2015/09/kitsch-endgame/
https://john-steppling.com/2014/04/the-impossible-playwright/
A really absorbing lecture. And I want to make the following comments. Feel free to disagree:
I was fascinated by your remarks on how primitive people created the first dramas by simply telling tales of the day’s events in the evening. I have a disabled son and also work with the disabled and I am therefore used to interacting with people who have a mental state that is arrested usually at various stages of childhood. And I have noticed how my son and the others have a habit of constantly having to reiterate an incident that happened to them just recently. And it strikes me that it is through the telling of the incident that it comes alive and almost as if it doesn’t even have a valid reality at all until it is told.
This is obviously a social phenomenon. It is only through interaction with others that your own experiences acquire validation. I have heard about abused children kept in social deprivation who never develop the basic language skills we expect.
If kitsch is a parody of catharsis the implication is that kitsch is the negation of catharsis. Catharsis implies an extreme transformation, the undergoing of some tremendous release of tension. Kitsch fails to do this but supplies a glamour to what is a stationary state. Kitsch does nothing more than take up your time. But this leads to a curious development which I have noted with respect to what I feel tempted to call “the Rock genre”. I don’t just mean the music but the whole of that “on the edge” projection that seems to permeate so much of pop culture. And the concept of catharsis became, so to speak, “trendy”. And we then had the oxymoron of “repeatable catharsis”. But then I recall – and I think it was Hullot Kentor’s book on Adorno – where there is an observation that a recording of even the most radical seeming piece of music loses all its effect the moment you hit the repeat button.
To be fair to Seinfeld and Steve Martin, their assumption of gravitas is intended as comedic and therefore laced with irony – though that irony is also a self-regarding matter.
By an odd coincidence, Andrew Scott made what was perhaps his breakthrough role for a large number of people (myself for example) playing Moriarty in “Sherlock” – where Benedict Cumberbatch was the lead. A true confrontation of opposites. Though, to be sure, Scott, like everyone else involved there, was hampered by Steve Moffatt’s posturing adolescent conception.
“Eric” was an odd experience in that, of all the films I have watched, this had a curious “non-effect” on me. It was impossible to feel any empathy for any of the characters. The one memorable thing – and it wasn’t a good thing! – is that there was an unexpected “feel good” ending that recalled Spielberg and even Disney. And you mention how kitsch always explains itself – as if it is scared of giving an impression other than the one intended. “Eric” is full of obvious indicators as to what it expects the audience to feel – which may be why I felt nothing.
Incidentally – and forgive my rambling now! – this seems to feed into a memory of a dreadful holiday I had in Turkey in the late 90s. I met a lady who claimed to be a Garth Brooks fan. Yes – remember him? Apparently he was a business graduate who decided to craft himself the role of “Great Country and Western Singer”. I asked this lady what she liked about Brooks and she spoke about this video she saw where “all those people were smiling and laughing and having such a great time!” It was depressing. She saw people enacting the effect intended and she mimicked it. I then asked her to name a single Brooks song. She initially couldn’t but eventually came up with something called “The Dance”. I reckon these memories were sparked off by Taylor Swift who strikes me the same way as Brooks i.e. a creature without content.
thanks for this first lecture! and not a moment too soon...
I received an email about some chorale collective putting on a show about Rimbaud. and it included the following in the blurb: "The work will delve into how Rimbaud's strange life unfolded as a working-out of his unique vision of himself and his place in the world. And just as Rimbaud's restlessly wandering imagery used in a new age of symbolist poetry, the concert will feature its own original and restlessly wandering images generated in the modern way: by artificial intelligence, in real time using the subtitles".
so AI now creates "restless and wandering images" to rival the symbolists. Rimbaud has already been domesticated and brand-ified over and over by the likes of Patti Smith, et. al, but there are symbolists like Lorca who have escaped that fate--because you just can't, I think, make him small. There's really nothing to say about this, it's not even particularly pernicious, it just seems stupid and it makes me weep.
So, reading and thinking deeply about art, especially performance, is crucial right now. Thanks again.