A
Good One of Those
Under
what circumstances an iteration is valued rather than a departure
from traditional practice? Put another way, when is it appropriate
to treat an art object as ‘a good [not so good] one
of those’? The two instances that seem obvious are those
commonly regarded as performances -- plays, operas -- and
objects that fall within long established conventional forms
sometimes known as ‘genres’. But this still leaves
plenty of room for curiosity. A 21st century play is still
a play even though it differs markedly from a 17th century
play, but saying it is ‘a good one of those’ does
not make it much of a contribution to the history of theater.
The same seems true of operas if one is taking about the writing
rather than the performance. ‘A good one of those’
seems more fitting in a conversation about thrown pots, scene
painting or Pavarotti, but why?
Here is a move review from a recent newspaper:
Here, the theme of ‘violent man in search of abducted
female’ is taken as a form, since it has been repeated
so many times, with the repetition taken as establishing the
form rather than as an occasion for negative criticism. On
this basis one can say that it’s ‘a good one of
those’ rather than ‘oh no, not again!’
In
the case of operatic and classical music performance repetition
is required; acolytes are expected to know the canon and every
performer wants hers to be ‘a good one of those.’
But in the case of the movie review above, it is not the highest
of compliments. Why not? Is the difference the status of the
underlying class of objects? A good pot is still just a pot,
whereas a good performance of the Rach 3 is, well, something
else.
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This possibility can begin as a routine
puzzle: the object may
What happens when the performance is recognized as such ‘a
good one of those’ that it alters the prevailing standard?
Is it still one of those, or is it more like an O’Neill
play: still a play, but altering the contours of the form? As
I understand it, this can happen in pottery as well.
This possibility can begin as a routine puzzle: the object may
be ‘a good one’ but of what? The Simpsons, long regarded
as one of the funniest shows commercial TV ever produced, consistently
failed to be awarded because, not being a live show, it did not
fit with sit-coms, and there was no ‘animated comedy’
category. More classically, silence was difficult for some to
include within music; Ornette Coleman was not silence but, for
some, not jazz either; and the term theater may not be bold enough
to include Waiting for Godot and Hello Dolly. In these instances
we are challenged to decide whether the creation is in the game
at all or just junk. If such instances are admitted to the game,
there may be a strong suspicion that the game has changed.
Some people, I am told, wish
to live their lives in the potentialities of this gap.
These questions began with a
putative distinction drawn by cultural anthropology between
the highly ritualized forms of traditional cultures and the
elaborative creations of civilized artists. On the one hand,
the honoring of dance, song and decorative performances that
were now as they had ways been; on the other hand, the invention
of perspective and Picasso. But it really ain’t so, and
the part that interests me is the distribution, within the huge
cultures of modernity, of rewards for performances and rewards
for departures, elaborations, shifts of direction.
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