A sad commentary on American arts and entertainment

My grandkids, or the younger ones anyway, were been bugging their parents to see Dumbo, the latest Hollywood remake. My recent illness gave me an excuse not to be part of a family outing, but when they descended on the ole homestead and mentioned that the movie was playing in nearby Fort Mudge, and they thought I needed to get out of the house, I was trapped. Trapped like a rat. So I went. Great modern animation and special effects, kind of a lame, PC (pro animal rights and "inclusivity") version of the original story. Harmless, gormless entertainment.

When I see movies like this and the remake of Alice in Wonderland, well done though they may be, I can't help but wonder if no-one in Hollywood has any new ideas. It seems today that all we see is remakes in movies and remakes on TV. And some of them, extensions of franchises that are well past their best-before dates (Hello Star Wars!) are truly dreadful. Where's the creative talent, the imagination that begat the original movies, which were themselves adapted from stories that some truly talented writers devised a hundred years ago?

This is hardly a new thought. Here's what Brooks Atkinson, one of America's leading drama critics, had to say, nearly seven decades ago.

Something elusive and intangible seems to have drained the vitality out of the theatre and perhaps out of American arts as well. No one knows the reason exactly. But could it be that the spiritual climate in which we are now living smothers art that is really creative, and that the emphasis on public expression of all kinds is toward meekness and conformity? [My emphasis. Walt]

People are playing safe. They hesitate to say what they think. The intellectual and artistic life of the country has been flattened out. ...ignorant heresy-hunting and...bigoted character-assassination are succeeding. The hoodlums are in control here as well as in Russia, and the theatre begins to look as insipid in the one place as in the other.... We cannot expect to have vital art in our theatre if we emulate totalitarian countries and yield the control of cultural life to the Yahoos and hoodlums.

Quoted in William Shirer's Midcentury Journey, 1955. That was well before Mr Atkinson or Mr Shirer had heard the expression "political correctness", but political correctness is what is described in the emphasized words. Political correctness is killing not only political thought but also our collective imagination. We have become a society where original, non-conforming thought is the greatest of all sins. Sad.

Postscript: I can't get over how, the older Danny DeVito gets, the more he looks like me!

Thinking about Charlie Hebdo: Kurt Vonnegut's views on freedom of speech and the role of the artist in society

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was an American writer -- one of Walt's favourite novelists. His works, such as Cat's Cradle (1963), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions (1973), blended satire, gallows humor, and science fiction. In spite of, or perhaps because of, his stint in the United States Army during World War II, he was until his death a committed pacifist. He was also a supporter of the ACLU and a crusader for not only freedom of speech but freedom of thought.

Kurt Vonnegut was born on 11 November 1922, eight years exactly after the Armistice that ended World War I. He dies on 11 April 2007, having lived through the Vietnam War and the first years of the Oil Wars or Gulf Wars or Wars Against Terrorism -- whatever you want to call them. I don't know if, prior to his death, he had ever read or even heard of Charlie Hebdo, but I imagine he would have applauded their lampooning of organized religion and secular sacred cows.

Back in 1973, Mr. Vonnegut was interviewed by Frank McLaughlin, for Media & Methods and by David Standish in Playboy, the magazine that men of my generation pretended to read. Perhaps we should have paid more attention when thinkers such as he cast pearls before us such as these comments about the role of artists -- writers, cartoonists and the like -- in our society.

From the Media & Methods interview:

I agree with Hitler and Stalin about a lot of things. Basic agreement with them and with...almost every dictator is that an artist should serve his society, and I would not be interested in writing if I didn't feel that what I wrote was an act of good citizenship or an attempt, at any rate, to be a good citizen.

What brought my ancestors over here from Germany was not oppression over there, but simply the attractiveness of the United States Constitution.... I was raised to be bughouse about the Constitution, and to be very excited about the United States of America as a Utopia. It still seems utterly workable to me, and I keep thinking of ways to fix it, to see what the hell went wrong, to see if we can get the thing to really run right.

[Now] I am heartbroken and confused.... I finally understand that I am not protected by the U.S. Constitution. I have never been protected by it, and it's only a piece of paper that we in America have always been dependent upon. The goodwill of those who govern us...that's all that has ever protected us....

We have entered a period now when our government doesn't really seem to like us much. I find this oppressive, and realize that the Constitution can't help much, can't help at all, really, if our leaders come to dislike us -- which they apparently do.

From the Playboy interview:

I agree with Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini that the writer should serve his society. I differ with dictators as to how a writer should serve. Mainly, I think they should be...agents of change. For the better, we hope....
We [writers] are expressions of the entire society.... And when a society is in great danger, we're likely to sound the alarms.

I have the canary-bird-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts. You know coal miners used to take birds down into the mines with them to detect gas before the men got sick. The artists certainly did that in the case of Vietnam. They chirped and keeled over. But it made no difference whatsoever. Nobody important cared. But I continue to think that artists -- all artists -- should be treasured as alarm systems.

Walt suggests that, now that a dozen canaries have been killed by fanatics of a "deviant form of religion" (to use the Pope's words), perhaps the "leaders" of the Western world will hear the alarm and take some action beyond mouthing platitudes about peaceful coexistence and the brotherhood of man. Or perhaps not....

Source for these quotes: Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, edited by  William Rodney Allen (University Press of Mississippi, 1988).

Why should you care what I think of a movie?

My brief and negative review of The Rum Diary led to a conversation with an acolyte who asked if it was really all that bad. I told him I thought so, but allowed that perhaps he should see it for himself and form his own opinion.

That got me thinking. Why should he or anyone else care if Walt Whiteman gives a movie zero stars, out of a possible five (and a huge moon)? Why did I use a rating "system" at all? Answer: because everyone else does. Critics of the arts -- literature, music, movies, whatever -- have become so lazy that they give someone's oeuvre a star rating, print it at the top of the piece, and then write a short and snide justification. And consumers of the arts have become so lazy that the rating at the top is about all they read.

Art, like life, is more complex than that. Maybe with something like a hotel you can develop a set of criteria, a checklist you can use to assign a star rating. (Did you know that five-star hotels must, among other things, have the toilet paper pointed every time the bathroom is cleaned?) However, using such a checklist is possible only when you're checking tangible things that you can see, touch, taste, smell and so on. So you could rate a restaurant's food and perhaps its décor, but how about ambience? Tough one.

Maybe critics shouldn't try to apply a star or any other rating system to works of art. Whether something is "good" or not has to be highly subjective. Getting back to The Rum Diary, how can one evaluate Johnny Depp's performance without having a yardstick of some kind with which to measure?

I happen to be a big fan of Johnny Depp. I thought his best performance was as the title character in Ed Wood. [Five stars!!! Ed.] Yet when I say he was terrible as the "hero" of The Rum Diary, I am merely comparing my opinion of his performance in that movie with his performance in the previous movie. Someone else might think he stank in both of them. Or that he was great in both of them. Someone else is entitled to his opinion, even if he's wrong!

Maybe all one can say about a piece of art is that it's there: on the wall, on the screen, coming out of the speakers or whatever. It attracted my attention. I looked at it. I felt something or perhaps I felt nothing. So what. Don't let me or anyone else tell you how you should feel about something. Check it out for yourself. Whether you're delighted or revolted, at least you've had the experience.

Note from Ed.: No, my last name is not Wood.

State of the Arts in Wardsville, Ontario

Rummaging through his dusty and tattered scrapbook of clippings, Walt came across the following report -- undated but believed to be c. 1983 -- from Ottawa, Canada.

A pair of letters from the Ontario government are being photocopied in offices all over Ottawa and brightening up the dull days around here.

One letter was written last August by J. Douglas McCullough, Assistant Deputy Minister of Citizenship and Culture at Queen's Park, and asks all municipal clerks across Ontario for input on a newly-formed Special Committee for the Arts.

McCullough asked for "a short brief or letter concerning the arts in their municipality - how they are regarded, how they are funded, what effect they have on the life or the economy of the municipality and so on."

Back came the now-famous reply of Harold V. Turton, tongue-firmly-in-cheek Clerk of the town of Wardsville, pop. 400, a tiny blip on the map between London and Windsor [Ontario].

Reference your letter requesting information on the Arts in our municipality.

We are pleased to advise that we have four: Art Harold, Art Morgan, Art Marks, Art Sweet.

They are all extremely well regarded in the community. They are mostly funded by Old Age Security pensions and Canada Pension, and all contribute to the economy of the municipality in their day-to-day living.

We are pleased that you are interested in the Arts. However, we have many other names that also deserve recognition, such as William, Charles, Henry, etc., particularly many of the female gender: Mary, Helen, Ellen, etc.

We would be pleased to forward a full list if you so wish.

Yours truly,
Harold V. Turton

Word received from Toronto is that a Harold V. Turton award is being set up to recognize the bureaucrat who sends out the most inane letter of the month.