Enough!

I just don't get it. The eMail fallout from the stage versus film conversation (here, here, and here) is simply mind-boggling. The missives keep arriving, every one of them harping the same tune: the relative merits of live theater and film, and the differences between the experience of live theater and film, and how what a blockhead I am (to here put it more politely) that I can't see and understand those differences, and what a jerk I am (also to here put it more politely) not to have given proper acknowledgment and response to the posts of those respondents who tried to explain it all to me.

Not one of these eMails recognized that none of those respondents — a single respondent excepted (John Shaw of Utopian Turtletop) — responded to the question I posed in terms of the artwork itself: Why should live theater survive as an art form today when film seems better able to do a play justice (emphasis added)? They all instead answered a question I didn't ask, as did all these eMails, by responding with explanations of the relative merits of live theater and film, and why and how the experience of live theater is a different experience from film.

Well, I already know the relative merits of live theater and film, and why and how the experience of live theater is a different experience from film, and know fully — underline fully — the nature of the difference. My question was framed specifically to provoke an exploration of the difference between live theater and film in terms of the realization of the artwork itself, not in terms of why and how that realization is experienced differently in live theater versus in film, and the relative merits of each.

So, please, people. Enough. I'm flattered you thought the conversation interesting to read, and that you took the time to write and send me your thoughts on it, but you're missing the point. I suppose I have to take the ultimate blame for that. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, or specific enough, in my posing of the question, although on rereading all I wrote, I really can't see in what way I was derelict in that regard. If the fault was indeed mine, I hereby apologize profusely for my shortcomings in setting out the matter more clearly and in better detail. Mea maxima culpa.

Basta!