Once More Unto The Breach

As an act of charity, I'd intended to let pass without rejoinder this discursive, gratuitously snide, barely coherent, prolix rant by Variety theater critic and weblogger Steven Oxman of Theatre Matters that was allegedly a response to this post of mine, and I'd in fact already said as much, but sans any specifics, in my obligatory link-back to that rant. But this post by playwright and weblogger George Hunka of Superfluities praising Mr. Oxman's prolix rant now makes that impossible.

In my above linked post, I'd attempted to make clear why a recorded version of classical music can never equal or better a live version by pointing out that a measure of the fundamental sense of the music at its basic level (I used as representative the musical phrase) is altered or lost in a recording, but that the fundamental sense of a play at its same basic level (I used as representative the word-order of a line of the play's text) is not altered or lost in a version made for film compared with a staged live version.

This was intended to show only the difference between classical music and a play at the most basic level of each (a musical phrase in the case of music; the word-order of a line of text in the case of a play) vis-à-vis their recorded versus live versions, and to imply that because recorded classical music fails at that most basic level and a play does not, there exists at least the possibility that a cinematic version of a play may equal or better a live stage version, but that no such possibility exists in the case of a recorded version of classical music versus a live version.

In his attempt to refute my argument concerning that, Mr. Oxman immediately muddies the waters by his constant references to "theater," as in:

There are now two, inter-connected discussions going on. One has to do with the comparison of music versus theatre, and their similarities and differences. The other has to do with the comparison of theatre versus film, specifically as it relates to plays being done as films. The two strains are highly related to each other because I, and others, argue that the recording of classical music and the filming of theatre are similar. Mr. Douglas disagrees.

Mr. Douglas did no such thing. Mr. Douglas never addressed "theater" in his narrowly limited argument (or any previous arguments, for that matter), and for good reason, too. "Theater" encompasses the totality of the presentation and experience of a play staged live, and that totality versus the totality of a cinematic version of a play is not what was being argued — yet. That was still to come at the very end of an argument on the question of a cinematic version of a play versus its live staged version in terms of the artwork itself, that argument to commence at such time when Mr. Oxman finally first deigned to give us his explication of his concept of "theatricality." The present narrowly limited argument was intended only to dispense with the false, ill-informed, and wrongheaded notion put forward by Mr. Oxman that there was some sort of equivalency between a recorded version of classical music versus a live version, and a cinematic version of a play versus a live staged version.

Further, Mr. Oxman's continued use of the term "theater" in place of the term "play" made it appear that instead of dealing with the matter of a cinematic version of a play versus a live staged version, what the original question dealt with was the matter of a filmed stage play version of a play versus that play staged live, which is a comparison of a totally different order, and not the subject to be argued eventually (i.e., at such time when Mr. Oxman would first give us his explication of his notion of the concept of "theatricality").

I'd like to think that malaprop use of the term "theater" was simply the result of sloppy writing on Mr. Oxman's part (such writing would not have been unexpected given the overwrought, fairly incoherent character of Mr. Oxman's rant), but it fast became clear Mr. Oxman used the term by design in order to change the subject from the intended future argument concerning the cinematic version of a play versus its live staged version in terms of the artwork itself (i.e., the play) to an argument about the experience of each; in other words, right back to the very thing that made previous attempts at an examination of stage versus film in terms of the artwork itself an exercise in futility, and largely pointless.

And it only gets worse as Mr. Oxman goes off discursively on impassioned, theater-freak tangents having nothing to do with either the narrowly limited argument of my above linked post, or the larger question that was ultimately to have been argued after that narrowly limited argument had been dispensed with (i.e., the larger question of a cinematic version of a play versus its live staged version in terms of the artwork itself). And it's precisely one of these impassioned, theater-freak tangents — one making a perfectly absurd and tendentious comparison between an idiot, mass-market movie and a serious-minded play — that my fellow weblogger, playwright George Hunka, singled out, and upon which and its author saw fit to heap his lavish and unstinting praise:

It's embarrassing, this desire to heap more praise on Steve Oxman, but with this recent post he leaps to the top of list of The Drama Critics Who Blog (sorry, Terry). The money quote today from Mr. Oxman:

"... those old enough will likely recall the film 'Wall Street'. There was also that same year a play by the great Caryl Churchill, called 'Serious Money', set in the London equivalent of Wall Street. You've never heard of it because when they replaced the London cast (which originally included Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina) with Americans, the production apparently didn't work in New York and bombed. I saw it in London and it was spectacular. It couldn't possibly be put on film, because it was so stylized. But it captured the frenzied feeling of being on the trading floor way better than 'Wall Street' did. Could the text be recaptured on film? Sure. But the 'play' couldn't be. The artwork was designed to create an environment–a sensation. Film can show you the reality better, but done well, theatre can give you the greater truth. Provide that particular play with an actual on-site location, instead of just a bare space with chairs and tables, and you've ruined it. Record it and watch it on video, and I assure you it won't even resemble what it was like to see it performed.

"By the way, it was in verse. And it spoke to more than the rational part of my brain.

"It was theatre. And it was beautiful."

Great buncha words there, Steve.

Great buncha words, no doubt — for devoted, passionate partisans of the theater, that is, with no interest in, nor the slightest inclination to, an examination of, and a dealing with, the question originally posited, and, as yet, still never argued.