Thursday 7 April 2016

But It's What The 'Guardian' Helped Teach Them, Ellen...

This, along with accounts of incessant loud booing in theatres, appears to be a sign of changing times. It’s not so much that everyone is a critic, rather that everyone is such a bad, incompetent critic, the kind of critic who is too impatient and lazy to fashion a proper critique so resorts to boorish disruption instead.
Gosh! I wonder where they could have learned such impulsive and sloppy critiquing?
I would have thought that, if you don’t like a play, you’d quietly leave, maybe ask for your money back, and fair enough. However, now there seems to be a new breed of uber-consumers who “know their rights” and (here’s a crucial shift) won’t sit passively as mere audience members but rather demand “equal billing” just for their reactions. In short, it’s the era of the self-sanctified right to reply as an instant dominant force that cannot be silenced or pacified.
Remind me again, what's the name of this publication you're writing for, Barbara?
While audiences are an integral part of the theatre experience, this doesn’t give individuals the right to throw tantrums, like tyrannical children, ruining the experience for everybody else. After all, when the media likes of me wish to spout ill-informed, unsubstantiated, semi-literate opinions, we usually wait until we get home. This kind of disruption (swearing, booing) seems beyond good, honest audience participation – it’s crude cultural vandalism. While performers often stand accused of being precious and over-entitled, it’s increasingly the hecklers who are displaying these self-aggrandising traits and we allow these situations to become the norm at our peril.
This rag helped to encourage the very strident virtue signalling behaviour it now decries. YCMIU, could you?

6 comments:

Antisthenes said...

People are becoming increasingly more aware of their rights, which should be a good thing as it makes us more accountable for our actions. Coupled with which information is much more freely available. Exposing what others are doing and giving us access to knowledge on what to do if we do not approve of what they are doing. Good in theory however it does not appear so much so in practice. The reason the stupid, the malicious and the dishonest are misusing and abusing it. There are not many of us who do not have one or more of those attributes.

The old adage "what we don't know cant harm us" may have more wisdom in it than I would normally give it credit. Some wise sage must have understood human nature and decided that for most of us it was safer that we know very little. "knowledge is power" another of those type of sayings and so it is. As we know power corrupts and the more of it you have the more corruptible you become. Progress has brought us many wonderful things but it also brings with it a new set of problems before we have solved the previous ones. That cannot continue at some point something has to give. Either us or progress or both.

Anonymous said...

"After all, when the media likes of me wish to spout ill-informed, unsubstantiated, semi-literate opinions, we usually wait until we get home. " Presumably they email in their columns from home then.

George

Edward Spalton said...

I remember an account of a stage production in Dublin of the story of Ann Frank in pre PC times.

The audience thought it was so appalling that, when the Gestapo arrived,
they shouted " She's upstairs!"

Flaxen Saxon said...

Anyone who uses the phrase: 'Uber-consumer', is a total pretentious twat and should be beaten with a flaccid bloater until thoroughly moist.

JuliaM said...

"Progress has brought us many wonderful things but it also brings with it a new set of problems before we have solved the previous ones."

Good point!

"Presumably they email in their columns from home then."

Heh!

"I remember an account of a stage production in Dublin of the story of Ann Frank in pre PC times."

Ah, yes! Starring Pia Zadora, or so the story goes.

"Anyone who uses the phrase: 'Uber-consumer', is a total pretentious twat.."

As if writing in thr 'Guardian' wasn't clue enough!

Rationality said...

Strangely enough, this came only days after another article in the same paper from Stephen Thrasher (who's photo always looks as if a discerning member of the public has inserted a broomstick three feet up his bum).

How dare Bill Clinton shout over Black Lives Matter protesters?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/08/bill-clinton-black-lives-matter-protesters-defending-record