Isaac I vs. Henry V

Good morning, class! 

So Isaac Butler has made another idiotic pronouncement. What else is new?  We already know the blog host and trust-funded bon vivant (having a bad hair day, above) feels that Shakespeare's overrated - so what's the big deal if he has decided that Henry V is proof positive of the Bard's mediocrity?

Well, it's not that big a deal, actually - and yes, yes, I promised to never read his silly blog!  But the post was staring me in the face on Art's blogroll, and besides, as Isaac himself might say (as he gamely suggests in a backpedaling later post), his position is interesting to study.  It's "a fruitful thing to discuss."

And why?  Because Butler's not just an Internet busybody these days - he's also actually teaching Shakespeare, to college students, at the University of Minnesota.

I know, I know - this is a bit like Lamarck explaining evolution, or Pope Urban offering a seminar on Galileo! (I could go on and on.)

But is Butler's current post (and position) just a bizarrely ironic quirk of fate - or a kind of cultural harbinger?  I'm hoping for the former, of course, but I fear the latter.  Because Isaac's such an exquisitely-detailed millennial type; it's like he was designed by computers and sent back from the future to warn us or something.

Hold on, though - back to his points against Henry V; they're so cliched they're somehow delicious. According to Isaac, Henry V sucks because:

1) There's no suspense - we know how it's going to turn out.  It's actually history!

2) The characters are bad.  So what if we're still talking about them 400 years after the fact?  They're still  uninteresting, you know what I mean? Like in that way David Byrne talked about.

3)  It's not that funny, and sometimes the jokes are mean.

4) What's with the plot?  Yeah, even though it's history, it should still have a plot, just like it should still have suspense!  Duh.  That's obvious.

5)  The Battle of Agincourt is not sufficiently awesome.  There's really nothing more to say.

6) The French aren't badass villains, either.  Seriously, they're not.  Just try hissing them, you'll feel silly.

And yes, that's the professor's lecture on Henry V!  I hope the sophomores are feeling edified by now, because I'm not.

Even though I have to admit - everything Professor Butler says is true. I mean, as I read his post, I could only think to myself, "Oh, my GOD!  I do feel silly hissing the Dauphin!"

Ha ha, just kidding.  Professor Butler has only proven that Henry V is a very bad comic book. Indeed, Shakespeare totally ignores the rules of genre!  What was he thinking???

Gosh, who knows?  But what's funny about all this is that the Professor's comments are basically what you'd expect the smart-alecky student in the back row to point out: this play was weird; Henry's a mystery; am I supposed to cheer the hero or not?; and am I supposed to hiss the villains - or not?; I don't get it.  It's not like Star Wars at all!

And then the professor starts talking.  And begins to explain, perhaps, that Henry V is an extended meditation on the meaning of our celebration of "history;" that Henry's "character" seems to be missing because it vanished into his public role slowly, over the course of two previous plays, and that therefore his persona is intentionally mysterious; that the actual Battle of Agincourt for Shakespeare is all but immaterial; and that there is almost no other play extant that can be interpreted in such contradictory, utterly opposed ways - which makes it a "mirror" rather than a "window" (much less a "screen").  It is, in short, a cultural artifact utterly unlike anything in pop culture; indeed, it contains pop culture - what's more, it's a covert critique of exactly what you think it should be.

Only the professor is Isaac Butler!  So none of that is said.  Instead, the student is encouraged to validate his own naive impressions as intellectual insight through "fruitful discussion."  And the academic community takes another small step in its long journey toward intellectual senescence.

There goes the playborhood!

Over at the Huntington's blog, Lisa Timmel, Director of New Work, has decided to let us in on the philosophy guiding next year's season (which, like this year's, will be comprised almost entirely of new or "newish" work):

Some local critics [that means me, folks!] have complained that there is too much new work going on in Boston. The pleasure of experiencing a new play is very different from the pleasure of experiencing an older play and I think everyone has their goldilocks point: this theatre has too many new plays, this theatre has too few, and we’re all looking for the one that gets the balance just right. But that kind of categorical thinking unfairly limits the expansive and expanding experience of attending live theatre. A play is not important simply because it is old or because it is new. A play is important because of the specific story it tells and the unique way it is told. A play is not important simply because we choose to produce it; it is important because you come to see it.

I confess I kind of love this, because it's almost beautifully nonsensical, and doesn't actually address the arguments it pretends it's responding to - after all, who's arguing for old stuff simply because it's old? Is that why the Huntington thinks people love the classics - because they're old?

Then there's the odd claim that a play is only important because the Huntington audience comes to see it. I'm not sure what that even means, but it seems to fly in the face of the established fact that truly ground-breaking drama often plays to small houses.

But then things get really weird:

So, why new plays? Because the world changes and perspectives shift. Because American theatre, in all its forms, thrives on the new, it always has. Our theatre history is full of the degenerate melding of forms: immigrant melodramas, minstrelsy, vaudeville and musicals all of them bubbling up into the mainstream one way or another and getting whitewashed along the way. There simply is no other way to tell the story of this country and our selves without including new work.

"Degenerate melding of forms"? Oooo, don't you just love that academic dirty talk? And how about "Immigrant melodramas, minstrelsy, vaudeville and musicals, all of them bubbling up into the mainstream one way or another and getting whitewashed along the way"? I mean seriously, "whitewashed"? Do I spot Clybourne Park or Neighbors, or maybe The Scottsboro Boys on the horizon? Minstrelsy is so hot these days, there's so much to choose from! Or maybe we'll be treated to some world premiere, in which Stepin Fetchit moves in next door to David Mamet!

Somehow, somewhere, I sense Isaac Butler getting excited. But back to Timmel, who wraps with:

Incidentally, the answer to the question “Why classic plays?” is exactly the same: Because the world changes and perspectives shift. There simply is no other way to tell the story of this country and our selves without including plays from other places and other eras.

Yes, you read that right: we're doing this play instead of that play for the following reason. But if we'd decided to do that play instead of this play, it would be for the same reason.

Really, you can't make this stuff up.

[Update: Isaac Butler is, indeed, already excited!]

A quick note on the meaning of "ad hominem"

I wound up in an e-mail exchange with Bill Marx last night in which he called me "the master of ad hominem." I was struck by this because it's a slur that's been bouncing around the web about me; Isaac Butler said much the same thing here [correction - the term actually appears in the comments to, rather than the main body of, that post] and J. Holtham has tossed the claim around, as have other bloggers.

But one can only assume from this that Bill Marx, et. al., don't understand the meaning of "ad hominem." So in the spirit of education, I thought I'd run a post about the term.

An ad hominem argument (meaning "argument against the man") is defined as something like this:

Person 1 has made claim X.
There is something objectionable about Person 1.
Therefore claim X is false.

A good example would be:

Bill Marx claims that the Huntington Theatre should have done a play other than All My Sons.
Bill Marx is pudgy and unpleasant.
Therefore, his claim is false.

I never make arguments like this - even when, as above, all the separate statements may be true. I think to lazy writers like Isaac and Bill, "ad hominem" has become a synonym for "insulting." And of course I've insulted them plenty of times - but always because of what they've said, not because of who they are. I'm constantly saying things like "Isaac Butler is a dishonest careerist because he said X, which is untrue but opens up a possible job opportunity," and "Bill Marx is a pompous ass because he said X, which doesn't help local theatre but only buffs his own ego." You see that "because he said X" part? That means the statement was an attack, but not an ad hominem attack.

Likewise, if I say "Lydia Diamond R. has distorted the historical record in two different plays to match a consistent psychological profile, and therefore is neurotic," that is not an ad hominem argument. It could be false, but you have to prove that with a statement that has a "because" in it (but does NOT have the name "Thomas Garvey" in it). You have to say something like "Lydia R. Diamond may tailor history to her own psychological profile but this is not neurotic BECAUSE . . ." I'm not sure what would come after that "because," but that's what you have to do - the argument stands separately from me, personally, and it has an inner logic that you have to address.

What's funniest about those who claim I resort to ad hominem attack is, of course, that they themselves are far more prone to the practice. The retort to my assessment of Diamond, for instance, has often been (and I'm not making this up) "Thomas Garvey is a troll!!" In the past, other bloggers have replied to my arguments with "Thomas Garvey is a coward!" "Thomas Garvey is an old queen!" And, of course, "Thomas Garvey is a racist, no wait, he is a BIGOT instead!"

This, of course, brings up something very tricky for the identity politics crowd: many of their claims are hard to distinguish from ad hominem attacks, as they tend to work backward from broad social characterizations. The whole circumstance of a white man criticizing a black woman, which is what has happened here, is fraught for these folks, and many of them immediately jump to the essentially ad hominem argument of "You're racist (and sexist)!" And if that claim doesn't match your profile, it morphs to "You're unconsciously racist!" or "You're structurally racist!" The target floats, but remains essentially the same, and it is, potentially, an ad hominem attack. Of course you might argue from this that therefore those who "dialogue" about identity politics should be especially careful about indulging in this kind of thing. That would seem to be a reasonable admonition, but it's likely to fall on deaf ears.

Because of course I agree heartily that there are some arguments that are racist, and some that are unconsciously racist. Maybe even some that are structurally racist. But the thing is, even if you're going to make that argument, you still have to begin it with a sentence that runs "Lydia R. Diamond tailors history to her psychological profile, but that is not neurotic BECAUSE . . ." (Or, in the case of RVC Bard, "Feeling unworthy of white people's presence is not neurotic BECAUSE . . .") You have to source your attack in the topic at hand. You can't begin with a general argument about the existence of racism, and then work backward to Lydia R. Diamond and RVCBard; this is a form of deductive fallacy, because while racism certainly exists, these two people could still be neurotic about it.

And yet so far no one in this blogosphere imbroglio has written any analysis at all about Lydia R. Diamond or her plays (and of course RVCBard hasn't stopped crying since I ran my post, so no one's going to go near her with anything but kleenex). But until they do, those who attack me are guilty of - yes, wait for it - ad hominem attack.