Jumping the Gay Shark II

I am flattered that an anonymous writer, “Baltimore Arts Supporter,” has taken the time to write at such length about what he perceives as flaws in my post on Le Cabaret de Carmen (“Jumping the Gay Shark”), and numerous flaws in my personal character as well. His comments on the opera deserve a response. He says:

Did you see the production by any chance? Just curious – there is nothing more ignorant, and literally brainless, than forming an opinion with no personal evidence. If you did see it than at least you have that going for you – though I would be surprised you could write this if you actually had been there.

No, I did not see it. As I stated, I wrote about the post at Ionarts and the review by Mary Carole McCauley in the Baltimore Sun. My opinions on those two writings were formed after I actually read them – personally. True, I expressed my doubts about McCauley’s opinion of the opera plot and explained why I had those doubts, but I did not purport to write a review of the opera. Had I been there, I might have commented on what I saw. Instead, I commented on what I read. Mea culpa.

You might be aware that reviews only give one person’s opinion of a work, and without seeing it for yourself you have no idea whether this review accurately reflects the experience, let alone the motivation of the performance or artists creating it. Much like right-wing book-banners that wanted to take the “Grapes of Wrath” out of libraries without ever reading it. Ultimately the opinions of people that form them without enough integrity to actually experience what it is they are critiquing is utterly inconsequential. Such people are lucky if they are forgotten by posterity, for no doubt the other alternative is that they are the laughing stocks of history.

Right-wing book banners! Good grief. Where did that come from? Oh, right, I’m conservative and therefore the writer can paint me as a book banner without any “personal” evidence – or any evidence of any kind. Mr. Baltimore certainly oversteps logic when he suggests that we cannot criticize something without actually experiencing it. Nonsense. Must I get a tattoo and pierce my nose before criticizing body mutilations so fashionable today? Should Mr. Baltimore burn a book or two before venturing to caricature conservatives?

You have many ignorant points in your post. Here are a few:

a) The production never claims to have uncovered a homoerotic side to the narrative. It happily admits to creating it. You should do your homework.

I never said the production claims to have uncovered a homoerotic side to the narrative. I quoted the reviewer saying that Nelson had “discovered” a homoerotic element in Carmen. If the production happily admits that it did not discover a homoerotic element, but rather created one, then the production and I are in agreement.

b) Only an idiot would not consider a man struggling with his sexuality pulled into a love triangle with a transexual in the social climate of the early 20th century not dramatic – it maybe be tasteless, it certainly is not Bizet, but it is definitely dramatically charged. No wind is lacking in those sails.

Mr. Baltimore concedes that this production may be tasteless (and presumably he has seen it). I did not call the production tasteless, but should I apologize for thinking that tastelessness would not dramatically charged? I have not found much drama in tastelessness since I was 9 years old.

c) Michaela not significant? Again idiotic. Portraying the struggle of a woman in love with a man who is not attracted to her is socially relevant and very significant. Again, it isn’t Bizet, and it may not be to narrow-minded conservative afraid-of-change standards, but to say she is insignificant just because her affection is unrequited shows a complete lack of an understanding of the genres you claim to defend. If you don’t understand what makes for dramatically compelling narrative or characterization, you really should find different blog topics. You may not like it, or politically buy it, but you have to be a fool to deny its dramatic potential.

If we discard the ad hominem attacks in the preceding paragraph, we are left with the writer’s contention that Michaela is significant dramatically because she loves a man who is not attracted to her. But Carmen is not concerned with the character development of Michaela. If Don Jose is gay, then the feminine Michaela has no allure. I am at a loss to understand how a love triangle gains “new tension” when one of its sides is removed. A perfectly good opera might be written that portrays the struggle of a woman who is in love with man who is not attracted to her, but that opera would need to follow some plot line other than Carmen. Or are we simply to presume that the conflict is strictly about Don Jose’s own sexuality, whether to be gay or straight? That issue might lend itself to dramatic development, but it is not Carmen, and it is certainly not a love triangle.

d)”One can posit that David’s love for Jonathan was erotic, but if so, it would tend to prove that homosexuality is a curable condition given that David matured into a full-fledged heterosexual.” Perhaps if you can only see the world in black-and-white…for the rest of us that have a clue as to how fluid sexuality is and three-dimensional the world is, all it would tend to prove is that David played for both teams and his sexuality defied the box the right-wing tries to put everything into. Regardless that opera isn’t like Handel’s “Saul”, there is no mention of the rest of the story and the David of that text is very much centered only on Jonathan. Artists mounting a work are only responsible for the text before them, not the history of what happened before or after – the David of this opera is Charpentier’s David, not the David of the people, nor should he have to be.

Nelson didn’t write “David et Jonathas”. If you knew the work, and your writings lead me to believe that you don’t explore the things you comment on, you would know that there is no escaping the homoerotic elements of the librettist’s text. Nelson isn’t claiming it is in the Bible, just that it is in this particular opera. The last thing Jonathan says dying in the arms of David is “despite the harness of my fate, at least I can still tell you that I love you”. Try to escape that with any viability – at the very least you can’t claim that an erotic relationship is a stretch from that text.

I made the point that any account speculating that David was a homosexual would have to contend with the historical record of his heterosexuality. I don’t know what box, right wing or left, that puts me in. I do know, which the writer apparently does not, that the arguments currently advanced by many homosexual advocates depend on establishing homosexuality as an “immutable trait.” Otherwise, homosexuals will not qualify as a suspect class entitled to equal protection under the law. If Mr. Baltimore rejects the notion that homosexuality is an immutable trait, he will find himself allied with many of the “right wingers” he seems to despise.

The writer is entitled to his opinion that an artist is responsible only for the text before him and not the history of what happened before or after, but I think the artistic portrayal of an historical character is more convincing when it does not contradict the historical record. Leaving out the recorded heterosexual side of David while presenting only a speculative homoerotic David hardly lays claim to a more “fluid” or “three-dimensional” viewpoint.

This is EXACTLY why great art and artists from Bach to Beethoven to Shakespeare to Woolfe (the list goes on and on) have also prospered artistically in face and despite of the right-wing. You think you are defending their art and you just don’t get it at all. Poor blind souls.

It is rather anachronistic to apply right- and left-wing concepts to the history of art. Some art has undoubtedly been created in opposition to prevailing power structures and mores, but much great art has been created under the patronage of church or court. Some art has flourished despite attempts to constrain it by political forces decidedly not right wing. Mr. Baltimore ignores far too much history in conceiving it as simply a conflict between noble artists and reactionary right-wingers. We don’t know what Bach would have thought of gay themes in music, but we know he didn’t write any. It is our peculiar fetish today to speculate about whether Bach’s failure to write on gay themes suggests that he was censored by the right wing, homophobic, or just a regular guy – or for scholars to attempt to rehabilitate such artists in modern eyes by projecting onto their work some social significance they never intended.

Your list of possible scenarios is cute, and shows why you aren’t, or at least I hope you aren’t, a director. This production works not because of some gimmick sexual twist, it is so much more than that. It works in ways your scenarios wouldn’t. One can tell when watching it that the plot twist was the product of the cabaret concept, not the impetus. The fact is, though the reviewer got it, most audience members didn’t. And that was fine. The production worked all that much more because, get the twist or not, the concept was engaging and the staging affecting. If you knew Nelson’s work at all you would know that it is many things, many things I’m sure you would neither like nor grasp, but it is absolutely not sophomoric. The ability to craft a nice sentence doesn’t make you qualified as a critic.

No, Mr. Baltimore, you can relax. The theater world is not likely to employ such a conventional fellow as me – you know, thinking that passé boy/girl stuff still speaks to audiences. But you should be worried that the homosexual theme is rapidly becoming as conventional and mind-numbingly predictable as any dramatic fad can be.

Ultimately I will end where I began. This isn’t buffoonery. Buffoonery is commenting on it, drawing a conclusion, without ever having seen it. In fact, buffoonery is being kind.

And we strive very hard at Arts & Ammo to be kind. It’s part of what distinguishes us from the rabble on the left.