Permission

Perhaps the most interesting, universal lesson I am learning in grad school is the permission, even encouragement to question, to reject, to dislike. Maybe it's the whole modernist focus on self rather than blind acceptance of the canon. Maybe it's because I had Sue Ellen Case's article "Classic Drag" under my pillow that I am processing info like this right now.

Actually, this became a big part of my classes yesterday. Absurdism regularly annoys me, the genre and work, not the class. I love the class, because it forces me to think critically and objectively, but without rejecting my own point of view. Yesterday was Waiting for Godot. And the more I read the play, the more I like it. The more I learn about Beckett, the more I dislike him. But the key to this was the fact that by understanding Absurdism, and in the grad-level environment, I am not expected to understand or like it. It's very liberating! I can violently disagree with Beckett's refusal to assign meaning, but at the same time policing interpretations. All I can say is, "Thank God the old bastard is dead." In general, I dislike the whole impulse to be recherche for the sake of. And Beckett really epitomized it.

Likewise in Film. I loved 8 1/2. But I don't particularly care for the film people. Not because they don't have interesting and valid things to say, but because of the impulse to separate themselves from the other arts. To suggest that by admitting the obvious links to theater or literature, it somehow lessons the Art of Film. Which is crap. It makes film people really pretentious and hard to work with since I am both a theater-maker and someone who believes in the interconnectedness of the arts.

It's empowering to have an opinion and the opportunity to defend it. It is also comforting to know I am not the only person who feels this way. Talking to another of the theatre grads from the Absurdism class over martinis, she affirmed that any time I fear that I am the only one possibly thinking that, chances are she is sitting a few feet away thinking the same thing. An ally! Then again, she and I have the same taste in YouTube.

on the iPod: Un Homme et Une Femme" - Yves Montand