News: problems, accuracy, fairness, commercialism, entertainment, ratings.

There you have it. Nothing has really changed since the introduction of TV as the omnipresent drug in American and world homes in the 1950s. Only the scale of rampant greed has escalated as the shifting media landscape threatens the older established orders.

My spouse thinks I’m crazy to watch TV news; perhaps I am in accord. At least, I compare as many sources as possible, and never rely solely on the “image-word” instead of the written word. Remember folks, reading is a more contemplative act than watching moving pictures. It “slows” you down by virtue of what it is. Question your reading too. I feel it’s a responsibility of being alive.

TV “frames” things and people rarely question anything outside the “frame” they’ve been handed. People who do not examine are always going to be victimized by others who provide the information. Do you really want to be a victim, someone to whom things “happen”?

Orwell was too small in his vision. 1984 was thirty years ago, and we blithely give away ourselves every day. Privacy? By the way, if you use the phrase “reality television” without irony, you’ve drunk the Kool-Aid.

Remember, all news organizations are subsidiaries of much larger corporate interests. While trumpeting their dedication to providing current, accurate information, they are only, repeat, only concerned with their bottom line and the dividends they pay to the shareholders.

And don’t even get me started on processed foods.

© 2014 by Frank Daykin, for Innovative Music Programs

 

Do you know the work of Robert Coles (b. 1929), eminent child psychologist and professor at Harvard? I came to it obliquely, while searching for some James Agee related something or other. He is the “James Agee Professor of Social Ethics” at Harvard. Who knew there was such a position? Fitting, for the author of “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” though hard-drinking and tormented, had a great sense of social injustice, despite his “white-glove” prep school upbringing.

Anyway, Coles has authored more than eighty books and 1300 articles, nearly all of them concerned with human moral, spiritual, and social sensibility and reasoning, mainly in children but also in adults, especially writers. There’s the Agee connection again.

Coles discovered that the many children and adults in the midst of crisis whom he interviewed over the years seemed, in most cases, quite normal psychologically. In many instances, the more strenuous the challenge, the greater depth of character the subject demonstrated. Speaking of his early work among children in desegregating New Orleans schools in the early 1960s, he recalls: “I was looking for ‘psychopathology’ in those early years of my residence in the South.” What he found instead was “remarkably little psychiatric illness … despite their trials.”

In 1961, he attracted considerable attention with an article he wrote in The Atlantic Monthly challenging traditional psychiatry. “When the heart dies,” he reflected, “we [psychiatrists] slip into wordy and doctrinaire caricatures of life. Our journals, our habits of talk become cluttered with jargon… We embrace icy reasoning.”

As Coles listens to people talk about their lives, he has been impressed and moved by their moral sensitivity by the ways in which people reflect on their lives in moral terms. He has been astonished by the moments of sudden insight that quite “ordinary” people experience. In The Moral Life of Children, for instance, he reflects on the life of Ruby Bridges, the six-year-old girl who figured prominently in the first volume of Children of Crisis, with whose study Coles began nearly thirty years of work. Ruby was one of the black children who, in the face of abusive, even violent, resistance, initiated school desegregation in New Orleans. Her mother told Coles that every night Ruby prayed for those in the mob who threatened and harassed her. “I think of the many black children my wife and I came to know, in Arkansas and Louisiana and Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi — and of the white children too, who braved awful criticism to befriend them…. Whence that moral capacity, that moral spirit, that moral leadership? How are we to make sense of such moral behavior in psychodynamic terms?”

He was one of the first to recognize that even small children have highly developed moral systems that deserve full consideration. Yet, they’re not “little adults.”

Coles found that children decide what is right and wrong largely by listening to one another and watching was goes on around them. When asked about lying, stealing, using drugs, abortion, or their reasons for choosing a job, they expressed rudimentary ethical systems or “moral compasses,” as Coles called them. These turned out to be more important than traditional background factors such as economic status, sex, race and even religious practice. Yet he found that these moral standards are increasingly set aside as children begin to reflect the values of society. The pressure to succeed and the mindset that “what works is what works for me” begins to supplant that inner voice. “Sadly,” Coles said, “as so-called cultural literacy grows, what could be called moral literacy declines.”

“Careful the things you say
Children will listen
Careful the things you do
Children will see and learn
Children may not obey, but children will listen
Children will look to you for which way to turn
To learn what to be
Careful before you say ‘Listen to me’
Children will listen”

            _Sondheim, from Into the Woods

© 2014 by Frank Daykin, for Innovative Music Programs

 

Thank goodness for slightly crazy people who venerate the past. No, I’m not referring to myself today, but to Henri Langlois (1914-1977), co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française.

His love for the movies was exceeded only by his personal eccentricity. Morbidly obese, not easy to get along with, living amid so much cinematic debris that a reality show could have been done about it . . .

However, he realized the fragility of this particular medium, and how quickly it would all vanish if no one preserved examples. In that, he was a pioneer.

He was also influential on the golden age of French “New Wave” auteurs such as Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Chabrol, and Resnais, and the whole Cahiers du Cinéma crowd.

The library grew from 10 films in 1936 to over 60,000 by the early 70s, despite a nitrate fire in 1959 that destroyed an unknown but large portion of the archives.

Langlois’ methods were “romantic” rather than scientific. He didn’t care about record keeping, and was constantly at odds with funders and other staff members, who he routinely disrespected.

In 1974, he received an honorary Oscar for his work.

Two documentary movies have been made about him: Henri Langlois (1970, English), and The Phantom of the Cinémathèque (2004/05, English with French interviews).

Check it out! I know it requires a somewhat inordinate amount of patience to appreciate silent films. You have to be in that “space” to really enjoy the pictures only. But remember, there were thirty years of filmmaking before there was a “peep” from the screen. (Not counting live music that accompanied them.) We’re still 14 years away from the 100th anniversary of the first “talkie”!

Everything vanishes.

© 2014 by Frank Daykin, for Innovative Music Programs

 

What do Mary Martin, Sandy Duncan and “?” have in common? That’s right, they all starred in “Peter Pan,” a musical based on the 1904 play (Peter Pan, or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up) by James Barrie (1860-1937). “?” is the as-yet unnamed star of the next live NBC musical presentation, following on the success of last year’s “The Sound of Music.” Maude Adams (subject of a previous blog post) was one of the first Peters, he seems to have mostly been played by adult women, a gender-switch that only adds to the ambiguity and psychological depth (or distress) of eternal childhood.

The character had made a brief appearance in a 1902 novel. Then the play became a novel again in 1911, Peter and Wendy. Talk about recycling your greatest hit. Well, Handel did it too.

The character was inspired by Barrie’s older brother who died in an ice skating accident the day before he turned 14, and was thus ever a youth in his grieving mother’s mind and heart.

Barrie never specified the actual “look” or age of Peter Pan, and it varied considerably from the first stage appearances in 1904 (red costume) to the latest, including Disney et al (green costume). He did say that Peter had all his “first teeth,” which would make him younger than 13, and that he was a “beautiful boy with a beautiful smile, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that flow from trees.” In the play, his costume is made of autumn leaves and cobwebs.

Recently, a successful Broadway “prequel” called “Peter and the Starcatchers” was an enjoyable re-do, telling “how they got that way.”

Barrie had a long-suffering actress/wife, one Mary Ansell (1861-1945). But he couldn’t give up his obsession with the Llewelyn Davies family, particularly the mother and her boys, who became the “Lost” Boys. Incipient pedophilia? It seems the late-Victorian age was rife with it, witness Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell. Ansell was no peach either, having an affair with a colleague of Barrie. Conveniently, he sued for divorce on the grounds of infidelity, although he had been emotionally “elsewhere” for years too.

As we know by now, Disney purified the muddy waters surrounding all this, tidying yet another fairy tale into innocuous childhood pabulum.

Michael Jackson, that arrested development poster-child, named his extravagant California ranch “Neverland,” filling it with all manner of age-inappropriate attractions. He paid dearly for his weird, but I imagine ultimately harmless, obsessions.

I understand advertising people and their ways intellectually, but I will never “connect” things the way they do. One of the major bus lines to points around the northeast is called “Peter Pan Trailways.” The only place I feel I am going when on one of those buses is “Nowhereland,” or maybe “Never-ArriveLand.”

If today’s thoughts are somewhat disconnected, chalk it up to stardust.

“It does seem inevitable that anyone who is completely dedicated to a task which is almost unrealizable must suffer for it.” James Barrie

Stirring words for any creative or recreative artist.

© 2014 by Frank Daykin, for Innovative Music Programs

 

By the way, he didn’t say it: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” But it sounds good.

Thinking about television, entertainment in general, I got to wondering if it is really any different than in the day of P T Barnum (Phineas Taylor, 1810-1891). Good Connecticut boy, born on the fifth of July. Son of an innkeeper, avers to hard work, ingenious, scheming. He wrote his own memoirs well before his death. He even served two terms in the Connecticut legislature, and was mayor of Bridgeport.

Maybe the people were more naïve, but with the way we have passively gobbled the phenomenon of so-called “reality” television, I think we shouldn’t give ourselves too much credit for sophistication.

Barnum was the first truly successful “humbug,” con artist, an itinerant showman who was keenly aware of opportunity.

He moved to New York and acquired a building on Ann Street which became “Barnum’s AmericanMuseum.” You know the Ives song “Ann Street”: Quaint name, Ann Street, width of same, ten feet, but business! Both feet. Rather short, Ann Street.

One of his “exhibits” was a woman named Joyce Heth. She was alleged to have been George Washington’s nurse. A blind, mostly paralyzed slave. Never mind that her billed age was 161. All the right buttons were pushed: patriotism, extremity (in this case, longevity), the freak factor. She died in 1838 at age 80.

“General Tom Thumb” the world’s littlest person. (Not.) Queen Victoria was impressed. I prefer Ravel’s “Petit Poucet” any day.

A “Feejee mermaid.”

Yet, amid all these garish tricks, he managed to find and import a true artist, the “Swedish Nightingale,” Soprano Jenny Lind (Johanna Maria Lind, 1820-1887). She toured all over America in 1850, singing with her trademark coloratura (agility) and charisma, earning herself and Barnum the biggest fortune of any of his schemes. She was paid $1000 a night for 150 nights. But she was an “exhibition” too, a circus act if you will.

Eventually rivals and other hucksters would merge their efforts into what is still called the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus.

It’s not like he was completely amoral however. He gave generously to many social causes, and had progressive views for his time, on the subject of contraception, for example.

Think for yourself people, and try to evaluate what you’re seeing, being given, hearing, reading. Don’t just swallow it.

© 2014 by Frank Daykin, for Innovative Music Programs

 

 

Some days, words just don’t cut it. Therefore, images, from one of my favorite twentieth century artists, Paul Klee (1879-1940).

“Art does not reproduce the visible—it makes visible.”

“Myself is a dramatic ensemble.”

© 2014 by Frank Daykin, for Innovative Music Programs

 

You know you’re in trouble when the “B” players in your opera outshine the stars. That was the case in the recent brief run of Andrea Chénier at the Metropolitan Opera.

Now I’m not one of those lamenters who constantly evoke some “golden age” of singing, which is usually mythical anyway, a product of the built-in forgetter we all have. I believe that now is all we have, and that the voices need to be cast with care. This is incredibly difficult to achieve in a house like the Met, where decisions are made as many as five years ahead of time, which is an eternity in vocal terms, and where the house is inappropriately large.

The opera, set in the French Revolution and Terror immediately following, is by Umberto Giordano. Premiered in 1896, during the heyday of verismo, which means “truth,” the title role has been a vehicle for the likes of Gigli, DelMonaco, Tucker, Bergonzi, and Corelli. For me, verismo indicates not only a style of opera, but a specific vocal weight and color, shot through with charged emotion.

That quality is what was lacking here. However, Argentinian tenor Marcelo Alvarez actually won me over, once I got used to his essentially lyrical sound (not in itself a bad thing to have!) instead of the heavier more impassioned sound I hungered for. It’s just that the music isn’t strong enough by itself, unless the singers are really chewing the scenery with their voices. It’s the kind of opera that really doesn’t even need staging: one could just face the footlights and bellow, if the quality was good, and get the points across.

Patricia Racette, the soprano lead, on the other hand, has been getting bad advice from her agent, or is greedy, or I don’t know what. She has increasingly been singing roles that are way too heavy for her (Tosca? Cio-Cio San?), and that are all over the place in terms of vocal heft. I even heard her Carmen (!) at the now-defunct City Opera. (I know, some soprani have tried it in the past, with the keys raised, but this was in the mezzo key.) At that performance, an opera neophyte whom I had taken turned to me and (about Racette) uttered the charmingly direct “Where’s the beef?” As Maddalena in Chénier, Racette was not up to the demands of the part, even skewing horribly sharp and/or flat on climaxes. Sometimes it sounded as if she was both at once.

Now, about that “B” role. Olesya Petrovam a Russian mezzo, made her Met debut in the opera-stealing role of Madelon, who offers her only remaining grandson to the cause, knowing he will certainly be cut down. This was a “wow” moment. As was Zeljko Lucic’s Nemico della patria.

Maybe the casting director(s) need to be taken to the Conciergerie.

© 2014 by Frank Daykin, for Innovative Music Programs

 

What a range! And obviously, what an ability to work with diverse larger-than-life personalities. From Bette Davis (Best Actress Oscar) and Henry Fonda in Jezebel; Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights; Davis again in The Letter; Greer Garson (Best Actress Oscar) and Walter Pidgeon in Mrs Miniver (also Best Director and Best Picture); Davis again in The Little Foxes; Myrna Loy, Frederick March (Best Actor Oscar), Dana Andrews in The Best Years of Our Lives (also Best Director and Best Picture); Olivia de Haviland (Best Actress Oscar) and Montgomery Clift in The Heiress; Audrey Hepburn (Best Actress Oscar) and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday; Charlton Heston (Best Actor Oscar) in Ben Hur (also Best Director and Best Picture); and all the way up to Barbra Streisand (Best Actress Oscar, but a tie with Katherine Hepburn for The Lion in Winter) in Funny Girl.

The legacy of director William Wyler (1902-1981), the “bona fide perfectionist.” Born in France to Alsatian Jews. Worked for a while as a shirt seller in Paris. Related to Universal’s Carl Laemmle through his mother’s family. Emigrated to Hollywood. Both his wives were named Margaret. Convenient for when you’re calling that name out in the throes of passion.

All told, fourteen of his actors won Oscars, out of a record thirty-six of his actors being nominated.

According to anecdote, noted violinist Toscha Seidel (famed for his lush tone, and who made his career in the studios of Hollywood movies) told Wyler: “Mr Wyler, you do not vibrato by shaking your leg.” The director wanted a more visually demonstrative expression of the player’s emotion.

Wyler himself was quite pithy: “I made over forty Westerns. I used to lie awake nights trying to think up new ways of getting on and off a horse.” “It’s eighty percent script and twenty percent you get great actors. There’s nothing else to it.” And “Stills belong in the lobby, not on the screen.”

So, dust off your Netflix subscription, stop binge watching House of Cards, and spend some time with a legend or two.

© 2014 by Frank Daykin, for Innovative Music Programs