LETTER: Critics might seem to ‘get it’
Editor,
The letter in Monday’s paper regarding the headline for the scathing review of “Anton in Show Business” is unfair. First of all, nobody is going to take the line as an imperative order. It’s in the features section of Friday’s newspaper for Pete’s sake. I doubt anybody will recognize it as anything else but somebody’s opinion. I also don’t feel the review’s headline has actively suppressed “autonomous intellectual engagement and independent thinking”. Any more than a positive boot-licking-whatever-the-department-produces review would. The letter seems to be reaching for a way to attack the negative review without actually attacking it.
The funny thing is that the review really isn’t that good. Wright comes off as a bit of a prude; which to be fair, is probably an accurate complaint about the production. From what I’ve seen of the USU theatrical productions, the performers use profanity and risqué material the same way that a child dresses up in her parent’s clothes. I can’t imagine having a jolting or shocking experience in a university production, much less an erotic one. Conviction is beyond most of these performers. Even worse than Wright’s prudishness, is the fact that there is still a bit of a bootlick in him. He praises the actresses
as “excellent,” but never identifies what made them so excellent. Would he ever come out and say that an actress was horrible, even if he really felt that way? He attacked the material, not as much the execution, and that seemed awfully politically correct to me.
I hardly ever read The Statesman’s theatrical reviews because I’ve instinctively pegged them as milk-veined PR pieces. Wright’s review was a step in the right direction. Far from suppressing intellectual engagement, it may even initiate it. Hopefully, it may even convince our theater department to exhibit something other than hatred and condescension for their audience. And if we can produce a genuinely, intelligently, culturally sophisticated, positive review that isn’t a milk-veined PR piece, perhaps students will attend these performances for reasons other than out of fidelity to school spirit.
Alex Jackson