I know how much you all enjoy kerfuffles, fooferaws, and imbroglios. Or is it imbroglia?
Here’s a report from the front, in the aftermath of a recent fracas I attended. (So recent, in fact, that my ears are still ringing and my hand stamp hasn’t worn off yet.)
After joining a lot of what are called “Leftbook” groups, which are groups where the rules for posting are longer than the Apple agreements we all sign without reading, and choked with baffling jargon that everyone else but me seems to speak fluently, I figured I’d join some fun ones.
With a breezy optimism worthy of General Custer, I joined a few classical music groups. “This will be a nice respite from my normal life, where I’m reluctant to even mention my affection for Schoenberg, Cage, and other composers. I can’t wait to dive into the sophisticated threads that await me, in the magical land where philistines and provincials don’t care to go.” I actually said these things out loud, my eyes wet with unshed tears. Of joy. In case that wasn’t clear.
It went south almost immediately. A professor of philosophy, or physics, or one of the other academic areas that qualify you to lecture musicians, was gettin’ biz-zay explaining to the mob how science had proven that atonal music is bad.
I gave him my two cents (and when I say two cents, I’m thinking of the coins of ancient Sparta, which weighed so much that even the burliest citizens were unable to lift them. This was a culture where tipping was often deadly, and scratch-off lottery tickets were a three-man operation). He didn’t respond, and I moved on in search of additional jollity.
Eventually there came another golden opportunity for me to speak on behalf of Art. Not Art Blakey, but “Art” in general. I recalled a phrase from Shakespeare— “there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” If the Bard were here now, I’d give him a withering look, but in my salad days (that is, yesterday), I saw things differently.
A post revealed the disturbing news that somewhere an opera director had taken it upon himself to change the ending of Carmen, so that Carmen stabbed Don Jose at the end, rather than the other way around.
This struck me as fatuous, but I probably would have let it go, had I not seen a comment accusing those of us who had a problem with this of just being old men who couldn’t accept that the world was changing. This accusation was like a dagger in my heart, just like the one that laid Carmen low. Or Don Jose, depending on which production you go to.
I commented that, in fact, I was very much in favor of the world changing, just not Carmen.
This might have been the end of it, but the thread grew, and grew, in the manner of a beanstalk. I don’t know about you, but when I see a beanstalk I climb it, figuring there probably won’t be a giant at the top. But— SPOILER ALERT— there was.
I saw a comment from a woman named Albertine Matmos-Presley. (On the advice of my solicitor, I’ve changed a letter or two of her name.) She didn’t object to the Carmen-empowering rewrite, because violence against women has reached epic proportions in our society, and we need to deal with this. I agree with that, naturally. Women of my acquaintance will, I hope, back me up when I claim to have never advocated for the stabbing of women. The crucial difference between my position and those of some on the thread is that I’m thinking primarily of women in the real world. I’m not sure how directing the fictional Carmen to stab her costar will result in psychotic men thinking twice about whatever they’re planning, but apparently there are those who think it will. The opera director, evidently, had gone on record with his assumption that opera fans in the past were applauding the onstage murder of Carmen, to show their support for misogyny. Maybe. Those of you who have made it through an entire opera will probably agree that when the house lights go up, you generally clap, even when no-one’s been stabbed.
I don’t want to bore you with the details, so I’ll just bore you with this summary. Things escalated, following the comment where yet another woman called me and others “crybabies” for making such a big deal about this. I told her I didn’t appreciate the namecalling. Ms. Matmos-Presley told me that namecalling was better than political soapboxing. I told the two of them, at some length, that this refusal to preserve the decencies of debate was troubling, and made leftists look bad, and a lot of other things besides. She accused me of “tone policing,” which I had thought was when you tell women not to be shrill or bossy, in an effort to silence the admirable efforts of women to speak up for themselves. It turns out that when women dismiss your views about art with insults, and call you names, you can’t ask them to stop.
Let me add a dull coda. This essay (if that’s what it is) should not be taken as some kind of invitation to women-hating stevedores and longshoremen in the audience to clap me on the back and buy me a beer. Until the introduction of the “tone policing” motive, I hadn’t seen any of this through the lens of sexism. In fact, a few other women on the thread had agreed with me, and a few men had backed up the director’s decision. My beef here is not with women. It wasn’t even about sex or politics at all, actually. I was talking about respecting artists, not trying to keep women from having a voice. To the contrary, I’d been at some pains to outline my common ground with the women in question, and clarify that we weren’t that far apart on the substance— I just had a problem with the dismissive mockery and schoolyard approach to debate.
Aside from my feelings about art and artists, I’m troubled by the reflexive reaching for trendy jargon to shield oneself from criticism. That kind of horseshit does the left no favors. For the record, I don’t object as a white male. Nothing tires me out faster than the whining of white males, many of whom really do seem to be crybabies, after the thousands and thousands of consecutive days we’ve gotten to be the line leader. But if I can’t talk to a woman in public without holding her to the same intellectual standard I’d hold, say, Bruce Willis or Wayland Flowers, I’m not going to be so keen on talking to women in public at all. Please, I’m begging you, don’t banish me to the men’s table, where I can only make small talk with the stevedores and longshoremen. They never want to discuss opera at all.
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