Re: Schechner - This is for you Farrow

Stephen Farrow wrote:

Giosue wrote:

Stephen Farrow wrote:

Giosue wrote:

So, my bf was so mad about that thread about West Side Story and keeping the form "pure" he's been brooding about it for weeks.

So he happens to be reading for his anthropology class and he comes across the following quote from Schechner, I paraphrase.

-It is neither preferable nor advisable to keep an art form pure -

So, when Mr. Farrow was telling me I should read some Schechner in order to understand his argument for not messing with "classics" I wonder what he meant?




What I meant was that your definition of what can constitute a "performance", as you laid it out in that thread, needed some updating because it was too simplistic (particularly your statement about literature not being a performative art, since writing is very definitely an act of performance - when you write, you are using words to perform a representation of yourself and your ideas).

Unfortunately, you seem to be doing here what you've done in several other threads - you're using an out-of-context fragment of a theory to try and score a point, and all you're really doing is demonstrating that you don't understand what you're talking about (and anyway, Schechner's an interesting guy, but his pronouncements are certainly not the word of God - he's made a rather nice career for himself, essentially, by writing the same book over and over again).

So you're saying on the one hand that I dont know enough about the subject because I havent read enough, and then on the other saying that the writing that there is is substandard? I think that you're the one who needs to revise your thinking.


Well, no, not quite. I'm saying that it's dangerous to try and reinforce an argument by using a single, simple sentence excerpted from a much longer, much more complex theoretical work, and that it's dangerous - and suggestive of a lack of critical thinking on your part - to quote anything by a single academic theorist as an unassailable truth. I wouldn't, in fact, say that Schechner's work is "substandard" - he's certainly an important, provocative figure, and his work is partly responsible for opening up all sorts of interesting avenues under the banner of "performance studies" - but he does have a tendency to repeat himself. The earlier stuff is great; the later stuff just tends, when you boil it down, to say the same thing he's already said.

And you've done specifically what I've asked you not to. I asked you to respond to all of the post and you've responded to part of it. Maybe you are indeed having trouble with reading!
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