Fences Make Good Neighbors

I've been thinking about the idea of community a lot since yesterday afternoon. I was directed to a local theater review blog in which an actor was cited as a reason not to see a show. The comment didn't directly name the actor, but a quick cross-reference to the theatre's home page would quickly reveal his identity. I had to scan sixty-some comments to find this attack. Boy, it was sickening. A lot of petty but quite vicious back and forth. Ultimately, I didn't find any of it illuminating. Gossip can sometimes serve as a means of social control, but this was plain old cruel and snarky stuff.
Last summer there was a similiar thread of comments on another local theater weblog. About that time I stopped visiting blogs on a regular basis. I also started to focus my energies on posting bits of wisdom and inpiration on my own blog rather than my own turgid solipsism.
I have often said that artists aren't polite. I need to amend that and assert that an artist's work need not be polite. I have acted and spoken quite cavalierly in my life, openly judging and criticizing others in a vain attempt to place myself within a community of artists that I'm simultaneously undermining with my vitriol. One of the comments about a particular theater suggesting that the theater opened itself to attack because it charges $18 for its tickets and seeks reviews in the local press. I certainly don't want to spend an evening watching actors struggle to tell a story for any price. A reviewer can certainly report this type of critique without calling out a company and, or an actor. Especially if the reviewer seems to call into question the performers' right to perform at all.
I want to say it loud, very loud, that I am not speaking from the mountaintop. Just yesterday, in a somewhat more measured tone and certainly more private discourse, I quipped to a friend about a couple of our mutual colleagues getting the opportunity to direct funded feature films.
I suppose anytime that we trumpet the lack of fairness in the universe we likewise sound our own foolish arrogance. We all have the right to pursue our dreams and aspirations. We live in a free market economy that confers success and failure based more directly on patronage than on idealism. In fact, fairness by definition most often determines the prices we pay based on supply and demand. In the case of entertainment, if the supply doesn't meet the demand another source of supply is sought. It's a bit of a self-cleaning oven in the end. An argument can be made that a bad play or theater is bad for the theater community as a whole, causing audiences to lower their expectations or stay away. I myself have made the argument that a bad film is bad for every filmmaker. I must admit the vanity of that opinion is motivated by a projected need to raise the capital for my own films. Investors are going to invest in more films. Audiences are going to go see live theater. Maybe not forever, clearly our culture is significantly shifting to more electronic media based forms of entertainment. Our civilization may well be in decline -- complaining about an actor's or a director's work so passive-aggressively is likely abbeting the decline rather than arresting it. To further prove that the basis of such arguments is largely egotistical (asserting that that which is ego-driven is ultimately destructive to the individual and his or her community), I find that many plays or films cited as must-see successes are often picked apart or compared disfavorably to what the critic could have done with the same resources.
We have the right to say whatever we like, of course. We also have the right to live very dysfunctionally. Perhaps a good way to practice setting some boundaries is to exalt in the success of others.
Okay. Enough of this. I have work to do. Blogging is no exception to the adage that idle hands are the devil's playthings.

Love One Another,
Signore Direttore