A slippery slope

We live in a strange world now, one that promotes mediocre books, movies, music and art as very good or even excellent. The reviews are often stellar; I know because I read them. I'm always interested in what others mean or have to say. I will often watch a film or read a book because it's gotten good reviews, but it happens more often than not these days that I disagree with the reviewers, professional and non-professional. That was the case with the Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All at Once (I don't understand how this film won so many Oscars) and with some recent best-selling books (The Midnight Library, Euphoria, and Normal People come to mind). All of them received stellar reviews, but I was disappointed by them. My criteria for judging them to be less than stellar are the following: poor plotting, disjointed plots, disguised preachiness, banal fluff that passes for philosophical thought, lack of depth concerning the serious matters that are taken up in the film or books, and so on. That being said, there were some classic books I read when I was growing up that I didn't like or didn't make me feel good, but objectively I know that they were good books. I have read books considered to be classics, by authors who are considered to be excellent that I haven't liked--for example, some few books by Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene. I evaluate them as mediocre because they had poor plots or rather ridiculous or superficial plotting and a failure to create engaging characters--mediocre at best. Most writers would probably agree that not everything they've published is up to snuff. How could it be? My point is that we need to be able to discuss some of these aspects when reading and writing reviews, because otherwise we can just accept that reviews have become sycophantic. Real objective discussion is rare at present. It seems as though the criteria for judging something as excellent or not have been pushed aside in favor of how one feels about the book, movie, art or politician in question. In other words, using subjective criteria for evaluations rather than objective criteria. If one likes a book, movie, piece of art, or politician because it/he or she made you feel good, I have no problem with that, but it can't end there. There have to be logical objective reasons as well for why one thinks something is excellent. But that's the slippery slope we're heading down right now. The definition of a slippery slope is a dangerous pathway or route to follow; a route that leads to trouble (Slippery slope - Idioms by The Free Dictionary). On that slippery slope, feelings alone matter, not logic or common sense. Feelings determine nearly everything, and it's easy to get fooled into thinking that something is good merely because other people feel that it is good. But it isn't. 

Nowadays we read about a classic book or film being 'cancelled' because it contained some off-color language or outmoded ideas that the woke crowd found insulting and wanted to rid the world of. One simply cannot do this. I am not in favor of cancelling books, films and pieces of art simply because they are outdated or not relevant to current societal mores and ways of doing things. One can teach students about those novels or films in reference to the age in which they were written or made, in other words, place them in their proper historical context. But we cannot rid the world of everything we don't like or pretend that it doesn't exist. We cannot cancel everything we don't like merely based on feelings. 

The potential for harmful situations exists when we abandon logic in favor of feelings alone. Basing judgments solely on feelings leads to a mob mentality, and mob mentalities never lead to anything good. In political situations, we've seen what can happen when mobs get out of control--the January 6th Capitol attack, for example. Even if it didn't start out as a planned attack, it became an attack and got out of control, no matter what Tucker Carlson says and feels. Again, Carslon knows (feels) that it was basically a sightseeing tour. He's concluded for us all and we should just accept his word. Except that I don't. His evaluation is not based on facts, but on feelings, his feelings. It's also based on his network's greed; how much they can milk this situation for all it's worth. 

From Puccini to Glass

La Boheme was the first opera I ever experienced, and I had the pleasure of doing so at The Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan in the late 1980s. I was living in New Jersey at the time, and I remember deciding that I wanted to see this particular opera. I went alone, by choice, to a Saturday matinee, because I wanted to experience opera by myself for the first time so that I could form my own opinion of whether I liked it or not. It was a wonderful experience, but I was completely unprepared for how much opera hooked me emotionally. I would say that this is mostly true of Puccini’s operas, of which La Boheme is one. I have seen other operas by other composers (Mozart and Wagner), but it is Puccini’s operas that ring most true to me emotionally. La Boheme is a tragic story about two lovers, Mimi and Rodolfo and their life together, their friends, the poverty they endure as struggling artists, and Mimi’s eventual death. When Mimi sings her aria Si Mi Chiamano Mimi (Yes My Name is Mimi), tears just start to flow because the music is so beautiful. My husband and I saw La Boheme at the San Francisco opera house in 1993, and the entire audience cried. I have never seen or experienced anything quite like that day at the opera either before or after.

I grew up in a family that appreciated opera and the great opera singers like Victoria de los Angeles and Renata Tebaldi. My sister was named for Renata Tebaldi--at least that is what my parents told us when we were children. I was named for my father’s mother, which somehow seemed far less exciting at that time than being named for an opera singer. My parents loved classical music as well, much of it sad, or so it seemed to me. I remember as a child being fascinated by the fact that my parents shared their love of opera and classical music with us. They were not afraid to do so and were not afraid that we would perhaps not like it. Their willingness to share their love of music and opera made it possible for us to share our music with them as well, and they did end up liking some of our generation’s music--Paul McCartney and The Beatles come to mind. As I get older I recall many of those childhood experiences—my father taking us to the local high school to hear classical music concerts, or Sunday afternoons spent listening to my parents’ favorite recordings.

Oslo decided to build a new Opera House in the late 1990s and construction on it started in 2003. It opened its doors to the public in April 2008. It is a beautiful building situated on the waterfront http://www.visitnorway.com/uk/Articles/Theme/What-to-do/Attractions/Norways-new-Opera-House/. We purchased a subscription series for the 2009/2010 season consisting of five operas and four ballets/modern dances. It was well worth the money although we discovered that we do not like all operas as much as we like Puccini’s operas. It has mostly to do with that Puccini’s operas seem to be more human or more able to capture the true human spirit in different situations. What we did discover is that we liked the visiting modern dance companies very much—The Netherlands Dance Theater especially—with pieces choreographed by Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon, often to music by Philip Glass. Fantastic dance pieces—Silent Screen and Shoot the Moon. This has been a wonderful surprise—that we enjoyed them so much. If you want to see what they’re like, you can check out short clips from these dance pieces on YouTube.