It's been a few days since I've looked around the theatre blogosphere (it so rarely changes in tone or content that you can do that with no problem). So I guess I missed this posting from Scott Walters on "Theatre Ideas" when it first went up:
After reading a recent post by Thomas Garvey, to which I will not link so as not to drive traffic there, I have to admit that he all-too-often exhibits trollish behavior in his personal attacks on members of the blogging community. While I don't condone the previous comment by Troll Watcher, I also don't condone Garvey's personal vendettas that resort to irrelevant attacks in lieu of making an argument. I believe in civility. Comment moderation will remain on for the time being. Any attempts by Garvey, now or in the future, to leave comments here will not be posted or, should moderation be eventually removed, will be immediately deleted.
I guess Scott means this post. Or does he mean this post? Ok, ok, he must mean this post. Although if that's the post he means, he's a little late in his concerns about driving traffic to it; some seven hundred people have already read it.
But howevever far the horse may have run from the barn, it's never too late to shut the doors, is it! I do have to smile at Scott, though, because I'm at a bit confused about one thing - what standard is he using for "irrelevant attack" and "personal vendettas"? I'm just wondering.
Because in "That Post," I simply turned on the Guardian's clueless Chris Wilkinson the level of invective that J. Holtham had previously turned on me. It seems rather obvious that if it's ok for Holtham to talk that way, it's ok for me to - even though I tracked his language almost precisely because I'd never be as childish or immature as he is, and I wanted people to sense that I was speaking ironically. Of course, as emailers have told me, Holtham's language was somehow "shocking" when it was stripped of its original target (me). But I'm afraid that was the whole point. Why was it ok for Holtham to unleash a stream of invective, and paint me as a racist, simply because I'd criticized him, RVCBard, and Lydia R. Diamond? Particularly since (as it turned out), Holtham was completely unacquainted with Diamond's writing (as Walters was), and had no idea that while Bard was weeping on her blog, she was chatting about shoe-shopping on Twitter? (Unsurprisingly, she has since made those tweets unavailable.)
Well, I suppose it was ok because many theatre people believe they're in some kind of on-going holy war against racism, and that criticizing black writers means that you are, of necessity, a racist. This is a phony politics, of course - not just foolishly naive but internally contradictory as well. On the one hand, theatre people constantly bewail the marginalization of their art form, and yet on the other hand, they insist they're overturning racism with it! And to anyone who can believe that one, it's only a small step to believing that pointing out the flaws and inconsistencies of a handful of black writers somehow endangers that noble cause. Right. Once more to the barricades on the Upper West Side, etc. That this stance makes theatre folks obvious marks for unscrupulous types like Isaac Butler and Holtham never seems to cross anyone's mind.
More amusingly, Walters says he believes in "civility." But of course if he believes in civility, he can't be a fellow traveler with Holtham or or Butler ("a trollgasm! the trollpocalypse!"). And of course any connection with the pathetic Don Hall ("douchebag . . . suckhole . . . asshat") is unthinkable. Yet Walters keeps company with these bloggers daily. So whom does he think he's kidding? These people are among the nastiest "trolls" on the Internet.
And even beyond Walters's amusing double standard, there's the problem that his argument doesn't even make sense prima facie. It is bizarre and nonsensical (outside of the blogosphere treehouse, that is) to say that because someone has pointed out the failings of - or unspoken connections between - other bloggers, all statements from that person from now on will be censored. Not merely statements that attack said friends, and not statements that simply recycle their vitriol, but all statements, period. Coming from an academic supposedly devoted to free discussion, this is pretty funny. Actually, make that utterly hypocritical. Unless Walters doesn't really believe in free discussion - a distinct possibility. Then again, perhaps he's just in one of those temporary fits of insanity he's prone to (such as the 24-hour period in which he was convinced that "quality does not exist").
Of course, in a larger sense it's appropriate for me to disengage with the Butler-Holtham clique anyway, because I'm a critic, and basically they're wannabes who are pretty much irrelevant to actual professional practice. Butler's been hawking his wares for years in New York, Holtham's been submitting plays for probably longer. They're the fringe of the fringe, "players" in a virtual sense only. And, naturally enough, their blogs are devoted to self-promotion, to somehow finding a niche in the actual theatre; hence their nearly hysterical attachment to various political shibboleths, and their constant mutual grooming and back-scratching. It goes without saying that the bottom line of such cliques is that their actual purpose never be mentioned. When they actually have careers, then they'd become appropriate critical targets - and of course, their blogging will almost certainly cease. There's truth to that argument, I admit - so why should I concern myself with the rantings of this particular peanut gallery?
I used to tell myself that I responded to their steady stream of articulate juvenilia because it was, in fact, influencing the discourse. Now I'm not so sure; or rather, I wonder whether the discourse, if it responds positively to their brand of tripe, is worth worrying about. I also wonder whether it can be "influenced" at all. I remember being struck by Isaac Butler's first response to my take-down of Emily Glassberg Sands. He wrote that my arguments were "character assassination," and "wildly inappropriate." Elsewhere he repeated that I was engaging in "reckless character assassination" and wrote there was "a lot more criticism due" me. Of course Butler was talking through his hat; Sands's claims have long since collapsed. What's telling is that from almost the first moment, Butler and his gang's response to my arguments - whatever they were - has been that they're "character assassinations," "personal vendettas," and that I should be shunned for them. It's like they've lifted their M.O. right out of Animal Farm - or maybe the Amish. They're determined to crush really free speech any which way they can. So perhaps the Professor had to turn censor in the end if he wanted to stay in their treehouse - oh, sorry, their "community."
No comments:
Post a Comment