[lit-ideas] Re: Miller and culture
- From: Judy Evans <judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 19:17:45 +0000
I see what I thought might happen, has: our papers (our "quality"
papers, anyway) carried a lot of items on Miller (in addition to
obits) on the very day the NYT carried just one, really rather brief,
piece. One theory about his relatively greater importance here (from
a US person whose name I missed, who lives here, I think) is that as
his work increasingly became a critique of the US it became less
popular there and more popular here (it was always liked here, but I
take her -- non-partisan -- point).
To the Herbert piece and your question.
(NYT)> If you can't say it in 30 seconds, you have to move on
and
>but the public at large seems
> much more interested in what Martha will do when she gets out of prison
> and what Jacko will do if he has to go in.
the second is probably true here too -- I'm not sure it's as bad here.
The first is I'd say less true, and I think perhaps the fact that we
have TV stations with no ads and limit the ad time and frequency on
the others helps. (A UK program made with an eye to the US market is
now obvious, it has frequent rapid transitions/breaks to allow for
the US ad breaks... .)
I'm not sure that's a very helpful comment!
Monday, February 14, 2005, 5:50:55 PM, Steven G. Cameron wrote:
SGC> **We've previously discussed the unfortunate dumbing down of current
SGC> culture. Bob Herbert, in the following _NY Times_ op-ed piece,
SGC> eloquently considers the problem while mourning the passing of the fine
SGC> thinker and playwright, Arthur Miller. A question Herbert doesn't
SGC> (sufficiently) raise is how might it be possible to reverse this trend
SGC> -- is anyone listening -- does anyone care enough??
SGC> TC,
SGC> /Steve Cameron, NJ
SGC> ------
SGC> OP-ED COLUMNIST
SGC> The Public Thinker
SGC> By BOB HERBERT
SGC> Published: February 14, 2005
SGC> Arthur Miller, in his autobiography, "Timebends," quoted the great
SGC> physicist Hans Bethe as saying, "Well, I come down in the morning and I
SGC> take up a pencil and I try to think. ..."
SGC> It's a notion that appears to have gone the way of the rotary phone.
SGC> Americans not only seem to be doing less serious thinking lately, they
SGC> seem to have less and less tolerance for those who spend their time
SGC> wrestling with important and complex matters.
SGC> If you can't say it in 30 seconds, you have to move on. God made man and
SGC> the godless evolutionists are on the run. Donald Trump ("You're fired!")
SGC> and Paris Hilton ("That's hot!") are cultural icons. Ignorance is in.
SGC> The nation is at war and its appetite for torture may be undermining the
SGC> very essence of the American character, but the public at large seems
SGC> much more interested in what Martha will do when she gets out of prison
SGC> and what Jacko will do if he has to go in.
SGC> Mr. Miller's death last week meant more than the loss of an outstanding
SGC> playwright. It was the loss of a great public thinker who believed
SGC> strongly, as Archibald MacLeish had written, that the essence of America
SGC> - its greatness - was in its promises. Mr. Miller knew what ignorance
SGC> and fear and the madness of crowds, especially when exploited by
SGC> sinister leadership, could do to those promises.
SGC> His greatest concerns, as Charles Isherwood wrote in Saturday's Times,
SGC> "were with the moral corruption brought on by bending one's ideals to
SGC> society's dictates, buying into the values of a group when they conflict
SGC> with the voice of personal conscience."
SGC> The individual, in Mr. Miller's view, had an abiding moral
SGC> responsibility for his or her own behavior, and for the behavior of
SGC> society as a whole. He said that while writing "The Crucible," "The
SGC> longer I worked the more certain I felt that as improbable as it might
SGC> seem, there were moments when an individual conscience was all that
SGC> could keep a world from falling."
SGC> For the United States, which launched a misguided, pre-emptive war in
SGC> Iraq, is shipping prisoners off to foreign countries to be tortured and
SGC> has pressed the rewind button on matters of social progress, this may be
SGC> one of those moments.
SGC> Reading Miller again, and looking back on his life, it's interesting to
SGC> see some of the differences he has spotlighted in two sharply defined
SGC> eras: the Depression-wracked 1930's and the prosperous, postwar 1950's.
SGC> "It was not that people were more altruistic," he wrote in "Timebends,"
SGC> "but that a point arrived - perhaps around 1936 - when for the first
SGC> time unpolitical people began thinking of common action as a way out of
SGC> their impossible conditions. Out of dire necessity came the surge of
SGC> mass trade unionism and the federal government's first systematic relief
SGC> programs, the resurgent farm cooperative movement, the TVA and other
SGC> public projects that put people to work and brought electricity to vast
SGC> new areas, repaired and built new bridges and aqueducts, carried out
SGC> vast reforestation projects, funded student loans and research into the
SGC> country's folk history - its songs and tales collected and published for
SGC> the first time - and this burst of imaginative action created the sense
SGC> of a government that for all its blunders and waste was on the side of
SGC> the people."
SGC> By the early 50's the agony of the Depression was gone. McCarthyism was
SGC> in flower and the dean of Mr. Miller's alma mater, the University of
SGC> Michigan, was complaining that his students' highest goal was to fit in
SGC> with corporate America rather than separating truth from falsehood.
SGC> The dean, Erich Walter, said, "They become experts at grade-getting, but
SGC> there's less hanging round the lamppost now, no more chewing the fat,"
SGC> or, as Mr. Miller put it, "speculating about the wrongs of the world and
SGC> ideal solutions, something no employer was interested in, and might even
SGC> suspect."
SGC> Mr. Miller understood early that keeping the population entertained was
SGC> becoming the paramount imperative of the U.S. We're now all but buried
SGC> in entertainment and the republic is running amok. Mr. Miller is gone,
SGC> and if we're not wise enough to pay attention, his uncomfortable truths
SGC> will die with him. (He felt, among other things, that most men and women
SGC> knew "little or nothing" about the forces manipulating their lives.)
SGC> Anyway, the Grammys were last night and Michael Jackson's trial resumes
SGC> today.
SGC> Arthur Miller? Broadway dimmed its lights Friday night. His country may
SGC> decide that's enough of a tribute and it's time to move on.
--
mailto:judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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