Acting and the Creative Act

A contrapuntal essay

In "The Existential Clown" in The Atlantic, James Parker writes about actor Jim Carrey as an artist, whose films show a consistency of vision:

"Jim Carrey will loom large in our shattered posterity, I believe, because his filmography amounts to a uniquely sustained engagement with the problem of the self."

I might take this in a few different directions. In emails with my friend Rob (a writer and proponent of Auteur Theory) we have discussed whether an actor can really be an auteur, who really controls the vision of a film or films, who should, differences in stage and film, that sort of thing. But there are other directions, including artistic intent. If Carrey did not play roles in these films as part of a larger artistic vision, if indeed his primary goal is to make people laugh and he doesn't bother with anything remotely approaching "a uniquely sustained engagement with the problem of the self," then can his filmography really amount to this? Can we the viewers (or just Parker) examine the ouevre for its results, without bothering with the intentions of the comic actor? Or maybe we could look about and find other actors who, in their acting alone separate from writing or directing, show a consistency of character, theme, explorative subject (John Wayne comes to mind). Or we could be more subjective: are there certain actors you follow in the same way you might follow a writer, a director, a musician? Does having a "favorite actor" mean quite the same thing as having a "favorite writer"? And how is it different?

I like all these lines of inquiry, but I'm interested in reflecting on acting as a creative act. When I speak of a Shakespearean production, I would tend to refer to "Actor A's Character" rather than "Director B's Play" (for example, to me this is "Gibson's Hamlet," not "Zeffirelli's Hamlet"). It is the actor who interprets and creates the character. If I see a film or stage version, it is not the choices of the director I will relish, but the choices of the actor. Of course the actor is not independent: he/she relies on the initial creation of character and words by Shakespeare, as well as the vision and support of a director. But what artist can work in isolation with total freedom from interference or influence? A writer does not invent the language he/she works in, even if he/she invents his/her own version of it.

But let's move to television. David Chase created The Sopranos, but I think it was really Tony Gandolfini who created Tony Soprano. Certainly Chase invented him, but it was Gandolfini who gave him life, who gave him shape, who thrusts Tony Soprano into my consciousness. Gandolfini is a creative agent. Gandolfini is the artist who passed a character from the realm of imagination into...well, my imagination (when I started watching the DVDs I did have dreams about him). Could another actor have done so? Maybe. Maybe not. But I want to credit the actor for making the character what he is, and I do believe it is the actor as creative agent that reached me.

That's not to say that's always the case. Larry David is probably more responsible than Jason Alexander for the genius of George Costanza, but Michael Richards is largely the creator of Kramer.

And maybe we get back to the old problem of Jack Nicholson's Randle Patrick McMurphy against Ken Kesey's Randle Patrick McMurphy. They're not quite the same McMurphy, are they? I don't think Milos Forman made a different McMurphy. And while I can have serious discussion about the differences between the film and novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I cannot really articulate why Nicholson's portrayal of McMurphy is not quite the McMurphy of the book. I can only say that Nicholson is a great actor, an artist, a dominant presence that makes a character his own. Simply by having Nicholas play McMurphy, McMurphy becomes something other than what he was in the text (of course, right? He's an aesthetic creation, and so that aesthetic in words on a page is different than an actor on a screen. That's not what I want to address here; I'm still asserting that Nicholson created a character).

So maybe I'm only thinking of the brilliant actors here (but, in the same way proponents of Auteur Theory mainly think of the brilliant directors). What of the average actors? What of the lousy actors?

But let me raise a problem (and suggest this whole line of inquiry is either pointless or impossible). I love the film The Aviator for its portrayal of character; I thought Leonardo DiCaprio was brilliant (I'm rather interested in OCD). One scene in particular lingers with me: Hughes is in a restroom, and he doesn't want to touch the door to get out, so he quietly waits until somebody else enters the restroom so that he can leave without touching the door.

The scene is wonderful: I recall the quiet and the focus. But whom do I really credit for the scene? Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, director Martin Scorcese, or writer John Logan? And this may also get at why I can't quite accept Auteur Theory. I think it likely the scene worked so well because actor, director, writer, and even a host of others contributing to the creation of the scene made it work. A singular, controlling vision? That doesn't matter; what matters is the resulting scene, a scene with many contributors to its brilliance (though perhaps Auteur Theory is a way to understand an ouevre, not a particular film or a particular scene).

I'm interested in the ways that an actor creates. I'm interested in the way an actor can be an artist. I'm interested in why different people watch things and what they're looking for when they watch. And I'm interested in how we talk about these things.

Let me finish by noting that in some ways, the subject of acting and the theater haunts my dreams. I have recurring dreams (nightmares, I suppose) about somehow making a mistake and ruining a stage show. In particular, I sometimes dream that I'm in a play, and perhaps I don't know my lines, perhaps I don't know the blocking, or often it's more serious: I don't know what character I'm playing, or I don't even know what play I'm in. In my dreams, I often find myself on stage in front of people with other performers, not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing and aware that I'm ruining everything. Please, try that on Freud.

(These contrapuntal essays are taking a distinct shape toward a) rambling directionlessly and b) asking a bunch of questions I'm not bothering to answer (I really hate the latter trend in my writing and will work toward toning it down). What I'm finding in these essays, however, is that it is not the result that makes it contrapuntal, but my mindset whiile writing. I'm willing to ramble and raise questions and lose focus. It's a method, a way of thinking, and thus the writing and thinking goes where I don't expect when I begin)

Torrential Downpour

Stupid Year Project
A couple of days ago I randomly told my brother that I would read or re-read all of Shakespeare's plays in the next year. This is the wild project that could undo me. I'm starting with Hamlet (season one of Slings & Arrows got me hyped for a re-reading), and I'll continue to blog about the experience throughout the year.

The Wire
I don't care if you judge me a philistine: I prefer television to film. A well-done TV series can engross me in ways a film just can't. A film has around two hours to bring me to another world, and it's a rare film that can pull it off. But a TV series, with its hours and hours of episodes, can bring me deep into characters and settings and stories. I feel engulfed in a good show, sucked into a world of possibilities.

And so my wife and I are ready to wrap up The Wire--just three episodes to go. It's a show that took some time to grow on us--it wasn't until the final episode of season one that I found myself engrossed. It's an emotionally wearing show--it often leaves us sapped. But I don't know what can replace it for us.

When do you give up on a book?
I'm half-way through Marc Bekoff's Animals Matter, and I'm thinking of stopping. The book introduces a lot of the key issues, but I don't find it philosophically rigorous, scientifically detailed, or well-written. There is writing on animal rights issues that is a lot better than this. But I may continue--there are some specific issues Bekoff addresses that I wish to explore further.

OCD
My particular obsessions sometimes come in the form of distrusting my senses. Later I mull it over. "Did I really snap the seatbelt into place while putting in a child seat?" "Was that really the number I saw on the scale?" "Am I sure I didn't run somebody over with my car back there?" I never quite trust my senses or my memory, and frankly my wife is a saint for tolerating me. This distrust is also why as a teacher I'm heavy on lists--I need to write down any task I need to do.

Mostly Vegan
I barely believe this. I went mostly vegan on March 30th, and as of today I've lost 50 pounds.

The school year

This is a chance to ramble about various things on my mind as I prepare for the academic semester. It's disordered, narcissistic, but probably boring. But writing it out sort of mellows me out about it, and it's a blog, so it should be therapeutic, eh? There's a theory on dreams that you dream about whatever is on your mind a lot at the time, and it's just sort of the leftover stuff your brain is working through (at least this is my memory of something I learned in high school that really stuck with me). I think a post like this is like that sort of dream (goodness, what an atrociously dull dream though!): it's the extra stuff my mind works through around this time. By now you should know sufficiently well that you can ignore this.

Two fear usually get to me at the beginning of fall semester. First, I worry that after a long layoff, I've entirely forgotten how to teach. Second, after the complete openness of summer, I sometimes envision the academic semester as a time with zero free time as I'm consumed by work. But this year I don't feel terribly bothered by either fear. Perhaps entering my fifth year teaching, I'm confident enough to know I remember how to (at the very least) stand in front of the class, talk, and write on the board. And I know that during an academic semester, there is still plenty of time away to do what one enjoys, even including grading papers (I've found as an adjunct professor I have more free time than I had when I was a graduate student). So basically, I'll devote a lot of time and energy to my work, but I'll still watch heaps and heaps of football.

And frankly, I like my job. It's fun. I find it mentally stimulating and generally fulfilling. I look forward to teaching classes, and I enjoy interactions with students. So the beginning of a semester offers a lot to look forward to.

So then I worry about the technical details (I am Obsessive-Compulsive--it seems I must have something to worry about). Get copies of syllabi. Get new keys for the building. Get some texts scanned. Pull out documents from a folder. Pretty basic stuff that always gets done without a fuss, but I'll vex over it.

I've already started making a weekly list of tasks. It makes me feel good: I've got a fixed list of what I actually need to do, and I get to cross things off to feel accomplishment. Today I did something that I hadn't already put on the list (wrote a Vikings column for a Minnesota sports blog I've started contributing to in addition to my own sports blog), and after completing it, I wrote it on the list just so I could cross it off and look at it crossed off. I did a lot of these lists in grad school, and it's a good habit, I think. It helps me relax: I don't have to worry about what I might have to do, because I can look at the list. This somehow allows me to enjoy my free time more.

This semester I'm experimenting with some of my courses, trying something new (I never want it to get stale). In comp class, I used to have a unit in the middle of the semester that ended in a midterm. I've dropped that (shifting many of the readings for that unit to the fourth paper unit, a Public Policy Proposal paper), and will be just bulking up each existing unit. There will be challenges in stretching the same content out, each unit lasting a few more class periods. I think it will work better, and it will give me more time in class to focus on technical writing issues.

But the bigger change comes in a lit course I'm teaching. It's a general education literature course titled "Types of Literature." I get to teach a wide assortment of novels, short stories, plays, and poetry. In the past, I've arranged the syllabus not by literary genre, but by theme (meaning it was organized almost randomly--the thematic complexities of most of the works don't easily fit into one thematic unit, and could almost be interchangeable). This semester I'm teaching it by genre, so we'll start with all the short stories we'll read, then read all the plays, then read some novels, and finish with some weeks of poetry. I really don't know how that will go, how the students will handle it. I'm also worried I didn't leave enough time for poetry (can one ever?), because sometimes the poetry takes 2-3 times longer to cover in class than I expect (such is life when the class is guided by student discussion).

But the time is almost near to stop throwing on shorts and a polo shirt in the morning; soon, I'll have to throw on pants and a polo shirt.

OCD and ideas

Though he wouldn't define it as such, Martin Luther is a person I consider to have lived a life devoted to ideas. Yet if you read biographies on him, you learn that in the latter parts of his life he was often sick and in serious pain.

For my I don't think there was ever a better novelist than Dostoevsky. He had epilepsy throughout his life.

Even if we are devoted to art, to ideas, to God, to anything beyond our material existence, we still have these bodies and these afflictions. We can't pretend that the physical pains that a person endures doesn't affect his or her life in ideas.

But what of mental afflictions?

I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies along the pure obsessive variety. Last summer I had obsessive fears that I'll be arrested for something I didn't really do and be taken to prison away from my family (this has got to be some pent up guilt about something, right?). Those fears have largely passed and now seem immaterial and distant--but at the time they consumed my mind, dominating my day to day thought, and they do occasionally (and briefly) pop up again. Lately certain words that I don't like to think keep popping into my head though I don't want them to--that's the form it's been taking. I can't control my own thoughts--the words just pop into my consciousness without my control.

Today something else is happening. I had a bad dream last night--I dreamt that I went to work and left my son at home in his crib, thinking my wife had taken him to daycare, and not realizing it until I was a half hour from home. It was a horrifying dream--I felt relief when I woke, and I checked on him still. And today, though I have distinct, specific memories of taking my son to daycare, though I even have material evidence that I was at the daycare facility, though I can think on the specific details of everything I did with him this morning, somehow my dream is lingering. Somehow I fear that I've botched things badly. That I forgot him. That I imagined taking him to daycare. Somehow the dream I had is more real than the reality I experienced this morning.

So that's my cross to bear--I get obsessive and consumed with thoughts I don't want to think about, thoughts that really attack and drain on me.

But...isn't neurosis part of a life in ideas, too? Would a Woody Allen movie be quite the same if he didn't have certain psychological hangups? Would Seinfeld even work if not for the insecurities and paranoia of George Costanza? What of the literature of Poe, of Hemingway? Aren't all our psychological hangups and disorders just a part of it all?

Simple request for some of my students

I know you don't think anything of it. I know for you, a pen is just a cheap utilitarian tool, and that a Paper Mate Write Bros. is not anything to be obsessive about. Hey, I've got seemingly dozens of them scattered about my house (literally dozens in unopened bags, but all sorts of individual pens in different locations in the house where I can easily access them), so an unknowing observer might think they mean nothing to me. And when you come to the front table and have forgotten to put your name on your assignment, and you see a pen (my pen) sitting there, I'm sure it's just instinct that makes you grab for it.

But I have one simple request.

DO NOT EVER TOUCH MY PENS.

Thanks.

Torrential Downpour: More Business

My recurring dreams

I have frequent dreams that I'm involved in the theater. Usually in my dreams I'm a stage actor, but sometimes I'm involved in other ways (last night I was sort of the director in a dinner theater version of King Lear; the producer/star actor disagreed with my idea that the throne should be moved from center stage to the side).

These dreams about plays have various themes. Often I would find myself cast as an actor in a play in which I didn't know the words, the blocking, or, frankly, the play. But there have been many other themes.

The thing is, I actually have only acted in two plays, the last in 1999. I don't know why I continue to have these dreams about working in theater.

Surely there's something there about playing roles, acting, putting on a show, and the tension this causes for me. But what else.

Bringing the C to the OCD

I can see why people with OCD come with the compulsions. When you're busy checking the stove and the lock by numbers divisible by three and frequently washing your hands, you have less time to spend with the pure O obsessions.

Dostoevsky is my master

In the future I may take some time to talk about why Dostoevsky is my master in all things. The ideas, the themes, the talking, the characters, the dialogical nature of it all, it all furrows into the depths of my soul and stays planted there, ready to burst into plant when the time comes.

Links

Read this NY Times article on a farm animal sanctuary.

Read "Thomas Bloor's top 10 Tales of Metamorphosis" at The Guardian.

Here's a book critic (Ron Charles) that doesn't like Harry Potter (I've never read Harry Potter and probably never will).

It's difficult to get rid of books that you actually don't need (Inside Higher Ed).

The Valve talks about The Simpsons.

The Onion always has cutting insight into our society: read these two articles.

"Study: Iraqis May Experience Sadness When Friends, Relatives Die"

This gets at so much of the way people in America talk about the suffering of this war. Always in war there is a dehumanization effect: one side doesn't treat the other side as fully human, as fully capable of human thought and feeling. It has happened in past wars (see General Westmoreland's statement that "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient"). It happens now. Let us remember what binds us: we are all human, and we all suffer. It's sad (but expected) that The Onion is the best source capable of pointing this out in a piercing way.

I'm not currently very good at talking eloquently about pacifism. Once I finish up Dostoevsky's Demons, I'll be reading some essays by John Howard Yoder (lent to me by a friend and pastor) about Christian pacifism. I want to find better words to express the deep thought and emotion I feel.

And a little lighter:

"New Sitcom Pulls Back the Envelope"

I always wonder of the stars of the conventional sitcoms feel like they're doing something important, or if they realize they're doing trash.

Downpour: the business

Deadwood, season three, episodes 1 and 2
In hindsight, it is rather simple how the show guided me from despising Al Swearengen as a villain to siding with him as a protagonist. It wasn't the attempts to humanize him with a soft side, with his confessions to prostitutes, with his appealing language, with the respect others had for him. Similar techniques failed to swing me toward sympathy for Tony Soprano (well, it did briefly, but not for terribly long). It was much more simple: bring in characters more loathsome than Swearengen (Tolliver and Hearst), ally Swearengen occasionally with our hero (Bullock), and simply have Swearengen perform fewer nasty deeds, distancing himself from his past crimes.

And now, if they ever do make a movie, I'd enjoy it if it were three hours of Bullock and Swearengen just beating the piss out of E.B., Tolliver, and Hearst.

Egalitarian Elitism 1: Plurality and Freedom of Expression
I've long held views on free expression of ideas similar to those of John Stuart Mill: let anybody say anything he or she wants, with the only limit on speech that intends actual harm. If you don't like the ideas somebody else is expressing, you have two choices: argue against it, or ignore it.

But this should not lead to the belief that all ideas are equal. Indeed, many ideas are lousy and should either be argued against or ignored. And this is where my egalitarian elitism takes a turn toward the elitism: yes, I think you should have every right to express your ideas, and society is better served allowing everybody to express their ideas. But I still retain my right to snobbery in dismissing your ideas if I think they are worthless, irrational, or just stupid. I will rarely simply dismiss--I'm almost always willing to discuss the ideas. But I don't hold all ideas equal.

And of course we come to the internet, which has as its greatest advantage the lack of a filter, and has as its greatest disadvantage the lack of a filter. Anybody can say anything he or she wants on the internet, for better or worse. Sometimes that is better, and often it is worse. We can't shy away from the freedom that offers--but we needn't become wishy-washy and accept ideas we find utterly stupid to be of equal value with ideas we find excellent.. We should consider all ideas for what is possible to understand from them, but we needn't accept them.

Still, I find if you are going to argue ideas rather than ignore them, civility and as much respect as is possible in the situation is preferable to merely insulting each other. Argument should be kept to the content of the argument, and not turned to personal attacks. There need not be a filter, and we need not accept each others' ideas, but we should at least be peaceable and as respectful as possible in arguing against another's ideas.

Lack of civility and the move toward personal attacks (explicit or subtle) are the bigger threat to open discourse on the internet.

Egalitarian Elitism 2: Snobbish in our own way
I've maintained on this blog that disrespected mediums and genres (television, horror, science fiction, comedy) have much to offer us, and are often as worthy of being called "art" as anything else. I've written about it all over, but particularly in September I began developing the idea of "Low Brow Aesthetic, High Brow Ideas" to focus on the quality of the content and ideas in works that are dismissed for their mediums, genres, or aesthetics.

And yet, I admit to a total snobbishness within this theory. I am snobbish in my own way: I'll defend the content of sitcoms I love, while expressing total loathing dismissal of sitcoms I find devoid of value whatsoever. The egalitarian anti-elitism that allows me to respect frequently disrespected mediums and genres has not prevented a strong elitism in my assessment of works within these mediums and genres. Once again, I don't consider all TV equal: I consider some horrid beyond acceptance.

Manners = Intelligence? Please. We left the aristocracy in Europe, thank you very much.
In Ken Tucker's condemnation of reality TV, I mostly agree: a lot of the people on reality TV shows are daft and dull.

And yet, I dismiss Ken Tucker as an asshole and an idiot for this line: "these studs and babes hold their eating utensils like monkeys..." Tucker dismisses most reality TV participants as unworthy of his attention...because they hold their silverware wrong. As if these customs have anything to do with wit, entertainment, or anything of cultural value.

Mr. Tucker, I've got a M.A. in English slapped up on the wall. I teach college English. Right now I'm flipping between reading Dostoevsky's Demons and some poetry by Ted Hughes. Do you want to dismiss me because I don't hold a fork right? Would you appreciate it if I dismissed you as a mere TV critic?

I always balked at economics
When I took Economics in high school, I could never accept the basic premises. The abstract concepts I spent so much much of my time considering (love, faith) never fit into the scheme of economic theory. I didn't know at the time I was expressing the same skepticism over economics' ability to explain everything that Dostoevsky might have been getting at in many of his works (particularly in Notes from the Underground, but not just there). Dostoevsky dismissed rational, scientific explanations and predictions of human behavior, believing that the complexities of the human psyche and the hunger for spiritual meaning could not be so easily quantified. I've always agreed, and even though, for example, I enjoy the deeper statistical metrics for sports analysis, I've always maintained a skepticism that they could tell me as much of the story as their more vehement advocates claimed.

David Leonhardt writes

"of the economics profession’s imperialist movement. For the last decade or so, economists have been increasingly poking their fingers into other disciplines, including epidemiology, psychology, sociology, oenology and even football strategy. These economists usually justify their expansionism on two grounds: They say they’re better with numbers than most other researchers and have a richer understanding of how people respond to incentives."

Leonhardt also expresses some skepticism over this movement. While I may be scoffed at by economists, I'm willing to stand with Dostoevsky, my master, against the tide of economics in everything.

It's Les Mis
It was $7.98 at Half Price Books for the complete original Broadway cast recording: Les Miserables is the musical I'm now living to.

OCD
Every once in a while I think I've moved past being an obsessive-compulsive mess. But then every year or so, the pure O obsessions come back strong. C'est la vie. The obsessive periods do change the way I read and think--and it's possible I get my best and most serious writing and thinking done during these otherwise internally miserable phases. Let us make the best of it all, I suppose.

Links
RK has a very entertaining new blog, The Daily Rube, where he explores Auteur theory in practice.

Motoko Rich says Harry Potter really might not be increasing reading for pleasure among young people.

I don't think I've linked to this already: Anthony Daniels' "Diagnosing Lear" looks at Shakespeare's masterpiece.

Via Arts & Letters Daily (which you should check, well, daily), Terry Eagleton says that "For almost the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life."

Bookslut interviews Miranda July.