CSotD: It’s the Song, not the (Alvy) Singer
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Matt Bors leads off today with a relevant point in an irrelevant controversy: When did we start demanding that our artists, writers and actors provide not only entertaining work but perfect lives?
He's right. If you start going through the personal lives of creative geniuses, you're going to uncover a mountain of ick in some cases — I didn't know "golden showers" were a real thing until I read "Nora," the biography of James Joyce's wife — and a lot of other odd behavior in others: The first season of "The Osmonds," (Yeesh. "The Osbournes." Not that the Osmonds are my idea of typical.) before everyone figured out how to act for the cameras, showed a family apparently from Mars.
Much of this fulmination is not just subjective but — deliberately or out of ignorance — extremely selective as well: The controversy over the Coke Super Bowl ad is being led by people who probably hate lesbians like Katharine Lee Bates as much as they hate people from other countries, and, if they realized that Francis Bellamy was a committed socialist, they'd probably work to ban the Pledge of Allegiance from classrooms instead of frantically denying that it is legally required in 45 states.
There is a difference, which Matt does not get into here, between artists whose work does not reflect their frowned-upon eccentricities and those whose work clearly does.
But I think it's unnecessary: I loved — still love — "Annie Hall," but, while I admired the gorgeous black-and-white cinematography of "Manhattan," the Mariel Hemingway subplot seemed creepy even without any sense of Allen's own attraction to much younger women.
It's irrelevant: I would think it was creepy regardless of how it dovetailed with any of his own predilections.
Of course, you are perfectly entitled to decline to enrich an artist whose personal behavior revolts you. But, unless that behavior is mirrored in their work, you can't claim some kind of artistic justification for your decision.
As noted here before, I knew a nice old fellow who said he wouldn't buy Japanese cars "because they used to shoot at my airplane." He didn't doll it up with some crap about balance-of-trade and he didn't even try to blend his patriotism in serving during the war with his subsequent choice of automobiles.
They used to shoot at his airplane. Fair enough.
I admire a person who doesn't doll up their personal choices with a lot of noble balloon juice.
So I'll keep watching "Annie Hall" and maybe "Play It Again, Sam," and I'll continue to think that most of his comedies are overrated, that the dialogue in his serious films is absolutely ghastly in its stilted, stylized pretention and that his acting makes Jerry Seinfeld look like Daniel Day-Lewis.
But, for the current discussion, I will continue to believe that, given the ferocity of their break-up and the stupefyingly bizarre personal attributes of both major parties to the relationship, we can't begin to judge what actually went on.
Speaking of how the perfect is the enemy of the good …
Jim Morin's cartoon stands out mostly because it is in a mountain of criticism of CVS for its decision to stop short of becoming a health food store.
Apparently, it's not good to stop selling something that, used as directed, will kill you, unless you also stop selling things that — if eaten in place of staple items rather than as a treat — could undermine your health.
The "Shame on CVS for still selling soft drinks and snack foods" cartoons are coming hard and fast and I guess it just proves that no good deed goes unpunished.
How hard and fast are they coming? Harder and faster than the outraged cries of "Shame on Coke for saluting cultural diversity and standing up against bigotry and yet still manufacturing a product that contains corn syrup!" diatribes on Facebook.
And we haven't even heard yet from Jenny McCarthy about the fact that CVS offers vaccinations.
Makes me wonder what would happen if Woody Allen stopped making movies and became an organic kale farmer?
Meanwhile, back in the cubicle
I covered this topic adequately yesterday, but can't resist Pat Bagley's take. Not only a spot-on analysis, but one that made me giggle.
Here, scratch that earworm:
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