| re: Another way of framing this | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 11:27 pm EDT 08/05/17 | |
| In reply to: re: Another way of framing this - CCentero 04:56 pm EDT 08/05/17 | |
|
|
|
| I was the one who brought Riedel into this wing of the conversation, and on further reflection, I do feel that I reacted to his column a bit strongly. His column is as much opinion as it is reportage, and I read it as if it were on Fox News: as a piece of social propaganda, built on just enough grains of truth to pass the lie detector. If you read his column more seriously than I do, that's a valid take, though I think even his fans would admit that he's never told us exactly what is happening behind the scenes. His column has never been remotely rigorous enough to pass that standard, which I think is a shame, because Riedel could write a much better if he wanted to. I find Riedel a fascinating figure, because he is far more intelligent and theater savvy than his column suggests, and yet he doesn't put forth the effort to get even basic facts right in his reporting - and he only puts out one or two columns a week, so he has the time. He comes across on his show as smug and self-satisfied, coasting on his charm and his own enjoyment of the product, which suggests a laziness to me. He makes a good show - I think he could make a better show is he really wanted to - and I have learned things about the craft and history of theater from Riedel. But where the show is a genuine space for the discussion of theater, the column reads to me his personal fiefdom. I see him use it as a pedestal to settle grudges and assert his influence on the industry. He picks favorites and targets, on whom to lavish praise or scorn, and for the past nine months the Kagans have been his favorite target. From befores the show was in previews, he has had it out for them. He has written merciless columns skewering them, and he has relished every opportunity to launch a torpedo. I've gotten the impression that he wants the Kagans crawl under a rock and die, each column a withering blow. And yet, just when he can administer the kill, he writes a column where they come off quite sympathetically and Oak is the villain. And he does less through the facts (which are paltry and unsubstantiated) than through the spin he puts on the narrative. The facts of the article, as I read them, are that Oak has been a pain in the ass. He fought with Rachel in rehearsals, he's been unhappy in the show, all of which the cast has noticed. The article told us he's good in the show, so the on-stage product isn't suffering and everyone is handling themselves professionally on stage. As I'm sure you know, there are many reasons why an actor and director might fight, and not all of them are the actors' fault. Likewise, there are many reasons an actor might be unhappy, and not all of them are the actor's fault (sometimes you're unhappy at work, am i right?). The article doesn't tell us the actual facts behind the fights or his unhappiness, it just tells us that they exist. Riedel could easily have turned this into a story of Kagan malfeasance, but instead he made it Oak's fault. I find that noteworthy, but then I ultimately agree with Oak handling this as he has. As the narrative goes, Oak violated his verbal agreement to publicly support the Kagan's narrative - which Riedel acknowledges wis a lie (another great piece of evidence he could use against the Kagans). As I read that, after unceremoniously firing him, they asked him to keep working for them. I would have expected Riedel, as a Republican, to have leapt on that as an abuse of unpaid labor, but instead he paints it as a perfectly reasonable request that was dashed when Oak realized how bad he was going to look. As I see it, Oak made a business decision, to protect his brand, which was going to take irreparable damage. You're the PR person, so you would have professional insight, but to me he chose wisely. The optics of this, already bad, would have only gotten worse if Oak had played Chris Christie in this. I mean... run eliza run, he could never have survived looking like a U.T. - that could easily have stopped his career dead in its tracks. Instead, he'll emerge a martyr. I don't know what his long term career looks like, but I think he emerges from this more strongly than he could have. (And it sounds like he might have needed a moment of ego deflation. Hopefully he'll emerge from this with more wisdom and humility. Many of us learn through failure, and it sounds like Oak made his own mistakes in this process. That's just my gut reaction, based on what we know, and no one has told us enough for us to do more than share gut reactions.) The way that Riedel writes this, Oak is a terrible person for breaking a verbal agreement to be taken advantage of by being exploited and having his capital devalued. That's such a weird counter-narrative to what could easily be a Republican/Libertarian rallying cry. Again, Riedek has the perfect opportunity to put a stake through the heart of this liberal couple who keep blowing up shows by maniacally spending money they don't have (another amazing story he's ignoring), and he protects them by putting the blame squarely on Oak. Now, there are of course many reasons that Riedel might have made that choice, and I projected more than i should have into his motives. There are numerous hierarchies in which the Kagans win out over Oak, and many of those are simply at the level of the jobs they do and the roles they play. It is entirely plausible that race is not playing a part in those dichotomies, though it certainly would be surprising, just knowing what we do of human nature. However he chose, the story that he's trying to tell is that internet people of color have closed the shown down. What I've seen is that internet activists exposed a lie amd revealed the show was suffering catastrophic financial failure. Riedel's story could be that "Great Comet" sold over a million a week for almost a year, and yet they're only one-fifth of the way back to recoupment - what terrible producing! Did they need to run for 5 years to make back their money? It boggles the mind. The show has been running for nearly a year, and it's going to lose ten million dollars. Riedel and others are blaming some tweets for everyone losing their jobs, while ignoring the giant garbage fire that was the Kagans' disastrous business plan. It doesn't make sense as a narrative to me, but some people on this board are swallowing it, and that concerns me for what it might foreshadow about the future. But yes, I misspoke by suggesting that race is the most important hierarchy in this. I should not have employed a smiley face, and I will be more cautious in the future. |
|
| reply | |
|
|
|
| Previous: | re: Another way of framing this - CCentero 04:56 pm EDT 08/05/17 |
| Next: | re: Another way of framing this - CCentero 01:09 pm EDT 08/06/17 |
| Thread: |
|
Time to render: 0.010089 seconds.