tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9902716.post1953490105049956527..comments2024-02-22T01:36:48.427-08:00Comments on On Theatre and Politics - Matthew Freeman: Albee and ObjectivityFreemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01183078884824734105noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9902716.post-4230890286561917272007-11-13T06:53:00.000-08:002007-11-13T06:53:00.000-08:00I think Albee is strawmanning here. The idea that ...I think Albee is strawmanning here. The idea that art is subjectively created and experienced has little to do with the purely facile notion that someone being deaf "explains" the music they compose. An insistence on the idea of subjectivity-- that artists create from a particular viewpoint-- is <I>not</I> the same as saying that art is explainable by biography.<BR/><BR/>Biography can help enhance the understanding of how particular works of art come to be, but it's still just a small piece of a puzzle. Knowing that Oscar Wilde was hiding his homosexuality at a time that homosexuality was a crime certainly makes reading <I>The Decay of Lying</I>-- in which he praises surface deception as the real truth-- more complicated, but it doesn't explain it.<BR/><BR/>I understand where Albee's coming from in this. If you're interested in writing human characters, you have to be able to write peopel you don't agree with or like in a human way. But you're still a subjective being in a world where objectivity is rare. If it exists at all.parabasishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12476856869466695694noreply@blogger.com