All the news networks are picking this up now, Harrogate just watched MSNBC air the fateful Richards clip during "Tucker." Harrogate won't bother to link to Richards' actual tirade: those interested can find it easy enough. Because to link the video would be to violate the brilliant point Harrogate is about to make.
There is a great deal of truth to what claymation says in the comments section of the first post on Richards-Gate. There is the Idea of Cosmo Kramer and that idea is not at all beholden to the actions of Michael Richards the man. So that whether he was all liquored up as claymation hopefully suggests, or whether he's just a garden variety asshole racist bigot (as Shakes and Harrogate have both implied in earlier posts)--either way, Harrogate says, the Idea of Cosmo Kramer is safely tucked away in the inviolable land of Art.
No, Harrogate's not a New Critic, in case any nerdy lit-crit trolls are lurking, though he does think there's, in general, too much obsession with biography, anecdote, and the petty like in art studies of all kinds. Harrogate is saying he doesn't see any more reason to allow Richards' actions to contaminate our vision of Cosmo Kramer than there is, say, to hold Harrogate's boring personality against his "breathtakingly electric writing" (New York Times), or to confuse Curt Schilling's glorious split-finger fastball with his terrible politics. Remember, readers, only shortly after Schilling's "bloody sock" heroism of 2004, he was out on the campaign trail stumping with George W. Bush. Doesn't make the Sox victory any less sweet. For all Harrogate cares, all these people we put in front of cameras might be assholes. But it's not for themselves that we care. It's for the actions, the ideas, the Poetry they project, that we care in the first place.
6 comments:
If only that were true, Harrogate. I think that the brilliance with which the character Kramer is executed easily inspires the suspension of disbelief necessary to continue to enjoy the art, but that will not be true for everyone. We cannot un-know what we learned about Richards today, and for many it will forever taint Kramer. Speaking for myself, my appreciation of art is frequently connected, to varying degrees, with my fantasy of the artist--This is why I read Hemingway's _A Moveable Feast_ and devoured Anne Sexton's biography and Flannery O'Connor's letters. And I also hold grudges against movie stars who cheat on their spouses--I will forever despise Ethan Hawke and Tom Cruise and I can't watch Charlie Sheen because what I have heard about his personal life disgusts me. So I think that to a point Kramer is safe, but he is not impenetrable. Because the next time you watch Seinfeld, you'll shake your head and wish that this incident hadn't happened.
Oh, these are turbulent intellectual waters into which we find ourselves toss'd, and with only our souls on which to depend for staying afloat!
It is true that there will be no way to watch episodes of Seinfeld without a shake of the head, a sigh, and a nostalgiac flashback to earlier, more innocent times where "Kramerica" seemed like the greatest idea this side of the chocolate doughnut.
Yet against these inclinations, we must resist with all our might! Else we are left absurdly requiring of our artists that they be the kind of people we want them to be, in their actual lives.
Not to mention the fact that we've all had our terrible, humiliating moments. Thankfully the rest of us don't get our public tantrums, our dirty laundry, our moments of political incorrectness broadcast all over You Tube. The price of celebrity, you say? Perhaps, to an extent.
But at any rate 'tis a distorting lens. Maybe three days ago Michael Richards did several small acts of kindness, none of which got caught on camera, none of which were sexy enough to cause a bruhaha even if they did get caught on camera.
No, best to leave the "people" alone and avoid the trainwreck of the star gazer whenever possible. That's All-State's stand. And Harrogate's.
Sarah said "taint"!!!
I agree that we shouldn't the actor should be separated from whom he embodies, but as sarah said, a line has been crossed. I doubt anyone would sit and watch O.J. Simpson playing a killer in a movie and suspend our thoughts of him from his character completely. Some things are so wrong that they won't allow us to suspend our thoughts of the person acting out and rightly so in my mind. Talent should not excuse you from being morally responsible to some extent. To exactly what extent? I can't say, but I know he Richards crossed the line!
P.S. If you go on a tirade like that on or off camera, you are a racist. That crossed past political correctness at the hanging comment. Please tell me most people don't have private tantrums like this! I need to believe!
Jae,
While I can personally make any promises, I still have some hope for the good in people (though not many of the people in power). I don't think that Richards' tirade is representative of the general public's private thoughts (hope, hope, hope).
With Oxymoron's brilliant point at the top of the provebial heap, it must be ceded by all accounts that the commentary on this thread represents a breadth of significant issues that merit further consideration.
But the tenor of this discourse has shifted, perhaps inevitably, into arguments about Richards the man, about his personal ethos, about what it means to say or do a racist thing, or any terrible thing for that matter.
A new thread must therefore come of this, one in which Art takes a back seat to Person. And that is where Harrogate now turns with a new thread.
But for those who still want to discuss how the artist's personal qualities bear on the art itself, this thread remains the place to be.
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