This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 17, 2011 - I felt mildly relieved after writing last week's blog post about Spider-Man. It wasn't until I got an email from Eric at act3, our communications agency, that I had to admit I hadn't really worked it all out. So, by way of our email exchange, let's try again.
Eric: So I just read your column, and what I'm really interested in at this point is your take on the play's take on the media -- I feel like you didn't really give us that. Do you think that the media portrayal is meant to make a commentary? That it makes one without intending to? Either way, what would that commentary be? Do you think the portrayal is accurate, overblown?
I suppose I could put this in the comments section, but I thought I'd fire off the thoughts in email form. Perhaps the questions can provide fodder for a follow-up blog entry, or perhaps you will tell me to take my pretzels and shove them. Either is fine :)
Nicole: I think you are right. My brain has been hurting about the concept of getting it out since I saw it over a month ago, and when I wrote it, I didn't quite feel like I really did it. So you should definitely put this in the comments. At which point I'll say:
I don't know that the emphasis was intentional. Mostly because the development of the story seemed to be so focused on the super-villain. I do think I'm so fine tuned to the journalistic lens that it probably over-struck me. But the following stands out regardless:
- The media have been covering the injuries and problems plaguing the show relentlessly.
- I'm not completely sure that the injuries and problems in this show are not getting proportionately more coverage than what might have been expected given how these things have been covered before.
- The production has spent a good deal of time and energy combating what they would characterize as overblown coverage with PR of their own.
- In the show, the publisher is generally mocked as not wanting to acknowledge a 300 lb. gorilla, yet ultimately he stands in the way of the progression of the plot, and not just any plot point, a major one.
- That major plot point is literally that MANHATTAN IS BURNING, and it's asserted in the plot that, until the newspaper guy agrees to report this, Peter Parker will not believe it's happening at all, even though the entire thing is one big fat illusion created by the super-villain (?!??!?!). Even the illusion can't come true until it's reported????
- So the major plan to attack the publisher and change his mind (which fails) is to glom on to the one inconsequential thing he will report (that some shoe stores were looted) to get his attention -- which I took as akin to the media's general strategy of reporting about Lindsay Lohan on CNN in hopes that it will get people to pay attention to, oh, I dunno, Egypt? But it doesn't work.
- Now (back in the real world), there is a tizzy because most publications went ahead and published reviews (horrible ones) of the show before it officially opened, frustrated that the producers have moved the opening back so many times.
- -I would have to agree that it's an illusion that they could make enough changes at this point for any of this to matter, yet they still insist it's not fair.
And while all that rages on, tickets are selling like hotcakes -- an illusion that what's written matters anyway.
Was that more of a strong point? :)
So I guess, maybe, it's the amount of energy around what does and doesn't get "reported" and who makes that decision. That there's such a gap between what's actually happening and what makes "recorded history." And how it's so ingrained that we don't even acknowledge it. This parallel between what happens in the plot and what's happening with the show in the press has gone undiscussed. So much so that I have to ask myself if it's really there -- perhaps it's all an illusion ... :)
Contact Beacon General Manager Nicole Hollway.
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Nicole Hollway General Manager