Dull Fiction and Gripping Reality
Jul. 21st, 2010 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinLast Friday's Front Row had a segment on a revival of Aspects of Love and one on the photographer for Shackleton's famous and aptly-named Endurance expedition.
I am not ashamed to be a fan of musicals, yea, even of Andrew Lloyd Webber. I've probably memorized every note of Phantom, Joseph, and Jesus Christ Superstar, and learned an awful lot about story structure, character, and the cathartic arc from the years I was obsessed with Sunset Boulevard. My roommate at the time had the complete recording of Aspects of Love and I tried on several occasions to give it a listen, but no matter how bored I otherwise was, or what I found to occupy myself while the music was on, I never made it to the end. Two discs! An hour and a half! How hard can it be? But by halfway through the second disc my brain was basically in a state of ... well ... this sums it up pretty much exactly:
God bless YouTube.
I may be reading too much into it but I did get a wry twinge of vindication to hear the host and his guest reviewer very diplomatically dance around sentiments in line with how I felt about the play.
Aspects of Love wasn't a complete waste of time, though – I got a rather sardonic bit of 'isn't the world a funny old place' material out of approaching its signature song logically.
GIVEN: All is fair in love and war
POSIT: love = war
PROOF: Replace every 'love' in Love Changes Everything with 'war.' It still totally works.
Now obviously I am much more into Scott than Shackleton (or, rather, the Terra Nova than the Endurance, as the actual leaders of each expedition are not what hold my interest) but no matter how much I resent it for hogging the limelight in the early 2000s and prejudicing me against the story that would take over my brain once I stooped to learn more about it, the story of the Endurance crew is undeniably one of the most awesome and amazing ever told. Evidently there's an exhibit at Liverpool's maritime museum of photos of the expedition (which I'm pretty sure is not the show that's been going on in Edinburgh; they would have said) so if you're in the area, go and say 'wow!' (but quietly; it's a museum)
In the meantime my large coastal city doesn't even have a maritime museum ... [mope]
... And to round it all off the final segment is on 'mockbusters,' with emphasis on Megapiranha. Oh, Front Row, you are so well-rounded.
I am not ashamed to be a fan of musicals, yea, even of Andrew Lloyd Webber. I've probably memorized every note of Phantom, Joseph, and Jesus Christ Superstar, and learned an awful lot about story structure, character, and the cathartic arc from the years I was obsessed with Sunset Boulevard. My roommate at the time had the complete recording of Aspects of Love and I tried on several occasions to give it a listen, but no matter how bored I otherwise was, or what I found to occupy myself while the music was on, I never made it to the end. Two discs! An hour and a half! How hard can it be? But by halfway through the second disc my brain was basically in a state of ... well ... this sums it up pretty much exactly:
God bless YouTube.
I may be reading too much into it but I did get a wry twinge of vindication to hear the host and his guest reviewer very diplomatically dance around sentiments in line with how I felt about the play.
Aspects of Love wasn't a complete waste of time, though – I got a rather sardonic bit of 'isn't the world a funny old place' material out of approaching its signature song logically.
GIVEN: All is fair in love and war
POSIT: love = war
PROOF: Replace every 'love' in Love Changes Everything with 'war.' It still totally works.
Now obviously I am much more into Scott than Shackleton (or, rather, the Terra Nova than the Endurance, as the actual leaders of each expedition are not what hold my interest) but no matter how much I resent it for hogging the limelight in the early 2000s and prejudicing me against the story that would take over my brain once I stooped to learn more about it, the story of the Endurance crew is undeniably one of the most awesome and amazing ever told. Evidently there's an exhibit at Liverpool's maritime museum of photos of the expedition (which I'm pretty sure is not the show that's been going on in Edinburgh; they would have said) so if you're in the area, go and say 'wow!' (but quietly; it's a museum)
In the meantime my large coastal city doesn't even have a maritime museum ... [mope]
... And to round it all off the final segment is on 'mockbusters,' with emphasis on Megapiranha. Oh, Front Row, you are so well-rounded.
