Eric Sawyer, composer, Harley Erdman, librettist
I am unable to find a list of the performers and conductor for this performance. I believe it is the premier which was presented by a consortium of five colleges in Western Massachusetts, at the same Smith College where Newton Arvin taught, where he was arrested for possession of innocuous 1950s era beef-cake magazines and where his career as one of the time's foremost scholars of American literature - his deep Hawthorne scholarship gives a good part of the substance of the opera and the title - and which may have led to his death a few years later. He isn't exactly a hero - he named names to the prosecutors which led to other men being prosecuted and fired - but he is a kind of tragic hero.
Here's an interview with the composer, librettist and the author of the book they based their work on.
For me as someone who is seriously anti-porn, it raises serious questions, though I think the stuff he was arrested for getting in the mail and possessing is kind of tacky and hardly pornographic, the refusal of lawyers and judges and "justices" to distinguish that from the photographed and filmed rape and abuse and endangerment of Women, Children and Men in the explosion of porn today is no reason to accept the one while acknowledging the injustice of cases like this one. I find I can hold both positions with no problem but, then, I'm not in the business of lying while a lawyer.
It is a very good opera. One of a number these two have collaborated on. I'm looking forward to hearing more of their work. Here's something by Eric Sawyer that's quite different, based on Shaker hymns, The Humble Heart
"For me as someone who is seriously anti-porn......"
ReplyDeleteOh good lord, you can't be sillier if you tried. Here's a clue, putz-face -- stuff that arouses normal people is none of your goddamn business.
As you typically do, you make a lot of my point in trying to refute it But I'll wait to point that out by asking how you can so confidently use the term "normal people" as if that's definable either casually or legally and, once identified, what arouses them? I'll bet you wouldn't really mean it's no one's business what arouses a good many of them, starting with those who are aroused by the rape of children and a dozen other genera of porn that could probably be identified by category up to and including the full depravity of Nazi themed porn. I would expect that, especially, you as well as I would find it the business of many others what, for example, the porn habits of the likes of Lindsay Graham or Mike Johnson or someone like Bishop Robert Barron or Raymond Burke or Paula White might be. I'd have considered it the business of everyone if those were exposed.
DeleteAnd that leaves out the damage of the porn industry to those whose bodies are the raw material of a lot of it. The failure to distinguish between what got poor Newton Arvin into trouble, the entirely voluntary choice of adult men to be photographed with little more than to cover their genitals and every category of real porn which involves everything from merely dangerous sexual promiscuity - often at the choice of the producer, not those who are having sex - to that porn which constitutes actual rape and those species of porn which involves killing either simulated or, who can doubt, actual killing. I'd certainly want to know if the seemingly "normal" person who has the care of children are aroused by pornography, either the depiction of children or the description of it. I'll bet you'd be interested in the veterinary assistant who has the care of your cat was turned on by animal snuff porn, which flourishes on unregulated far-right social media.
Oh fercrissakes, nobody's in favor of kiddy or animal snuff porn, and the idea that you think either is some kind of out of control problem only shows the depths of your capacity for faux outrage and pecksniffery.
ReplyDeleteHere's the deal, Sparkles. A) Porn serves a valuable social function for the ugly and the unloved. B) Erotica is what turns me on -- Porn is what turns YOU on. 😎
A, I was answering your contention that "what arouses normal people is none of my goddamned business" not whether or not anyone's in favor of it. As the prevalence of both genera of porn makes enormous amounts of money for those who peddle it and the frequency with which people who are taken as "normal" are exposed or arrested for pornography that features children or the murder of animals, your contention that they wouldn't consume such filth is wrong. Clearly you would consider it the business of many what arouses such "normal people which was what I was pointing out. Clearly that level of sexually arousing material isn't the same thing as 1950s era beef-cake magazines
DeleteB. Your willingness to volunteer the bodies of those who are used and used up by the porn industry in service to your entirely stereotypical and imaginary beneficiaries would only be noble if you were putting your own ass on the line for them. We've had that conversation before. Your "B)" is, as always just another conventional 1960s style cliche. I wonder if by saying that you don't make or at least imply my contention about the difference between obvious hard-core porn (which, by the way, is sold under that name, so it's no denying that's what's being sold) and the kind of stuff that Newton Arvin got into trouble over. In other words, it's hardly the same thing that the opera is talking about.