The Playgoer: "Arts & Leisure" Watch: 8/14

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Sunday, August 14, 2005

"Arts & Leisure" Watch: 8/14

Let it be noted: Week Two of Porn as Art. Yes, another pr promotion of a porn film on highly valuable pages. (This time a midnight kitsch showing of "Deep Throat"--as if it wasn't whitewashed



Lennon: "Help!!!"

enough in the recent "documentary".) Last week it was the "Directions" blurbs up front. This week it's "The Week Ahead" in the back--this is what used to be the big listings, which the "new" Times arts regime removed (too democratic, I suppose) and replaced with this highly "selective" critics picks. Yeah, like we need "experts" to draw our attention to "Deep Throat" and Lennon: The Musical. Speaking of which--why does the Times continue to slobber over this turkey? What does Yoko have over them??? Especially when you contemplate this "publicity" shot above.

You may remember, there was some controversy last year over this move to dump the more complete, less glossy old listings, with several readers complaining (including Playgoer, who even got a letter published!---albeit on the rarely read Public Editor page). There was some announcement lately they were going to abandon the change. Could have fooled me.

On the Theatre page itself, though, hats off to Jason Zinoman for sneaking in a good little item on Richard Foreman. And it's not even a promotion for anything! Imagine, an arts article written out of genuine interest. It's been common knowledge for a while in the theatre community Foreman offers a lot of free access to his work over the web. But certainly worth raising consciousness of Foreman among the increasingly un-theatre-friendly, Broadway-only Times (implied)readers--if only to balance the Lennon and nudity articles.

And to even further improve their downtown cred all of a sudden, there's also this long meandering piece on this "Howl!" festival--something I've never even heard of for two years. Okay, looks interesting. But not much about "theatre" here. The only interesting context given here is about reclaiming downtown from gentrification and corporatization. (But, hey, how about the Metro section?) The same "Two Boots" venue talked about here, by the way, is the one doing the "Deep Throat" showing. Playgoer doesn't mean to come off so prudish, really. Study porn all you want, really. Take it seriously, by all means. But the thought of a bunch of East Village hipsters gathering in a basement screening room to watch grainy 30-yr-old footage of the abused Linda Lovelace giving head, while tossing back a beer and trading ironic comments....kinda doesn't sit right.

But, hey, I have no moral qualms at all about that Two Boots pizza. Even though that may not always sit right either.

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