In "Performing Glam Rock," Auslander talks about the difference between person, persona, and character through the lens of glam rock music. We have the person, a regular flesh-and-blood performer who pays their taxes and reads the newspaper. Then we have the stage persona, or who that person pretends to be onstage. (Lady Gaga, anyone?) Last of all, we have the character, the person portrayed in the text of the song itself. A person onstage, acting like a second person, and singing as a third... it's a lot to take in. And the spectacle of the performance asks us to forget, at least the real person, and experience only the persona and the story the persona wishes to tell.
I'm not sure how to translate this to a conversation about opera. Levin talks a little about the "unsettled" nature of opera- or at least, how opera should be, but I'm not entirely sure what it means. Are we to understand that operas have become stodgy and predictable, and we must embrace the unpredictability to reclaim what is relevant in the art form? Are the conventions of opera the same things that are keeping people out of the theatre and in the concert hall? By placing the utmost importance on the music rather than the text, what are we giving up? What do we get in return?
2 comments:
I'm glad you brought up Lady Gaga (although I'm sure all of us were thinking of her as we read this). Not knowing the rock genre or its history, I saw obvious connections between the kind of spectacle that Auslander describes and modern pop music and pop culture icons like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Nicki Minaj, or even the Kardashians. This kind of outrageous and spectacular dress and behavior has become almost a standard in many media industries. As you pointed out, many of them try to encourage the audience to forget that the first aspect of the persona--the real person--exists by eliding the real person with the onstage persona. In a world this connected, celebrities never really leave the stage, and some of them go to great lengths to make sure they are rarely seen out of character.
Lady Gaga is a particularly interesting case. There was a quote in Auslander from a glam rocker who said that their goal is to leave people asking, "Are they for real?" Sometimes I've asked this about Lady Gaga, wondering how seriously she takes herself and how much she is in on her own joke when she wears the meat dress.
But what is also interesting to consider with these modern instances of popular spectacle is that they are predominantly women, at least the ones that immediately came to my mind. As I read Auslander, I had a lot of questions about the gender politics and relationship of glam rock to female sexuality, which it appears he addresses in another chapter. Still, he notes that there was really only one major female glam rocker, and the performance of ambiguous sexuality was also a male domain. This brings up some interesting questions about gender and sexuality in performance. In which of the three personas do we locate sexuality for a male performer? Do we locate it differently for a female performer?
Iris, good question about bridging between Levin and Auslander. I think we might begin by thinking about how glam rock is as much about the spectacle as it is about the music, while conventional opera is more about the music than about the spectacle. However, Auslander argues that opera should pay more attention to spectacle. So that's what I see as one opening to begin bridging the two readings. Have you ever been to a concert and thought to yourself, "oh, this is exactly like the album." I have had that experience a few times, and it always makes me angry, because I came to see the live performance of the music in order to experience something more than the careful and precise recitation of the studio recording. I want some improvisation, some playfulness between the musicians, some element of stage persona to be enacted before my eyes a la The Who trashing their equipment. By placing the emphasis on precise playing of a sterile and fixed musical score, the band makes me feel bored and like I've wasted my money. I could have cranked my stereo up to 11 and danced alone in my living room instead of paying $50 to see them live (but dead). Opera is beautiful on the stereo... and it's beautiful live. But if there's going to be a visual component, why not make it interesting or innovative in ways that challenge or deepen our understanding of the opera? I like Levin's proposal to make opera dialectical (page 32)--that seems like a worthy endeavor to me.
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