American writer Andrew Klavan – a former liberal mugged by reality - published a truly fascinating post today (read it here), about how left-wing fiction writers often use supposedly villainous characters to deliver screamingly right-wing messages that we, the audience, respond to positively: “often the audience recognizes the truth when they hear it and so elevates the villain while completely forgetting the hero and his pious-sounding left wing claptrap.”
Klavan concludes: “It’s about time our artists allowed their heroes to speak such truths and left the puling self-righteous leftist nonsense to their villains. After all, that’s the way it is in real life.”
Whatt a great insight!
Klavan's definitely one of the good men.
Funny you should mention that.
ReplyDeleteOnly last week, I was dragged kicking and screaming to see Don Carlo at the ROH. Fours hours with only one cigarette.
According to Michael Tanner in the Spectator:
[Don Carlo's] alter ego, and the work’s true hero, the freedom fighter Rodrigo, is magnificently taken by ...
He's half right. Don Carlo certainly isn't the hero. He's a narcissistic drip who can't get over the fact that his father the King of Spain married the French princess Carlo was betrothed to. It's annoying whenever that happens, obviously, but most of us get over it.
Not Carlo. He falls in with this Rodrigo chap who thinks it would be a good idea if Spain stopped killing people in Flanders. He even manages to get a hearing before the king for a delegation of Flemings.
Nonsense, says the king, it's the only language they understand, it will make them happy in the end and, at the insistence of the Grand Inquisitor, he has Rodrigo executed. Also six heretics.
How could Verdi have made it any clearer that monarchs have a statesman's duty that transcends undergraduate grandstanding as a freedom fighter? He couldn't, and yet Tanner thinks that Rodrigo's the hero.
Was he watching the same opera?
Has he never read Machiavelli (hugely recommended, that's a link to a Radio 4 play that you must listen to now)?
Surtitle: Good grief.
Well done remembering the plot. I'm ashamed to admit that I sat through the whole of Don Carlos many years ago at the ROH and - despite generally being a Verdi fan - can't remember anything about it! Otello, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, La Traviata - no problem, loved 'em to bits, but DC hasn't left a trace (and I saw it after I'd given up drinking). Maybe it's because the supposed hero was an annoying lefty who got what was coming to him!
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