On his book Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician
Cover Interview of October 07, 2009
A close-up
I wrote the Introduction as a mise en scène that would set the stage for what comes next—a tale of presidential betrayal of an American artist (by Truman and Eisenhower). In a larger sense, my work indicates how the arts are not separated from the domestic and international political milieus, from political and social forces. In other words, the aesthetic terrain is not in some pristine place but is instead linked to structures of power.
I think that my book makes much of this clear by focusing not on abstract theory but on the concrete, human case. Leonard Bernstein was, of course, a composer and conductor living in Cold War America. As composer of Broadway musical theater, he was subject to the demands of the Cold War culture industry for creative expression. Dissident and daring, Bernstein tested the limits imposed by orthodoxy—e.g., by naming and opposing the military-industrial complex and its adventures and expeditions around the globe. But Bernstein did not broach those limits.
In the sixties and later on, Bernstein did attack that complex, its promotion of an expansionist foreign policy and its most visible manifestation, the war in Vietnam. And Bernstein did not stop there: he also attacked racism and homophobia, in the 1977 Songfest and in public address.
The reader will learn from the section on Gustav Mahler how Bernstein’s championing of that composer fits into the socio-political analyses of Bernstein’s life-long projects.
Spontaneous generation is one of those wrong theories that clutter the basements of the biological sciences and that now look so very obviously wrong that it is hard to see how anyone could have taken them seriously in the first place. Why wouldn’t it occur to anyone that flies might be laying eggs that were too small for us to see? How simple would the crucial experiment be? What I have tried to do in much of my work is to turn this ‘obvious wrongness’ on its head—why, exactly, does it seem so obviously wrong?—and see what the new picture that emerges from that inquiry says about science and our belief in its results.Daryn Lehoux, Interview of November 13, 2017
It’s commonplace to say that humor is subjective, since what’s funny to you might not be funny to me. But humor is also a loaded concept. If you – or your people – have no sense of humor, or the wrong one, that means you’re less rational, tolerant, understanding, or civilized. You don’t get it. Or, worse, you lack something human. Modern Chinese debates about humor were very much caught up with these fundamental questions of value.Christopher Rea, Interview of October 26, 2016
A close-up
I wrote the Introduction as a mise en scène that would set the stage for what comes next—a tale of presidential betrayal of an American artist (by Truman and Eisenhower). In a larger sense, my work indicates how the arts are not separated from the domestic and international political milieus, from political and social forces. In other words, the aesthetic terrain is not in some pristine place but is instead linked to structures of power.
I think that my book makes much of this clear by focusing not on abstract theory but on the concrete, human case. Leonard Bernstein was, of course, a composer and conductor living in Cold War America. As composer of Broadway musical theater, he was subject to the demands of the Cold War culture industry for creative expression. Dissident and daring, Bernstein tested the limits imposed by orthodoxy—e.g., by naming and opposing the military-industrial complex and its adventures and expeditions around the globe. But Bernstein did not broach those limits.
In the sixties and later on, Bernstein did attack that complex, its promotion of an expansionist foreign policy and its most visible manifestation, the war in Vietnam. And Bernstein did not stop there: he also attacked racism and homophobia, in the 1977 Songfest and in public address.
The reader will learn from the section on Gustav Mahler how Bernstein’s championing of that composer fits into the socio-political analyses of Bernstein’s life-long projects.