Reading in the dark - Username Faust review
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Username Faust review
Yesterday ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) alexx_kay, juliad and I attended "username: faust," currently playing at the New College Theater. I found it both enjoyable and thought-provoking; my ultimate judgement is that creatively, it is a fabulous play, but politically, I completely disagree with its theme.
Here is the story (note I think I am conflating the character name with the actors' names, due tot he way the program presented this information). Alice, a wheelchair user who works from home at a data entry job, becomes drawn into the Internet, posting to LiveJournal and later, under the influence of Sophie, creating YouTube videos. Soon she finds herself withdrawing from her real-life friend and neighbor, Wendy, in order to cultivate the adoration of her online fans. All of this comes about through a literal Faustian bargain, with Lucifer being played by a sort of "remixed Old Nick," who sings all his parts through pieces from various Faust operas.
The acting was impressive (although I wish the female lead had projected a bit more), and the opera was wonderful.
My main issues with the play are that it takes the easy route in some of it's narrative, including a pat "technology is evil" moral stance. To be specific, the action of the play presents the idea that the Net robs you of "real" experience and substitutes superficial meaningless virtual experience. It is to be noted, as
this other review
http://galen-reviews.livejournal.com/12688.html
points out, that this is a Harvard student's senior thesis, but still, I feel a more complex unpacking of the pros and cons of technology is, at this point in the 21st century, to be expected.
As a disability and technology advocate, I have to strongly object to this theme.
1. From a 21st century perspective, the "technology is evil" stance is over-simplified and not very useful to a culture which uses technology every day, in all sorts of contexts, for all sorts of reasons. The narrative possibilities were restricted by the one act length of the play, but still, it would have been refreshing to see something new. (alexx_kay pointed out that the theme was even self-contradictory, as much of the content was presented through the use of technology, including projections of cmputer screens and YouTube videos.)
2. Particularly as the theme was contextualized by the fact that the characters were people with disabilities, there was some implication that they were more susceptible to the lure of Internet relationships because their real lives were unfulfilling, with Wendy complaining of having no boyfriend and Alice complaining about her tedious data entry job. I felt really uncomfortable with the portrayal of these two characters who seemed to have no connection with books, or music, or hobbies. In other words, these weren't like any of the real people with disabilities that I know, but they did serve to underscore how emotionally vulnerable PWD could be, with the implication that PWD might more easily fall pray to the lure of Internet-based relationships.
Ultimately, I feel there needs to be more portrayals of the positive uses of technology and th reality that the user has the power to adopt, adapt, turn it on and turn it off through their own sense of agency. While the ending of the play did show the lead character turning off her computer and leaving the stage, this ending was problematized by the fact that she was still showing up on the cameras, which continued to be viewed by Sophie and Lucifer. This left a sense that, once the genie has been let out of the bottle, the user has no way back, no means of really reclaiming agency, and will never truly escape the exploitive gaze of the technological eye.
You can find Alice's blog entries on LJ (sorry, not certain of the url), and you can catch some of the YouTube videos shown within the play and audience commentary (including my own contribution) at
the username: faust YouTube channel
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yVVzEPFbg4o&feature=PlayList&p=1F537754225D8FE6&index=1
[updated and corrected url].
(Just as an aside, when we returned home last night, alexx_kay went off to World of Warcraft and I went off to LJ.)
Current Location: aerye
Current Music: www.wumb.org
Tags: media studies, technology, theatre
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link to youtube doesn't work :-)
also, have you seen that Regina Lynn story about audio-described porn for the blind? I'm curious -- and she's curious -- what the blind community is saying.
Sorry about the url, I thought that was the correct url but perhaps alexx_kay can take a look at the program and post the actual url sometime today. Re described porn: I'm all for this idea--I've always been a pretty vocal critic of how little sex-related material, informative, recreational, or purely smutty--is made available to PWD (the National Library Service does provide braille versions of Playboy, but all the sexual material has been edited out--I know this because I had a braille subscription for a year or so until someone informed me of the editing). On the other hand, I'm unlikely to actually use this service. Someone else sent me the link and I looked at what was offered; it's traditional het white male smut, as far as I could tell, which is pretty much not my thing. I considered posting a link tot he librarian post Web site and asking for descriptions of the pictures--that totally being my thing (two words: library ladders).
I found the url for the username: faust YouTube channel and corrected it within the original post.
Also, I should have added this disclaimer to my previous post: I have no idea what the blind community thinks of this. As I have mentioned previously, I am not very active with blind groups of any sort, and don't hang out with enough blind people to feel I can speak for anyone else. If you are curious about what a group tinks of the porn description site, I would post to one of the blind communities, or perhaps the disability in media group on LJ (not sure of their precise name, you can find it on my info page, though).
well I wasn't asking you to speak for anyone else definitely, I would never ask that. I made an assumption, clearly a bad one, that you were active with blind groups, and thus might hear what other people had to say.
I didn't mean to come off sounding snarky about that. I do talk to a lot of visually-impaired people, but find myself less and less involved with groups, even mailing lists. Part of me feels that, if there were a consensus opinion on any subject, I would probably be likely to have the opposite opinion *grin*. I don't know why I feel that, but it just makes me more likely to feel I am not in touch with what blind groups think.
The lead character's name is actually Cass. I think she was played by an understudy for our performance, so that may be part of the projection issue. She was miked, but not very well, so whenever she was looking away from her right shoulder, the mike didn't amplify her. Also, our friend who was there is [Bad username: juldea"], not juliad.
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| Date: | April 15th, 2008 02:22 am (UTC) |
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No understudy on the 13th.
I was confused by the name being different than the name in the program.
The play didn't really address the allure of online relationships, though, because the main character didn't really have any online *relationships*. I don't recall any mention ever being made of anyone with whom she had any regular online contact. The messages she writes to her "fans" are mostly about how she can't possibly respond to them as individuals. What she is tempted by is not online relationships, but online adulation. I am inclined to think the director just made certain choices in the context of having to get this project done in a relatively short time frame. The result was creative and entertaining, but not particularly intellectually nuanced. |
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