Henrik Ibsen invented realistic theater, and now he bores. Why? | Hacker News Reader

Henrik Ibsen invented realistic theater, and now he bores. Why?

commentarymagazine.com

38 pointsdang28 comments

> “theater of concurrence,” a genre whose practitioners take for granted that their liberal audiences already agree with them about everything

Bit of an ideological record scratch moment there, so I went to look for an "about commentary magazine" (there isn't one?) and an overview of their work: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/issues/ which is clearly coming from a very ideological place.

Nonetheless the central thesis of the piece is sound; what was shockingly progressive now looks mundane, because society has changed.

> Therein, however, lies the source of our latter-day discontent with Ibsen, which is that the people who go to see serious plays today are no longer horrified by anything in A Doll’s House or Ghosts. To the contrary, they sympathize with Nora and her fellow transgressors, and this sympathy cannot help but diminish the impact of Ibsen’s work.

For similar reasons nobody reads Stendhal any more, Tolkein looks cliched and oddly paced if you are exposed to any modern fantasy before reading him, and landmark films like Citizen Kane and 2001 are entertainment only to very specific audiences.

Indeed, it feels rather like we're reading someone with an axe of their own to grind.

I'd like to see a little more justification for this:

« For him, the Victorian-era hypocrisy he decried was a manifestation of the power of the mob to stifle the imaginations of the handful of great men and women who were born to leaven the loaf. As he declares in An Enemy of the People: “The majority is never right….The strongest man in the world is the man who stands alone.” »

That seems to me to be a clear-cut case of dishonestly attributing the views of an unsympathetic (at that point in the play) character to the playwright.

Further, I think the author may be exaggerating Ibsen's lack of popularity these days (having to write things like « of the later works, only <list of six plays> continue to be widely performed » is a bit of a clue).

Coincidentally, just a couple of hours ago, I heard an interview of 'Ink' playwright James Graham talking about audiences expecting Rupert Murdoch to be presented as a straightforward villain.

One of the many excellent things about Ink was how it forced audiences to revise - rapidly - their notions of Murdoch, even if after the play, we were left to reflect on the corrupting effects of power.

> https://www.commentarymagazine.com/issues/ which is clearly coming from a very ideological place.

"Hate Crime Hoaxes and Why They Happen"

"Kavanaugh and the Assault on Men"

Yikes.

Right, but let's judge the piece on its own merits, not by association.

> For similar reasons nobody reads Stendhal any more

Speak for yourself. Charterhouse of Parma is one of my favorite novels.

Wait, nobody reads Stendhal any more?

I read A Doll's House and Ghosts in high school. Ghosts ends with the main character's son, who has inherited syphilis from his father, insanely chanting "The sun, the sun, the sun, the sun."

That ending is something that my brother and I reference today as an example of how art can become top-heavy and unconvincing (The sun is the "source," which in this case is the father, who has passed his disease literally and figuratively on to his son).

The ultimate problem I have with Ibsen is that his plays feel pre-configured, even fake. He's never searching for a thesis or questioning. He has an opinion to unload (e.g. the sins of the father shall be visited upon the son) and he's decided to use a play to do it. The result feels sterile, boring, lacking in wit, pointless.

I would unfavorably compare Ibsen to Raymond Carver. Carver also deals with disintegrating families, marital tension, poverty, alcoholism and the rest. But Carver somehow feels vital and real. His writing never resembles overwrought tragedy even though there's plenty of unhappiness. You never get the feeling that Carver has the answers or that he's talking down to you.

Have you read or seen the Wild Duck? I think it's much superior to Ibsen's better known plays.

As in Norwegian, I have to ask... is Vildanden (the wild duck) not one of his most known/iconic plays outside of Norway? I would say it's easily one of the three defining plays people would know about over here, so it confuses me to see it mentioned like this.

My impression is that a Doll's House and Ghosts are much better known in the English speaking world. Enemy of the People too--probably because of the punchy title.

Interesting, over here I would say et Dukkehjem (a doll's house), Vildanden (the wild duck), and Peer Gynt are his most known works, probably not-very-closely followed by en folkefiende (Enemy of the people). Fascinating.

The message of the Wild Duck is sort of unpopular. If we could somehow stage the play on HN, it'd probably get massively downvoted :-)

This is not true at all if you take his plays as a whole. Often his next play will take the opposite position from the one before.

This seems to me like a very High School English teacher inspired interpretation of the story. I'm not sure what your distinction is between opinion and thesis, but in either case the "sins of the father" quote is just a dramatic element of the story. The thesis IMO is quite clearly a critique on the hypocrisies of the Norwegian society at the time. The characters in the book that all proclaim traditional values and virtues are all hiding despicable behavior while the mother and son subscribe to a more progressive morality and are punished for it.

Also Carver might feel more vital and reel considering his stories are about people in my parents or grandparents generation (people I've met), whereas Ibsen was writing when Victorian England was still a thing. I love both authors btw.

> Whenever you see a new play that purports to indict the spiritual emptiness of the bourgeoisie—and most latter-day British and American dramas do just that—you are seeing his influence at work. From Shaw to Arthur Miller to Tony Kushner, he is the great forerunner, the prophet of modern drama. Yet fewer directors and actors are showing any interest in his own plays

This is the peril of artistic innovation. Sonic Youth inspired most nineties bands, but they now sound like generic nineties grunge, only becoming amazing when you realise the track was written ten years beforehand.

Same with JMW Turner. To me personally his landscapes seem incredibly bland, but now I realise he was one of the people who inspired so many others to look at the beauty of nature to the level it became an Ikea cliché.

I’m old enough to remember when SY and Pixies were new, and even as a music fan they sounded like a revolution. But within ten years it seemed normal, and ten years after that it was just boring. That’s just how music is. Still great bands though.

I agree that Sonic Youth sounds a little dated at this point. But a lot of classic rock (not all, but a lot) still sounds pretty revolutionary to me, The Doors in particular.

I think Sonic Youth won't stand the test of time, like a few other bands, because they weren't very good. They were basically 'abstract art in sound' - and essentially their sound was 'breaking moulds'. It was very different, hyper alt. But it wasn't necessarily, in and of itself, very great.

So, Sonic Youth 'works' in the culture of the late 1980's and early 1990's. But it doesn't work beyond that.

Very timely, but not timeless.

So Van Halen, kind of the opposite of Sonic Youth ... I was never a fan but dragged to see them live a few years ago - it was monumental. A sound created to fill a stadium, just 4 dudes and not a lot of fuss/electronics or gear. A clean big sound from just them playing. A little like Chilli Peppers in terms of 'just four guys without much else'. Ironically I only ever saw them with Pixies opening.

> Sonic Youth inspired most nineties bands

s/most/some/; s/bands/grunge bands/;

Let's not overplay it here.

s/some grunge bands/many of the most well known grunge bands/

Let's not downplay it either.

An example I have been thinking of recently is Robert Fripp’s contribution as a session guitarist to David Bowie’s Heroes. As the story goes, Fripp arrived at the Berlin studio jetlagged and not particularly involved in Bowie’s project, but in just a few hours he laid down a series of parts that anticipates the whole evolution of guitar-based pop music for the next 15 years. If you know the whole historical context of the genre, this is an incredible achievement. But play it to younger generations of listeners today and it sounds commonplace or, worse yet, “dad rock”.

> Whenever you see a new play that purports to indict the spiritual emptiness of the bourgeoisie—and most latter-day British and American dramas do just that—you are seeing his influence at work.

Right, just like if you hear someone sneeze, you're witnessing the influence of the first human that sneezed.

As if nobody could independently get the brilliant idea to criticize the bourgeoise?

Indeed - and more recent incarnations of the genre, if well done, are more likely to supplant the original as influences, simply because they address more contemporary, less settled issues.

Also, there was a theme in art of the 1800's of critizing the bourgeoise before Ibsen. Maybe not in plays, but certainly in painting.

E.g.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awakening_Conscience

The woman in that painting, 26 years before A Doll's House could well be "Nora".

Hmm, but that is criticising bourgeois behaviour in the name of bourgeois and/or Christian values, no? Whereas Ibsen criticises the values themselves…. Of course, this dichotomy is too simple, and tags like "bourgeois values" are shortcut descriptions of a moral world with as much complexity and contradictions as the present day's….

An indictment of American theatre more than Ibsen. In London, Ibsen adaptations have been shocking as ever. Robert Icke’s phenomenal Wild Duck was one of the best plays I saw last year. The fact that Ibsen can be hit or miss is down to the production, not the writer.

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