Lucky Man

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• It should come as no surprise that fame—showbiz fame anyway—is so disorienting. After all, the theater, where it all begins, is founded on a conspiracy of mutual deception. The performer pretends to be someone he is not, and the audience willingly suspends its disbelief. It's a confidence game in which both parties risk the humiliation of being played for a sucker. The actor makes himself vulnerable to the embarrassment of failure by trusting that the audience will grant him the time and attention to craft his lie. In return, the audience depends upon the actor's gift to keep them from feeling like fools for believing. Artfully transacted, this is one con where the potential exists for everybody to win. The payoff is an hour or so of collective—and harmless—magical thinking. (查看原文)

  B.Blanca 2020-10-10 06:12:50

• Once you get beyond the physical and temporal boundaries of the playhouse, however, the deal gets more confusing. With TV and film, for example, the sense of scale is thrown so completely out of whack that the whole idea and value of the mirror is lost. Take the film actor—blown up to fill a twenty-foot-high film screen, he assumes the dimensions of a god. Some in the audience, viewing him from the darkened, churchlike environment of the cineplex, might even begin to regard him as such—hence, matinee idol. In contrast, the television actor is miniaturized, omnipresent as a new member of the viewer's family. But there's a godlike power in this illusion as well, turning on its ubiquity, and the sheer number of lives that the performer can touch in the intimate space of their living rooms. (查看原文)

  B.Blanca 2020-10-10 06:23:59