-- By Tom Phillips
In 1960, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s film ”The Virgin
Spring” shocked and outraged audiences
in Europe and America. The film
dramatizes a medieval Swedish ballad of rape, murder, and revenge – all shown
with brutal realism. It ends with a
scene of penitence and prayer, as a spring bursts forth from the shallow grave
of the young victim.
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| The Virgin Spring |
The rape scene was censored in the US, and I saw the film in
a truncated form in 1960. Still, it took
57 years until I dared to look again. “The
Virgin Spring” is 89 minutes of continuous tension, dread, shock, and only at the end, redemption.
Bergman, wounded by the violation of his work, put out a
brief letter defending its frankness. He
said the rape scene had an ethical significance. “It shows the crime in its naked atrocity,
forcing us, in shocked desperation, to leave aesthetic enjoyment of a work of
art for passionate involvement in a human drama of guilt and grace… We must not hesitate in our portrayal of
human degradation, even if, in our demand for truth, we must violate certain taboos.”
Ethics trumps Aesthetics.
In 2017, Laura Peterson will not be censored for her new
version of “Failure.” But in its way, it
is just as shocking a violation of our usual aesthetic standards. Refashioned in the wake of the 2016 election,
“Failure” is a picture of just the “American carnage” that our new leader
claimed would end with his inauguration.
In her program note, the choreographer calls it “a protest against the
elevation of materialism and thoughtless accumulation of wealth at any cost.”
It does this by showing the cost – i.e. the degradation of American lives, one by
one, into the slavish pursuit of an illusion.
A great chasm has opened between the rich and the rest of us in America,
and for the vast majority, there is no way to bridge it. Working three jobs will not do it for the
single mother. Teaching ten courses will
not do it for the PhD adjunct professor.
For-profit colleges with E-Z loan terms will not do it for the hopeful student. Unpaid internships will not do it for the
would-be young professional. The reality
for most is a new form of slavery.
