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Frost/Nixon
I saw Frost/Nixon last night (thanks to the lovely ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
brownfist, who had an extra ticket). I thought it was great, despite the mixed reviews it's been getting, but then, I've been a bit Nixon-obsessed lately. The more I think about him, the more I think that he was an actual clinical sociopath—the play is quite lovely in that, in parts, you really feel a bit sorry for the guy, and then you realize that he's manipulating you, and then you almost respect him for being a master manipulator because that does take talent, and then you remember that he's among the most evil men to ever live. So I really enjoyed it on that level.
Also, it's interesting to see a story about a confrontation between an ideologue and someone who is basically in it for the lulz, where the former is a right-wing bastard and the latter is the protagonist. I may have been on the internet for too long, but I kept thinking that what Frost was trying to do, and almost succeeded at, was simply the ultimate PWN.
Except—and this is where I think the play is really a tragedy—he didn't succeed. He won the battle—the interview, which was this amazing moment where you saw the true potential of the media and particularly that of television—and ultimately lost the war. Because where are journalists like that now? (And Frost was a bloody talk-show host!) What real consequences did Nixon face after his "trial"? In the end, it's the same thing that makes all of those stories where The Truth Is Exposed To The World completely fall apart—he got Nixon to admit wrongdoing on a lesser crime (the larger crimes, Vietnam and Cambodia, he didn't take any sort of fall at all), and then, nothing. Retirement and long-postponed death.
I like it when I come out of a play feeling really angsty. Go figure.
brownfist, who had an extra ticket). I thought it was great, despite the mixed reviews it's been getting, but then, I've been a bit Nixon-obsessed lately. The more I think about him, the more I think that he was an actual clinical sociopath—the play is quite lovely in that, in parts, you really feel a bit sorry for the guy, and then you realize that he's manipulating you, and then you almost respect him for being a master manipulator because that does take talent, and then you remember that he's among the most evil men to ever live. So I really enjoyed it on that level.Also, it's interesting to see a story about a confrontation between an ideologue and someone who is basically in it for the lulz, where the former is a right-wing bastard and the latter is the protagonist. I may have been on the internet for too long, but I kept thinking that what Frost was trying to do, and almost succeeded at, was simply the ultimate PWN.
Except—and this is where I think the play is really a tragedy—he didn't succeed. He won the battle—the interview, which was this amazing moment where you saw the true potential of the media and particularly that of television—and ultimately lost the war. Because where are journalists like that now? (And Frost was a bloody talk-show host!) What real consequences did Nixon face after his "trial"? In the end, it's the same thing that makes all of those stories where The Truth Is Exposed To The World completely fall apart—he got Nixon to admit wrongdoing on a lesser crime (the larger crimes, Vietnam and Cambodia, he didn't take any sort of fall at all), and then, nothing. Retirement and long-postponed death.
I like it when I come out of a play feeling really angsty. Go figure.