No Stars For The Eclipse

NO STARS FOR THE ECLIPSE
by Robert Levin

One weathercaster called it a "must-see light and shadow show by the
Old Master Himself." But I can't say the recent solar eclipse was
worthy of the recommendation.

Not even total, and staged (in my location anyway) behind a thick cloud
cover that served only to diffuse the vivid contrasts essential to any
dramatic effect, the "Old Master" might have been faxing it in from
deep space somewhere for all the incandescence it could claim. Quite
frankly, as light shows go, I thought more interesting work was being
done at the Electric Circus back in the sixties.

Now let's please not have any misunderstandings. I'm aware that I'm
criticizing the performance of a venerable figure who, over the eons
and in every conceivable form and category, has compiled an impressive
oeuvre. If I have to confess that a lot of His stuff is not to my
taste, that I find much of it heavy-handed or impenetrable (when,
indeed, it is not distracted and slack), this doesn't mean I've failed
to recognize the enormous contribution He's made.

I'm thinking, of course, of the models some of His stunning
manipulations of the more volatile natural elements provided for the
Irwin Allen disaster films. And, to be sure, there's His introduction
of death itself which, brilliantly counterbalancing His earlier
inventions of genders and sex, forestalled the unwieldy prospect of
twenty-thousand expansion teams in just the American League East (and,
say, the 2001 playoffs extending well into the 2019 season).

But that's hardly been the limit of this remarkable innovation's reach
and impact. In its absence, "Scream 2," which everyone agrees was even
better than "Scream," would doubtless have languished in perpetual
turnaround since filmgoers would have found the emotions of fear and
panic depicted in the original much too weird and elusive for a sequel
to ever be greenlighted.

What's more, we can be reasonably certain that the popular denouement
of the "happy ending"--the product of an inevitable backlash--would
never have been developed.

So while it's often, for me, like feeling obliged to respect whatever
that was that Marcel Marceau used to do, even as you knew that one more
minute of it and your lungs were going to erupt with blood, I'm more
than prepared to honor the "Old Master's" achievements. It's just that
I'm not what you'd call a huge fan.

What puts me off most is...well...it's His LORDLY attitude. I could
forgive Him a lot--yes, even those tedious revivals of His
wind-and-water specials that take out half a state--were He less
disdainful of his audience, less willfully opaque and ambiguous. I know
this "mysterious ways" thing is a cornerstone of His persona and I can
understand His reluctance to give it up. But, bordering on the
pathological, His aversion to making His meanings known is wearing a
little thin, don't you think?

I'll allow that, however disappointing it may be, it's ultimately of
small consequence when He mounts a shoddy eclipse. But it's something
else again when, for one especially egregious example, He leaves you to
blow out all your circuits trying to figure just where Alan Keyes fits
into the notion that if you're on the planet it's for a reason.