ATTN JMS: Those who bitch about B5's writing and acting
John W. Kennedy
Lying home in bed with a cold (and a Xmas-carol gig tomorrow night!), I was
rereading the 70's Eerdmans omnibus edition of Charles Williams "Taliessin through
Logres", "The Region of the Summer Stars", and (with C. S. Lewis) "Arthurian
Torso", and chanced upon this in the introduction, by Mary McDermott Shideler.
It sometimes seems that our ears are open only to what we
call "realism" or "naturalism," and are closed to the austere
voice of the classical mood and the ringing tones of romanti-
cism. It has become commonplace to identify the reality of love
with sex, and the reality of sex with its messier physiological
concomitants. It is fasionable to celebrate society and the in-
dividual in jargon or broken phrases, avoiding even the cadences
of consecutive speech, and to employ the crudest verbal expres-
sions that we can find. Such treatment of the matter and form
of human life is entirely legitimate in itself, and valuable as a
reaction against the classical and romantic excesses of the past.
It is not the error of this fashion but its tyranny that is damning,
not the insistence that this harsh word be cried aloud but the
demand that no other shall be heard, as if an individual could
not or should not be stirred by the paintings of both Jackson
Pollock and Andrew Wyeth, or as if a love for Mozart's music
were to preclude the enjoyment of Charles Ives'.
Things seem only to have grown worse since the 70's. I dare say
even Kindergarten teachers award higher marks to yells than to
thoughts, nowadays, just as in my generation art was virtually
defined as a slavish devotion to Ibsen (per Shaw) and Chekov
(per Stanislavsky) and Stanislavsky (per "Method" icon of choice).
Don't listen to them, Joe, old buddy. There are still a few of us
who appreciate crafted prose, and even a few who realize that
it's entirely possible to speak in complete sentences, if one so
desires. (Hey, not only does it impress the chicks, it saves you
from having to do jury duty....)
SATAI
John W. Kennedy wrote:
>
> Don't listen to them, Joe, old buddy. There are still a few of us
> who appreciate crafted prose, and even a few who realize that
> it's entirely possible to speak in complete sentences, if one so
> desires. (Hey, not only does it impress the chicks, it saves you
> from having to do jury duty....)
I have to agree with him. Those who bitch would not have done any better
were they in your place. And I also think that not only the writing or
acting is important here, but the CONTENT of it. You, JMS, have gone
deep in the hearts of subjects and matters regarding so many facets of
life that other series would never dare speak of because of the "ethics"
imposed in our society. What I'm saying here for those who do not
understand is "read between the lines"!!!!!! There is much more to B5
than merely the script, the actors, the ships and monsters! There is
ESSENCE! It treats with dignity of the very fabric of life itself and I
think B5 has done it better and further than any other SF TV Series yet.
I use the pseudonym SATAI when I mail and post in memory of the
Minbari's perception of the Universe as explained to us by Delenn. I
think the vision of the Minbari is quite a step further into the matter,
it's more than any other series have done on it. Imagine the rest now.
There is not only the Minbari in B5 !!!
I hope season five gives us more and more of what the four previous
seasons have already given us plenty of! I'm convinced it will. Watching
B5 will always be a pleasure you can savour better with an open state of
mind...
Truly yours,
SATAI Yvan Ratelle