"The Season" thoughts — Page 3

Hogan's Hero writes:

"There is no comparison between Obama not thinking gay marriage was viable politically and William Goldman's abject bigotry. I don't know why you think he has changed (Simon hasn't) but I also don't see the relevance of that."

In one sense that's true -- Obama's views evolved over a period that began in the 21st Century, while Goldman was writing almost 50 years ago. I wouldn't defend what he wrote -- though I maintain that it reflected mainstream progressive attitudes of the time. But to say that you don't see the relevance of someone's view evolving over time is to take a truly reactionary position. For starters, the evolution of viewpoint over time is what ended slavery, brought forth the women's movement, the gay rights movement, and so forth. And to condemn every work that lived within the prejudices of its own time would mean condemning THE MERCHANT OF VENICE and THE TAMING OF THE SHREW to begin with, not to mention OLIVER TWIST, the poems of Ezra Pound, and might even (in the world of gay rights) be a case for condemning the casting of Paul Lynde in BYE YE BIRDIE or Charles Nelson Riley in HELLO, DOLLY!. These were blatantly intentional gestures of stereotyping, which audiences enjoyed for exactly what they were.

I understand real anger at Goldman's point of view, but pretending that time doesn't present the possibility of changing us is both short-sighted and dangerous. And condemning THE SEASON because it represented a typical point of view of the time that we now find unacceptable seems unworthy of serious discussion, though here we are having one.

I wouldn't think of speaking for HH, since he's certainly proven he's capable of doing it himself (and no doubt will).
Speaking generally (not just about gay stuff or this author and book)
- Some written opinions are mistaken and offensive, but understanding the times can help explain some of the absurdity that results.
- In many, if not most cases, these opinions aren't accompanied with malice - and the person likely has acquaintances in the group. That doesn't stop the resulting statement from being offensive.
- The person may be very liberal or progressive, That doesn't mean that they were at the time on all issues - and that everything they say would be considered as such in the light of reason or passage of time.

I don't have to contort myself to believe that his crap opinions relating to gay artists and influence were really progressive. No they weren't.

I also won't disregard the rest of the book because he's so off-base in this topic.

I must say that I was very surprised that I was surprised. Specifically - I had heard about the book for years. It's one of those like Act One, Everything Was Possible, Diary of a Mad Playwright, Not Since Carrie...

However, I was unprepared for his homophobic point of view that started from practically the first page. I knew that the Kirkwood book was dishy but also was aware that many of his recollections were highly suspect. Likewise, if I were to read about Henry Ford, I'd know that he was a racist anti-semite (who I'm sure believed that giving jobs to the blacks migrating from the south and staying in his segregated company town, Inkster, made him a progressive industrialist).

No point here - but I was surprised that I hadn't heard about it before. (but NO - I'm not looking for trigger warnings)

Updated On: 12/15/15 at 02:44 AM

You PC Millennials are a bunch of gay bores.... or should I say glum bores.

And I am gay.

All right, I've spent far too much time on this already, so this is my last post, no matter what (perhaps Hogans Hero will be relieved). I began to think that maybe I was crazy, so I did a little research. Please understand that I'm not defending what Goldman wrote, I'm simply trying to make the argument that his thinking was typical of mainstream progressive attitudes of the period, and that it should not be condemned as if he had written it today, a half century later, because he didn't.

I was thinking about how neither CABARET, nor even COMPANY (in 1970) were willing to say what they meant about their leading characters (both shows -- created largely by gaytheater artists -- have remedied that in revivals). And I thought that this indicated a general attitude at the time (Broadway in those days played mostly to relatively sophisticated New Yorkers, not tourists) so I looked up the Times' (also a bastion of liberal thought) review of The Season. They took the book seriously and gave it to the great critic and ambitious director Harold Clurman to review. Clurman had been a founder of The Group Theater, a very left-leaning theater group in the '30s. He didn't like the book much, but he never mentioned anything about Goldman's attitude toward gay people. That simply didn't bother him. The Times itself didn't start to use the word gay (it was banned as a description of "homosexuals" until the late 80s, when the AIDS crisis forced the Grey Lady's hand, some 20 years after "The Season" was published. Then I came across this article:

https://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2013/10/11/the_new_york_times_discovered_gay_people_in_1987.html

My only real point, and I won 't retreat from it because I'm right, is that Goldman fit within the norms of the times for mainstream progressive thought -- not the way theater people thought, but the way average New Yorkers thought -- and that's simply undeniable. If you say it isn't so, you're wrong. You obviously don't remember the era, or don't remember it clearly. We live in a world today that is so different from 1968 that it's sometimes hard to believe, but it's true. And, to paraphrase an old saw, those who flunk history are doomed to repeat it.

I am not relieved one way or the other. You misapprehend what this is about. No one questions that homosexuality was danced around. Indeed all sex was-you could not have straight married couples sleeping in the same bed on TV for goodness sake. But perhaps you should re-read what Goldman wrote, and compare it to what the Nazis said about Jews (as well as gays). Progressive folks were not on Goldman's bandwagon.

I DID find it interesting that for a time he was roommates with John Kander, given his opinions.

Re-reading Goldman's chapter on "Homosexuals" shows that Goldman doesn't call for a ban on homosexuals in theatre; he states "... the homosexual is an important part of Broadway," and "...the homosexual contribution to Broadway simply cannot be overrated. Many of the best plays in the past 20 years have been written by homosexuals. Most of the major musicals of the sixties have been directed by homosexuals, the songs from most of the hits of the sixties have been written by homosexuals, the dances created by homosexuals, the clothing designed by homosexuals. In musicals, particularly, the homosexual contribution is tremendous; of the ten longest-running musicals of the decade, two, at the most, were accomplished without homosexual contributions..."

This isn't a complaint; a reading of this statement as pejorative comes from the reader, I think, rather than the writer.

What he does specifically call for in this chapter is freedom for gay writers to write plays featuring gay characters. I may disagree with him when he finds that many of the female characters in the works of Albee or Inge and such are gay men in disguise; but I think that his main point is one to admire (and something that eventually came to pass, with the works of William Finn, Nicky Silver, Tony Kushner, etc.).

Castigating Goldman for talking about homosexuality in different terms than we do today is somewhat like castigating a caveman for wearing fur. (Of course, if anyone can find examples of writing from a theatre artist in the late 60s that discusses homosexuality in a way that is more consonant with the way we do today, I'd love to read it.)

Thanks for the link, HH

In my case, considering the times, I certainly didn't begrudge the "homosexual" term [also "negro"] . And, no I didn't ascribe any animosity to his opinions. Yes, he championed "The Bpys in the Band" (which many of us in the 70s criticized, but that's another story).

Rather, I took issue with is snarky comments about the homosexuals at the Judy Garland concert (yes, I understand them to be commonplace for the time) and his Freudian distortions of the inability of gay men to create realistic female characters and romantic relationships. (Thank you again for the Taubman info - it's new to me, HH)

Just because he may not have felt animus to gays, and many of his conclusions were couched in the tolerant "poor, sick homosexual, who can't help it, but could be a good person like everyone else" pathology of the times, it doesn't make them progressive (even then).

But neither does it make it germane to the discussion of the rest of the book.

Updated On: 12/16/15 at 04:09 PM

Like many other things we oversimplify, this is not a binary thing. I would say there is animus in some of Goldman's comments, not to mention a degree of obsessiveness about the subject that (to me) means something. I think it is useful to juxtapose the way people thought about Jews in the 30s (especially) with gays in the 60s, and also with trans folk as it evolves before our eyes in the current decade.

Just in case they haven't already been posted above, here are a couple of contemporaneous quotes commenting on the references to homosexuality in Goldman's book.

1) Life Magazine (By Stefan Kanfer - October 31, 1969): ...The Season is a bitterly disappointing book.... [It] pretends to be the New Journalism. But it smacks of the old Yellow variety. An unnamed "pro" watching the late Judy Garland onstage says, "Is this theater? You bet your ___ it's theater. It sure as hell ain't singing."

Goldman's shallowness could be overlooked if it were his weakest point. It is not. In an otherwise shrewd chapter on homosexuality he attacks Tennessee Williams: "He may have a sex life that makes Errol Flynn look like Holden Caulfield," sneers Goldman, "but I have never read Williams' name in print in connection with any woman in any romantic way.... I am not questioning his right to his own personal philosophy, but I sure have stopped believing what he tells me about sex." Now there are cogent reasons to doubt the efficacy of Williams' latest works, but to discard Williams' metaphor of the annealing power of sex is to discard the playwright's major works -- and ultimately the playwright himself.

Bringing up a writer's past or personal history smacks of the old ad hominem argument -- attacking the man instead of his work. It is a game any number may play. The most blatant example of ethnic pandering I have ever seen was in the happily short-lived musical of 1961, A Family Affair, which was about a Jewish wedding and which featured a shameless stream of stereotypes. It was co-authored by a Mr. William Goldman. I am not questioning his right to his own personal philosophy, but I sure have stopped believing what he tells me about theater.

2) Saturday Review (By Edward Albee - January 1970): ...It is also, unfortunately, a book easily as corrupt as its subject -- informative so long as one does not care any more than Mr. Goldman seems to about whether the information is true, half-true, or absolute fabrication -- informative in the main, alas, if one's drive for knowledge is easily satisfied by such tactics as smear, sn*, and innuendo.

Mr. Goldman displays a compulsion to demean his betters, an unfailing attraction (intellectual or instinctual, I am not sure which) to the mediocre, and repeatedly makes embarrassingly hysterical references to that laughable nonsense -- the takeover of the American Theater by homosexuals -- references that, in their stridency, almost strike one as the attempts of a man to fortify himself against surprise attacks from within.

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Incidentally, based on the "snippet view" in Google Books, John Simon did not like The Season, either. I can't tell whether he made reference to homosexuality in any context, but his criticisms do (to my ear) sound pretty similar to those above. For instance, according to Simon, Goldman is "too often prey to middlebrow prejudices and resentments." And even when Goldman makes criticisms that Simon agrees with, they are "expressed so crudely and unwittily as to make one side with the victim."