Monday, October 27, 2014

The Aegis of Art

“The Death of Klinghoffer” is being performed by the New York Metropolitan Opera amid public protests. Protests in the street. It is a 1991 work by the American composer John Adams and depicts the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship and the murder of a Jewish passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, by Palestinian terrorists. Mr. Klinghoffer's daughters wrote that the opera “presents false moral equivalencies without context and offers no real insight into the historical reality and the senseless murder of an American Jew…it rationalizes, romanticizes, and legitimizes the terrorist murder of our father.” The aegis of Art.

Does everything deserve a second viewpoint, another perspective? Is Ebola just another life form struggling in the void? Does Hitler have a context? Should the KKK have a retrospective?

On the other hand, if Art has nothing to teach other than there is nothing to teach, what will happen to it?

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