The virus of puritanism

A construction executive is in bed with his wife. He can't sleep, and he is thinking about a lady professor he has just met: feminist, or post-structuralist, or whatever. But this piglike man, who has never had the least cultural interest, can't help it. She excites him. So much so, that his virile member starts to rise, turning from flaccid slug to intercontinental ballistic missile. Just then his spouse happens to move, bumps into the unusual erection, and hastens to take advantage of the happy event - ignorant of its cause, which he cannot very well explain to her.

It is to the writer David Lodge that we owe this and other savory scenes. Against your expectations, the writer feels more sympathy for the crass builder than for the academic woman. All his books partake of the same sarcastic view of high culture, pedantry and the hollow jargon of the cultured classes. I wonder why such pokes at culture are so rare in Spain? And right away I answer: because when you indulge in sarcasm about culture, it hits a nerve in certain readers who take it literally. These readers are not necessarily sub-literate. Puritanism is a virus widespread in the cultural world. If you tease them with an article called 'The Headache of Wagner,' about the five-hour duration of Parsifal, some expert is sure to howl as if you had slandered his mother; some earnest dipstick is sure to ask why you are against five-hour operas.

How can funny articles be written without mockery of culture? Are we supposed to mock only the weak? I thought this last week as I sat in the Teatro Real. The production was Richard Strauss' Elektra, an opera that plunges right away into the affairs of a destructured family. For those who worry about the decline of the family, I may say that while in antiquity they had no gay marriage, siblings sure did some shitty things to each other. I pride myself on my ability to carry two contradictory ideas in my head at the same time; and while some of my neurons were enjoying the music, others were buzzing with doubts, which I here expound.

Stage directors now seem to want singers to be not only singers, but actors too. This has always been the case in musical comedy, but the other way around: actors have to sing too, and dance. This will seem a sacrilege to some, but in some operas today I see a certain incongruence: on the one hand, they make them sing on their knees, dance, fall down and make fools of themselves, in the worst of cases; meanwhile, no suitable physical qualities are demanded of the singers.

The other evening, in this opera where there is not a single note of humor, the sisters and brother of the tragedy were played by an Elektra who was red-haired and large, a Korean, and a smallish brown-haired woman. The important thing is the voices, you will say. OK, but then why are they made to behave as if they were actors? The public has a right to an explanation. Clytemnestra, their mother, ought to come out on the stage and tell us the reasons why the fruit of her loins is so various in appearance: an immense red-haired woman, a small brunette and a Korean. Genetic inheritance is whimsical, of course, but it does normally produce a minimal similitude. And if the singers have not been blessed with a suitably graceful physique, why is it necessary for them to pirouette and prance across the stage? Does this not place too much of a strain on our imagination? I know that there are many fans of this art who pine for the old days when physique didn't matter. Very well, so the singers should come out, sing with emotion and that's it. But Elektra's brother and sister were not at all convincing. Now I am going to recite three Paternosters and an Ave María.