The Primate Press

Steppenwolf  1/25/11

The current production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at Steppenwolf (through Feb. 13) is very close to the experience Albee intended it to be. Except for one gap in the ensemble, it gets the effect I think the playwright was after, especially in the third act. I’ve noticed that many audience members, even of the literary type, are unaware of what that is, however.

People have been debating the “hidden meaning” of this play ever since it didn’t win the Pulitzer Prize in 1963, because, apparently, no Pulitzer can be given if the year’s best play is obscene. Audiences and critics alike are perennially preoccupied with the liquor, the marital brutality and the sexual explicitness of this three-act marathon. The brute interpretation is that Albee’s statement is about marriage and relationships. (An essay printed in the Steppenwolf program begins by mentioning New York Times critic Walter Kerr’s assertion that the play is about the “human probing” between George and Martha, and nothing else.) The sophisticated interpretation is that the play is an allegory for the death of the American dream, and George and Martha (whose names allude to the first First Couple) symbolize what we’ve become.

I dismiss the brute theory; this play is nothing special if it’s not about something larger and symbolic. However, I disagree with the details of the sophisticated theory. George and Martha are absolutely meant to target America, no question about it; I agree about the symbolism of the names. But if this play is about the American dream, it’s less about its death than how ludicrous it was in the first place.

It seems to me director Pam McKinnon gets this same thing out of it. I like generally what she did with the production, and the set. Tracy Letts was fantastic as George, making me believe him and at the same time elevating George to the poetic and literary force he needs to be. Carrie Coon and Madison Dirks as Honey and Nick were fabulous and real. Only Amy Morton didn’t ever seem to become Martha in any convincing way. But that role is tough.

To understand this play, and any play, you have to start with the experience it intends, not an intellectual translation into allegory or, again, an intellectual apprehension of the portrayed situation. Albee’s intention is to blow the façade of busy efficiency and orderly condescension towards life off of the Americans that come to see his play. Then his intention is to take them to the truly transcendent, to show what it means to make something sacred. The reason the play takes the shape it does, that there’s so much ugliness and “yelling in the living room” (Albee’s description), is that first of all, Americans’ façade against the sacred is nothing short of bulletproof. And secondly, Americans are so utterly unfamiliar with the sacred, except in the most sentimental religious literalizations, that the real thing of necessity looks ugly to their eyes.

I make these assertions based on evidence in the text of the play itself, and in the larger oeuvre of the playwright. It’s not an accident that George and Martha are academics; they are the monstrous and inconceivable teachers in the world Albee is creating. It was Emily Altman’s set at Steppenwolf that brought this fact home to me, as a matter of fact. Truly the home of academics, it was neat except for books and papers stuffed and crammed wherever there was a ledge or shelf to hold them. It’s not a mistake that Nick is a climber in a scientific field, either; his scientific detachment frees him from messy involvements that don’t advance his material success; but sucks him into ones that do. Like America on the world stage.

Other plays of Albee’s demonstrate this very same motif, and luckily many are done in a much more archetypal style than Virginia Woolf, so it’s easier to see. One is Seascape (one that DID win the Pulitzer Prize, apparently for NOT being the the playwright’s best work, in 1974.) Another is 2003’s The Play About the Baby. In The Play About the Baby, a mysterious couple comes to terrorize an innocent young couple with threats of taking their new baby. In Seascape a normal middle class couple is terrorized by a horrible sea monster couple who crawl up on the beach and interrupt their picnic. Do we see a pattern here? I think this is enough evidence to at least entertain the possibility that George and Martha, though rendered in much more detail than the couples in these two plays, are on some level more akin to metaphysical personages (like in TPATB) or sea monsters (Seascape).

The truly wonderful thing about Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is how George and Martha, rendered in comparative realism, are in the third act revealed to be something other than how they appeared. That is at the center of the experience of this play. To get the third act right has got to be hard, and I thought Steppenwolf did a good job. The third act should play like the layers of the reality we thought we were watching peeling back before our eyes: George announces they will now play “Get the Guests,” and reveals Nick’s treachery behind Honey’s back. After Nick has failed to satisfy Martha, he is forced to assume the role of houseboy – curiously a routine George as well as Martha know all about. Most startlingly, Martha reveals that George is the only one she ever loved, and shows without question that they have been on the same side all along. And of course, there’s the bit about George and Martha’s kid. When done well the act has the feeling of a sacred ritual, with the climax of George’s chanting in Latin – building the audience in a primal way, back to the roots of theater in religion. Steppenwolf did it well.

The only thing that didn’t work was Amy Morton’s performance. But I think there must be pitfalls to playing this role today. In both productions I’ve seen recently, this has been the weakness. The difficulty is that parts of the character appear dated. This is a a woman whose only mode of self-realization is through the ascension of her husband, and today it is very hard to view that as anything but a shameful weakness. Yet, Martha is supposed to be huge and strong and forceful. It doesn’t make any sense. If I was an actor and was trying to internalize her, it wouldn’t know what to do. But on a literary level I don’t feel there is something wrong with the character.

Here again, the key is that this Martha we see during most of the play is not a real woman; she is a monster being played by Martha for the benefit of her guests. In that regard she is every bit as powerful, and acting by choice (and an equal partner in an enterprise) as George is. Also, it’s my opinion that this ugly characteristic is not the product of a blindspot of the time period; Albee finds it just as ugly in the character of Nick. The actor therefore shouldn’t treat it like a period characteristic, but as a monster characteristic. Martha should be huge, absurd and seething; every bit as pent up and animalistic in her cage as George is. She potentially can be seen as the strongest of the two, with the size of the role she tackles compared to George. But it has to be known that this is a role, and not the real her.

This understanding is key to much of the play, for an audience too. We don’t know what the sacred looks like, but Albee is trying to show us. It’s not sensible, it’s not controllable, it doesn’t fit into an Optimistic Plan for Uninterrupted Progress; and yet it’s something we are starving for. If we see the play as about nothing more than a dismal marriage, we are still stuck in the American point of view the playwright means to shatter. Things are what they appear to be; ultimately everything we need is pleasant, and will soon come our way. “Wounds, children,” Man in The Play About the Baby counsels, “Wounds. Without them, how can you know you’re alive?”

I was kind of surprised by how quickly the right wing base was able to regroup in the form of the tea party after the destruction of the Bush administration. I was hoping they would be demoralized and turn inward, questioning why they followed someone who turned out to represent many things they hated.  I suppose that’s what a liberal would do, not these people.

Also, like just about everyone else, I’ve puzzled over this outpouring of weirdness. Obama is a racist, Obama is a Muslim, Obama is a socialist, Obama is not a citizen; Death Panels, Terror Mosques, comparing everything to Hitler. And all those weird outfits made out of bandannas.

It all seems just weird – until you learn it’s actually orchestrated from behind the scenes.

As it turns out, billionaire backers such as the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch have been orchestrating the grassroots support for a right wing agenda for more than 30 years. Through think tanks they fund such as the Koch’s Mercatus Center, ideas friendly to their business interests are farmed and harvested. Then, through seemingly independent political organizations such as Americans for Prosperity, they donate millions to pay for “grassroots” organizers and tell them what to say.

This explains the speed of the movement’s formation. And in my opinion, stepped-up outrageousness, starting with Sarah Palin running for national office, has been an essential piece of their post-Bush strategy.

Once the Bush administration looked like it had run its course as a feasible puppet, the corporate backers instantly set to work picking other ones. No real reorganization or regrouping of interests has happened behind the scenes. The same puppeteers have simply picked up new puppets.

But they needed a way to make their new instruments come off as something different from the discredited ones. So they hit on this stepped-up outrageousness, with a dash of additional dumbing down, as a good solution. Sarah Palin is even more folksy, and one step more outrageous than the Bush people. Glenn Beck has served as the new, more outrageous Rush Limbaugh. Deliberations over whether Obama is a Muslim, or how to stop a “Terror Mosque” from encroaching on the World Trade Center site, have one-upped discussions of the patriotism of liberals on the outrageousness scale. They even had to find a new, more accessible and outrageous name for their puppet party – and they called it the tea party. Perfect.

The outrageousness differentiates, and it also distracts – a classic tactic of the right. It focuses attention on everything but the real goal. And right now, that is doubly important, since the real goal is to advance the same agenda they’ve pushed for the last 30 years. Minus any sane argument that it could possibly be good for anyone but them.

Now, my fellow liberals and progressives, before you start whooping it up once again about how gullible these poor white trash are, there’s one other thing we need to understand about how it works. The foot soldiers in this movement are not so ignorant of who they take their marching orders from. In large part, they are people who really are afraid if we don’t do everything management demands, the companies will leave this country and take their jobs with them. From their perspective, they are acting in their economic interests. They are committed to doing whatever management demands, and for 30 years, their bosses have drilled into them that these things are tax cuts, deregulation, weakened oversight and low interests rates. It would be strange to suddenly say these are not the things they need now. Besides, their appetite for them is infinite. They would not actually be in a crisis if they didn’t get them, but there has to be an explanation for the crisis the country is in now. So, in the sickest twist of all, their line to their foot soldiers is that things have gotten so bad because we actually haven’t done enough of these recently. That is the “new” facet of the message.

Actually, the rest of the country will be in a crisis if they are able to promote this agenda further, and especially if they gain control of Congress. No one benefits from an environment totally hostile to business – of course – but being held hostage by them for everything they ever ask for is not a solution either, and is especially dangerous right now.  The left needs to take a stand that business interests don’t need to be given everything they want at all costs. It is not good for the economy and it is not good for us. We need to articulate a balanced alternative.

Ha, you say. This cowardly Congress and this milquetoast president? They couldn’t even stand up for a public option when they controlled both houses of Congress. When the hell are they going to stand up to business interests?

I have to say I wonder that myself. But before they can even begin, the power of the tea party to drag the entire conversation inexorably to the right needs to be defused. I’m hoping now that election season has begun, Obama will start assaulting the business interests behind the Republican party, and not just the actual politicians. But liberal constituents and activists have to do their part too.

The first step for us, since we now know it’s a ploy, is to ignore the outrageousness. If we ignore it – blatantly – it will stop working. And step two: focus attention on the same old players who control the movement, who hope nothing more than to continue the same policy of  the past 30 years.

Every time we characterize the activists as quirky, ragtag, disorganized or goofball, we play into their hands. We imply they are self-organized and not controlled from the top down. Every time we remark on their lack of a coherent theme or the seeming randomness of their message, we help obscure the fact that they actually stand for something very specific, the same policies we’ve had for 30 years. Every time we marvel at the stupidity, brazenness, or instant celebrity of Palin or Beck, we build the credibility of the puppets as something new and different and original, when in fact they stand for the same policies of the last 30 years. And every time we engage in ludicrous arguments about the President’s birth place or religion, or a “Terror Mosque,” we help focus the scrutiny on something besides their true goals – the same policies as we’ve already had for 30 years.

We must ignore the circus, and emphasize, repeat, and not let go, that the “new grassroots uprising” is really the old boss in disguise. It stands for the same policies that we’ve already had for the last 30 years, which didn’t work as promised. Whenever one of their stunts or events makes a big news splash, we must hammer away at those same policies of the last 30 years. We must hammer away at the players behind the movement, whose ideas and demands caused our economic mess in the first place. We must hammer away that their policies were tried and tested for 30 years, quite long enough for us to see what the result would be. We can’t waste airtime on anything else. What they want is what we’ve already had.

Hi! I’m back, just in time for midterm elections.

Like Barack Obama, I’m against the idea of the endless campaign. That’s why we haven’t seen the president step into the fray of the midterm elections yet. He was practicing what he preaches and actually governing while in office. (At least, that’s why I’m hoping he’s been absent.)

But now that the day after Labor Day has arrived, and the official campaign season is upon us, it’s important to step up. I’m sure the president will do his part. I too am going to take some time off from my more important affairs of state and try and have an effect!

One thing that frightens me right off the bat is that the mainstream media is acting as if it’s a foregone conclusion that the Democrats will lose control of Congress in November. They can barely refrain from anointing a new speaker of the house.

I’m here to say we have to do something to prevent this. If you are a progressive and you are still pissed off about the public option we didn’t get, I’m here to beg you to consider how much woefully worse things will be if you don’t vote this fall, in order to punish the Democrats. If you’re a moderate who is pissed off about how the right wing fringe is now getting all the press and influencing public opinion while the president and Congress remain passive, imagine how much worse it will be if we actually elect some of these freakish corporate puppets. I dislike these things too. But to an extent, we are the public and it’s up to us to provide the public opinion that will make it safe for the Democrats to stay in power, and to get more done than they have so far.

One thing’s for sure: if the corporatocracy regains power in November, everyone in Congress might as well stay home from work til 2013, because nothing but ugliness will be accomplished. And that would be a huge waste of tax funded salaries.

I know Barack wants me to be doing my part to support healthcare reform, and to donate my money to Organizing for America, and explain his proposal to my friends who aren’t yet on board. And I know I haven’t been paying much attention, what with trying to make a living after becoming un- and then self-employed, and all the other things I’ve been up to – really since the election.

But right now there’s something I want Barack to do. Mr. President humbly insists that he can’t do this without me, and that I have to be like an activist and start a movement to get it done – but I personally feel pretty useless right now. Right now one thing has to be done for any healthcare reform to happen and only Barack Obama can do it.

Stop trying to convince the Republicans. Start trying to convince the 52% of Americans that oppose this bill. If they like it, Republicans are irrelevant. That’s what I want Barack Obama to do.

Maybe that’s impossible. Why do 52% (or more depending on the pollster) oppose this bill? Maybe it’s just bad. Maybe the Republicans do have the pulse of America, and the Democrats are out of touch.

Right. Perhaps 52% of Americans believe, like Senator John Barasso of Wyoming, that they all should have “catastrophic insurance coverage that required them to pay for most services out of pocket,” because “Americans would make better, less costly health care choices” then. Or, perhaps 52% of Americans believe we simply cannot afford to cover the uninsured, the “more than 30 million people over 10 years” Obama would cover, because we can’t afford the programs we already have, like Medicare. I’m sure they’re leary, but do they really believe the nation that could afford to attack Iraq does not, when it comes down to it, have it in its capacity to find a way?

Republican politicians are ideologically rabid about these issues. They disagree philosophically. Americans in general do not.

For example, consider the December CNN poll that had 61% of Americans opposing the health care reform bill in its form at the time, which included a “public option.” The same poll showed 53% FAVORING a public option, as a general idea.

Maybe they’re against the current bill because it’s not liberal enough! as the Huffington Post would have you believe. But that’s just as gross and self-serving an assertion as the Tea Partiers claiming they represent America.

52% of Americans quite simply don’t like the bill because they believe, while it might help some people, it’s not going to help them personally. Most Americans get good health insurance through their employers right now, and while they may be paying somewhat more, it’s a pretty good situation. In this recent ABC poll, 53% of Americans believe if the bill becomes law their premiums would go up, and 50% that the quality of their care would be better if no change was made. They are unsure, and so do not want to take the chance of ruining something that’s working for them.

Obama claims this won’t happen, or at least that if there is a price increase it’s because benefits have also increased. I don’t know if Barack is right or not, but why do people in general believe he’s wrong? Because they’ve dissected the bill and found evidence to the contrary? Because they have been won over by a well-formed and cogent Republican argument? No, because the extraordinary ruckus made by the massively powerful, corporately-funded conservative PR machine has succeeded at its singular mission. To raise enough doubt in normal people’s minds to make them balk. That’s all. No one’s convinced anyone.

It’s Obama’s job to convince them. Not mine. Only Obama can do it.

Oh, God. The One. She’s one of those.

Well, let me just explain why. First of all, even though it may seem like it’s existed forever, this power of the conservative media, which can really claim only a 25% minority of true believers, to incessantly influence public opinion, is an extraordinary force. Never before the past decade has so much money been riding on, and bankrolling, the defeat of public policy that displeases big business. Never before has technology made the dissemination of falsely or suspiciously-based doubt so immediate and so cheap. Never before has corporate America been so motivated and so well-poised to literally warp the debate with views that hardly anyone shares. This is an extraordinary situation in which to promote a bill whose goal is to help people, perhaps, but at bottom is not in line with the interests of corporate America.

On top of all that money, the goal of raising doubts is pathetically easy to accomplish. Distractions, fear, oversimplification and blatant lies are all fine tools any buffoon can master. FactCheck.org might call them out again and again, but the goal has already been accomplished. Communicating an idea is hard; derailing communication takes no hard work, intelligence or talent at all.

I do not believe that Obama has magical powers or is Jesus with a tan. I do believe he is an extraordinarily talented communicator, with a deep and broad knowledge of the issues, and the indispensable ability to educate. I also think – oh, I guess I know this – that he is in an extraordinary position to unleash these abilities on the public, as he is the president. He is the One! – but only because we need someone extraordinary, in an extraordinary position, to counteract this extraordinary situation.

(This happened repeatedly in the campaign, by the way. People were unconvinced, Obama was so young, the media was saying such outlandish things. Then Obama would make a concerted effort to aim his extraordinary powers of communication and explanation in opposition to the misinformation, and people would come around. This is called, being a leader.)

If he would only stop being accommodating and do it now.

Stop trying to convince the Republicans. Start trying to convince the 52% of Americans that oppose this bill. My ordinary fellow supporters and I will pitch in by explaining the reform to people we know, perhaps. Then, use reconciliation to pass it. If the majority of Americans are on board, Republicans are irrelevant.

Does anyone really think Republicans are going to vote for any healthcare reform bill no matter what’s in it? I don’t. While I truly applaud Obama’s above and beyond efforts to invite them into non-partisan cooperation, so far his efforts have done no good. Republicans vote against everything proposed by Democrats no matter what. That’s because it doesn’t benefit them politically to cooperate (or that’s their perception.) It only benefits them to oppose, oppose, oppose. Obama may do an admirable job inviting non-partisan cooperation in Washington, but it doesn’t make Republican voters waver for a second on what they demand of their representatives.

Ezra Klein with something of the same thought in the Washington Post.

So we may disagree about to what extent a Public Option would help — it would help me personally a great deal, being self employed and relying on not getting too sick for fear of testing the arbitrary limits of Unicare’s benevolence — but do any Democrats really think it would hurt? Even just to try?  This argument comes down to, as usual, team politics. Republicans oppose this legislation because it’s from Democrats. Republicans will find a way to oppose it after the public option is off the table.

Finally, Barry Obama is seeing the light. I think the reality has set in on what that public option would really mean to the United States of America, and even a closet communist like him knows he could never get away with it.

For an illustration of just what things would be like if a public health care option ever were to be adopted, I need only mention these three words: UPS, FedEx and USPS.

Once upon a time, mail in this country was handled efficiently and effectively for everyone. Back in Colonial times when there was only UPS and FedEx, two fine private, for-profit companies, everyone knew they would get their mail on time for the lowest cost. But some liberal in Washington was not satisfied with things working efficiently and effectively, and he came up with a public option for mail — the United States Postal Service, or USPS. I think that was Jimmy Carter.

Now, you have the situation of today. A giant, federally-funded, poorly run behemoth has taken over the entire mail industry, and is the only choice. No private company can compete when the playing field includes a cheater like the US Government, propped up with a free revenue stream of taxpayer dollars. So UPS and FedEx, once the champions of high quality mail delivery, with retail stores everywhere, quickly declared bankruptcy and disappeared from the landscape.

When’s the last time you got your mail without going down to the USPS station and waiting for hours? Some resort to flying to Canada to get their mail. And with the usual waste and mismanagement of a government bureaucracy, getting our mail costs much more than it used to when free market competition kept prices low. Remember the good old days, when it only cost 32 cents to mail a letter?

And God forbid you have a problem with mailing something. Calling the USPS with a problem is a nightmare. Its customer service is nothing like the fine customer service that naturally comes into being when the free market system is unregulated. It’s the opposite of the excellent customer service you get when you call, for example, the fine private company AT& T. The electronic voice is so sincere when it assures you “your call is important to us.” The real live people are so courteous when they transfer you to another department, or the wrong department, or tell you to call back at a different number, or disconnect you accidentally for the eighth time in a row. They’re so nice when they give you the phone number of the department they’re trying to connect you to, just in case for some reason you get disconnected. And it’s no problem at all calling them back over and over, because the wait time is never longer than 20 or 30 minutes before another representative comes on the line. They always speak perfect English. You can tell by their American names that they are local employees, and not slave labor outsourced to India at a dollar per hour, as the United States Postal Service does. And knowledgeable! These people are so knowledgeable when you have a technical question about your Internet service. Not only do they know exactly what department to pass you off to, they know all the special offers they are required to bombard you with after they haven’t helped you with the problem you called about in the first place! Now that is the unfettered free market system working to help the regular joe.

Nope, if the liberals in Congress get away with this Public Option, it will be the end of American life as we know it. A government competitor in a free market industry? It’s unheard of. It’s unamerican. It’s unnatural, and we have yet to see an example of it working in our country.

Read Rest of Blog Post

What kind of man pins his hopes and dreams on a lawn chair made to fly by tying dozens of weather balloons to it? With milk jugs for ballast?

Someone sort of crazy, someone who’s a dreamer, someone “quirky”. Yeah. In the current Steppenwolf production of Up by Bridget Carpenter, Ian Barford’s Walter Griffin has all of those qualities. But still, something is missing. Somehow, it was still not this man that would do that. This production (and possibly the play) have a class issue.

There were many lovely things about the production, especially the sweet portrayal of the two teens, the staging of Phillipe Petit on his highwire, and the best moment of the play when 16 year old ** Griffin joins him up there on a high of love.

But always in the scenes between Walter and his wife, the actors seemed uncertain about how to proceed. That’s because the imagery doesn’t make sense without a certain indication of class. Who pins his dreams on something like that? Someone quirky, crazy, that’s  true — but also someone of the lower middle class. The shear futility of the dream, which is the beauty of it, is a characteristic curse of a certain class. The lawn chair, the desperation that drives such a need for escape, the fatal touch of one’s 15 minutes arriving too soon — on David Letterman — these are all images that make sense only in the context of a redneck.

Ian Barford just seems and looks too yuppy-ish for this role. In the role of his wife, Rachel Brosnahan is too North Shore, and Martha Lavey, as spectacularly refined as she is, is far too aristocratic for the role of a tarot card reading con artist. That down and dirty sense of class, something along the lines of what Mickey Rourke would do, is not only essential to the aesthetic, it’s essential to understanding the play. My favorite part about Superior Donuts was how Michael McKean was in such perfect register as far as class, ethnicity and age. I wish the characterizations in this play could have had that subtly of class register, not because they need to be faithful to the “true life” story, but because it’s essential to the expression.

This might be a problem with the writing too, I’m not sure. Perhaps Carpenter shied away from writing the truck driver that inspired her because it was not something she knew well enough. Certainly the Steppenwolf crew shied away from it, either because they missed that element, or because they couldn’t relate to it.

With that piece of the puzzle, I can see what inspired the writer to write about it. It’s a beautiful and poignant image of the futility of all of our hopes. It’s a sad and moving play, and, thank goodness, not bittersweet or quirky in the least.

Only with the element of class do we understand the desperation of the need, and the peculiar object of a flying lawn chair that is at once low tech, cheap and wildly independent. Only with that specificity does the image stir our own feelings of ultimate futility.

Preventive testing not covered by insurance: $166. Medically necessary root canal without dental insurance: $1280. One doctor visit in excess of calendar year limit: approx. $300. Out of pocket costs since April, when I was laid off: $1776. Public health care option: priceless.

The Art Institute’s thesis that “the Edvard Munch of popular imagination—a tortured, bohemian rebel who seemed almost a living version of the famous figure in The Scream—was in fact a myth, carefully constructed during Munch’s lifetime by critics, historians, and the artist himself” would be much more interesting if the real Munch was actually a good painter.

Abundantly evident from this show is the fact that the reason these myths are the focus of audiences, critics and popular imagination is because to fixate on the work for its own sake is totally boring. I surmise also that Munch himself invited the myths for certain similar reasons.

The main deficiency in Munch’s work is that the entire canvas is not treated with the same amount of interest and care. The galleries are filled with large paintings in which almost the entire acreage is ignored; one moment of intense interest is repeatedly contained within miles of wasted canvas. Invariably you could cut out nearly the entire painting and be left with the only interesting part. Often you can cut out the entire painting.

The faces are the thing he was interested in; the faces are exquisite and alive — the faces contain the entire expression. But the “backgrounds” and the rest of the scenes are dead and ignored, and different. The paintings aren’t integrated.

A prime example is his Sick Child paintings, of which there were two versions in the show. The dying child’s face is filled with pathos, and a peculiar existentialist sense of the futility of everything (for that’s what this motif is surely about) — everything that these paintings are reputed to say, and uniquely in Munch’s voice. But the rest of the painting — bed, room, parent — don’t contribute. The more famous Anxiety is another. And if the faces are covered, as in Kiss by the Window, there is nothing whatsoever to look at of interest. What we have is just a bad painting.

Similarly, the idea in the show’s thesis that he had other, here-to-fore under-acknowledged influences, such as Monet, would have been more interesting if his unique genius had transformed these influences into something entirely his own. For example, it is fascinating to consider how Van Gogh was impressed with the “scientific” dots of Seurat, and how dutifully he went about incorporating the idea into his own language — and to behold how expressive and unlike Seurat is the product. But Munch never improved on or made his influences his own. “Summer Night: Inger on the Beach” is a derivative corpse compared to the sparkling Monet in the same room, “On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt”.

But it is inaccurate to think Munch had nothing original to say. He was just unable to say it simply, directly, and without apology or extraneous baggage. Munch never really found himself as a painter, in other words. If he had he would have cropped every painting to the face alone and confined himself to portrait painting. He would have left us a body of work as painfully lovely as Kathë Kollwitz if he’d been brave enough to trim off all the empty fat and composed his paintings to be the expression, not contain the expression. He never had the courage to say exactly what he wanted to say, however, through painting and nothing more; in life and in his art there was always the protective veil of extraneous stories to dilute and diffuse. It was like his soul was given over too much to the dread and darkness that he was trying to convey to achieve the alchemical magic of turning darkness into beauty.

Like a Munch painting, the show itself contains isolated wonderful moments, making it worth the trip — Rodin’s Kiss, Van Gogh’s lemon yellow street scene. There is a striking difference when a painter who is actually interested in and who has complete, deft control of perspective as a draftsman tackles the subject of a riverside walkway in Paris with radical perspective. It might have been that the Art Institute was coyly trying to say as much with this show, because invariably the paintings of his “influences” were excellent choices and far outshown the Munchs they hung next to. But this might be giving them too much credit.

This is a thesis that would have been more enlightening if it had been applied to Van Gogh. With him it’s a sad fact that the myths of the popular imagination and the marketing world often overshadow and distract from a truly great painter. The uninitiated often are prevented from enjoying his truly imaginative and spiritual vision for thinking about how it was that he cut off his ear.

Not so with Munch. Myths about insanity and loneliness are much more fun than the paintings themselves.