[lbo-talk] How Politics Ruined My Life: Was Fuck Hope

[dredmond at efn.org]

On Fri, January 16, 2009 8:41 am, Doug Henwood wrote:


> On Jan 16, 2009, at 10:59 AM, Shane Mage wrote:
>
> I love Wagner, but Parsifal is pure tedium.

Though musically, "Parsifal" is Wagner's most advanced work, the next step
beyond "Tristan" (an entire opera which, famously, never resolved into a
full cadence until the very end). I vaguely remember Adorno calling it
Wagner's belated self-critique, or something like that.

Adorno's point was that Wagner is very much the progenitor of the modern
culture-industry. Auteur madness, expensive budgets, bloated works of art,
hobnobbing with elites, scripts fawning on the Wilhelmine Empire - pure
Tinseltown.

-- DRR