Alec Baldwin’s HuffPo Rant: The Work Of A Snubbed Actor, Or Meta-Genius?

So this is interesting. In an op-ed published by the Huffington Post earlier today, called ‘How Broadway Has Changed’, Alec Baldwin — who is currently starring in a Broadway production of Orphans, which is closing early thanks to poor ticket sales — writes, “Broadway has changed in the past 21 years and I wanted take a moment to look at that.”

Only, throughout the thousand-plus word piece, he doesn’t look at that at all.

Using what Vulture  recognises as a brilliantly-conceived “framing device”, Baldwin’s op-ed is not an analysis of how Broadway as a medium, forum, whatever-um has changed since his 1992 appearance in A Street Car Named Desire; nor is it even a look at the manner in which “tabloid journalism, and its viral impact through the Internet in particular” determines the success and/or failure of a Broadway production. (Someone should really write something on either of those topics!)

Instead, in what has to be a self-aware act of art imitating life, Baldwin uses the very medium he is criticising in the very manner he is condemning: to have a good old fashion rant about Ben Brantley, the New York Times’ chief theatre critic who gave Orphans, and Baldwin’s performance in particular, a less than favourable review.

Refusing to believe Baldwin’s piece is simply a juvenile case of wounded ego, or a misguidedly public attempt at one-up-manship, let’s have a look at the top four quotes that reveal his post as the meta-masterpiece it is. Proving once again the medium really is the message, and that Baldwin has simply ninja’d us all.

THE PART WHERE HE CONDEMNS SALACIOUS JUDGEMENT, AND THEN PASSES IT:

“The tabloid culture that dominates the media today, with its jettisoning of nearly all journalistic tenets, rushes to paint the most sensational and, at times, least fact-based presentation of a story. Whatever information that is the most damning/salacious/judgmental is posted as quickly as possible and replaced by the next “event” even more quickly.”

Baldwin promptly follows this up thus:

“Ben Brantley, who I must state up front is no fan of mine (every John Simon must have his Amanda Plummer, I suppose), is not a good writer … No one I know of in the theatre reads Brantley except in the way that a doctor reads an x-ray to determine if you have cancer.”

Calling the chief theatre critic for the New York Times a bad writer — salacious and judgemental? Neverrrrrr. Referring to him as an “odd, shrivelled, bitter Dickensian clerk” — sensational? Not at all.

THE PART WHERE HE IS A CRITIC’S WORST CRITIC:

“A critic’s job is to evaluate two things: what you are attempting to do and how close do you come to pulling it off. Highbrow, lowbrow, Shakespeare, Williams, movies like The Hangover, movies like Lincoln, they all deserve the same fate. If it’s trash, then call it. But is it good trash or is the bar too low? Then call it.” 

With this line alone, and by the sword of his own barometer, Baldwin’s self-conscious criticism-of-criticism fails. What was he attempting to do? Look at how Broadway has changed in the past 21 years (note the title). How close did he come to pulling it off? …But surely such huge hypocrisy can’t be a mistake.

After setting up his sliding scale of evaluation — intention versus the realisation of said intention — Baldwin, in typical Baldwin form, again kind of ignores his own words.

THE PART WHERE HE JUST HAS A BIG OLD BITCH:

“Frank Rich got cranky in his last year. He hated nearly everything and later admitted that, towards the end, he did not enjoy going to the theatre. Perhaps that is now true of Brantley, who has occupied his seat since 1996 (hard to believe) and seems to have spent the current Broadway season writhing/writing in agony … I think it’s time for the Times to get rid of Brantley. I don’t know anyone, anyone at all, who will miss him or his writing.”

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So, let’s look at this. Baldwin’s piece uses everything it criticises to criticise. It is riddled with contradiction and throw-away lines; so congested with heated emotion and the tabloid bitch-factor he briefly credits for changing “broadway since 1992” that it lacks any truly intelligent rebuttal to Ben Brantley’s criticism of Orphans, and fails spectacularly to enlighten us to any of the myriad of ways in which Broadway may have changed in the last two decades.

Such a well-executed failure can only come from one place. No, it’s not the incomprehensible musings of a rage-drunk actor set loose on the interwebs. Nor is it the mindless babblings of a man cut down to size. But — like artists who use cheap labour to produce work about cheap labour, Bondi hipsters laughing at Bondi hipsters, or James Francos who parody James Francos — Baldwin’s piece infiltrates the medium that it criticises, in order to criticise.

It is a work that turns the tool of bitchy, tabloidtastic journalism on itself and reveals Baldwin himself as a man of absolutely undeniable meta-GENIUS.

We hope.

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Hannah Wolff is a writer currently studying Art Theory and interning at Junkee. The twittersphere confounds her.