Stage | theguardian.com: "Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising," wrote Cyril Connelly in the autobiographical Enemies of Promise in 1938. It's not just the gods, we theatre critics are always at it too with "promising" operating as short hand that simultaneously succeeds in both lowering expectations and raising them. Clever that.
2 comments:
It's remarkable how much of an impact specific language can have. I can definitely see his point about how 'promising' can seem a little condescending, however to a relatively new playwright or artist, perhaps this initial encouragement will further incite and encourage them to work even harder. I think it's important in a world where so much work is being created and is so accessible to the public to have varying degrees of success and acknowledgement.
This article adresses a really interesting point about what it means to be promising and why it really isn't such a good label to receive. From the title, I excepted that the article would mention the unreachable expectations that come with "promising" but it also brought into question the whole idea of being promising, which I found very interesting. The description of being promising operates under the assumption that an artist's best work is always ahead. While (hopefully) an artist is always developing, the idea of them being promising implies that they are almost there. If we give them a little more time, they will be fully grown and produce something great, but obviously this is not the reality.
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