workshops

[fpb]

I have never taken part in a workshop in my life and I don't intend to. I will accept criticism from people who wanted to read my work for its own sake, or from teachers; either way, from individuals. But my experience of seminars and other group discussions at college is that they are one-half a waste of time and another half a way of structurally missing an opportunity. People whose opinion you value are too nervous to subject it to the group; you have to put up with people whose opinion you despise, merely because they are in the group; and because of time constraints, there is rarely - make that NEVER - an opportunity for anyone to go in the depth any subject needs. The whole idea of group discussion seems to me just as inefficient and obstructive as all other modern manifestations of the idolatry of group behaviour; no wonder that Oxford knows nothing of it, and that the only educational paths it employs are the individual conversation between tutor and student, and the collective address between lecturer and class.

But if that is bad enough in the field of study, it is wholly intolerable in the field of art. Can you imagine Jack Kirby or Charles M.Schulz sitting around listening to one or two dozen people chosen at random delivering their more or less uninformed opinions on their work? Such sessions, if anyone were insane enough to set one up, would result in one of two things: either the artist storming out in rage (and don't think that Charles Schulz was incapable of rage: his famously mild temper turned to severing amd bludgeoning steel any time that an ill-advised editor made an unnecessary change in his work); or else, should it happen that those present really appreciated the genius and originality of the artists, it would end in the latter not coming back because they had heard nothing but compliments.

The bottom line is that constructive and useful criticism, even devastaing criticism, only comes from individuals. Groups constrain some individuals and give others far too much space. And they are lethal to imagination: every name added to the list of people involved in writing anything increases by 25% the likelihood that it will be bad. The worst written movie I have seen recently had four credited scriptwriters. I loathe group encounters in principle and from experience; I had every opportunity to assess their value; and you will never, ever see me near one.

Comments

[dustthouart.livejournal.com]

I think there are different personalities. Some people work well only alone, some people work best in partnerships, and some people work best in groups. I personally do best one-on-one, but some people really do things best in groups.
Edit: BTW, when it comes to screenwriting credits like that, most of the time that isn't a result of group collaboration, but rather one person writes a script, the suits don't like it, the writer is fired, a new person is told to fix the script, it's not good enough, they bring in a third person, continue ad nauseum. Who gets their name on the end product depends on contracts. MST3K calls this "passed from editor to editor in a desperate attempt to save it" and yeah, it does usually mean crap.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That's not what happened in the movie I am talking about - one of the scriptwriters was the director himself. The thing is that he does not seem to have had a single good narrative idea - he was strictly an images man - and he roped in others to try and help, and none of them improved on it.

Group work is OK if there are definite mansions for each person and one person in overall charge - for instance, in movies, you have a man to do the writing, one in charge of photography, one in charge of costumes, and so on, under the direct charge of the producer or the director. To have a group-hug of ten directors or ten producers would be a recipe for disaster.

[helixaspersa.livejournal.com]

You're wrong about Oxford I'm afraid - plenty of classes and seminars these days, not only for language teaching. Quite a few finals papers are now taught with seminars plus the odd tutorial. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I know that I enjoyed the privilege of group discusssion (that was sarcasm) before Oxford when studying for my A levels, and afterward at SOAS. I was and remain utterly unimpressed. Although perhaps I was just lucky. Our Sanskrit class numbered half a dozen maybe, and we did have our group meetings, but under the direction of Richard Gombrich they were more like pleasant social occasions with informal but stimulating conversation than like the structured (to death) debate I suffered elsewhere.