Movies
TÁR, or The Everlasting Struggle to Differentiate the Art from the Artist
It’s an old dilemma. Do we separate the art from the artist? Do your personal life and views matter if you manage to create something transcendental? Tár explores the art vs artist trope but it doesn’t give definite answers.
Todd Field went to amazing lengths to make the audience be absolutely certain that Lydia Tár is a real, living human being. This achievement deserves a special accolade of its own.
The art vs the artist
We have HR in workplaces that regulate the behavior of an employee and an employer. We (hopefully) terminate the employment of a person if they are, say, vocally racist, a murderer, a rapist or something else that clearly breaks the law.
However, when it comes to non-ordinary, fancy jobs, like movie producers (ehm Weinstein and co.) or actors (ehm Kevin Spacey and co.) or football players (ehm Mason Greenwood) we tend to favor the art and neglect the personal lives of these people.
Unfortunately there’s this unwritten rule that if you are a gifted artist (not, say, a gifted plumber), then you are above the rest on the social ladder. As if being “gifted” at art means God intended for you to stand higher than everybody else, and be somewhat untouchable. As if preserving the artist is so much more important for society as a whole than the suffering of the artist’s victims. As if it’s our generational duty to save the artist so they can create more and the generations to come won’t blame us for messing with this process.
Lydia Tár is a generational talent. She thinks that we should separate the art from the artist. The personal life, ideas and actions of, say, Bach, don’t matter as long as he creates marvelous music. As long as he is talented. She awes at these names and urges her students to close their eyes on the fairly misogynistic, racist, homophobic views of different composers.
Lydia Tár spends her days in a patriarchal world, speaking with leading men in her field, making decisions, interacting. But she does so in a way that doesn’t differentiate her from them. To operate in this patriarchal world, she has accepted its rules and knows that to stand as high as the men in her field she must behave exactly like them.
Fairly patriarchal behaviors
Lydia Tár is the representation of the patriarchy. She is a successful conductor of the German orchestra. She grooms young talents and exchanges sex for opportunity. She cheats on her wife with multiple women. She causes one to commit suicide, and has zero empathy for that. She is obsessed with her work and neglects every other human being in favor of what she does. She lies and manipulates. She is a sexual predator. At one point she even calls herself a U-Haul lesbian as if that justifies her horrible misogynistic views. As if it gives her a carte blanche to freely criticise women and praise horrible men. In the end, this results in her demise.
Equality
The movie clearly portrays the rules of the world. Total equality cannot exist in a patriarchal world. The simple reason for that is every human being wants to be able to do what they love and do best. They want to succeed and have equal opportunities.
However, the current social structure is constructed in a way that, as a woman, to be able to climb the ladder, you need to behave exactly like men. You need to close your eyes on the misogyny, the obvious inequality, cheat, lie, and be against basic human rights for women.
It seems like the current Prime Minister of Italy, the current Minister of Healthcare in England, the late Margaret Thatcher, Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres, the lawyer of Johnny Depp and almost all female right-wing politicians have accepted this rule and operate within it. You have to become “one of the boys” to claim that spot. And quite frankly, that sucks. That is exactly why the mission of feminism is to dismantle the patriarchy and create a world capable of being truly equal.
Epilogue
Tár is a great movie about talent, about how we view artists and how we wish to close our eyes on their personal lives to be able to continue to enjoy their art. It’s about how we put them on a pedestal, worship and admire them. And it’s about how, as a woman, you need to give up on your instincts and basically become a man to succeed in this world.
However, Tár is a very long movie. If you’re not a Cate Blanchett fan, I doubt you’ll be able to finish it. It could’ve been a little more entertaining and a little less “art”, especially considering the fact that the movie doesn’t actually give definite answers in the end.
