have I discussed how much I love the way The Seagull deals with art, though

Every single one of the core four (Konstantin/Nina/Trigorin/Arkadina) is a cocktail of artistic idealism and cynicism in different ways, and of agency and passivity couched in the language of art—Konstantin who wants to reinvent theater and rewrite the system but can’t shake the sense that he’s victimized by the old structure and is oppressed by his pessimism; Nina who wants to be part of the theater and attain catharsis within it, who just wants to make art regardless of what kind it is as a means of escape; Arkadina who plays roles written by other people but who is the main character of her own life and everyone else’s in the vicinity; Trigorin who writes as a means of capturing and manipulating the world but who carefully makes himself passive and malleable in his personal life

and Konstantin and Nina have the idealistic fervor in their pocket but they aren’t talented and Trigorin and Arkadina might be relics of a corrupt world by comparison but they are and art means things in the same order of magnitude to all of them and it’s not about the older generation being supplanted by the younger or the younger being taught the virtues of waiting their turn, it’s just about four people being lit on fire by their crafts

and when they go on holiday and aren’t meant to be working artistically, they throw themselves into romance as a means of performativity, as a means of touching greatness, as this all-consuming pretense that works in tandem with the all-consuming reality of how consumed they are by different creative things

and it’s quiet and incendiary all in one; it’s funny and tragic in the same breath; and it’s mean about humans but it’s honest about art

that’s probably definitely a pretentious statement and I don’t care a jot

I love it so much