Unappealing Lack of Narrative in 'The Arts Board'

If the post-modern approach to art has delegated the importance of narrative to the proverbial back burner, “The Arts Board” is a torch-bearer of that new school, a veritable Statue of Liberty to whose crown an ensemble cast of executive editors cling, much as a newborn babe clutches its mother’s fingers. In the interest of linear narrative, little in the 525,949-minute runtime of “The Arts Board” makes any sort of sense; in the interest of misplaced one-liners, arresting visuals, and a soundtrack that bewilders, “The Arts Board” is revolutionary, visionary.

Greedily engulfing every artistic genre known to man, “The Arts Board” dons drama, comedy, satire, tragedy, romance, and animated children’s film intermittently: it provokes you to laugh and weep at alternate turns, to both condemn and sympathize with its characters as they fall and redeem themselves in near-Biblical majesty. Yes, Campus Arts Executive Tree A. Palmedo ’16 (played with remarkable poise by Tree Palmedo) descends into drunken madness during a moment of stress and weakness, but are we not elevated, in the presence of the divine, even, when the following day he appears in drag specifically to lighten the spirits of his co-characters? When incoming Film Executive Jude D. Russo ’16 (Jude Russo) claims that poetry should have ended with Milton, do we not forgive him when he martyrs himself for the collective, clutching a bloodied copy of Dickinson’s works to his chest?

However, that character development is sometimes muddled by the film’s overwhelmingly meta self-referentiality: directors Natalie T. Chang ’15 and Erica X Eisen ’16 make frequent cameos that are clearly moments of narcissism rather than motif, providing little more than an overarching sense of inevitable doom. The heavy-handed treatment of their appearances drowns the film in predictable foreshadowing: Chang appears, and without fail someone is fired. Eisen appears, and someone’s German pronunciation is corrected. Outgoing Film Executive Alan R. Xie ’16 (Alan Xie) appears, and the audience is subjected to a tale of horrific weekend dalliances.

This simple-minded repetitiveness may have been due in part to the obviously inadequate budgeting of “The Arts Board”: in another turn of unappealing breaks of the fourth wall, there are constant references to low funding and the poor quality of props ranging from beer to computers. One would think that the computers, at least, could be given the appearance of functionality: alas, such details seem to have gone unnoticed by the crew. In their place are nonsensical allusions to both a mysterious prequel and a similarly nonlinear sequel. If such a sequel is green-lighted, this critic can only hope that it shakes the chains of its predecessor and, blinking against the bright light of a new day, leads a fresh-faced cast in a successful exodus across the Red Sea. Or perhaps…a Crimson Sea.

—Natalie T. Chang is the outgoing Arts Chair and incoming nuclear missile. She hasn't slept in 40 hours.