In the new movie Tár, Cate Blanchett plays a renowned orchestra conductor and composer whose unchecked ego leads to her ultimate downfall. But the movie isn’t entirely unsympathetic to its monstrous heroine. In one scene, she holds a master class where her ideas about music collide with her students’ woke identity politics, and the results are ugly.
The scene shows Lydia Tár (Blanchett) teaching a Bach piece to her students. When she asks a student, Max, what he thinks of the piece, he replies: “Nowadays, white, male, cis composers — just not my thing.”
Tár proceeds to put him on the spot, dismantling his rote-woke response in front of his classmates.
“Don’t be so eager to be offended,” she replies before referencing Sigmund Freud. “The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity.”
“The problem with enrolling yourself as an ultrasonic, epistemic dissident is that if Bach’s talent can be reduced to his gender, birth country, religion, sexuality and so on, then so can yours.”
At the end of her speech, Max storms out of the class, calling her a “fucking bitch.”
Tár replies: “And you are a robot. Unfortunately, the architect of your soul appears to be social media.”
Watch below (Warning: Strong language):
Tár, which has received rave reviews and is expected to garner major Hollywood awards attention, treads a fine line between reviling and admiring its heroine. Lydia Tar’s talent and intellect are undisputed, but her manipulative and self-serving treatment of others is not only sociopathic but ultimately dangerous and destructive.
The scene in Tár isn’t far removed from the real-life world of classical music, which has become infected with woke ideology.
As Breitbart News reported, University of Oxford academics recently complained that Western sheet music is tainted by “its colonial past,” and would be a “slap in the face” for some students, as it has “complicity in white supremacy.”
Last year, renowned composer Bright Sheng was removed from his University of Michigan class for showing the 1965 movie Othello, in which Laurence Olivier wore black-face makeup.
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com
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