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TheOtherDave comments on How to Seem (and Be) Deep - Less Wrong
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Having not seen the play, my guess is that PhilGoetz is mainly frustrated by the tendency of "philosophical" works to end up in a foggy cul-de-sac, rather than to specify problems and work toward answers.
You may be right.
That said, I continue to be puzzled by the idea that plays should specify problems and work towards answers (or tell us things we didn't know, or make arguments beginning with facts); objecting to a play on the grounds that it doesn't do this strikes me as about as sensible as objecting to a scientific paper on the grounds that it doesn't rhyme.
That said, it's possible I just have too narrow a scope of what a play is. That's why I asked for examples of plays that do have this property; if pointed at such a thing I might completely rethink my understanding of what makes a play worthwhile. If you have examples handy, I'd be grateful.
I know almost nothing about plays, movies are more my thing. What do we have for worthwhile "think piece" film? Mindwalk? Waking Life? What the Bleep Do We Know? A sad state of affairs.
I'm not so much suggesting/lamenting that plays/movies/books should all gain rigor. I'm staring into a massive unoccupied niche where strikingly rigorous works could exist. Ok, maybe not massive.
Primer proved difficult material can gain a following. Now we need a few more Shane Carruths with somewhat different goals.
Thanks for clarifying. Of those I've only seen Mindwalk but I understand better what you mean now.
And, sure, I agree that there's a mostly unexplored popular-entertainment niche for this sort of rigorous message film; I originally thought you were supporting a different claim.
Above, you said:
What are sufficient grounds for objecting to a play?
(shrug) This reduces to the question "what are plays for"? Whatever they're for, failing to do that thing is grounds for objection.
I expect "that thing" is a disjunction, and I don't claim to have a full specification. But in much the same way that one doesn't have to be able to articulate precisely what a business plan is for in order to be pretty confident that the fact that it isn't in iambic pentameter isn't grounds for objecting to one, I don't think a full specification of the purpose of theatre is necessary to support the claim I'm making.
That said, if I strip out the implicit context and address your question in isolation... "failing to entertain" is probably a generic enough answer to cover most of the bases.