meaning-value
the following extraordinary passage from Twyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit: Learn It And Use It For Life
perfectly exemplifies for me the difference between æsthetic-value & meaning-value (not that the two are
mututally exclusive, especially given McLuhan's formulation. but that's for another time).
page 43:
Mike Nichols tells a story about getting the musical Annie ready for Broadway. A scene that was supposed to be funny was failing to get laughs no matter what Nichols tried. He asked [Jerome] Robbins to watch the scene with his practiced eye. Afterward, Nichols asked him how to fix the scene. Robbins surveyed the stage and pointed to a white towel hanging at the back of the stage. “That towel should be yellow," he said. “That's it?” thought Nichols. That makes the scene work?” But he made the change in the scene got a laugh every night thereafter.
the implications are staggering.
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