The Front Page: Amateur Hour Democracy

 The Front Page: How Democracy is Fragile, Exactly

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

 

The first cold reading play I did was The Front Page, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (1928). It was on the light side: the banter in a courthouse newsroom: a man scheduled for execution that night who has escaped. All the parties in the justice machine, including the reporters, have some motives that are very far from justice: catching the late train, keeping one’s fiancé happy, selling newspapers, rising in the profession, closing the case, winning votes, not making work for themselves. The question is whether a bunch of people with these various motives can come together to do justice: to prevent the death of a man whose guilt has not been established. Put another way: can a bunch of ordinary people, with limited commitment to doing justice, approximate what a brilliant, totally dedicated, authoritarian could accomplish – Batman, or the hero of lots of police shows. The play’s answer: justice is done, but just barely.

 

This reminds me of one of my favorite plays, which I saw in Lumet’s film version, Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose (1954). Again, someone is accused of murder: the action of the play happens entirely in the jury room, after his trial. Again, the jurors have many agendas: getting out in time to go to the ball game, defending the honor of immigrants, fitting in, not rocking the boat, giving their favorite speeches, exercising their bullying muscles. The question this asks: can people with such different agendas come together in this structured activity and actually deliver a just verdict? The alternative is a judge, paid and trained and conditioned to be “above all that” during robe-time. The answer, here also: justice is done, but just barely. The key event: they find the switch for the fan, cool down the jury room a bit, and decide to take another hour to deliberate.

 

Each play enacts the fragility of democracy, of having big decisions made by part-timers with conflicting loyalties, which is one core democratic idea. In Athens, there were rules to keep people from occupying public roles very long, and to force lots of people into governing and decision-making activity – an extension of the jury idea to “water commissioner.” The hunch behind this was that, out of the mess of different motives and experience and conditioning, good government would happen, enough of the time.

 

Drama was important in Athens in a way that might seem foreign to contemporary people. There were huge theatres, and citizens attended these performances, perhaps partly out of religious duty. The plays were a baseline, common experience. (I think of the way television worked in the early days: you could count on people having seen last night’s Lucy episode.) 

 

Antigone, by Euripides (441 BCE), which I encountered most recently in Seamus Heaney’s 2004 adaptation, The Burial at Thebes, is also drama about political fragility. It features two strong characters, Antigone and Cleon, both of whom are right, in a way, and both of whom are unwilling to lose an argument. Antigone wants to properly bury her brother. Creon wants to assert the supremacy of his new government over merely personal concerns, to enact strict justice, by leaving the bodies of traitors to the vultures. The situation very clearly allows each of them options in how vigorously they pursue their projects, and the terrible consequences happen because neither is able to take the off-ramp, to take advantage of opportunities to get most of what they want. This seems to me to be in the same spirit at The Front Page and Twelve Angry Men: here is how our political set-up is fragile, and here is what must be preserved, if it is to work – in Antigone, the possibility of compromise between absolute positions.

 

I have been watching for this kind of political drama, this kind of drama as civic education, in contemporary television, following especially the career of Aaron Sorkin, who gets better from The American President through the West Wing to Newsroom and then to the movies Molly’s Game and The Trial of the Chicago Seven – developing a capacity to communicate what is at stake in American political life and what must be preserved, if it is to be rescued. The 2023 series The Diplomat, created by West Wing veteran Deborah Cahn, seems promising as a continuation of Sorkin’s project – if only it can temper the impulse to do high speed chases and blow things up.

 

This is a thread worth following, in contemporary media: the serious efforts to help people think about the virtues that hold a complex political entity together and the forces that will push for simplification – for martial law and authoritarian saviors and government by decree – as these manifest in communities, in companies, in families, and in great nations.

Saint Joan -- and Violence

 Saint Joan and Violence

Saturday, July 22, 2023

 

The cold reading group did Shaw’s Saint Joan recently. 

 

I first read Saint Joan in about 1962, when I was 11. My dad was taking a remote English class, and I read along. 

 

The play commented on some thoughts I’d been having. I grew up with stories of gunfighters on radio and television, and so with the ideal of (occasionally) killing bad people. My parents had both been supporters of United States involvement in World War II. My dad had a desk job in the army, but was willing to go where-ever they sent him, to do what was necessary. So, I was, in a general and fantastical way, pro-violence.

 

About age 10, I realized that violence in war is generally directed at quite good people – civilians, draftees, children. The bad people are usually well protected. At the same time, it became clear to me that the progress of wars could not have a good outcome. Each war provoked the next, the weapons got bigger, and the controls on them got looser. Humanity was not going to win by getting better at war, and participating in a war was the opposite of “being part of the solution,” whatever the patriotic folks said.

 

I tried on the identity -   “selective killer” - an assassin, with a carefully curated ‘better dead’ list. But I got quite a clear idea of what I would become if I went that route, and I didn’t want to become that.

 

I think I was attracted to Christianity – exemplified by St. Gertrude’s Catholic Church in Forest City – by the idea that these were the only people talking about a way out of otherwise unsolvable problems – a way out of war, and a way out of death. Whatever the odds might be, any way out beat no way out. So I was genuinely interested in what Christianity might have to offer. 

 

Joan presented a problem. The Catholics had made her a saint, although her enthusiastic participation in war conflicted starkly – to my mind – with the explicit pacifism of the gospels. I wasn’t quite satisfied with my parish priest’s very sensible advice that canonization is always only about the purity of someone’s intentions, not about the content of their beliefs.  There were too many ways that the Catholic Church supported the military establishment – Catholic military academies, Catholic chaplains, Catholic participation in patriotic events. 

 

St. Joan presented a conflicted figure for me, someone I admired for following her personal visions even as I questioned the content of those visions. Her way of understanding war made it possible for a soldier to decently and whole-heartedly participate (and save his soul) and I was pretty sure that was impossible. 

 

Encountering St. Joan again now, 60 years later, I relive the old perplexities. Shaw pictures Joan at that juncture in history at which war ceased to be a lucrative, rule governed game played by rich, well armored people (the ransom game), becoming instead a game of kill or be killed involving lots of very vulnerable and very enthusiastic ordinary people, without many rules at all. Indeed, it seems that he sees her genius as, in part, inventing the possibility of a really bloody and enthusiastic war, and, along with that, the rationale for such a war, “God is on our side.” So, Joan is, in Shaw’s play, at the beginning of the process that I was identifying as hopeless and futile: she invents nations (defined by language) and then invents a way of thinking about killing that justifies total investment. She also re-invents kings by divine right, capable of raising the revenues and armies for a substantial war.  And, she invents a way to certainty – a relationship with God -- that bypasses criticism, compromise, and amelioration altogether. In his play, she becomes one of the most powerful and dangerous people in history, the inventor of the basic ideas that ensure endless and accelerating conflict.

 

Is Shaw reflecting on history (and expressing some of his own reservations) when he has the inquisitor say: “Heresy at first seems innocent and even laudable; but it ends in such a monstrous horror of unnatural wickedness that the most tender-hearted among you, if you saw it at work as I have seen it, would clamor against the mercy of the Church in dealing with it.”

 

Was Joan that powerful, that original? Did Shaw think she was? I don’t know. I am guessing he made her stand for something he wanted to talk about. What was he thinking, and how was he intervening, intellectually, writing this a few years after the end of the World War I, explicitly commenting on Joan’s recent canonization? That is a topic for research, and maybe another post.

 

What I want to hold on to is the odd way that a piece of literature can remain relevant to a person over 60 years and can preserve a line of questioning. 

Twelfth Night - Privilege and High-horsism

 Malvolio – Privilege and High-horsism

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

 

Again, the cold reading group gives me ideas. The latest play was Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and I got to be Malvolio. Since I have trouble with double-identity plays, I looked for help on Youtube and found a course (Shakespeare and Politics) by Paul Cantor of the University of Virginia, who highlights Maria calling Malvolio a Puritan, the enemies of theater who eventually prevailed, closing the theaters in 1642 – and whose traveling arm, the Brownists, were the beginning of U.S. cultural history as it derived from Europe. 

 

As I looked at Malvolio’s speeches, he seemed to me to define the dynamics around privilege. In India, in the army during the colonial era, the greenest British soldier outranked the most senior Indian soldier. Likewise, in this story, the most dissolute aristocrat outranks the most responsible and accomplished commoner. Malvolio’s position is made worse because he is responsible for relaying Olivia’s dis-satisfaction at the escapades of her relatives – turning them out, even. He does this too forcefully for his rank (but he shouldn’t have to do it at all):

 

My masters, are you mad? or what are you? Have ye
no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like
tinkers at this time of night? Do ye make an
alehouse of my lady's house, that ye squeak out your
coziers' catches without any mitigation or remorse
of voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor
time in you?

 

One effect of being understood as metaphysically inferior, irremediably inferior, is that one develops a conception according to which one is metaphysically superior – by virtue of virtue. I call this high-horsism. It is an understandable response to injured dignity. When privilege meets high-horsism, the result is, over and over, civil war. So, it is important that Malvolio storms out at the end, wrecking the happy ending -- three blissful marriages. Nobody has attended to the impossible situation of Malvolio. He has been treated cruelly, and the audience has been invited to laugh at him. But, as in Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the audience is invited to laugh along with the aristocrats at the artisans’ play, there’s a double-take to be taken here. Everyone in 17^th Century audience, except the king, is metaphysically inferior to somebody, as everyone in the 21^st Century audience has been so regarded at some point (as a child, as a female, as trans, as an adjunct, as not rich, as not really, really rich, as not smart enough, as old, as disabled), and the memory of the ways that that metaphysical, irremediable difference has been emphasized and used for other’s amusement will come back up for people, like the taste of a bad dinner. The audience is left with two impressions: happiness at how well it all worked out for most of the people, and a residue of unease at how badly it all worked out for Malvolio. One might also notice: Malvolio has a way of thinking available to him that gives him ultimate metaphysical superiority – as one among the predestined elect of God’s new kingdom. He has a way of turning the tables.

 

I think many normal romantic comedies deserve to end with the song that ends Brecht’s Three Penny Opera. It is astonishing how close Shakespeare comes to that sentiment:

Und so kommt zum guten Ende 
Alles unter einen Hut 
Ist das nötige Geld vorhanden 
Ist das Ende meistens gut.

Dass er nur um trüben fische 
Hat der Hinz den Kunz bedroht. 
Doch zum Schluss vereint am Tische 
Essen sie des Armen Brot.

Denn die einen sind im Dunkeln 
Und die andern sind im Licht. 
Und man sieht nur die im Lichte 
Die im Dunkeln sieht man nicht.

The last verse reads: so some are in the dark, and some are in the light. You see the ones in the light; you don’t see the ones in the dark. 

 

 

 

 King Lear  

Sunday, June 25, 2023

 

A cold-reading group I’m in did Lear recently. Like always, that gave me ideas.

 

For years, I’ve been thinking about one saying of Jesus, in Matthew 5, against oath-taking: 

 

³³ “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ ³⁴ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; ³⁵ or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. ³⁶ And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black.³⁷ All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’;anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

 

I have tried to imagine that as the center of Jesus’ teaching, rather than, say, some recommendation of compassion or radical benevolence. (This is part of a larger project of trying out sayings of Jesus as central, to see how that makes one read the others.)

 

In last week’s play, Pericles of Tyre, oaths come up. Pericles tells his deputy he shouldn’t bother swearing an oath, because the sort of person who would abuse his office would also break his oath; nothing is gained:

 

The care I had and have of subjects' good

On thee I lay whose wisdom's strength can bear it.

I'll take thy word for faith, not ask thine oath:

Who shuns not to break one will sure crack both:

But in our orbs we'll live so round and safe,

That time of both this truth shall ne'er convince,

Thou show'dst a subject's shine, I a true prince. Act 1.

 

Dionyza, by contrast, is keen to remind her servant Leonine of his oath – to murder Marina:

 

Thy oath remember; thou hast sworn to do't:

'Tis but a blow, which never shall be known.

Thou canst not do a thing in the world so soon,

To yield thee so much profit. Let not conscience,

Which is but cold, inflaming love i' thy bosom,

Inflame too nicely; nor let pity, which

Even women have cast off, melt thee, but be

A soldier to thy purpose.

 

Another murderer in the play, Thaliard, laments his oath to King Antiochus: 

 

So, this is Tyre, and this the court. Here must I

kill King Pericles; and if I do it not, I am sure to

be hanged at home: 'tis dangerous. Well, I perceive

he was a wise fellow, and had good discretion, that,

being bid to ask what he would of the king, desired

he might know none of his secrets: now do I see he

had some reason for't; for if a king bid a man be a

villain, he's bound by the indenture of his oath to

be one! Hush! here come the lords of Tyre.

 

Pericles of Tyre is partly about how little one can predict what’s going to happen, or what one may be called upon to do. It is odd to think that one could maintain any resolution, in a world like that. One would have to know oneself and/or control oneself far more than people do. The play might serve as an example in support of Jesus’ warning about oaths.  (Ophelia raises a related point in Hamlet, “we know what we are but know not what we may be.”)

 

Oaths and formal declarations are important to Lear, and one of his reasons for not reconsidering his dismissal of Cordelia is that he has sworn oaths. He responds to Kent’s intervention on behalf of Cordelia:

 

Hear me, recreant!
On thine allegiance, hear me!
Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow,
Which we durst never yet, and with strain'd pride
To come between our sentence and our power,
Which nor our nature nor our place can bear,
Our potency made good, take thy reward.

 

So, Lear believes that swearing makes an intention real and permanent; it is a small step to thinking that professions of love do the same.

 

Someone in our group suggested that Lear is demented, a claim I find very interesting. A couple of points are relevant here:

 

1.     He values oaths and embellishments the way his society values them, which is also the way our legal system values them. Whatever someone’s character may be, whatever example a person may have set, oaths are administered at every significant juncture, at every point where speaking matters.

2.     According to one history noted as a source for this play, Lear has ruled for 60 years. So, for his time, he is very old, and likely very tired. One understands his reluctance to give up ruling: a king with three daughters and no son will likely see his kingdom descend into civil war when he dies or abdicates. His only option for giving up rule is to maintain his daughters’ personal connection to himself, to keep them from – naturally – becoming enemies through ambition. It is a small hope – but one can understand his impulse to be a control-freak at this instant. He is enacting a public ceremony to save his people.

3.     Cordelia has the option of saying something affectionate without entering into a competition with her sisters – making a kind of place-holder statement. But she does the opposite thing: she emphasizes that her loyalties will be divided when she marries.  That presents an opening for her husband (who-ever he may turn out to be) to reject the threefold division and try to claim the kingdom, to ignite a civil war. She seems to be testing Lear.

 

What interests me here, more than the interpretation of the play, is the status of oaths and professions. What has become of Jesus’ point, which Shakespeare echoes: we don’t control our future selves, and we can’t foresee our future circumstances, and that makes swearing a kind of charade (as immediately becomes obvious in the behavior of Regan and Goneril)? The oaths and professions don’t set anything in cement; they just prevent people who take them seriously from reconsidering horrible mistakes. 

 

A king who has reigned for the maximum time allowed to a king, maybe 60 years, has lived a long time hearing people say what they ought to say, with his kingdom and his own dignity upheld by formulas, oaths and professions. And, having reigned that long, he has to be aware of the fragility of a kingdom where the king has only daughters; maintaining his sovereignty amounts to holding back civil war. He might admit that, under the professions and the oaths and the formulas, people’s real attitudes and loyalties may have changed over the years, that the structure of words is masking a new reality. But he bets on the structure, on people saying what they ought to say.

 

Many of us live now close to as long as Lear lived, and we rely on memories of loyalty, memories of attachment, structured habits, to keep us feeling secure: we know who are friends are, we know what can happen. (My mother’s writing group chose as its anthology one year: “I think I can handle this life.”) So, living in the knowledge that many relationships could have changed, since one’s last “audit”, and that the settled features of the world might become unrecognizable tomorrow, is not any easier for us than for Lear. For everyone, as Ophelia says, “We know not what we may be,” and exploring a mind that experiences life that way is, I think, one task that Shakespeare undertakes over and over. 

 

My primary interest in this matter is more about interpreting Jesus than interpreting Lear. If one takes Jesus seriously about compassion and forgiveness and mutual affection, one is in the mainstream of human moral teaching. Lots of venerable people have said this sort of thing. If one takes Jesus seriously about oaths, one puts oneself outside of the consensus and, to a considerable extent, outside of respectable society. It is not even clear how a society without oaths would work; I am not sure there has ever been one. And yet Christians tend not to see their commitment as radically estranging them from political and legal engagement in their societies.

 

But, if one reads Jesus from the standpoint of this strange saying on oaths, he moves into the same intellectual space as Shakespeare writing Lear, inviting people to take seriously how much they don’t know and how much can change from one day to the next. What would people who did that, day after day, be like?