Samuel Johnson never had much patience with us revolutionary tax-cheats and tea-crate-tossers back in 1776. Still, some perceptive remarks he made in the context of literary theory may be worth mentioning here. Certain Republican politicians have been all but blaming the Democrats for pointing out that people are wrong to throw bricks through their windows and to call them with death threats. That, you see, apparently amounts to capitalizing on their misfortune. Damn liberals go wah wah wah just because someone threatens to hang, draw, and quarter their entire family (or whatever the specific threats are). Well, here is the good doctor having his say about people who insist on dramatic illusionism at the theater:
He that can take the stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation . . . (Preface to Shakespeare).
The point for us regarding today's political environment would be that the officeholders and talkers on the right who have been spreading lies, innuendo, and baseless fear among the populace have unleashed the floodgates of "delusion"; they have obviously peddled their absurdities and falsehoods in the hope that a large enough percentage of the population would take them literally and act upon them to make reforming health care access impossible. The pols and talkers nearly succeeded, and to at least some extent, they are morally accountable for the persistence and bad eminence of the delusionary state they have encouraged, as well as for the material effects that have ensued and may yet ensue from it.
Dr. Johnson was quite certain that his ideal spectator at the theater was never in any danger of getting taken in by the spectacle, neoclassical precepts about verisimilitude notwithstanding; his remarks on this score are brilliant:The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. . . .Well, that's the stage, and for Dr. Johnson, who more or less follows Aristotle in such matters, it is a rational, neat affair: if we are sane when we go to the theater, we will know the difference between reality and spectacle or illusion, even though the emotion we feel while watching a play is genuine and refers us back to something real or at least possible. I wish I could believe that the neat scission between reality and fiction holds for "political theater," but I can't. Politics may be theater, but it's always also tied to real life, to material consequentiality. Oscar Wilde's dictum that "life imitates art far more than art imitates life" may hold true for the fine art of politics. If you tell me a lie that preys upon my anxieties, my prejudices, my fundamental assumptions about who I am, or who you or "they" are, etc., it's likely that I'm going to become possessed by that lie; my obsessions may well get the better of me and lead me to do that for which I may be sorry. I find certain Republicans' failure to understand this fact inexcusable.
It will be asked, how the drama moves, if it is not credited. It is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited, whenever it moves, as a just picture of a real original . . . . The reflection that strikes the heart is not, that the evils before us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment . . . . The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more.
Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.
Friday, March 26, 2010
The Inestimable Dr. Johnson: Theatre, Bricks, and Tea
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Dino, it seems we are all struggling to understand the current political climate and searching for descriptive or explanatory adequacy from within our respective disciplines. If there were a ‘willing suspension of disbelief,’ it would be easy for a parent comforting a child to say, “ Its only a bad dream, spooky Kabuki Theater, that is all.”
ReplyDeleteIf the actors were psychotic or sociopaths, it would be easy to reference criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual (DSM-IV) of the American Psychiatric Association for a description. But the actors are not psychotic, and folie à deux or the dynamics of mob behavior hardly covers it.
What we are facing is the “baffled response of established powers in the face of revolutionary challenge” (Krugman). Please consider this quote:
“Lulled by a period of stability which seemed permanent, they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertion of the revolutionary power that it means to smash the existing framework. The defenders of the status quo therefore tend to begin by treating the revolutionary power as if its protestations were merely tactical; as if it really accepted the existing legitimacy but overstated its case for bargaining purposes; as if it were motivated by specific grievances to be assuaged by limited concessions. Those who warn against the danger in time are considered alarmists; those who counsel adaptation to circumstance are considered balanced and sane … But it is the essence of a revolutionary power that it possesses the courage of its convictions, that it is willing, indeed eager, to push its principles to their ultimate conclusion.”
I believe the above quote explains the current political climate. There are radical forces that equate ObamaCare with socialism; that want to dismantle the New Deal and Great Society social safety net; that want to privatize social security and eliminate Medicare; that want to eliminate the IRS and taxes altogether. These are the expressed goals of conservative stink tanks such as American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. They are funded and employed by corporatists, and they have a plan.
The troll who visited us recently, the one who calls himself Rational Nation, is a foot soldier in this revolution. His comments may be annoying, but we learn little by casting a blind eye.
So who is the author of the above quote? An octopus has a flair for suspense ... another way of saying 'terrible tease.'
Well, I'm cheating, but it's Henry Kissinger.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, yes, it's true that the casting of BHO as a lefty extremist is a function of reactionary extremism -- I mean if you want a "government takeover of health care," that would entail not only turning over the insurance function to Uncle Sam but also giving all the doctors nice tidy uniforms and making them employees of the state. Nobody is proposing to do that, for heaven's sake. Even "Medicare for All" wouldn't come close to that kind of "socialist" thoroughness since it has to do with insuring access only, not with the actual care itself. People who bandy about "socialism" here in the States obviously have no idea what the word entails.