Category: Popular culture

Millennium Approaches and Change Approaches

In Angels in America, the author of the play, Tony Kushner, explores many issues such as homosexuality, identity, religion, politics and ghosts. Part One of the play, “Millennium Approaches,” deals specifically with how people, especially those in America, react to homosexuality. Generally, the response is quite negative. While we all know that Joe is a homosexual, in the initial part of the play, he denies that he is gay. This first scene of denial is seen when Joe and Louis talk about Republicanism. When Joe says, “I voted for Reagan,” Louis calls Joe, “A Gay Republican” (Act I, Scene 6). In response, Joe quickly says, “I’m not—,” thereby showing that he’s denying his true self. He continues to deny whenever the topic of him being gay comes out. When Joe declines to have sexual intercourse with Harper, Harper asks, “Are you a homo?” (Act I, Scene 8). At first Joe hesitates but then replies that he isn’t. These two scenes show that there’s a possibility of Joe being gay. While he denies the fact that he is gay because such an idenity is degraded and discouraged both by his religion, Mormonism, and American society at large, in both scenes he shows hesitation before denying: “I’m not—” and takes some time before replying to his wife, Harper. The reactions in these scenes bring up specific questions. How do people generally act or react toward homosexuals? Is it right to criticize them? What is the right or moral way to react or respond to homosexuals? How is the idea of homosexuality explored in the play? Did the play change your mind about homosexuality?

The inner or identity struggle that Joe faces is clearly depicted in Act 2 Scene 2, in which he describes Jacob wrestling with an angel:

I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid. There was a picture I’d look at twenty times every day: Jacob wrestles with the angel. I don’t really remember the story, or why the wrestling—just the picture. Jacob is young and very strong. The angel is … a beautiful man, with golden hair and wins, of course. I still dream about it. Many nights. I’m … It’s me. In that struggle. Fierce, and unfair. The angel is not human, and it holds nothing back, so how could anyone human win, what kind of a fight is that? It’s not just. Losing means your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from God’s. But you can’t not lose. (Act 2, Scene 2)

Through the metaphor of the angel, Joe implies that he is struggling with homosexuality. Because he is a devout Mormon, his religious beliefs repress his homosexuality. In this metaphor, the angel symbolizes Joe’s difficulty in understanding God’s will or purpose. The battle seems to represent his struggle to overcome or deny his character or the nature of his homosexuality. Losing in this battle also seems to foreshadow that he will eventually accept his sexuality. What do you guys think of this wrestling scene? What’s the significance of this scene? What do you think the losing of the battle symbolizes or suggest?

Eventually, in Act 2, Scene 8, when Joe talks to Hannah, his mother, Joe faces and admits that he is gay: “Mom. Momma. I’m a homosexual, Momma” (Act 2, Scene 8). Unfortunately, his mother’s response is negative and quite hurtful. At first she does not say anything. Afterwards she says, “You’re old enough to understand that your father didn’t love you without being ridiculous about it… You’re ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous” (Act 2, Scene 8). The repetition of the word “ridiculous” emphasizes that the mother does not accept Joe being gay and that it is something very wrong and against the rules or laws in both Mormonism and the larger society. The stage directions also show that Hannah was quite upset and she warns him saying, “Drinking is a sin! A sin! I raised you better than that.” While she was referring to drinking, she was also referring to his confession. Once again, through his mother’s response, we can see that homosexuals are degraded and looked down upon in American society. If you were the mother, how would you have reacted?

Through homosexuality, Kushner also introduces one of the greatest health issues from the 1980s to the present, AIDS. The disease is first introduced in the play as Kaposi’s sarcomas in Act I, Scene 4. During the conversation between Prior and Louis, Prior says, “K.S., baby. Lesion number one. Look it. The wine-dark kiss of the angel of death” (Act I, Scene 4). The angel of death signifies that K.S. is detrimental. But, what does wine-dark kiss suggest? Why was the disease compared to a wine-dark kiss? Does the color of red wine suggest blood, signifying death? We find this comparison quite interesting. What do you guys think? Moreover, how does the disease, AIDS, affect the lives of the characters in the play?

Another theme which the play outlines is movement. Movement, whether it is physically from one location to another or psychologically from one state to another usually symbolizes new beginnings. It provides a second chance, a new beginning with nothing from the past to hold you down. In Angels of America, we see that Harper is struggling with her life and when Joe asks her to move with him to Washington she refuses. A new place, new job and a new neighborhood would give her a chance to start again. Yet,with change and new beginnings also comes fear. That is the reason Harper decides to stay. At the very beginning of the play we witness the funeral of an old lady called Sarah, who has moved from Eastern Europe to America for a better life. Despite her fears, she was capable of building new future for her sons. Is movement always a positive change? Does movement always symbolize new beginnings? At this stage in the play America is portrayed to be the land of freedom, equality and new beginnings. It is the land where dreams come true. Is this how America will be portrayed throughout the play? Or is the ‘American Dream’ merely propaganda?

Similar to Ibsen’s Ghosts, Millennium Approaches also addresses the idea of ghosts. In the play, Prior is confronted by two ghosts also called Prior Walter. In conversation, Prior 1 and Prior 2 explain that they both die of the same plague that the resent Prior is about to die from. They explain the process of their death but tell Prior that they had their wives and children with them because they were married. Prior explains however that he will die alone because he has no wife and children since he is gay. The idea that Prior is dying of the same disease as his predecessors coincides with Mrs. Alving’s claim that ghosts haunt us. These ghosts that are the behaviours of our those that came before us. Prior could not run from his fate, he was going to die of the plague. None of the previous Prior Walter(s) could have escaped their fate just as Oedipus could not escape his. Do you think that if Prior had met his ghosts earlier he could have saved himself from his fate? What is the significance of the ghosts in the play? 

The themes discussed in this play are still topics discussed today. The idea of giving human rights to gay people is a topic debated by politicians, church congregations, and the average man across the world. The topic of AIDS and finding a cure is mentioned in every medical conference. Issues of democracy, racism and religion are debated everywhere. They all promised us that change was coming. How much have we really changed?

While thinking about these questions, perhaps you may enjoy this trailer for Angels in America as presented by Signature Theatre Company.

Happy reading!

Rhoshenda, Jenny, Shereena.


I Ran to Oran and Found a Plague!

 

Albert Camus’ The Plague has been an influential literary force, raising questions of the ideas of absurdity and the futility of religion. While doing research of the novel, I stumbled upon this British TV show called Hornblower that ran from 1998-2003. This show is about a fictional character called Horatio Hornblower, who was a Royal Navy officer during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. In one episode, the soldiers have a diplomatic mission to Oran (does that sound familiar? 🙂 ) but when they land, they find out that it is a plague town (that better sound familiar). Therefore the sailors who had been to the town are quarantined on the ship and we see how the idea of the plague affects a microcosm of a society. It causes distrust and struggles that reveal the implications that disasters like a plague has for people. The acting is wonderful and the show as a whole is esthetically pleasing (it is British television after all).  If you want to see some visual responses to something as dreadful as a plague to people, you may want to take a look at this episode.

Hornblower dvd cover.jpg

Ibsen’s Play in Contemporary Culture

WARNING!!-This post contains spoilers!!

In Ibsen’s play, Ghosts, the characters are surrounded by built-up lies and secrets that originate from attempts to hide one’s shameless choices from public judgment. Mrs. Alving decides not to leave her husband despite his intolerable behavior to prevent suspicion and criticism, forcing her to live her life in deception. This play demonstrates how individuals in a society fear public opinion and are very protective when it comes to their image or reputation, especially for people like the Alving family, those that are widely respected in their community. The nature of the plot in this 19th century play is definitely one that has become popular in recent culture. The simple idea of keeping secrets, which possibly starts off for good intentions but then others build up uncontrollably that they begin to “haunt you” in everything you encounter in the future, has formed the basis of various contemporary narratives.

One that I was at once reminded of when I read this play was a TV series called Revenge, which started in 2011. What I noticed to be strikingly similar between Ibsen’s play and Revenge is that both stories’ protagonists come from prosperous positions and so have a kind of “social anxiety” that rules over them. Victoria Grayson, one of Revenge’s protagonists, is a mother of two children and a wife of a silent criminal, who was involved in a terrorist attack but blamed an innocent man for it. Although Victoria was in love with the innocent man who was framed, she did not defend him or tell the truth about her husband to protect her family’s reputation (like Mrs. Alving). Years have gone by and a guiltless man was punished for their lies and others that gathered as a result of her husband’s cruel plan. All these secrets, or “ghosts”, have eventually ruined Victoria’s life, especially her children as they did not know the truth until it was too late. Another similarity to Ibsen’s play is that Victoria’s son actually starts to act in a similar attitude as his father (like Oswald) and her daughter, which turns out to be the framed man’s daughter, ends up being the real victim of all the secrets (like Regine).

I apologize for the spoilers, I tried to say as less as I could! 😛

Enjoy,

Aysha

Who’s feasting today?

On the 23rd of July 2014, Barack Obama spoke at a $32,400 per plate fundraiser. Meanwhile, Vladimir Yakunin, a Russian businessman whose assets are being frozen and his visas blocked, updated his Facebook page with pictures of his family sailing in the Caribbean.

These factoids are especially crucial to us, analysts of Pushkin’s ‘A Feast During the Plague’ because they bring up ideas that resonate with much of what’s going on in the text. The satirical street-art on the left tells the story. Thankfully there isn’t a plague epidemic going around at the moment but the references to Pushkin in both articles are appropriate. For starters, many Americans believe that Obama giving yet another talk at a Silicon Valley fundraiser means that he is ignoring more pressing domestic and international concerns and instead feasting (literally). Yakunin’s Facebook posts show that he’s clearly escaping his personal issues (again, literally). 

The characters in the play make a choice in how they react to the literal or figurative plagues that they respectively survive. We are given to understand that Yakunin and Obama are making a conscious decision too. But if we’ve escaped a plague, or something similarly nasty, do we have to behave in a certain way or do we have no such obligation? Would Yakunin be behaving in a more “sensitive” way if he locked himself inside his home in St. Petersburg and never saw anyone again? What’s wrong with taking your family on a cruise of the Caribbean when you can?

In the play and in the two articles, there is a kind of social removal. But the major difference between the articles and the play is what side of society the audience gets to see. In the play, we see the people who have escaped society and the plague, whereas the articles and the street-art reflect the thoughts of the larger society that the characters escape. His role as the President dictates that Obama has an obligation towards the people who face the problems he doesn’t immediately deal with, but do the characters in the plague have a similar responsibility towards society? Pushkin introduces the priest who raises this question. He tries to make the chairman feel guilty in the same way as the street-art tries to do. We don’t know what Obama or Yakunin feel, but we are given a glimpse of this survivor’s guilt towards the end of the play. 

The moral debate continues.

Keep reading!

Abhimanyu

Every day is like Sunday

I stumbled across this “pocket history” of the plague in London, 1348-1665, produced by the Museum of London, and the line “One eyewitness said that London became so quiet that every day was like a Sunday” made me think of Morrissey’s apocalyptic anthem from the start of my Cold War college years. Enjoy.

For Defoe-related material from previous years’ courses, see this convener’s post as well as one about the novel’s medical content — especially concerning competing beliefs about the plague’s origins. Also see this one about how to situate Defoe’s work in the history of the novel as a genre. If you browse back and forth around these posts you’ll find other useful content. Here’s a round-up with links to some of the best additional posts on Defoe assembled over the last couple years.

Kicking off #contagion15

While you’re all working on your first assignment — which includes a summary of Sophocles’ King Oidipous — you may get a kick out of this peculiar retelling of the story. It’s also a summary of sorts.

Meanwhile, I wanted to direct you to a few posts on Sophocles and Boccaccio from past years. Here’s a sample convener’s post on Oidipous, with a link to an even earlier one. It follows up on something we only brushed against today: the question of why genre matters when we’re comparing the plague descriptions in Sophocles’ drama and Thucydides’ historical account. Here’s another, which may help you start to compare the Sophocles and excerpt from Boccaccio. And here’s an even earlier post on The Decameron which dwells on the relationship between storytelling and plague in Boccaccio’s work. Each of these posts contains ideas I hope we’re able to take up in the next few meetings. Which topics here strike you as most interesting or relevant to our conversations thus far?

You Shoot, You Score

From today’s class discussion on Welcome to Our Hillbrow, we identified a number of themes that emerge in the text, such as xenophobia in South Africa and the issue of cultural identity. Another important aspect of the novel is euphemism and metaphor, of which soccer (a.k.a. football) is a notable example.

In both the novel and reality, football plays a major role in South African culture, as it brings a common sense of pride to the nation and it represents the best (and worst) aspects of the contemporary South African society. Interestingly, the narrator mentions soccer in the first sentence of the text: “If you were still alive, Refentše, child of Tiragalong, you would be glad that Bafana Bafana lost to France in the 1998 Soccer World Cup fiasco” (1). For the South Africans, soccer is the only event in which they “momentarily [forget] xenophobia” (27), as it serves as a platform for fans to unite in support for Bafana Bafana  – “The Boys”.

However, soccer is not merely a sport. It reflects its society, much like how theatre and fictional writing reflect reality. The passive act of watching soccer is unfortunately similar to the common act of spectatorship in society. For instance, in the following passage, the citizens of Hillbrow witness a 7-year-old girl die from a reckless car driver:

“Most people, after the momentary stunned silence of witnessing the sour fruits of soccer victory, resumed their singing. Shosholoza … sounded its melodies from Wolmarans Street, at the fringe of the Johannesburg downtown, to the head of Clarendon Place, at the boundary of the serene Parktown suburb. Shosholoza … drowned the choking sobs of the deceased child’s mother” (2).

An unfortunate consequence of a soccer victory is the unnecessary celebratory violence that follows, which is evident from the above passage. However, what is even more unfortunate is the reaction of society to this violence. Like spectators watching soccer, society is detached from the action and from the foul play of violence, and respond accordingly.

Soccer also serves as a metaphor for other “social disease”, as the narrator uses soccer terms to describe Terror’s, a rapist’s, malicious thoughts and intentions toward Refentše’s love: “Because he was full of spite towards you, Terror wanted to take Lerato’s thighs for a playing field, in which his penis would be player, referee and spectator simultaneously” (65).

In terms of the issue of xenophobia, though soccer temporarily distracts the Hillbrowans from their hatred of foreigners, it actually makes xenophobia more noticeable since its absence highlights the fact that it is usually present. In reality, South African football also highlights the issue of xenophobia, which can be seen in this article and this account of soccer’s history in Africa. 

It is often said that soccer is truly an international sport. Why is soccer such a popular sport, in both the novel and in reality? Why is soccer such an effective means of analyzing society? What are the implications of this metaphor, and how else does soccer reflect society?

P.S. On a side note, this article discusses the recent murder of South Africa’s national soccer captain and its implications. (Take note of the article’s mention of Ebola.) Again, what is the role of soccer in highlighting current societal issues? How does the victim’s identity as a soccer player in this case add to the severity of the murder? 

 

Sex and Drugs and… Religion as an Affective Influence?

Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, self-labeled as a ‘gay fantasia’ aims to provoke from the title onwards, describing itself as being a play based ‘on national themes,’ thus truly horrifying every Republican and ‘Nationalist’ that encounters the text. Kushner feels that the issues presented in the plays are representative of the themes in America at the time of writing, the late 1980s to the early 1990s. These themes will be described in this conveners post as change, religion and politics. None are unique, but few could argue that Kushner’s work is not. 

The theme of change within the play is continuous during Millennium Approaches, the part of the play duo we are considering in this post. The development of morals is something we can accept, but the ‘depressing… limitations of… imagination’ is what prevents change from occurring fully, it allows the characters to remould the world: but the world is made from the same dough, just pressed into a brand new shape. Same beast, different form.

‘When we think we’ve escaped the unbearable ordinariness… it’s really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth.’– Act One, Scene Seven

The escapism in the play seems possible only with death or social acceleration, like the presentation of Roy’s career threatening freefall at any moment due to its crumbling foundations of hypocrisy. Perhaps a moralistic plot twist, but a satisfying collapse all the same.

The ways in which Kushner’s work assesses the topic of change is especially important for the reader’s of today who must live in a fast-paced, globalized world, the first signs of which were recognized by the characters of the play in the 1990s. This acknowledgment of the ‘sickness’ of modern man, is presented in this contradictory passage, where the cure to constant movement is supposed to be to continue this movement. After all ‘the only cure for motion sickness…’ is ‘to keep moving.’

 Does the play suggest feasible methods to the modern man for how to deal with this rootlessness? Does it provide a judgment on globalization or cosmopolitanism? Does the play suggest that the way America should respond to the ‘call’ of modern times is to embrace change and recognize diversity?

The theme of religion is evident, from the discussion of the neurotic Mormon, Harper, to the hardened Roy Cohn of Judaism. The distinction between the religious divides of characters is clear, two religions with clear intersections. Both religions follow commandments that clearly define their moral code: every character with a defined religion in Millennium Approaches defies a commandment, whether it be through homosexual intercourse, lies, drug addiction or hatred.

The commonality between the characters is not coincidental, Kushner masterfully creates an atmosphere in which everything lies at a point of conflict, situations which seem impossible even to the most gifted of Game Theorists. The emerging political philosophy championed by Kushner, and thus by Louis, is that of democratic optimism. Something that is not affiliated with the ‘evils’ of Republicans demonstrated throughout, and certainly could not be projected at the beginning of Millennium Approaches before one has information symmetry. The characters are unpredictable, which makes the game they play so much more dangerous: their political philosophy of democracy makes them even more so, because the decisions they make are liable to have impact on not only their lives, but the lives of the people they love. A prime example of this being the separation and the impact it has on Harper.

‘When we think we’ve escaped the unbearable ordinariness… it’s really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth.’– Act Three, Scene Two 

John Sexton would be proud of Kushner’s ability to derive political statement from religious background: Mormons and Jews generally vote on opposite ends of the political spectrum, with Jews favouring the more Conservative parties, and Mormon’s either abstaining from political contest or voting for social democracy. The idea of religion as an affective influence on voting behaviour is strong in the play, not only due to the issues surrounding sexuality and religion: something acceptable within Judaism, not so within Mormonism. It is near enough a battle of wills, between religion and sexuality – the result feeding the ‘X’ on the ballot in the game of chance they are embroiled in. The lies and the conflict between their love for God, and their love for each other seem ordinary, and as disease twists the world they live in, the escape becomes a trap once more. A trap that no ‘democratic idealism’ will free them of.

‘Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot get a puissant antidiscrimination bill through the City Council… who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout.’– Act One, Scene Nine

The idea of sexuality as something that hinders the progression of the characters is embodied primarily through Roy, and his desperation to hide his sexual preferences even when it will be AIDS that kills him: not bigotry. His refusal to become one of the unknown, lost souls is seen as a bad thing by the other characters as he is painted as a cold, almost evil character by Kushner. Yet his success within his field is admirable, and one cannot help but like Roy. His imperfections are vivid and clear, but they make him all the more human and workable.

The conflict he faces is excruciating: his career or his life. To seek full treatment would require his honesty, not something he is willing or able to provide.   

If we consider the conflict faced by the characters in Camus, how do we define what the more difficult choices are? Who acts more rationally in the face of danger and disease?

Sex is ever-present in the play, if not in lengthy scenes, in the shadows with AIDS, HIV, separation, love… there is not a moment when the looming figure of sex is not present. It is a blight on the characters, influencing their actions: from the victimisation and infestation of Prior, the social prejudice Roy projects on his ‘peers’, the liver ‘cancer’, and Harper’s descent into addiction. 

Yet the characters do not cease their participation, much like in Pushkin’s ‘A Feast during Plague’, where despite the risk of congregation, or in the case of Angels in America, the risk of sex – the characters continue their dangerous exploits. The idea of risk is all-consuming: the cards are dealt, the poker faces are on. They play the high stakes: unprotected sex, politics, law, love. All are set to lose, but the draw of the game is too strong to avoid. The plotting referred to in the quote above is not a coincidence with the theme of risk, the reference to the inescapable battle of politics is a form of addiction, something every character experiences, whether it be an unhealthy lust or the pill popping that both preserves and destroys.

In light of Prior’s and Louis’ separation it is important to ask, whether in the play AIDS is a force that pulls people apart (as opposed to the influence of the plague in Camus’ novel) or that brings people together into a strange, almost absurd community (think of Harper’s and Prior’s shared feverish vision)? Does AIDS have a different effect on human behaviour as the previously studied disease, due to its capability of ‘permeating’ the most intimate part of human relationships? What other manifestations of disease can we find in this play, apart from the sickness of modern man, corruption and guilty conscience?

Azmyra, Laura, Maisie and Sharon

St. James Infirmary Blues

Two of many versions of “St. James Infirmary Blues,” mentioned on pp. 118 & 123 of Camus’ The Plague (Penguin Classics). The former, 1928, could have been on that gramophone. The latter, 1959, was released after “194-,” so technically it didn’t exist yet.

I went down to St. James Infirmary,
Saw my baby there,
Stretched out on a long white table,
So cold, so sweet, so bare.
Let her go, let her go, God bless her,
Wherever she may be,
She can look this wide world over,
But she’ll never find a sweet man like me.

More here.

Ibsen round-up

Well, today may have been the first time I was ever tempted in class to link Ibsen to Suicidal Tendencies, but the passage we focused on from Ghostsall kinds of old defunct theories, all sorts of old defunct beliefs, and things like that. It’s not that they actually live on in us; they are simply lodged there, and we cannot get rid of them — made me think of the above song, which was released in 1983. They key connection comes when the singer asks how he could be considered crazy if he’s simply a product of his parents’ various institutions. As noted in discussion, Ibsen’s take on cultural inheritance is pretty bleak. Might we even say it’s punk?

Here are some links to past discussions of Ibsen on this site. Last year someone posted a clip from a recent theater production in London. Here’s a post that reads syphilis itself as the play’s creepiest ghost and another on 19th-century Norwegian beliefs about ghosts and haunting — with a surprising dip into the history of photography. Here’s one on Romanian takes on the undead.

I think I mentioned in class that Edvard Munch, the Norwegian painter, was a big Ibsen fan. Ibsen was 30-odd years older than Munch and they only met a few times. But Munch was pretty taken with him. Here’s a brief essay on the relationship between their work, including comments on Munch’s 1906 set designs for Ghosts (see above, Oswald sitting in the chair in the final scene, the sun rising outside as visible through the big picture window). I like this observation in particular:

To see was the most important thing for both Ibsen and Munch – but certainly not in an external, photographically recording sense. The artist’s ability and task is to see inwards – so that external motifs and inner, mental agitation are “lived through” (to use one of Ibsen’s favourite expressions) and melted together into valid expression. I do not paint what I see, but what I have seen, Munch once said – and Ibsen could have said the same about his “poetic visions”.

And here are a couple links to even earlier posts: the first conveners’ post from 2012; one on humor (how much of this play should we read as comedy?); and one on fatherhood — especially bad fathers — as one of Ibsen’s particular obsessions. Enjoy!