Bacchic revels and Autographing Jesuses

I have been absent for a while, I know.  In the time since I have last been with you, I have been to California to give a paper at a conference, graded up a storm in preparation for the end of the semester on Tuesday (with miles to go before I sleep), taught endlessly, sat in a state of exquisite tension watching my Tar Heels' progress through the NIT tournament, and tried to ignore the odious Blue Devils' (our archnemeses) progress through (sigh) the NCAA tournament.  It has been quite the psychodrama.

Oh, and I have fallen back into infatuation with Dancing with the Stars (which I continue to dream will one day feature a Tar Heel basketball "Star"), watched the ingeniously low-key and oddly Darwinian Fantastic Mister Fox, failed to hate New Moon on the scale that I was sure I would (is it possible that it is the rare film that is actually at its best on a tiny airplane screen? It gave all the teen melodrama the perfect minute frame.), and thoroughly loved one of the rare Judith Ivory novels I hadn't yet read (Bliss).

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But back to the conference, which, as it turns out, was fascinating.  Quite the trigger of new ideas.

I saw a paper given by a fight director/historian of stage combat about the Rumble in West Side Story, whose forms he traced back to a variety of Spanish switch-blade fighting called navaja that is (as it turns out) very closely related to flamenco.

The day before, I attended a presentation on a small town in Brazil (Nova JerusalĂ©m) that stages a mammoth quasi-medieval processional drama every year.  It began on quite a humble scale. Eventually, its founders created a "stage" around which the audience could process, with the actor-Christ, through the stations of the cross.  This stage is a third of the size of the original walled city of Old Jerusalem.  Nowadays thousands attend each performance (which has a cast of hundreds), and the starring roles are played by telenovela actors, prompting the New York Times to ask: "Should Jesus sign autographs?".

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The keynote was a very interesting talk on metatheatre (theatre about theatre), which is my field, so I was filled with delight.  We got into a rollicking debate about the nature of metatheatre in Euripides' The Bacchae, which is often cited as the non-comic origin of metatheatre as a genre (theatrical self-consciousness suffusing every part of the play) rather than a device used every now and then.  Old Comedies, you see, had been flinging their theatricality at their audiences like the embittered stand-up comics they were for years before The Bacchae.

In this, Euripides' last play, the king of Thebes, Pentheus, is disturbed to find that a new religious cult from the East has come to his city and possessed its citizens.  The women of the town, in particular, have been moved to abandon their homes and take to the forest, where they spend their days in a state of ecstatic glee, frolicking amidst the flowers, striking rocks to make streams of wine spring forth from them, and ripping animals into pieces with their bare hands.

Pentheus is particularly annoyed to find that this is the cult of Dionysus, a cousin of his.  Dionysus' mother, Semele, miraculously conceived before she was married.  She claimed that she had lain with Zeus, the king of the gods, in disguise.  The women around her, including her sisters and a woman who is actually Zeus' wife in disguise (those gods like nothing better than a good game of dress-up), mocked her for the feebleness of this lie - clearly she had slept with a mortal man and was attempting to hide it in the most sacrilegious possible way. Or perhaps her lover is only pretending to be a god, and she is just the most gullible woman ever to walk the earth.

Semele begins to feel a bit doubtful.  So she begs her lover to reveal himself in his true form. Reluctantly, he gives in, and when she gazes on him in all his divine glory, she is struck by a lightning bolt and consumed by flame.  Zeus snatches the fetal Dionysus from her burning body.

See?, her sisters (including Pentheus' mother) say, the god struck her down because of the infamy of her claims to divine impregnation.  And that is when the newly-divine god of wine and theatre decides to come to town and teach his female relatives a vengeful lesson about doubting divinity.  He drives them wild with Bacchic ecstasy, taking over their senses almost against their will.  When Pentheus tries to drive the cult out, he lures him back in by saying this: Aren't you at all curious about what the revels of the Bacchae look like?  After all, who knows what those ecstatic women are up to, partying alone up on that mountain?  Don't you just want to take a look?  Well, then, you had better dress up as one of them, so as to avoid attracting attention.

And the next thing Pentheus knows, he is dressed in the slightly feminine robes of Dionysus.  He is an exact double of the god. When he goes up to spy on the Bacchae, his own mother leads the women in ripping him limb from limb.  Metatheatre is a perilous thing.

Much is often made of the idea that acting is represented here as a sacrificial act: the root of the word "tragedy" is a Greek word meaning "goat-song," which seems to speak to the ritual qualities of the Festival of Dionysus where the plays were performed.  Chant a choric ode, sacrifice a goat, perform a tragedy: they are all gifts to the gods.  But the tragedy in particular asks the tragic hero, and the actor who plays him (less often her), to sacrifice himself for the community.  They suffer (and, as characters, often die) as the scapegoat for our common guilt.  So Pentheus becomes the first human actor, the first person to dress up and take the place of the god in the sacrifice, and tragic metatheatre is born.

But equally interesting to me (as I said in the conference discussion) is the way that this is a metatheatre of spectatorship; an exploration of the perils of watching, and a warning to the audience of what they are getting themselves into.  Spectatorship is a kind of gateway drug: "Don't you want to see...", Dionysus says to Pentheus.  And he does, he really really does.  When we hear about something alien or unthinkable or extreme, we can't help but want to see it - why else are we watching The Bacchae?  But look what happens to Pentheus next: he is drawn into the spectacle, not as separate as he would like to think a spectator should be, and the next thing he knows he is a Bacchante, he is Dionysus, he is an actor, he is the sacrifice itself.  Never forget that Dionysus was born out of an act of forbidden spectatorship: please, god, show me your true face, so that I can be sure.

There are consequences to looking on the divinity, and on truth.  Acting is the gods' way of protecting us from the pure extremity of the real, the truth.  Revelation is a variety of punishment.

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Anyhoo.  A bit bleak, that.

Adaptation was really the topic of the day. During a panel on film and theatre (one of my favorite subjects), we got to talking about the nature of adapting material between the two forms.  Is responsible, thoughtful adaptation (I found myself asking the panel) always a meta-act, because it has to justify the creation of a new artistic artifact in a different genre or form?  Does it always have to say "Here is what film, or the graphic novel, or live performance brings to The Producers / Hamlet / Buffy that the original couldn't offer in its form"?

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During a talk on reinterpreting Shakespeare, I began to contemplate a new course structure.  Normally I try to cram as much material into the semester as I think my students can handle.  I am a syllabus glutton.  But suddenly I began to consider the opposite strategy - a course in which we covered a single canonical play in extreme, microscopic depth.  It would be called something like "Dissecting and Adapting the Canon."

In the first half of the term, we would work our way through the text (something like Measure for Measure or Oedipus) scene by scene, doing close readings and reading secondary sources on historical questions, different theoretical approaches to the text, etc.  At midterm, instead of an exam, we would have a semi-staged reading of the text with "explanatory notes" on various issues of interest interjected by the students.  It would be open to the university community as a whole, with the intention of making this a regular feature of the department's yearly schedule - something friends could attend, teachers could assign as extra credit, etc.  Performance-as-research. 

The second half of the term would be an extended adaptation project.  We would read theories of adaptation, read and view works influenced by our key text, and, finally, theorize and compose a new work of art that rewrites our original text, but lends it a new form based on the concerns of our particular culture moment.  Not a modernization, but a complete rethinking of the text.  What elements in it speak to us most urgently now, and why?  In place of a final exam, students would hold another staged reading, this time of their own creation.

We will see what happens to this idea after a few years of percolation.

Our Suspicions about Altruism

The existence of true altruism has become popular subject for debate in recent years: does anyone do good things out of purely selfless motives?  Even in the absence of material rewards, don't "altruists" get a rush of satisfaction or virtuous good feeling (in other words, an emotional reward) from their benevolent deeds?

There is a corollary, and a sad one, to this interesting debate: a widespread distrust of good deeds.  When someone we don't know tries to do something nice for us, our minds automatically skip to the catch.  What is in it for them?

Now of course, this skepticism is healthy when we apply it to, for instance, to promises of politicians and salesman.  But as the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy found out, it makes it awfully hard to do a nice thing. 

The premise of the society is this: give micro-grants of $100 to a group of people, asking them only to do something nice for total strangers with it. 

The idea, says the founder, is to spark new thinking and dialogue about philanthropy and altruism:
"One hundred dollars is not going to change anyone's life," Martin said. "It's a small thing. The money is just a framework for people to use their imagination. It's like a kick in the ass."
What did people do with the money?  Many gave away umbrellas or dollar bills on the street.  Their attempts met with almost universal reluctance and rejection.  I think we can blame this on the cynical way "free gifts" are used in sales and proselytizing: we, like the Trojans after the horse, don't believe a gift is ever "free."

One of my favorite ideas was this:
Clark Kellogg deposited his $100 in a bank account and left written instructions for his great-granddaughter to withdraw the accumulated total in 100 years and give it away. With compound interest, he said, the total will be $2.1 million, which is enough for a lot of free umbrellas in the rainstorms of 2110. "I don't think I'll be around then," he said.
Perhaps I like it so much because it reminds me (utterly unreligious soul that I am) of the parable of the talents.

But of course this gets me thinking - what would I do?  How could I do the most good with $100?   

Eccentric Ell, eh?

My friend J is heading off to LA at the beginning of next week, and that has set me a-ponderin'.  What would I recommend, from my years of visiting that city (where D has been living while working behind-the-scenes on a variety of TV shows), to a visitor who doesn't want to do the typical touristy rounds?

It has to be said that LA does resist the "typical tourism"  that can envelop cities like NY and DC - largely because it is not a city in which one sets out to "do" things in any sort of strict, culture-vulturey way.  Instead it is a city of peregrination* and of consumption. In LA, one eats, one shops**, one wanders.  It is (with some notable exceptions, like the Hollywood sign) a city of experiences rather than of sights.

So what I recommend below are my favorite LA experiences, hoping to err neither on the side of the hopelessly touristy and mainstream, nor on the side of the truly avant-garde and hipster.  So here you have it, not the Miracle Mile, but the Eccentric Ell:

  • Traipse through the canals of Venice (left).  The beach community of Venice, CA - before it became the home of Muscle Beach, cutting-edge skateboarding, and experimental art galleries - was laid out as a miniature version of its Mediterranean namesake.  All the houses faced not roads but canals, and you could paddle to your neighbor's house to borrow a cup of sugar.  Many of the canals have, I believe, been filled in now, but the watery blocks that remain are some of the most coveted property in the city.  Some maintain their original small, beachy flavor; other plots have been bought by artists and architects and renovated in innovative and distinctive ways.
  • While you are in Venice, nip over to Abbot Kinney (named after the visionary who created the original "Venice of America") for some intensely Californian window shopping.  Sit at Jin Patisserie and partake in painfully exquisite tea and cakes.
  • Blow your mind at The Museum of Jurassic Technology - I am reluctant to say too much about this experience, which will either thrust you into a state of the most profound rage or leave you with a feeling of quasi-religious mental displacement.  Suffice it to say that 1) no, there is no such thing as Jurassic Technology, and 2) this shrine to eccentricity won its creator the MacArthur "Genius" Award.  OK, that will not quite suffice, so let me say this: when you emerge out of the Cavalcade of Oddities that are the exhibits, and the Exercise in Productive (?) Bafflement that is the movie screening, and you move zombie-like into the Russian Tea-Room of Awkward Conversation, there to drink tea from the samovar and eat dry biscuits with your shell-shocked fellow travelers (er, museum-goers), you will finally understand, as my friend DD said in a swivet of ill-contained fury, that you are the primary exhibit in the MJT.  If you must know more about this zen koan of an experience, visit this link or this one.
  • Eat huge feasts incorporating many kinds of tiny foods for shockingly affordable prices.  All my favorite foodstuffs in LA come in this form: dim sum, tapas, rijsttaffel.  One type of feast is the exception to the affordability rule, but still well worth the attempt: Korean barbecue.  Yum.
  • See a film at Grauman's Chinese Theatre - If you choose one stereotypical tourist activity to engage in, I would make it this one.  The one time I went to Grauman's Chinese, it was to see the execrable  Be Cool, in which the characters lurk about Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Oh, the meta-piphany that was.  See, Grauman's can make even Be Cool delightful.  Almost. [The one alternative I would suggest for "stereotypical tourist activity" is one I have never myself experienced - a trip to the Observatory in Griffith Park to reenact Rebel without a Cause.  It was closed for renovations the last time I was in the neighborhood.]
  • Have the caprese at Pizzeria Mozza.  Yes, that's a picture of it on the front page of the website: the most flavorful, on-the-vine tomatoes you have ever tasted, placed on top of a mozzarella burrata that can only be described as epiphanic. Try to ignore the twenty-something guys with expense accounts at the table next to you, ordering dozens of pizzas, taking a piece of each, and then leaving the rest to be thrown away.  There is a special place in Dante's hell waiting for them.  Its theme is the completion of tasks begun and the proper appreciation of good food.  It is populated by grotesque creatures whose eyes are exactly the size of their enormous stomachs.
  • See a show or a workshop at the Kirk Douglas. The most active (although by no means the only - this is a show business town, after all) theatre organization in LA is the Center Theatre Group, which runs the Mark Taper Forum, the Ahmanson, and the Kirk Douglas.  Its shows and its ambiance can definitely tend toward the corporate, but its smallest theatre, the Kirk Douglas, is both the most cutting edge and the most romantic (it has renovated an old-fashioned marquis cinema in the middle of the charmingly pedestrian-friendly old Hollywood studio town of Culver City).  You are most likely to see new work here, even work that is in the midst of being workshopped, giving you the opportunity to give playwrights, actors and directors your feedback.  You can also catch established avant-garde theatre groups here (as paradoxical as that description may seem).  It is our favorite of the LA theatre companies that D and I have sampled so far, and not just because it is a lovely evening walk from D's house.
  • Drop by the Huntington in Pasadena.  After strolling about in the gardens (stunning - there is nothing like seeing hummingbirds feed in the Shakespearean Garden in January), nip into the Library proper to see the Ellesmere Manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, complete with illuminated portraits of each of the pilgrims (including Geoffrey himself).
 Ah, I have made myself nostalgic (and hungry.  Very hungry.) just by writing this list.  Luckily I am going to SoCal week after next for my regular burrata fix.  (Oh, and also to see D.  That's right.)

So I put it to you: does anyone have other LA eccentricities to recommend?




* See how I did that: from vultures to falcons?  That's right: I work with words for a living. (Although, strictly speaking, peregrination implies pedestrian movement, while LA is - in Reyner Banham's words - an autopia. You can see his brilliantly English lovesick ode to LA below.)

** And LA shopping doesn't necessarily have the grimly corporate, acquisitive tinge that I generally associate with the activity, in part because - although it is a city entirely composed of strip malls - these strip malls are filled with independent businesses, unique boutiques, mom-and-pop endeavors, and restaurants offering up obscure national cuisines.  There is more individuality in an LA strip-mall than I have encountered most other places.