Is Britain suffering from an artistic shift to the right?

Terry Eagleton thinks so.

But it seems to me that there is a peril in looking holistically at historical leftists (by which I mean choosing the most radical points in their careers as representative), and comparing that to this particular moment in contemporary artists' careers (when, as he points out, many of them have succumbed in middle or age to a dilution of their former radicalism), particularly when this moment is so defined by fear and terrorism.

The point that he is making is about established, mainstream individual artists (along the lines of a Morris or a Shaw in other time periods). But of course in every age a lot of innovation and dissent will occur at the fringes of the artistic community, among the unsung and avant garde. Furthermore, it seems to me that there is a strong vein of protest in British theatre right now (although it is perhaps less polemic than the radicalism Eagleton is looking for, as the dialogic nature of the form allows), but it is being produced not by individuals but by collectives. Think, for instance, of the work done in the Tribunal theatre project at the Tricycle, which takes documentary evidence about current events (my favorite was about British residents being held in violation of habeas corpus at Guantanamo) and reworks it for the stage.

The Triumph of Love (52 Plays/52 Weeks)

To gain your heart I did everything I could to abuse those who stood in my way. You were the sole object of my machinations.
-Phocion, The Triumph of Love

In the gardens of a country estate, the rich youth Phocion and his servant Hermidas plot their way to ingratiating themselves with the rigidly reclusive owners of the house, the strict philosopher Hermocrate, his frigid and syntactically ornate sister Léontine, and their dim but noble ward Agis. There are, it emerges, secrets on both sides of this exchange. Agis's father, the late king, developed a mad passion for his sister-in-law, kidnapped her, and died, imprisoned by his enraged brother, who took over the kingship himself. In other words, the ethics of Agis's uncle's possession of the throne are complex. Agis was smuggled away after his mother's death (the plot of the play would have been vastly improved by making his mother the king's kidnapped sister-in-law, but alas, the incest route was the road less taken here), and Hermocrate is plotting an uprising against the current possessor of Agis's throne, his cousin Léonide, daughter of the wife-deprived usurper.

Phocion is desperate to join their household, after encountering Agis on a walk through the surrounding property and falling madly in love. Is this an unusually explicit (if not, strictly speaking, unusual) 18th century tale of homoeroticism? Only a little bit. Phocion, it turns out (of course), is Léonide in disguise, and she must go to great lengths to convince Agis that he is in love with her. First, she must reveal herself as a liar when it comes to her gender, and then she must overcome his learned repulsion for women (Agis was brought up by Hermocrate to believe that women would only divert him from his all-important political purpose), and finally she must uncover to him the nature of her political position, and convince him that she is not his most hated enemy.

She does this, of course, through a series of complicated amorous deceptions, convincing every member of the household that s/he is madly in love with them and cannot be turned away. The Triumph of Love is, it turns out, a tiny farce, not nearly as complex as what Marivaux does elsewhere with the genre (not to mention Shakespeare - but is that comparison really fair to any playwright?). It shows neither the verbal wit (although perhaps the French original is most linguistically clever) Marivaux is famous for, nor the superhuman complexity of the plots wrought by his colleagues across the channel during this period. It does, however, carry the odd distinction of being the only one of Marivaux's plays to have been turned into an English language film, starring (!?!?) Mira Sorvino, Ben Kingsley, and Fiona Shaw. Maybe I should watch a "staged" (i.e. filmed) version before I render my final judgement. You can read Roger Ebert's review of the film, as well as Mick LaSalle's less glowing evaluation (a hint: he titles his review "Triumph doesn't").


The Triumph of Love (1732)
Marivaux (Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux)
trans. James Magruder (1994)
**1/2

Paprika

[Anything one could possibly say about this movie would be a spoiler, so be forewarned. However, as usual I suspect that the enjoyment of the movie has other aesthetic benefits than surprise. But it is hard to say how valuable my innocence about the plot was, looking back on the experience. Is this not the most equivocating spoiler warning ever seen?]



Cyber-Freudianism: The Final Frontier. A group of psychotherapists are participating in a mammoth corporate research study into dream-intervention. A powerful device, known as the DC Mini, allows the therapist to insert themselves into patients' dreams, for first-hand observation or even, potentially, interference. Now, as someone interested in artistic representations of psychotherapy, I have to say this a brilliant premise. There are so many places to go with this, not least into the power it gives the therapist to trade the patient's verbal deceptions for their subconscious symbolic transformations. But one of the least interesting routes to take is the one chosen: the action film about ontological breakdown. Now, I love ontological breakdown dramas (in which different levels of reality, like dream and waking, or theatre plot and audience reality, or fiction and readerly reality, blend into one another), but is it possible that in the years since postmodern fiction began to burst forth with self-reference (or since Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, or even since Calderon's Life is a Dream in the Spanish Golden Age) this device has been played out a bit, and that it is in need of a spot of regeneration?

I think it is possible. The opening of the film (our insight into a detective's therapy with Paprika, the sprightly alter ego of psychotherapist Dr. Chiba) is quite brilliantly disconcerting, and this delightfully uncertain, surreal tone is maintained for about a third of the movie. But soon the film starts bewildering without complicating, collapsing layers of reality without adding meaning or possibility. Much of the film's appeal comes from its bright, crazed aesthetic, a joyous zest for Freudian symbolism that yields crowded frames of surrealist excess (or perhaps they look back further to Hieronymus Bosch [look right for part of his "Garden of Earthly Delights," courtesy of Wikipedia]). But then the film reduces itself with the great peril of Freudian cinema (though not necessarily, I hasten to add, of Freud's own process): analysis that simplifies. The potent (and latent) presence of Oedipus and the sphinx as a metaphor for the narrative is ultimately brought out of subtext and spoiled through explication. Great sexual battles are writ large, ultimately playing out in the context of the Godzilla vs. Mothra genre (this is not nearly so charming as it seems in description).

All in all, an interesting film, and one that has garnered a great deal of praise from American critics, but ultimately an unsuccessful one.


Paprika (2006, Japan)
dir. Satoshi Kon
***

[In other news, I finished Sleepless Nights last night, and the final chapter was less spectacular than those that preceded it. I also watched (and wept voluminously over) United 93, but fell asleep before the midnight Harry Potter showing that I had promised to attend with my friend. Alas! Still at work on Watching the English (going on 14 months now), and I admit that I was sucked into starting the fourth book in Ursula K. le Guin's Earthsea cycle, Tehanu, against all my virtuous intentions to read book group and challenge books first. Ah, well. Now that I am done with Sleepless Nights, I will return to The Heart is a Lonely Hunter as my next book group read.]