King Che Lear
I posted this over on my blog, but I thought I would put it up here as well.
Now that I am back to one job instead of two I finally have some leisure time to enjoy. So I decided to take Jennie to see King Lear, featuring Kevin Kline, at the Public Theater on Saturday. In general I don’t find Shakespeare to be wonderfully inviting. In fact, sometimes I think he doesn’t deserve all the praise, but that is when I am reading. Shakespeare is meant to be heard not read, and if the person performing does his job well, well then I think that Shakespeare deserves his reputation. I have to say that I thought the performance was great. In particular I thought that the two actors who portrayed Edgar and Edmund were amazing. I have resolved to watch out for them in other performances around the city and I would be very much interested in seeing them in a more contemporary play. King Lear is a complicated play with many story lines; it makes modern television dramas seem simple to follow. Even superb films have a hard time balancing as many plots as King Lear. The most recent thing I know of that did it well is The Departed, but of course everyone dies in that too. Sometimes I wonder if the reason everybody dies in such dramas is because that is the easiest way to tie everything up, rather than following continually more fractured storylines for an indefinite period of time. It takes a lot of things to hold a drama like King Lear together; the writing, the acting, the directing, and the effects must all align. I’ve already praised the actors and while I must give Shakespeare a large portion of the credit, the director James Lapine also deserves praise as well. All in all, I give King Lear two thumbs up.
The other thing I did this weekend was fun as well. On Sunday afternoon I took about 2 ½ hours and read Ernesto Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries. Those of you who know me know that I have somewhat socialist leanings, but that is not why I read the book. I saw the movie last year and I wondered about “Che”. This is the revolutionary who fought for communism all over the world, who was buddies with Castro, and who was eventually put to death. I wondered how someone who seemed so carefree and caring towards the destitute and downtrodden could possibly take up arms and kill his fellow man. I wondered if it would ever be possible for me to embrace a cause so much so that I could forget the reason for the cause. The Motorcycle Diaries didn’t help me much on that front, but they did give me some food for thought. Che apparently realized the same thing. In the preface he writes about his thoughts as he was organizing the notes to be published. I’m not sure how long after they were written they were published, but Che acknowledges that he is now a different person. I would like to quote him, but since the book isn’t in front of me and it is a translation in the first place I will paraphrase. He says something to the effect of: the person who is organizing these notes is not me, at least not the me I was. That me died the day I came back to Argentina. The book ends with his declaration to fight for the cause of the Latin American proletariat, although the editor’s note says that no one knows when or where it was written or even if it was written on the journey. Is it possible that I will ever go to the extreme like that? I don’t know, but at least I’ve pondered the consequences.
Now that I am back to one job instead of two I finally have some leisure time to enjoy. So I decided to take Jennie to see King Lear, featuring Kevin Kline, at the Public Theater on Saturday. In general I don’t find Shakespeare to be wonderfully inviting. In fact, sometimes I think he doesn’t deserve all the praise, but that is when I am reading. Shakespeare is meant to be heard not read, and if the person performing does his job well, well then I think that Shakespeare deserves his reputation. I have to say that I thought the performance was great. In particular I thought that the two actors who portrayed Edgar and Edmund were amazing. I have resolved to watch out for them in other performances around the city and I would be very much interested in seeing them in a more contemporary play. King Lear is a complicated play with many story lines; it makes modern television dramas seem simple to follow. Even superb films have a hard time balancing as many plots as King Lear. The most recent thing I know of that did it well is The Departed, but of course everyone dies in that too. Sometimes I wonder if the reason everybody dies in such dramas is because that is the easiest way to tie everything up, rather than following continually more fractured storylines for an indefinite period of time. It takes a lot of things to hold a drama like King Lear together; the writing, the acting, the directing, and the effects must all align. I’ve already praised the actors and while I must give Shakespeare a large portion of the credit, the director James Lapine also deserves praise as well. All in all, I give King Lear two thumbs up.
The other thing I did this weekend was fun as well. On Sunday afternoon I took about 2 ½ hours and read Ernesto Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries. Those of you who know me know that I have somewhat socialist leanings, but that is not why I read the book. I saw the movie last year and I wondered about “Che”. This is the revolutionary who fought for communism all over the world, who was buddies with Castro, and who was eventually put to death. I wondered how someone who seemed so carefree and caring towards the destitute and downtrodden could possibly take up arms and kill his fellow man. I wondered if it would ever be possible for me to embrace a cause so much so that I could forget the reason for the cause. The Motorcycle Diaries didn’t help me much on that front, but they did give me some food for thought. Che apparently realized the same thing. In the preface he writes about his thoughts as he was organizing the notes to be published. I’m not sure how long after they were written they were published, but Che acknowledges that he is now a different person. I would like to quote him, but since the book isn’t in front of me and it is a translation in the first place I will paraphrase. He says something to the effect of: the person who is organizing these notes is not me, at least not the me I was. That me died the day I came back to Argentina. The book ends with his declaration to fight for the cause of the Latin American proletariat, although the editor’s note says that no one knows when or where it was written or even if it was written on the journey. Is it possible that I will ever go to the extreme like that? I don’t know, but at least I’ve pondered the consequences.
3 Comments:
I think that fundamentalist Muslims are the last group to take up arms in such an earth-shattering way. I'm not sure we in the developed world are capable of it any more. It's a similar reaction, an almost visceral one, against the excesses of secular Western culture and the percieved weakness of political compromise that drove Che and Castro to such lengths and that drives terrorists in our day. It's an aesthetic belief in the beauty of the downtrodden and a delight in toppling huge and complex infrastructures and institutions. That's why I'm not sure I can believe the commentators who cry that the solution to our problems in the Middle East is the creation of infrastructure - because the very hand that would hold out that infrastructure is tainted by Western economic coercion and moral corruption.
The spector of a Marxist view of history still brings up the question about our current situation: is it the poor economies in (some parts of) the Middle East that have created a justification for radical religious fervor; or does the religious and ethnic purism of certain parts of the middle east have it's own interior driving force? If the latter, I'm not sure that there is a diplomatic or military solution that can be imposed from without - cultural regeneration and reflection would have to come from within those cultures. As long as only two choices are offered them - to capitulate to Western commercial and cultural influence, or to accept violent and extremist religious positions - I'm not sure that, like Che, they will be able to resist the prospect of revolution.
There. I want my chocolate milk.
It's waiting for you anytime at any Starbucks in Chicago.
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