Tag: cabaretic

Editor’s Note:

I wrote this originally for a Quaker audience, but would like to share this with you as well.  I’ve added a few notes in the text to aid the comprehension of those who are not Friends.  I’ve also expanded the message to include those who are not people of faith.

The Author.

Forgive me for doing something a bit different today.  A steady diet of teh serious often gets burdensome.  

The late 90’s to early 2000’s MTV animated series Daria was finally released yesterday on DVD in totality.  I’m not sure a more perfect encapsulation of my adolescence could have ever been created.  Born in an era where content on MTV still could be seen as edgy and daring, instantly creating a kind of seductively rebellious authenticity with a younger audience, the series served as a lifeline to lonely, isolated, insecure teens like myself.  I myself related so much to many of the characters.  Daria and her best friend Jane were a kind of wise-cracking vaudeville act, lampooning the contradictions and hypocrisies of the world around them with their own private repertoire.  I also knew many in my own life who reminded me of Jane’s ne’er do well brother, Trent, a chronic slacker whose dreams of rock ‘n roll stardom are always frustrated by his limited proficiency as a songwriter and guitarist.  Sometimes I still encounter the Trents of the world, particularly when it comes time for me to once again take my guitar in hand, sit, and play before an audience.

Nine months spent in Washington, DC, has provided valuable insight.  Beltway insiders and area professions are their own breed.  As I’ve gotten my sea legs, more and more of their world makes sense to me.  Once I arrived here that I was immediately given some particularly infuriating advice, namely that other people were just as smart as I was, if not smarter, and that I ought to get used to it.  I think he assumed I was just like everyone else—the latest newcomer eager to play the game in a town with more than its share of naked ambition and power plays.  Perhaps he was the latest candidate for burnout, having recognized that institutional idealism is often an exercise in minutia.  Though my background and my academic career may be relatively humble, I am no stranger to elitism when I see it, and I am just as repulsed by it now as I ever was.

I feel a bit late to the party writing about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Had I chosen to focus on this subject a few days ago, I might have been inclined to draft a personal narrative about the summers I spent on Alabama’s Gulf Coast as a boy and young teenager.  My post would have certainly have been in good company; it heartens me to recognize just how many people have an emotional and personal connection to the region.  I myself didn’t realize how much the warm salt water and white sand meant to me until I began to contemplate what both might look like covered in oil.  It is very unfortunate that tragedies like these have to happen before we ever seriously consider the long term consequences.  Off-shore drilling was, until very recently, touted as some kind of snake-oil panacea or fix-all curative.  One hopes that we now understand the complexities and potentially catastrophic drawbacks in tapping the reserves present in our coastline.  

So much of my life I spend cynically griping about the bad side of human nature.  The work I do every day frequently centers around a ceaseless source of constant frustration.  Seeking strategies to reform destructive behaviors is the basic skill set of many professions and basic activism.  Influencing people so that they might understand the correct means of conducting their lives is a substantial challenge and a constant energy drain.  I’m sure many of you understand this quandary all too well.  While it is true that we all possess a dark side, some more than others, recent events in my life have provided a unexpected but welcome sense of clarity and perspective. I note with joy over the past three days that I have, much to my great surprise, seen the very best in people.  Once again I am humbled to have been proven incorrect in my assumptions about others.

Until yesterday, the subject of distracted drivers and their role in pedestrian accidents was merely an abstract annoyance.  When I moved to DC, I quite willingly gave up my car and resorted largely to my own two legs to get me where I needed to be.  Periodically one hears a horror story here about how about a jogger, walker, cyclist, or all around fellow human gets mowed down by an inattentive driver.  Recently, there have been a handful of similar incidents where people were seriously hurt.  I suppose I may have been remiss to not use that information and apply it to my life, but I always justified my inaction by feeling certain that such a thing would never happened to me.  Well, never happened yesterday.

It is at least interesting to see the latest mainstream media insult circulate liberally across the country,  one designed to reduce bloggers to little more than reactive agitprop sensationalists.  This week it’s “(insert example of ridiculously overblown commentary here) could have been found on Daily Kos”.  I might take more offense, except when I know the major players frequently fall far short of their own lofty journalistic standards.  We’ve consistently recognized, called out, and sometimes outright mocked op-ed columnists, television commentators, pundits, and members of the fourth estate.  We shouldn’t expect a mea culpa any time soon.  But when we can produce all sorts of facts to prove our point, we can certainly make a strong case on our own behalf.  And we can certainly keep sharing our own voices for the benefit of all, unimpeded by what anyone might say.  

During the dark days of the Bush Administration, the collective mood on the Left could not have been more pessimistic and discouraged.  Believing ourselves to be utterly ignored and summarily discounted, our anger was palpable and copious.  I wonder why we on the Left didn’t form a series of spontaneous demonstrations, venting our frustration at a government we saw as illegitimate and destructive.  While it is true that protests were plentiful then, no self-proclaimed movement sprung up, one then dutifully covered exhaustively by the media.  That we did not resort to Teabagging tactics was itself a very good thing, but I think also that many of us placed complete faith in the mechanization of the system itself.  When things began to turn around at long last in 2006 and then, two years later when a compelling candidate articulated our desire for change, we believed that working tirelessly to secure his election was wholly sufficient.

Throughout the whole of my life, I have felt outside the norm.  The Methodism of my boyhood preached that, as a devout Christian, I should expect to be frequently misunderstood, feared, and at times distrusted by the rest of society.  Based on my Southern roots and the political convictions I grew to espouse, in addition to the company I kept, I continued to feel out of step with the majority point of view in all kinds of ways.  If this was supposed to be an essential component of living the Christian life, then it was not a difficult one to adopt.  When, years later, I became a Quaker, it wasn’t hard at all to accept that many would not comprehend what I believed.  Shortly before I converted, I read a book front to cover which stated that Friends were used to being thought of as peculiar and eccentric.  Those words cemented my decision to become a Convinced Friend.  For years I wore a nonconformist’s identity like a badge of honor, though my secret desire, barely even vocalized to myself, was always that I might find greater acceptance and understanding.  Having achieved this, I believe that I would find the comfort granted to those not consistently marginalized and discounted by the majority.  

Last week I read a brief blurb in Politico, in which a scholar expressed his opinion as to why labor union membership was in sharp decline.  The scholar stated that, in his opinion, the decrease was a result of the fact that people are now inclined to think more individually than communally.  He added that this trend will become more, not less pronounced with time.  Backing up this claim, he noted how, these days, people get jobs by packing their resumes full of exhaustively long lists of individual accomplishments.  Americans have always been resistant to thinking as a group and placing group priorities above individual gain, but with the death of labor, one of the most notable exceptions to the rule, expect more problems to manifest themselves that have their nexus due to a hyper-individualist attitude.

An internet advice column responded to the question of a man who was uncomfortable with the idea that, assuming the two of them would marry, his girlfriend would not agree to take his last name.  The columnist deftly turns his original question around in her reply, suggesting that perhaps he should agree to take her name or that the two of them could form a new surname unique to the both of them.  Inherent in the whole of the reply is the assertion that the soon-to-be husband in question isn’t nearly as open and accepting of a woman’s right to individual choice as he thinks he is.  The major issues expressed in the column are an articulation that men who place demands upon women, especially in situations like these are speaking from a place of privilege and in so doing need to rethink their attitudes.  When politically problematic and personal choice butt heads, the two almost always clash.  

A particularly popular line of thinking states that, should a woman make a conscious decision to participate in what would at its face be a restrictive, oppressive custom, she should be allowed to do so without being criticized as somehow violating the aims of women’s rights.  Up to a point, I think this statement is justified but if one expands the application, it becomes more and more problematic.  It should be noted that not all oppressions are the same, but in an earlier post this week, I tried to draw a parallel between all systematic injustices.  If, for example, an African-American chooses consciously to dress in blackface and to participate a minstrel show, offensive and demeaning though it is, is the practice any less evil and reprehensible if it is justified by deliberate personal choice?

A fellow Friend told me the other day about one of her passions.  She is a skilled seamstress and designs her own ballroom gowns.  The clothes she makes are ornate and authentic, designed to be worn to balls which seek to re-enact social functions that date back to the 19th Century.  Part of the appeal, as she describes it, is to dress up, and part of the appeal is to participate in specific dances authentic to the period while socializing with others. I am conscious that recreating a Jane Austen novel has its appeal, but as a Feminist I am also aware of the gender inequality and sexism inherent as well in the practice.  British society of that day was rigidly stratified and effectively divided by a strict adherence to class distinctions.  I doubt many in the current day would care to deal with them or wish to feel marginalized and discounted to such a stifling degree.

Knowing this, the first question I have is why many feel such a strong sense of fascination with this particular time in history.  Every few years the same novel is adapted yet again for film and yet again it makes money.  I question if it is easy to brush aside the objectionable parts and still enjoy the experience.  If such films, books, or plays were, for example, full of racism or homophobia I doubt we’d be so forgiving.  We can tolerate that which effectively disregards the rights of women much more effectively than, say, a new adaptation of a minstrel show.  I doubt few would wish to go to social functions where participants dressed up in blackface, attempting to emulate Stepin Fetchit the whole night long.  

The past proves a respite from the daily grind, but we choose to see it in romantic terms, and really, squarely on our own terms.  Some would return to Austen’s day, but they’d certainly want to bring their toothbrush and modern medicine along, too.  Neo-cons and anti-feminists have done much the same thing in idealizing the Fifties, forgetting, of course, that those days were also full of paranoia and a constantly nagging fear of imminent destruction by way of nuclear war.  In those days, the average housewife had access to a car perhaps a few times a week, almost always at the discretion of her husband, and was predominately cloistered at home doing household chores.  This may be a very normal means of longing for simpler days, but some take it beyond fantasy and escapism.  When this does happen, then problems arise.

I wonder if we have truly come to terms with escapism and its role in our daily lives.  Most notably now it drives the Tea Partiers and those allied with them.  As many have commented before, there is really nothing especially authentic or historically accurate that points back to the American Revolution, aside from the occasional demonstrator in colonial militia costume.  Those who take the Second Amendment in its original context and apply it to today, arguing for the establishment of a well-regulated militia are the ones who scare us all; yet again it should be said that they are trying to use a document centuries old and make it fit exactly as justification for their own leanings.   We already have the National Guard and have no need for vigilante justice or a firearm in every holster.      

Some social critics warn of attempts by the powers that control society to provide means of escapism instead of actually bettering the condition of the people. For example, Karl Marx wrote about religion as being the “opium of the people”. This is to be compared to the thought of Saint Augustine of Hippo, who argued that people try to find satisfaction in material things to fill a void within them that only God can fill.

If nativist, xenophobic, reactive movements like these on the Right considered themselves wrought of honest religious dissent to the status quo, I think I would have less overall reservations.  Most likely I still wouldn’t agree with them, but religion practiced honestly has a leveling, moderating influence.  Without it, we quickly see rage and open hostility.  Taken to extreme we have the Westboro Baptist Church and its hatred towards LGBTs, but this is the exception, not the rule.  Tea Party groups thus far have cherry-picked passages from the Bible to suit their needs, but it is, by in large, a secular movement.  If these activists really are intent on turning back the clock, I think adopting a conservative Christian framework to guide them might not be a bad idea, since the days they allude to were far less secular than our own.  Here is another example of how many will selectively choose which parts of history agree with them while and disregarding the rest.  If it is purity which we are seeking, none of us passes the test.    

German social philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote that utopias and images of fulfillment, however regressive they might be, also included an impetus for a radical social change. According to Bloch, social justice could not be realized without seeing things fundamentally differently. Something that is mere “daydreaming” or “escapism” from the viewpoint of a technological-rational society might be a seed for a new and more humane social order, it can be seen as an “immature, but honest substitute for revolution”.

An important distinction to make here is that there is a difference between Utopia and Dystopia.  That may be the best encapsulation of what is on everyone’s mind right now.  I admit that I have my own bias and my own loyalty, but aside from a few misguided souls, I note that what we have been debating amongst ourselves in recent Progressive discourse are escapist means of imagining how government would run if our specific ideas were adopted.  As we scheme and ponder, regrettably some on the other side want to take the law into their own hands, while, regardless of how they frame it, wishing to take advantage of the government which agrees with them while seeking to dismantle the government that does not.  Our definitions of what constitutes active revolution are very different from each other, but regardless of it is phrased and by whom, one wonders what period in history or historical document will be cited next.  Doing so would seem to be inevitable.  And, as we do so, I hope we will realize that the past, consulted honestly, has no allegiance to Party or ideology.  Rather, as C. Vann Woodward noted, “there is too much irony mixed in with the tragedy for that.”