- T.S. Eliot, "Humouresque (After J. Laforgue)"One of my marionettes is dead
Though not yet tired of the game--
But weak in body as in head,
(A jumping-jack has such a frame).
But this deceaséd marionette
I rather liked: a common face,
(The kind of face that we forget)
Pinched in a comic, dull grimace;
Half bullying, half imploring air,
Mouth twisted to the latest tune;
His who-the-devil-are-you stare;
Translated, maybe, to the moon.
With Limbo's other useless things
Haranguing spectres, set him there;
"The snappiest fashion since last spring's,
"The newest style, on Earth, I swear.
"Why don't you people get some class?
(Feebly contemptuous of nose),
"Your damned thin moonlight, worse than gas--
"Now in New York"--and so it goes.
Logic a marionette's, all wrong
Of premises; yet in some star
A hero!--Where would he belong?
But, even at that, what mask bizarre!
Friday, July 4, 2014
Anticipating Expended Socialism
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I love T.S. Eliot. He knew -- as so very few do -- that g-r-i-m-a-c-e should be pronounced gri-MACE and not GRIM-iss.
Of course you may say, as too many do are prone to do these days, "What difference does it make?" (:-o
I'll tell you: It makes the difference between tasteless, vulgar ignorance, and refined, cultivated erudition.
No matter what the Bozo's want to think; such things do MATTER.
__________________
Joel Gray had a kind of genius as a performer, but he's always given me the creeps no matter what role he plays. The Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret, however, is the creepiest of them all. I'm sure it was quite intentional.
Only a fellow Jew could get away with saying, "She doesn't look Jewish at all," after burlesquing romance by waltzing around with a gorilla in drag. Is the number supposed to be touching? -- funny? -- grotesque? -- incisive? Any two or all four?
I admit I'm not sure how to take it. In fact that is the outstanding characteristic of Cabaret. It's brilliant, often amusing, but fundamentally corrupt and has always left me feeling sick at heart. I'm sure that too is quite intentional, nicht wahr?
Indeed. Momus is a god banished by the Olympians, FOR GOOD REASON.
The decadence of Weimar depicted in Cabaret... made the rise of Adolph Hitler seem almost inevitable. In Cabaret, we sense this underlying truth. IMO, what is offensive in the movie was its' smug anti-facism, its' the pretense of pretending there was another solution on the table that wasn't even worse... "communism".
Constructing a neutral ideological frame upon which to build a society in which its' diverse ethnic and religious groups can flourish is no easy task. The temptation to "tip the scales" to favour the current "outs" or "ins" is simply too appealing to politicians and leaders, given the resources at their disposal. But if you really love someone, you need to let them succeed and/or fail on their own merits. What doesn't kill them, makes them stronger.
There needs to be room in a free society for dissent. But when said dissent soon invokes Momus at every turn like the Nazi's did to the Jews, the Communists to the bourgeosie/ kulaks, Americans scapegoating "Republicans" and/or "Liberals"... we go too far. Our politics has gone too far. The opportunity to play "politics" to the benefit or detriment of different groups within our society has gone too far and needs to be curtailed.
Limited government. Time to restore some of those limits. Nicht wahr?
...that our ideological frame has strayed so far from the Founder's vision is also very troubling. It's progressed beyond the point of any more attempting the untying of the Gordian knot, and cutting it instead, as Alexander did.
Free market capitalism ala Adam Smith is not Mercantilism... yet it is to British Mercantilism we seem to have returned. The frame has been "too far bent". Perhaps its' time to reforge a new one.
Post a Comment