Aristotle observed that political subversiveness will inevitably follow the cultural kind: “Any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole state, and ought to be prohibited…”
The idea is debatable, but it does contain a kernel of truth.
The columnist David Aaronovich has written two articles in The Times proving unwittingly that 1) Aristotle’s message may apply to culture at large and 2) the reverse is also true: political subversiveness in its turn produces cultural mayhem.
First, he wrote that his former membership in the Communist Party is entirely innocent, and so is the re-emergence of Labour Trotskyism. Second, he welcomed Glenda Jackson’s forthcoming appearance as King Lear in the West End.
Both messages are animated by subcutaneous resentment of our civilisation, which sentiment has become the hallmark of Western journalism. Both poisonous fruits dangle off the same branch of one tree.
The question to ask about the support of both communism and women playing male roles is Why? Pose it, and you’ll be amazed how close the two answers will be.
When a grownup (as opposed to an immature youngster) becomes a communist, he accepts that man isn’t an aim in itself but merely a material with which to build the edifice of universal happiness. A logical corollary is that, if said material is defective, it must be dumped into “the rubbish bin of history”, in Trotsky’s phrase.
Since most people fall short of the shining ideal, communism presupposes mass murder, a theoretical postulate that has been empirically proved in every communist country. A communist has to believe that an abstract political aim justifies the concrete massacre of millions.
Therefore a communist isn’t just intellectually misguided. He’s driven by a destructive animus, which is to say he’s evil.
This can’t be changed by merely abandoning communist phraseology or indeed convictions. The energumen resides not in the mind, nor in the vocal cords, but in the viscera, and that area is almost impossible to reach.
That’s why the wide spread of ex-communists among our opinion-formers is worrying. In most cases the ‘ex’ part is hard to believe. A man can’t become an ex-dwarf and, without a religious Damascene experience, he can’t become an ex-communist either.
Vindicating Aristotle, Mr Aaronovich shifts his innate subversiveness into culture. Why not, he asks, have a woman play Lear? Why not have two homosexuals play Romeo and Juliet, “as an exploration of transgressive love”? Why not have a black play Hamlet?
Because that’s “an insult to the playwright”, says the dramatist Sir Ronald Harwood. “But on this issue he’s completely wrong,” responds Mr Aaronovich, displaying the know-all effrontery so typical of communists.
The question to ask here isn’t Why not? but Why yes? It’s not that, as the playwright Sir Ronald says, the part “demands huge energy and masculine strength”. A woman is capable of possessing such qualities, although I doubt that the grossly overrated Miss Jackson does.
But why resort to this gimmick? Have we developed a shortage of male Shakespearean actors? Why have we decided that a prince of medieval Denmark could be black? What’s to be gained by portraying Juliet as a male pervert?
Apart from an expectation of commercial appeal, the Lear director is animated by the same impulse as a vandal who wants to relieve himself in a cathedral or spray-paint a moustache on the Mona Lisa. Just as man is but material to a communist, so is our sublime theatrical tradition but grist to the mill of any director’s hubris.
Even cleverer men than David Aaronovich sound ignorant and stupid when trying to defend a corrupt idea. He doesn’t disappoint either, by offering this argument in defence of thespian transsexualism: “Whatever gender Shakespeare intended in his writing, all Lear’s daughters were originally played by boys. Somehow the playgoers of the time managed to cope with this.”
The playgoers of the time didn’t have a choice because women were banned from acting in Elizabethan times. Given the opportunity, a Globe director would have jumped at the chance of casting a Maggie Smith as Cordelia or a Sarah Bernhardt as Goneril. But he would have muttered “Vade retro” if told to cast either woman as Lear.
“If you are black or Muslim or Jewish or white or male or female or gay or straight, these single qualities are held to define you in every way. But it’s a lie,” pontificates Mr Aaronovich, resorting to the communist trick of making an opponent utter nonsense the easier to ridicule it.
Such characteristics don’t define one in every way, but they certainly define one in some way. Hence having a conspicuously homosexual black man play Ophelia turns suspension of disbelief into suspension of sanity, as does casting an actress as Lear.
“King Lear is a play about the tragedies of ingratitude, ageing, madness and death,” Mr Aaronovich explains helpfully. “Shakespeare is not insulted by Glenda Jackson playing the part of his tragic king but rather, four centuries on, is honoured by it.”
Not blessed with his direct access to the playwright, I’d suggest that it’s not just Shakespeare who’s insulted by this cultural communism but elementary good taste – which is to say our whole civilisation.
Mmmm… partly right.
Aaronovitch is a pillock, an obnoxious lefty regardless of the label, and communism is obviously (to me) loathsome, and has never yielded anything but but misery and death, in vast quantity.
However, art is art and it is right to experiment. What we now regard as mainstream culture was often, when it was made, regarded as being dangerously radical – examples can easily be found in music, literature and painting.
They should do Lear with a woman, and if she is clever she might even make a success of it. I don’t think it is any better or worse than these productions in modern dress or set in space or naked… art, once you force the artists to conform, is no longer art, but conformism, its opposite.
As to the question of whether or not the result is great art, that will be answered by posterity. In most cases it will award a resounding raspberry, but a few will be accepted as artistic geniuses.
Art is as near as most lefties get to a free market.