Old skool.
I may be getting paddled by the Happy Tutor elsewhere, but never let it be said I said he couldn’t turn a phrase on a dime and kick a white-hot nickel back in change:
You are not watching a play. My friend, you are on stage, as a member of the Chorus. The play is a tragedy, with comic or satiric interludes. What makes it tragic is that time and power are slipping away from the moderate. The tragedy is about how, through the failure of the Chorus to speak up, democracy in Athens was lost. The play ends with a Peter Karoff, or one of so many other such moderate, wise figure’s tragic recognition that it is too late for protest. They, the ones who come to their recognition too late, or express it too late, are not hauled off. Theirs is a worse fate, to live for the rest of their lives, in what had been a democracy, with the urbane shrug that was the tipping point, forced to repeat that shrug under conditons that become increasingly bleak, and to pass on to their heirs that legacy of self-subjugation.
Turbulent Velvet, meanwhile, wants to remind you of what Kenneth Burke said about satire and burlesque, and you need more than I want to paste here, so go. —As for me, all this on top of re-reading Wicked is proving a rich, rich diet:
“Animals in pens have lots of time to develop theories,” said the Cow. “I’ve heard more than one clever creature draw a connection between the rise of tiktokism and the erosion of traditional Animal labor. We weren’t beasts of burden, but we were good reliable laborers. If we were made redundant in the workforce, it was only a matter of time before we’d be socially redundant, too. Anyway, that’s one theory. My own feeling is that there is real evil abroad in the land. The Wizard sets the standard for it, and the society follows suit like a bunch of sheep. Forgive the slanderous reference,” she said, nodding to her companions in the pen. “It was a slip.”
Elphaba threw open the gate of the pen. “Come on, you’re free,” she said. “What you make of it is your own affair. If you turn it down, it’s on your own heads.”
“It’s on our own heads if we walk out, too. Do you think a Witch who would charm an axe to dismember a human being would pause over a couple of Sheep and an annoying old Cow?”
“But this might be your only chance!” Elphaba cried.
The Cow moved out, and the Sheep followed. “We’ll be back,” she said. “This is an exercise in your education, not ours. Mark my words, my rump’ll be served up rare on your finest Dixxi House porcelain dinner plates before the year is out.” She mooed a last remark—“I hope you choke”—and, tail swishing the flies, she meandered away.
Too rich, perhaps. I need to get back to the more comfortable ground of the Unheimlichsenke. I did have one more thing to say, at least.
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