Our Ass Doesn't Laugh
Political theatre and a Midsummer Night's Dream
"Lord what fools these mortals be."
Puck, Scene 2, A Midsummer Night's Dream
"I think I'm living in a dream." So a friend said after watching the cable news the other night. There was an air of unreality to it, almost as if it were a play on stage, except the stage was a television screen, and the scene was a televised political rally.
She's right, of course. We are living in a dream, a kind of political theatre that unfolds every night on the television screen, in social media, and on the internet. In effect we participate in the very kind of reality depicted in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream. We, like the characters in the play, are in a dark woods, where the fairies dance.
The parallels are even more pointed because some of us, amid this dream, have fallen in love with an ass, just as Titania fell in love with Bottom, who had been turned into a donkey. He is self-impressed ass often presented on television who is very much a protagonist in the drama, albeit in an antagonistic way.
One difference between our play and Shakespeare's, however, is that we will not awaken from our dream and return to a perfectly ordered world where couples live happily ever after, married to their partners of delight. This is how things end in A Midsummer Night's Dream. We will awaken, if we ever do, to a new world shaped by the dreams we now experience and advance. The play will be unfolding for quite some time, long after any elections that might seem to draw it to a close.
Those of us in the open relational tradition, process and otherwise, can understandably wonder where God is in all this. Here too, there’s a lesson from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Part of the very lure of God within each heart is a lure to see the comic and absurd dimensions of the dream in which we are absorbed. It is serious and tragic, to be sure, but also funny. Political theater must be matched by political humor on the part of those who dwell within it, lest the drama become a full-fledged tragedy.
It is noteworthy that the ass described above, the one some among us have fallen in love with, does not or cannot laugh, except when sneeringly ridiculing others. He laughs at others but not with others in a lighthearted way; he cannot let himself be silly. He only scowls.
This is one way in which our ass is different from Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Not that Bottom sees his own absurdity, but he is funny in a lighthearted way. He makes a fool of himself and half knows it. He sees the absurdity of having become an ass and thinks that maybe he was just dreaming. Our ass makes a fool of himself, too, but he doesn't know it.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a lure for feeling: an invitation to laugh. Part of our laughter can be that we recognize that the very world in which we live is a blurring of the actual and the possible, the literal and the theatrical, with no easy way to separate them, if that is even desired. The laughter is part of the dream, but it also gives us a little distance from the tragic sides of the dream. We can have moments of sanity through the laughter.
Often we seek this sanity by alternative means. We may peel away aspects of the ongoing political dream with what we call "fact checks." But there is so much more to life than facts. The symbolic power of contemporary political images—some repulsive and some attractive—affects us, regardless of the facts, as does the ongoing story, the narrative. It is important for us to laugh, too.
This includes laughing at ourselves and our pretensions of moral purity. No need to scapegoat. There's a Bottom in each of us. The ass on the stage is not the only ass in the play. There's no room for self-righteousness in the ongoing drama. No room for dividing the world into ass-lovers and ass-haters, with a sense of smug superiority that "they" live in a dream world and "we" do not. We all live in a dream world, shaped by the sagas in which we participate.
Shakespeare wrote many wonderful tragedies, but he also wrote comedies. Unless we see the comic in our political theater, unless we recognize the asses on stage, around us, and within us, unless we have moments when we can lapse into silliness without apology, we will too easily fall into the tragic. The key? Recognize the ass in others, but let's claim our inner asses, too. Puck, the mischievous fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream, had it right: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" Our best hope is to fully recognize the foolish side of life and, as we are able, turn our scowls into smiles.
Interested in Shakespeare and Process Philosophy? See also:
She's right, of course. We are living in a dream, a kind of political theatre that unfolds every night on the television screen, in social media, and on the internet. In effect we participate in the very kind of reality depicted in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream. We, like the characters in the play, are in a dark woods, where the fairies dance.
The parallels are even more pointed because some of us, amid this dream, have fallen in love with an ass, just as Titania fell in love with Bottom, who had been turned into a donkey. He is self-impressed ass often presented on television who is very much a protagonist in the drama, albeit in an antagonistic way.
One difference between our play and Shakespeare's, however, is that we will not awaken from our dream and return to a perfectly ordered world where couples live happily ever after, married to their partners of delight. This is how things end in A Midsummer Night's Dream. We will awaken, if we ever do, to a new world shaped by the dreams we now experience and advance. The play will be unfolding for quite some time, long after any elections that might seem to draw it to a close.
Those of us in the open relational tradition, process and otherwise, can understandably wonder where God is in all this. Here too, there’s a lesson from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Part of the very lure of God within each heart is a lure to see the comic and absurd dimensions of the dream in which we are absorbed. It is serious and tragic, to be sure, but also funny. Political theater must be matched by political humor on the part of those who dwell within it, lest the drama become a full-fledged tragedy.
It is noteworthy that the ass described above, the one some among us have fallen in love with, does not or cannot laugh, except when sneeringly ridiculing others. He laughs at others but not with others in a lighthearted way; he cannot let himself be silly. He only scowls.
This is one way in which our ass is different from Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Not that Bottom sees his own absurdity, but he is funny in a lighthearted way. He makes a fool of himself and half knows it. He sees the absurdity of having become an ass and thinks that maybe he was just dreaming. Our ass makes a fool of himself, too, but he doesn't know it.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a lure for feeling: an invitation to laugh. Part of our laughter can be that we recognize that the very world in which we live is a blurring of the actual and the possible, the literal and the theatrical, with no easy way to separate them, if that is even desired. The laughter is part of the dream, but it also gives us a little distance from the tragic sides of the dream. We can have moments of sanity through the laughter.
Often we seek this sanity by alternative means. We may peel away aspects of the ongoing political dream with what we call "fact checks." But there is so much more to life than facts. The symbolic power of contemporary political images—some repulsive and some attractive—affects us, regardless of the facts, as does the ongoing story, the narrative. It is important for us to laugh, too.
This includes laughing at ourselves and our pretensions of moral purity. No need to scapegoat. There's a Bottom in each of us. The ass on the stage is not the only ass in the play. There's no room for self-righteousness in the ongoing drama. No room for dividing the world into ass-lovers and ass-haters, with a sense of smug superiority that "they" live in a dream world and "we" do not. We all live in a dream world, shaped by the sagas in which we participate.
Shakespeare wrote many wonderful tragedies, but he also wrote comedies. Unless we see the comic in our political theater, unless we recognize the asses on stage, around us, and within us, unless we have moments when we can lapse into silliness without apology, we will too easily fall into the tragic. The key? Recognize the ass in others, but let's claim our inner asses, too. Puck, the mischievous fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream, had it right: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" Our best hope is to fully recognize the foolish side of life and, as we are able, turn our scowls into smiles.
Interested in Shakespeare and Process Philosophy? See also:
- The Blurring of Worlds: Process and Imagination in A Midsummer Night's Dream
- The Value of Unresolved Tensions: Whitehead's Philosophy and Hamlet's Inner Life
- Will Whitehead be Read a Hundred Years from Now? Yes, and here's how.
- Reading Whitehead/Reading Shakespeare
- We are Stuff as Dreams are Made On: Whitehead, Shakespeare, and Political Theatre
- The Madness of King Lear: Whitehead and the Desire for Fame
- Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair: The Tragedy of Macbeth
- Who is Lady Macbeth? A Process Reflection