Sigh.
I’m not going to lie. We’re in a really crappy place, America.
While most of my community (performing artists) is starting to pick up the pieces from a harrowing four years (I’ll address this in an upcoming blog), I’m watching a much larger cross section of America scrambling to understand how their savior could possibly be losing to “Sleepy Joe.”
Read any group of hacktivists responding to one of Trump’s most recent delusional tweets, and you’ll see a dizzying array of idolatry and defense, followed immediately by a) support, b) insults or c) phishing schemes for bitcoin.
After a mere 24 hours, a single Trump tweet can amass 1.5 MILLION likes and 180 THOUSAND comments. Again, with a dizzying array of a) support, b) insults or c) phishing schemes for bitcoin.
That’s the world we live in, folks.
The last four years have been particularly infuriating for myself and people like me, as I’ve watched every wonderful and beautiful thing that I love and studied about theater and showmanship and the arts just get exploited and used, time and time again, by a man who’s clearly out for personal profit.
I may hate the man, but I can admit he definitely knows his audience (even if he’s pulling a “divide and conquer” by pitting different base groups against each other); and from a more technical critique, he has clear control over his vocal instrument, he knows how to use his commanding posture (I’ll chalk most of that up to genetics) and his ability to cut ideas down to their most “soundbite” form is… regrettably legendary.
I’ve always resisted the professional need to “brand” myself (but I’ve read many books on why it was important that I do it), so I’ve watched in horror as he adeptly and effectively branded “Crooked Hillary,” “Sleepy Joe,” “little Marco,” and the “Socialist Dems,” among many others.
I watched in horror while he deftly did to everyone around him what I couldn’t bring myself to do to… me. And I watched in even more horror as his followers mindlessly ate it up and repeated it. Over and over and over again.
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I’ll admit, I may hate him even more because he’s using some of the tactics and skills that I love.
But I also seriously hate how he’s ruining the country that I love.
And how he’s abusing the people who love him.
They may be acting tough with their Second Amendment talk, but he’s straight up ripping them off.
I find that particularly “deplorable.”
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Back to the arts and why I have (a spark of) faith that Theater can still decolonize society.
I’ve always told everyone that I preferred studying acting to dance because I preferred to be around a “more diverse” crowd.
I’ll admit, it is far more complicated than that. I have several dancer friends out there whom I love more than words can say – they are absolutely wonderful people! – But then there are typically more dancers whom I don’t care if I never see or hear from ever again.
See, in dance, you usually have a company of similarly shaped dancers (height:weight), who are relatively similarly looking (let’s face it, hair and skin colors tend to wash out under bright stage lights), all vying for the same coveted “top” roles. High competition. And dancers seem to have a bad tendency toward being rude and awful and ruthless towards each other in order to end up or stay up on top.
I literally have no time for that.
Besides, most of my childhood was spent with my nose in a book and theater just seemed like this magical way of bringing those rich, complex, worldview-challenging stories onto the stage. And it required more than 10 girls who could do 32 clean fouettes in unison.
I’m also having a flashback to my high school acting teacher assigning my group juries the general theme of “injustice” in high school. I still cringe to think about what we ultimately produced to that prophetic subject, but the brainstorming process has always left a lasting impression. And, as a teacher, I’m fairly certain that was the ultimate point.
Besides, I always liked being able to act out scenes onstage with boys. Instead of having to pretend that I didn’t hear what was just in front of me in a “whisper” from one of the girls.
So I tended to prefer acting over dance.
The people seemed cooler.
Even if no one else knows or appreciates or cares about what I’ve ultimately seen or what I’ve done in my weirdly varied career, I know in my heart of hearts that I have absolutely seen the ugly side of the “entertainment industry,” and that I wholeheartedly rejected it; but I also didn’t recognize it at the time to be a ‘canary in the coal mine’ of general societal unrest.
I sloughed it off as “entertainment industry” bullshit. But apparently it’s a larger “American/Western Society” type bullshit.
What do I mean? I mean that I have watched my friends, undeniably talented individuals who have tackled some of the most complex Shakespearean characters and texts, play criminals and terrorists and racial stereotypes in Hollywood, over and over and over again.
Because that’s the story that the people “in charge” are telling.
And all of us, knowingly or not, end up being complicit in furthering that narrative.
The Civil War was anectotedly ended with a white woman’s tale about “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
That’s a nice story, and motivation to keep “fighting the good fight” here, but the machine that’s been pushing us forward, pitting us against each other and making us blind to the multi-faceted powers that drive us against one another… it seems too big. Too goliath. Too… impossible.
The Arts have always reminded us who we are and why we are.
I have to believe that we can wield that power again.
Erika Diane 