We saw the musical Hadestown last night. It’s a rousing retelling of the tragic Orpheus and Eurydice myth. It is of course a major bummer–no Broadway magic swoops in to rescue the doomed heroes. I felt lightly chided by Hermes at the end, when he said that the reason we watch tragedies is because we hope that maybe, just this once, it’ll turn out differently.
Act I ends with a stunning set piece. Hades, who is depicted as a depression-era robber baron, leads a call-and-response dirge about the importance of building a wall around Tartarus. “Why do we build the wall, my children?” he asks. “We build the wall to keep us free,” they chant back.
While I was watching this, I thought, gosh, it’s is a bit of an anvil-drop, isn’t it? So precisely-tailored to our political moment. This is obviously not a new phenomenon to Broadway, but it still took me out of the story.
Well, apparently I was wrong. The song, with a scenery-chewing authoritarian mogul leading chants about how we need to build a wall… is not about Donald Trump. It was written in 2006, inspired by scenery-chewing authoritarians the world over, and walls throughout history.
Asked about this in 2016, the writer said, “We all know the underworld boss/king archetype when we see it. Let’s not elect him president.” So, first, oops. Second, that’s what we’ve become, a nation led by somebody’s imagining of the chaotic evil king of hell. Great.
Good song, though. Lyrics of the last verse below the fold. Open thread.
What do we have that they should want?
My children, my children
What do we have that they should want?
What do we have that they should want?
We have a wall to work upon!
We have work and they have none
And our work is never done
My children, my children
And the war is never won
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
We build the wall to keep us free
dmsilev
Somehow, that brings to mind this:
WereBear
I have a taste for the delightfully weird, but it does not extend to musicals.
A friend told me Amazon Prime has the Albert Finney Scrooge. And then laughed and laughed because I famously barely made it through in the theater.
chris
A wall you say…
A Texas state agency ruled that a high school teacher in Texas who was fired after she sent tweets to President Trump asking him to rid her school of undocumented immigrants should be reinstated or be paid a year’s salary https://t.co/phuku0EA8g— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 30, 2019
Major Major Major Major
@dmsilev: The opening number has Hermes telling us “it’s a sad song / but we sing it anyway.” Even if you didn’t know the myth, it’s not like you wouldn’t know what you were getting into…
Baud
@chris:
Awful woman, but no government worker should be fired for expressing a political view. Not that the people who are against political correctness would adhere to that rule.
Redleg
A moving song. Thanks for posting the video.
bystander
Political statement: “I hate illegals.”
Quisling asking for opportunity to betray students: “Come help rid us of all these illegals at J. Bilbo Wentworth Grammar School, 123 West Police Street, Hooverville, Texas.”
stinger
What a powerful song.
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major: Shakespeare did the same thing of course. What is Elizabethan English for ‘Spoiler Alert!’?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
I understand what you’re saying, but what if she had said that Hitler was right about the Holocaust and that Trump should emulate that? Would that just be another political view?
I don’t see much of a difference between that and what that teacher actually said. She’s asking Trump to target her school and deport all the “illegals”. I suppose since she’s a public employee, First Amendment protections are more stringent, and that’s probably a good thing. However, I think she deserved to be fired for hate speech.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
But it’s not just a random political view. It’s a view about the way her work is run and about the job she should be doing. Demanding one’s school be rid of illegal immigrants strongly suggests that a teacher will not be fair to her students, which is reasonable grounds for dismissal.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
No, I think that crosses the line into hate speech and advocacy of unlawful action.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Roger Moore:
This
Major Major Major Major
@dmsilev: well yeah, your original comment included an example even ?
Baud
@Roger Moore:
I can’t count how many liberal government workers would be out of a job if those types of inferences became acceptable.
geg6
@Baud:
Not sure I agree with your take on this. Perhaps the school authorities were concerned about the harm she may invite or even render herself against the students in her school. Maybe they were more concerned about their students’ safety.
laura
We build a wall to fetishize our hate and demand that the wall be respected and that today’s hated be a caution to the rest that hate will come for you too.
I can’t even with this. I can’t.
Baud
@geg6:
I’m going by the tweet in this post. If there’s other evidence to support the firing, that’s a different matter.
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major: That’s from the end of the play. He does the same thing right at the beginning:
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
I’d say that advocating that undocumented immigrants in her school be deported should be grounds for advocating hate speech
Gvg
I would even doubt that all of the children she thought were “illegals” were. That kind of view comes with an assumption that anyone who looks a certain way in that persons opinion, is an illegal. Children are inherently more vulnerable to bullying too. She does not belong around any children. I am certain she could have been fired for other specifically forbidden actions because I doubt the request to Trump was a one off.
Major Major Major Major
@dmsilev: my bad!
Hades also reprises his ‘sad song’ bit at the end, right before the tragedy line I mentioned up top.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
I was looking at your front pager profile thingy on here and I absolutely love it! Samwise as an astronaut is adorable. Did you design it all yourself?
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
You realize every undocumented person is subject to deportation? Until we have comprehensive immigration reform, that will not change. The best the next Dem president can so is rein in ICE and relax the enforcement policy and make conditions a little more humane.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
@Baud: yeah, I don’t know that “we should enforce the laws” rises to the level of hate speech, although “come deport these vermin” would.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): it’s from the NASA Selfies app!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
I suspect that, like Gvg said above, the teacher has probably just assumed that several of students are undocumented simply because of their skin color. Difficult to prove, yes, but I think that’s what was going on. She’s a racist.
I think the school district should pay her the year’s salary in monthly installments of $1 with a note telling her to go fuck herself
Zinsky
I haven’t seen “Hadestown”, but it is definitely on my “to watch” list. Our local high school theater group recently put on the musical adapted from E.L. Doctorow’s “Ragtime”. It was also incredibly relevant – the three main groups being white privileged, immigrants and blacks. A scene where an immigrant man has his young daughter lashed to his arm and says to another, “An immigrants greatest fear is having their children taken away…”, brought tears to my eyes.
joel hanes
@laura:
We build a wall to fetishize our hate
Also, Trump believes that it enhances his prestige.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-iw7LXJ09g
delk
Speaking of walls – on this day 40 years ago Pink Floyd released “The Wall’.
I was a senior in high school. Two years earlier I saw them perform “Animals” at Soldier Field.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
One is reminded of the martyr, Kim Davis.
As to Hermes, great luggage!
Lawrence
I saw this show a month ago. The actor who plays Hades looks like Mike Pence. That or Max Headroom.
Hungry Joe
We saw the show in May, right before it snagged all those Tony nominations. It’s wonderful, amazing, both great fun and sobering as hell.
Gretchen
With Don Jr. defending the Rocky picture of his dad, and Devin Nunes making weird references to nude photos of Trump during the hearings, I’m wondering whether the Russians really are threatening to release unflattering nude photos of Trump from his frequent stays in bugged Moscow hotels. Trump world is trying to inoculate against their release by claiming that the Rocky physique is his, and the fat guy in the photos is photoshopped.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
This rant isn’t directed at you or anybody in particular, so you know:
The administration, and more broadly the GOP, love to hide behind the fig leaf of “enforcing the law” when in reality they interpret the law to give themselves the cruelest outcomes they want when the law itself doesn’t say outright what they want it to say. In this way, the rule of law is used as both a club and a cage, to serve the Right’s ends.
At the same time, they’ll regularly break the law while deporting an infant (or worse yet murder it by purposeful neglect) or a 30 year old man who was naturalized when he was a child for coming from the “wrong” country. It amounts to state terror. It’s a total fucking farce. They don’t give a flying fuck about the law.
That teacher knew that and that’s why she tweeted at Trump. She was hoping to draw attention to her school so she could be rid of the dirty “illegals”. That’s why.
NotMax
@trollhattan
Never saw Hermes in quite the same light since his occasional appearance on Frankie Howerd’s Up Pompeii.
:)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
Oh yeah? I’ll have to download that. It looks super cool ^^
Ksmiami
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): there can be no meeting of minds, nor cohabitation with these fucking fascist lemmings. When our Athens beats their Sparta, no mercy
Brachiator
@dmsilev:
Of course, one of the many fun things about Romeo and Juliet is that the source material was a cautionary tale about why children should listen to, and obey, their parents. Many in the original audience would have been familiar with that version of the story. Willy the Shake masterfully subverted audience expectations.
ETA: when I tutored high school and college students about the play, I sometimes ask which important character never appears in the play, and why?
dp
Fantastic show. We saw it on Broadway in May, and our daughter (a theater fanatic) has been following it for years as they’ve developed it. In addition to the music, the staging is amazing. Highly recommended.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
That’s a really good question, that no teacher ever asked around me, nor taught the answer. So, I’m asking straight up, who? why?
Some parental figure? wild guess…
joel hanes
@Brachiator:
Doesn’t Zeffirelli put Rosaline at the Capulet’s masque?
(Romeo’s cousin and friend Benvolio makes goo-goo eyes at the young woman I’m thinking of)
Or was I mistaken about who was being portrayed?
Searcher
The most recent Valdemar book includes a painfully transparent Trump expy as the main mostly off-screen villain.
NotMax
@dp
Interesting. Was contemplating going to see it, then the staging in the bit performed on the Tony awards show was what most put me off it.
Diff’rent strokes and all that.
opiejeanne
@WereBear: Yes, except for that one great song: Thank you very much. The rest of it was not good.
Jeffro
@Major Major Major Major: I’m psyched to see Hadestown in a few weeks with my family (50th bday present) – now I’m twice as psyched! Thanks M4!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@opiejeanne:
That’s actually the only part of Scrooge I’ve ever seen. “Thank You Very Much” is hilarious
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
Rosaline, the niece of Lord Capulet, and Romeo’s ideal model of love and beauty. Romeo sneaks into the Capulet party to meet her, and instead sees Juliet.
Had she been an actual character in the play, Shakespeare most likely would have written a romance or a comedy, in order to provide a mate for Rosaline. Maybe there would have been some antic competition between her and Juliet.
But there is something amazing in how the idea of Rosaline, which Romeo obsesses over, is blasted away by the reality of Juliet. She is the real deal, and the heart of the tragedy.
Also, as a practical matter, if Rosaline were ever seen or part of the play, audiences would compare her to Juliet throughout the play and perhaps wonder, why not just choose her instead? By omitting her altogether, Shakespeare keeps the drama focused on the two lovers.
As another poster notes, Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet is one of the few films in which Rosaline is actually seen.
Jay
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/461868-texas-teacher-who-asked-trump-to-deport-undocumented-students%3famp
More detail, more tweets,….
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/06/04/fort-worth-teacher-georgia-clark-asked-trump-tweets-round-up-illegal-students/%3foutputType=amp
NotMax
@Brachiator
Word in the back alleys of Verona was that Rosaline and Nurse were an item.
;)
Martin
I would disagree here – and I’m saying that as a government worker. She wasn’t expressing a view regarding immigration writ large, she was specifically asking him to remove the children in her school, presumably in her classroom. That’s a violation of her job responsibilities.
I work for the residents of California. All the residents, including the undocumented ones, the felons, and all that. My job is to support their educational goals. That’s the job. If I’m unwilling do that job because I don’t believe they are deserving of that, then I should be fired. That’s really no different than the pharmacist that claims they can’t dispense birth control. If they are unwilling to do the job, they need to be removed from the job. (To be clear, that’s in contrast to someone willing but unable due to accommodations)
Brachiator
@joel hanes:
Yep. You got it!
Jay
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Excellent point. You saw this in the past, in America, in the fugitive slave laws. Government sponsored cruelty as “the rule of law.”
Jay
And the Media and Useful Idiots ratfucking of the Democratic Race continues with great success,…….
Jay
Brachiator
@NotMax:
Or part of a threesome with Friar Laurence. ;)
trollhattan
@NotMax:
Heh. :-)
“Helloooo!”
Jay
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Oh, it’s absolutely the conservative position that laws should be selectively enforced to further entrench the power of the powerful.
trollhattan
@Jay:
Donny scribbles note to self: “Send Vlad usual presidential Good Neighbor Award.”
Jay
Jay
@trollhattan:
Presidential Medal of Freedom,….
cliosfanboy
@Martin: i agree. Expressibg opinions is one thing. But asking ICE tocome get students from her school? That crosses a huge, bright red line.
J R in WV
@Jay:
OK… That’s good, now we know where Mr Zuckerberg’s limits are; he believes in capital punishment prior to trial. He appears to be good with lynching liberals, or Muslims, or people of color. And I think it’s a good thing to know that.
otmar
At recently saw the Offenbach version the Vienna VolksoperHe turned the Greek tragedy into a parody of the aristocracy.
Recommended.
zhena gogolia
@Jay:
Yep.
Jay
Jay
@J R in WV:
keep in mind that Zuck’s lines are flexible. Nazi’s that threaten violence, organize crimes online, Zuck’s fine with that.
Researchers who screen shoot Nazi eliminationist posts to cite them in research papers, banned.
Jay
Jay
Baud 2020
“Tax the Rich until they beg for Free College!”
trollhattan
@J R in WV:
“Now, if they’d written ‘hanged’ they’d be right out!”
Standard, schmandard, we’re above-average!
Jay
Mo MacArbie
I thought those lyrics rang a bell.
Steeplejack
@Mo MacArbie:
Fixed your link: “Why Do We Build the Wall?”
Sab
@Jay: She should have been reading him already. He has been around for years.
Jay
debbie
Oh, FFS. Instagram just told me, “Since you like the Onion, you might like Bernie Saunders.” Really, Instagram? The Onion should sue.
Hob
@delk: Some local musicians and drag performers in SF did their own staging of The Wall recently, with mixed but interesting results. Here’s my attempt to describe it.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: This teacher is a threat to the safety of her students. That undocumented immigrants are legally subject to deportation does not matter, since she doesn’t know that these kids are undocumented and many probably aren’t–but we know that ICE has few inhibitions against illegally harassing such people. What she’s doing here is similar to calling the cops on them when she has no evidence they’ve done anything. That crosses the line from opinion to act.
Pharniel
philosophytube used it as his theme setting for the Tories.