Doomsday

Hi everyone, I thought I would write a general blog to comment on some of your entries for this week, which are already prompting (maybe provoking!) lively discussion.  For class, I think it would helpful for each of you to choose a scene (or part of one) that you want to read in class—you can ask others to play certain roles, but you should prepare at least one character to do and indicate what is important about that scene and character. 

Ariana raised the interesting point about what constitutes an apocalypse in terms of scale of suffering.  I was intrigued by this in part because she also made a clear set of designations for how Angels fits with the 5 component parts of Apocalypse.  The argument for strict labeling has been made by Amos Funkenstein, a biblical historian, who indicates that “apocalypse in the full sense of the word, a balance of myth, method, and way of life, existed only for about 200 years, and formed a unique mentality.”  Most historians say this is too narrow an understanding and even he concedes that its “captivating” story has “remained a constant theme.” (I’m drawing these quotes from my discussion of this issue in my book Anti-Apocalypse).  Remember that Rosen distinguishes between apocalyptic myth and narrative (xxi) and is interested in pointing out the ways that apocalyptic narrative has evolved over time.  In other words, to say that a “local” calamity is not sufficient to qualify is to miss the way that apocalypse is drawn on to tell a certain kind of story.  Moore used it to characterize Cold War nuclear rivalry, for example.  So, rather than disqualify the US AIDS epidemic and Angels as not sufficiently apocalyptic, it’s more to the point to ask what the effect is of using the apocalyptic narrative to relay a certain set of messages. John of Patmos was writing at a time when the yet to be Christians of the Jesus sect were persecuted—but the numbers of that group were not so great either.  The question of “local” scale is one that we should discuss further in class, and for information about numbers of people who died from AIDS and living with AIDS or HIV, here is a website: http://www.avert.org/usa-statistics.htm

Angela has raised the issue of great journeys and how the opening scene functions in this regard.  What I was struck by was her rethinking the message of the Rabbi—which is what I think Kushner prompts us to do in precisely the way Angela points out.  And Leah’s insight about the pun on the Rabbi’s name and the Polish city of Chelm is part of that too, since the city is a shorthand way of poking fun at the Rabbi who thus becomes associated with the “fools” of that city. 

Jahneille has opened up for us one of Kushner’s primary themes, by way of David Savran (I saw him last evening at Macaulay and he seemed pleased when I told him that she had read and used his essay): “One resounding theme in Theses, according to Savran, is the binary of the future vs. the present. He refers to progression of the painful and imperfect reality that is now while comparing it to the hope provided by the future.”  This insight will help guide us toward the implications of millennialism, a key part of the history of apocalyptic thought.  Here is the quote from Walter Benjamin’s essay “Theses on the Philosophy of History” that inspired Kushner:

“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

Leah’s entry takes up this theme of millennial hope beautifully to show how the quest for a new kind of citizenship is the struggle of the play.  For class, let’s discuss the traits of this new citizenship, which is to be a different way of seeing the world from the perceptions of Reagan’s America that the play challenges, but also distinct from the apocalyptic certainty of the World’s Oldest Living Bolshevik at the beginning of the second play.  Priya has also pointed to Joe’s struggle as wrestling with angels and demons and this gets to—along with the character of Roy Cohn—the plight of being forced into the closet as gay men.  What happens when that struggle turns inward into self-loathing, and/or in Cohn’s case to hatred so intense that he sees himself above the law—and humanity?

Daniel’s entry has already elicited several responses and it will be useful to raise these issues in class for further discussion: the uses of humor and caricature and/or stereotype, the role of guilt in personal and collective actions (or inaction), and oppositions between individualism and communalism.  Be sure to read Kushner’s afterword, which touches on some of these.  

See you Tuesday!