|
March
Murder and the American Dream
A revival of Stephen Sondheim's 1990 play
"Assassins" now provides us with a musical
meditation on the competitiveness and envy that
fuel a great deal of what a number of social
observers have noted as the rise in US
"meanness."
Think about how we talk about what it takes to
“make it” in business in the USA. What
words show up again and again? Critic John Lahr has
noted that,"...the vocabulary of murder has been
inseparable from capitalism's bravado of success.
'Making a killing,' 'killer instinct,' 'going for
the kill' and 'getting away with murder' are
shibboleths of the psychopathic style that our
entrepreneurial culture applauds and rewards."*
Even when, in fact, there is no one to kill, we are
encouraged to have the qualities of being able to
stalk and dispatch our prey at the negotiating
table or in the marketplace if not in the forest or
on the savannah.
Though “killer” words still occur in
our speech as they did when Sondheim first wrote
“Assassins,” we need them less right now
because we have a shared sense of victimhood in the
wake of 9/11. Feeling like a victim allows the
killer instinct in us to find a less murderous
sounding outlet—there is a guilty enemy
“out there” who needs to be brought to
justice and punished. It is legitimate to defend
against those who represent wrongdoing to us in the
world and to attack them with a murderous intent
that no longer seems murderous. We are the good
guys and they are the bad guys. It is a virtue to
feel murderous if we are the wronged good guys. We
get a license to kill that turns psychopathology
into virtue. Vengeance becomes acceptable at least
at some unconscious level.
Lying behind the need stalk and to kill, is a US
sense of entitlement. If we have a right to realize
the American Dream, to enjoy our constitutional
right to "the pursuit of happiness," (interpreted
with amnesia about the "pursuit" part), then we
have the right to target and dispatch those who get
in the way of realizing our happiness, no matter
who they may be.
Presidents make good targets because they are
big shots. In Sondheim's theater piece, a group of
historical presidential assassins, from John Wilkes
Booth who killed Abraham Lincoln in an act of
Southern justice, to John Hinckley, who shot Ronald
Reagan to get Jody Foster's attention, are brought
together on the stage. They sing about the
disappointment, envy and anger that propel them to
strike at the chieftain of the land that they see
as having promised them so much and delivered so
little.
Where does this rage spring from? The US is a
culture where who one is what one does. We expect
to be rewarded for hard work—or any effort at
all. We construct ourselves through our work and
our self advertisement. Others should see,
recognize and reward this. Thus when we don’t
succeed in work (which is our life) it strikes a
double blow. First at our identity (losers are
nobodies) and then at our goodness (having not
succeeded, it is our own fault—we must be bad
people).
In the US it is insufferable to be a nobody
around others who are somebodies. We want to strike
back for anything that feels like an attack on our
sense of self and our goodness. We don’t need
to be outcasts or even bad off; we just need to be
one down to want revenge. Envy is stoked by being a
lesser somebody than somebody else in a world of
individualists. There is no one to assuage the
loneliness accented by the feeling that one is not
a winner. A loser is a dangerous loner
Okay, so few of us need to maim or kill another
person or even kick the dog to balance our
accounts, but small time everyday assassins abound.
They steal the happiness of others to get even. The
killer and the psychopath we see in film and on the
stage would not make sense unless he or she were a
believable exaggeration of very real tendencies
that we can recognize in ourselves. Are not the
moments of character assassination, Schadenfreude,
gossip and backbiting not connected to the sense of
getting less than the next guy or gal or getting
less than what we feel should be our share.
In good theater and film, the internal workings
of the killer instinct are laid bare. The catharsis
of meeting our alter ego on stage can help prevent
both the little murders we commit and the little
deaths we die in day to day competition with each
other. In the glow of the footlights we walk a bit
with the enemy, and it is us.
Sondheim’s show is unfortunately a revival
from another time, a decade past, and an era when a
booming economy made not succeeding very painful. A
post-9/11 sequel is sorely needed, one which
examines more carefully our current solidarity in
assassination and our denial of its murderous
intent. We need theater that begs us not to leave
unexamined the elements of entitlement,
disappointment and revenge against humans who live
beyond our borders, who, whatever their cause,
attack us. Unfortunately there is little in the
world of entertainment that takes us to a level of
self-understanding in the way that Sondheim’s
“Assassins” does. From video games to
adventure movies, we are generally persuaded that
killing is part of getting on in life.
© 2010 George
Simons
Other Resources Books
Periodicals
* * *
There are no elements so diverse that they cannot
be joined in the heart of a man. - Jean
Giraudoux
George Simons
is a US specialist in intercultural and gender
communication who hangs out in Mandelieu - la
Napoule, France, as well as in Santa Cruz, CA. In
the 1980’s he was one of the founders of the
Hidden Valley Center for Men and the Cyberguys
network. He is currently the treasurer on the board
of The National Men's Resource Center™. He is
on the faculty of Management Centre Europe, where
he consults on virtual global teamwork. He has
written over a dozen books on culture and gender
including Working
Together: How to Become More Effective
in a Multicultural
Organization and
with Deborah G. Weissman, Men
& Women: Partners at
Work. (Crisp
Foundation) and is the creator of the award-winning
Diversophy® game. www.diversophy.com
or E-Mail.
Contact
Us |
Disclaimer
| Privacy
Statement
Menstuff®
Directory
Menstuff® is a registered trademark of Gordon
Clay
©1996-2023, Gordon Clay
|
