Esotericism in the Classroom

 

As someone who works in the American educational system, I find that I need to avoid openly stating my beliefs. Students ask me what I think of Donald Trump and I tell them that I do not discuss politics on school grounds. It may very well be that my students have as low an opinion of Trump as I do. If I agree to talk about the issues where I agree with them then I will be trapped in those situations where I disagree with them. Not talking about politics in school is a matter of principle. I honestly believe that it is not appropriate for adults to use the platform they have been given as teachers to advocate for their own political preferences. Kids deserve the space to be ignorant and not know how to solve the big issues of the day without someone trying to recruit them to some cause. 

The fact is, though, that I have another incentive to keep my politics to myself. Unlike the many teachers who can afford to openly plaster their leftwing politics on their classroom walls, I know that I risk my job if I were to ever openly talk about my politics in front of students. This reality has helped me appreciate the esotericism of Leo Strauss. Central to Strauss' narrative of intellectual history is the idea that pre-modern philosophers hid their views from the masses. One did not want to end up like Socrates, executed for challenging the gods of Athens. Of particular interest to Strauss was Maimonides, who openly admits, in The Guide to the Perplexed, that he contradicts himself in order to conceal things from certain readers.    

Having to be careful about saying my opinions has taught me something else about esotericism, it helps you become a better teacher and thinker. Part of the danger of having strongly held beliefs is that they become a form of identity. You believe less in the idea and more in the community of people who hold them. The idea becomes a password to show that you are a good person. For those who have started reading my dissertation posts, this is an essential feature of the military model with its social ideology. If you cannot simply pontificate your beliefs wherever you want but have to limit yourself to a personal blog, it gives you a space to examine your own ideas. Clearly, your ideas are not obviously true otherwise there would not be people who want to silence you. Are your opponents bad people; maybe, even if you are right, there really is something dangerous about what you believe?

In truth, arguing with students will not win them over to my side. As Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay argue, if your goal is to convince people that they are wrong, perhaps the most counterproductive thing you can do is argue with them. Whatever arguments you make are almost certain to simply demonstrate that you are on a different team and cause your interlocuter to become defensive. They will then respond with their own tribalistic reasoning and all meaningful discussion will break down. 

Recognizing that you are not going to be able to convince people that they are wrong, it is far more productive to let other people simply talk. This has the advantage of developing a relationship with the person as they do not perceive you as a threat. Furthermore, while you may not be able to convince them that they are wrong, there is still one person who can. However resistant people might be to outsiders telling them that they are wrong, they are perfectly capable of converting themselves if given the chance. Most people do not get much opportunity to really listen to themselves talk about what they believe so give them the chance. 

The proper setting for someone to change their own minds is while sitting by themselves reading a book. This was something that Protestants understood very well. It is the Bible that has the power to convince people that they are totally depraved sinners who can rely on Jesus and not anything else, including their own good deeds. After listening to people's arguments, rather than arguing, it is more productive to suggest a book (or a blog) for them to read. 

Being by yourself with a book has the advantage of not having to worry that the author is right. The author very well might live on the other side of the world or even be dead. Furthermore, disagreeing with the author does not break the connection. You can continue to read the book and the arguments might stick around in your head for years until you wake up and realize that you do not have the same opinions as you once did. The more this process is simply going on in your head the better as there will be less social pressure to conform to whatever your group tells you that good people believe. 

As a teacher working in a system in which just about everyone is to the left of me, I have had no choice but to follow the advice of Aaron Burr in the Hamilton musical: "Talk less. Smile more. Don't let them know what you're against or what you're for." 

It turns out that this is good advice and if I did not fear for my job, I would not have the discipline to keep to it. Students should feel free to talk about their beliefs and not worry about whether I think that they are right. As kids, they are most certainly wrong about nearly everything and that is fine. They do not need to hear my slightly less ignorant views. Instead, I can then serve as a librarian to suggest books for them to read. Who knows how they might be affected years down the road by an idea that has been bouncing around in their heads.   

What I wish to give over to my students, above all, is the spirit of skeptical inquiry. This is not a system of belief that I can ever argue them into. To be a skeptic means to be willing to attack your own ideas as vigorously as your opponent's. You become a skeptic by experiencing having your own mind being changed in subtle ways over many years of thinking and reading. Skepticism also has the virtue of helping people become more tolerant. Maybe that person I disagree with is actually right? Let me listen to them. If nothing else, I am honestly curious as to what they actually believe and how they came to their conclusions.

 

The Paradox of a Bohemian Community: A Conservative Deconstruction of Rent

 

Among my favorite musicals is Rent. I confess that I feel guilty about some of the more problematic aspects of the musical. It is not as if I actually approve of the life choices made by any of the characters. In my defense, I would like to make the case for seeing the musical from a conservative perspective as an exploration of the intellectual trap of attempting to live outside of any communal standard. 

The characters in Rent are fundamentally narcissists in the sense that they choose to live for themselves over the interests of any community. To be clear, there is a spectrum among the characters with Maureen clearly being the most narcissistic with Mark and Angel being the least. In this, they follow the dictates of 19th-century Romanticism, the main philosophy in the Western tradition that attempts to justify placing the desires of the individual over the moral standards of the community. 

Ultimately, living for oneself is an unworkable idea so the characters attempt to create their own counter community This can be compared to Milton’s demons trying to create their own counter to Heaven, a project doomed by its own inherent contradictions. If submission to God is the necessary component to build heaven, then any community founded on the rejection of God will, by definition, turn into Hell.

The characters attempt to protect the homeless tent city from being torn down by their former friend Benny. The homeless (unless they are following some version of apostolic poverty) are an example of what can be seen, from an Aristotelian perspective, as a non-community. They may live in physical proximity to each other but they lack a set of binding values that allow them to work together for some greater good. Later, the characters try to form a community with each other. This attempt to build a community is fundamentally doomed as the "greater good" that binds the characters together is their commitment to living according to their Bohemian personal standards. 

One can see the logic of Bohemia as leading to one of two intellectual dead ends. The first can be seen in the landlord Benny.

           

On the surface, Benny is a traitor to the Bohemian values of the other characters. He once was like them, but then he exchanged sexual liberation and socialist living for marriage and now works as a capitalist for his father-in-law, destroying the homeless community in order to build the more lucrative Cyber Café. It should be noted that Benny still sees himself as the altruist and he has a highly plausible argument that, in the long run, Roger and Mark have a better chance of pursuing their Bohemian dreams under his "neoliberal" regime. The fact that we have good reason to question Benny’s sincerity both in terms of his marriage and his altruism does not mean that the other characters are right. On the contrary, it is Benny, with his neoliberalism, who is the ultimate Bohemian, living for himself without any care what other people think of him while pretending to have higher ideals. His hypocrisy is the contradiction within Bohemia itself.

The second and truly literal dead end for Bohemia is manifested in AIDS, which physically affects both Roger and Angel. AIDS represents death in its inevitability as well as its fundamental unfairness. With AIDS, some people might die in a matter of months while others may go on for years. Obviously, all people face death. AIDS just forces the characters to face the likelihood of dying young without the hope of pushing death to some far-off old age.

   

Roger hopes to write one song before he dies that will redeem him from being nothing more than a singer who threw away his gifts to heroin addiction and was responsible for his girlfriend's suicide.

 

Conventional people face the problem of death by making themselves part of a community. By being faithful to a spouse and raising one’s children together with them, one ensures that, even after you die, you will have meant something to someone remaining. This family should be embedded within some larger community with a story that plays out over millennia. Finally, this community and its purpose should be based on something supernatural that transcends time itself. (One thinks of the Last Battle where all the good things of Narnia are taken to Aslan's country to continue to exist forever even after Narnia is destroyed.) Even Romanticism could never truly escape this need for community. Even the genius artist who violates community standards in pursuit of their art can only succeed by embodying the essence of some people. Roger has no people to write for who will appreciate his art, leaving him facing death with nothing but regret and guilt for his girlfriend’s suicide.

The musical’s solution is for the stripper Mimi to fall in love with him, coming into his apartment to ask him to “light her candle."

   

With some reluctance, Roger falls for Mimi and this allows him to join with the other characters to resist Benny. This gives us an unconventional community populated by people who, except for Mark, are some combination of gay, drug addict, or HIV positive. The big question of the musical then becomes can love allow such an unconventional community to survive.

In the end, the true challenge does not come from Benny, but from the group's own internal dynamics. Angel's death causes the group to break apart as Joanne stops being willing to put up with Maureen's flirting with other people and Roger comes to suspect Mimi of sleeping with Benny, causing her to relapse into addiction. 

It is here that the musical finds itself trapped between allowing its scenario to play out to its logical conclusion or giving the characters a happy ending. Logically, the community should fall apart as the characters' beliefs do not allow for the formation of a community. As such, the musical should end as a tragedy. This, though, would not affirm the beliefs and lifestyle choices that the musical is attempting to advocate. In the end, the needs of propaganda outweigh the demands of truthfulness. A happy ending is salvaged with Roger returning to Mimi after she overdoses and she is saved, deus ex machina style, from a drug overdose. 

It is interesting to note that the musical has an artistic problem to match its intellectual weakness in that it effectively lacks a second act. The songs that are worthwhile are almost all in the first act. If only musical shorts were a thing then Rent could have been presented up until La Vie Boheme with the gang giving Benny the proverbial middle finger. One imagines Jonathan Larson of blessed memory being forced to add material simply to get to a respectable runtime and hoping that audiences would be so impressed with the first half that they would forgive him for giving them a garbage second act.   

    

Sunshine: A Miami Boys Choir Vampire Musical (Part III)

(Part II)

The vampires attack Uman on Rosh Hashanah knowing that they would find many Jews with a demonstrated predilection for the dark side of idolatry and antinomianism. Rebbe Frost quickly converts the class to vampire Judaism. The only survivor is Chananya Yom Tov Lipa Katznellenbogenstein. (I know that he is a Shmuel Kunda creation, but bear with me.) Because of the events of the Magic Yarmulka, Chananya has become an excellent punchball player and a committed rationalist. He no longer believes in magic (yarmulka or otherwise) and strives to improve himself by working hard enough to match his God-given intelligence. He had refused to go on the class trip to Uman, saving his soul twice over. 

Chananya is left in a deep spiritual crisis. How could it be that his rebbe and the entire class would so easily abandon halakhic Judaism? Does not the existence of vampires prove that magic exists and refute science? Chananya decides to follow in the rationalist footsteps of the spy Caleb, who resisted the call of the antinomian spies by visiting the Cave of Machpelah to pray. He refuses to go to Rachel's Tomb because he found the Abie Rotenberg song to be idolatrous. God forbid that a monotheist Jew like Chananya would even think of praying to the patriarchs. On the contrary, Chananya only wishes to better contemplate their pious example so that his faith in reason (and the source of all reason) can be rectified.

It is therefore to Chananya's great surprise that he meets the patriarch Jacob, who had been living his undead existence in the cave for more than three-thousand years. Chananya expresses his ambiguous feelings in joining Team Jacob with "I Want to Know."

I want to know if I should care
I want to know if there is cause to fear 

Chananya wants to know if there is any point in continuing to struggle against vampire antinomianism. He also wants to know if he should be afraid that a vampire like Jacob might bite him. 

I've searched for days
And thought for nights

Chananya has searched for spiritual daylight to help bolster his intellectual rejection of vampire antinomianism that he has thought through.

Could my whole life been a meaningless plot
Could it be true, I am only half a man

Using post-modern meta-narrative, Chananya questions whether this whole musical is ridiculous and whether he is simply a screeching Jewish kid.

Then I met him, he brought me the signs
How blind I have been not to see the light
Show me the way, the only way
I've waited long for this day

Chananya met Jacob, who offers to instruct him in the Guide for the Perplexed and its esoteric vampire fighting secrets. (As a patriarch, Jacob has the chronological defying power of knowing literally all of Torah.) Chananya laments that he was never taught actual rationalist monotheist Judaism in yeshiva. He begs Jacob to instruct him in this one true religious way that allows for so many different ways.

And now I now that I should care
And now I now that there is cause to fear
But I would like to know what can I do

Now Chananya knows that there is objective truth known to reason that he should care about. He also knows that there really is a God worth fearing. This leaves Chananya, though, with a dilemma. What can he do against the vampires? He does not know the location of their secret headquarters nor does he know how to defeat such powerful enemies. 

The first problem is solved when Chananya realizes that it is pashut p'shat in Dracula that the town of Klausenberg, a city with a strong historic Jewish presence, is close to Castle Dracula. This must be the place where antinomian Jews and vampires first made their unholy alliance to take over the world. Though Chananya is eager to slay his rebbe and all his former classmates, Jacob cautions him to take heart as to the true way to defeat vampires. Together they sing "Sunshine." The song mixes their two distinct pains of loneliness, Chananya's recent and raw loss of his rebbe and classmates with Jacob's long-enduring agony of thousands of years of being a vegetarian vampire cut off from both the Jewish community and philosopher's heaven.   

Though the world's astray
And has slowly lost its way
With the goal of virtue fading


The world has been led to follow vampirism, abandoning any sense of Aristotelian virtue ethics, with its sense of objective good and bad action, in favor of brute power.

There's a steady light
That has kept away the night
With the brightness it's creating

Can we bring the world it's only sunshine
Only Torah yields the hope for mankind
Let the beauty of our song
Find the good in everyone
Through the darkness shines our faith in our times

At a practical level, it is only the rationalism of the Mishnah Torah that can defeat the vampires.  Being a Maimonidean frees you of superstition and allows you to recognize that there is nothing supernatural about vampires. They are nothing but a virus that can be eradicated. Even at night, they can be defeated with UV lights. The supposed superhuman strength of vampires is no match for a philosopher on the Maimonidean diet. At a spiritual level, Maimonideanism is a necessary antidote to vampirism. As long as people think of religion in terms of power and becoming immortal, they will inevitably be seduced by the allure of vampires and their offer of power and immortality.

Though we number just a few
We radiate the truth
Through the darkness shines our faith for all time

Maimonideans have always been a very small minority even within the Jewish community. It is really hard for them to even put a minyan together. But the moral power of their positions is so great that it radiates outward keeping idolatry in check. Even pagan Jews have to pretend to believe in God. 

Chananya journeys to Klausenberg and enters the secret underground vampire crypt. He quickly finds himself surrounded by Rebbe Frost and his former classmates. Rebbe Frost mocks philosophy as the destroyer of faith and asks Chananya what he believes in now his position is so clearly hopeless. Chananya confounds the vampires with the Averroesistic hymn, "B'siyata D'shmaya." These lyrics appear to endorse superstition while really being an ode to science.  

Have you ever felt there is nowhere to turn
Things feel confused 
No one's concerned
The times we live in are o so dark

The faith alights a spark
There is a vision, eases pain
Hope arises again, hope arises again

Everyone feels confused on occasion by the mysteries of the universe. A philosophical diety seems to lack the personal touch of mysticism with its idols and antinomianism. One might even turn to the darkness of vampires at a time like this when they appear to dominate. Faith in reason is a spark that protects you from the pain of a vampire bite. The philosopher, with his hope that his consciousness will become part of the eternal mind, will arise even after death, unlike the vampire who will not arise once properly staked but will turn to dust. 

B'siyata D'shmaya, whatever I do 
When I need him to help me, he always comes through
Never will I feel alone
Without him who can stand on their own

The Truths of physics, as embodied by the movements of the heavens, will never let a rationalist down. Chananya, even by himself, is never truly alone and has no need for the vampires' achdus hivemind. 

Prayer after prayer, tear after tear
Begging for help, for heaven to hear
When Hashem at his side
Every door is open wide
Our only hope is to look to the sky
Where he waits for our cries

What else produces tears like praying over some especially dense philosophical prose? One needs to open one's mind to hear the rational music of the heavens. When you place yourself on the side of universals, you can understand anything. There is no hope in looking to mysticism for understanding, but only in looking at the manifest laws of the universe seen in the heavens, which wait for us to cry out eureka.     


What follows is the bloodiest, most elaborate, and coolest fight scene in the history of Jewish musicals. 





Next, comes a punchball duel with Simcha Stark, which explains why it was only rational for Chananya to want sunglasses in an underground crypt. Rebbe Frost is shocked that the best boy in the park could lose at punchball. He pretends to do teshuva, singing the song from the Marvelous Middos Machine. Chananya responds that he always thought Abie Rotenberg was an idolater and performs the quadruple Death by Bais Din combo needed to kill senior vampires. 

The musical ends with "Kumt Shoin." These are the last lines of the Mishnah Torah, indicating the importance of Maimonides. They also are a rejection of the kind of apocalyptic political messianism that can only lead to antinomianism and ultimately vampirism. The rabbis as opposed to the "true tzadikim," never desired the Messiah to take over the world and rule over the gentiles. On the contrary, they honestly wished to be left alone to study God's Torah.   

Sunshine: A Miami Boys Choir Vampire Musical (Part II)

(Part I)

The counter to the Jews' naive hopes for the future is revealed in the song "Klal Yisroel Together," which takes the perspective of a new Jewish vampire. 

Quiet shul a foreign land

sits and davans an older man

What kind of shul is quiet with no talking? This must be a shul in which vampires gather to listen to their gadol hador. The vampires take the words of their sages very seriously and kill anyone who defiles the sanctity of their synagogue. In this context, davaning does not mean praying, but preying. An "older man" is a vampire, who is older than mortal men.

You're amazed at his life of simplicity

A vampire's life of drinking blood is very simple (besides for the fancy clothes and seducing women). This makes a vampire much holier than those "fake tzadikim," who need extravagant luxuries like bread and salt.

How his words reach you with sensitivity

And your eyes recognize as never before

That the dream that he preys for is yours

The newborn vampire is struck by the telepathic communications he is receiving from the vampire collective. He suddenly realizes that he too dreams of preying upon humans and drinking them dry.

Miles apart 

Close at heart

Feel the bound as one from the start

All the mountains and oceans are in our way

We are joined from the time of that wondrous day

When at Sinai we learned the path we would take

That the chains of our past will never break

Through the power of the hive mind, vampires can feel as bound and close at heart even from miles away. Mountains and oceans do not matter because vampires are joined by the day they were converted. Furthermore, antinomian Jews look to the gathering of Sinai when they worshiped the Golden Calf. It takes a very special kind of Torah scholar to hear "I am the Lord your God" and conclude that one should bow down to an idol. (If you donate gold to our charity, tzadikim will melt it into a calf and worship it for three weeks straight over the course of the auspicious time between the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av. This proves that, in fact, we do believe in one God, money.) By rendering themselves immortal, these Jews are guaranteed protection against the threat of modernity as they will have no need to try passing on their values to the next generation.  

Together we dance together we sing

Throughout the world how our achdus does ring

Klal Yisroel together today

Even though we seem so far away

Together we cry we hope and we prey

Let's bring each other closer each day

Klal Yisrael sharing the dream

Sheves achim gam yachad

Because of their hivemind, the vampires are the masters of achdus (unity). Unity is an intrinsically vampire doctrine as what it really means is that I will bite you and you will now do things my way. This is how Jews can be brought closer each day until all Jews can become brothers of one blood, together as one mind. 

All assembled dressed in white

With awe and fear this Kol Nidre night

Kol Nidre is a highly antinomian concept in which a person is released from their vows. The antinomian is freed from his promise to refrain from biting pigs and save them from the forces of the klipot. The vampire is freed from his promise to not bite people and save them from the Angel of Death.    

There is a feeling here 

When Neilah is near

That we'll all be inscribed with another year

A vampire can very confident at the end of every Yom Kippur that he will still be alive the following year. 

And when Simchas Torah brings that joyful harmony

We are ever bound in stronger unity

If regular Jews got the idea that the point of Simchas Torah was to get drunk, you can hardly blame vampire Jews for turning Simchas Torah into a joyful feeding frenzy that brings new converts in harmony with the hive mind. 

It will now be revealed that the rebbe, who taught the class the "Torah Today" song is actually the "older man," one of the head vampires. He has been priming his students to accept vampirism, the true message of his song.

(To be continued ...)

Sunshine: A Miami Boys Choir Vampire Musical (Part I)

For the past forty years, Yerachmiel Begun has led the Miami Boys Choir, one of the most successful musical groups in the Orthodox world. It will come as a shock that all of this has been cover for Begun's lifelong dream to write a vampire musical. Many of his beloved songs have really been describing scenes for this musical. The key for reading these songs has been to recognize that references to the night are really about vampires and daylight has been the rejection of vampirism in favor of a non-antinomian Torah lifestyle.   

The musical opens with the singing of "V'he Shamadah" in the background as the narrator explains that the great enemy of the Jewish people has always been the vampires, who, as immortal beings, have been able to survive from generation to generation to try to destroy us. This war goes back to vampire Laban, the Aramean who "destroyed" our father Jacob by turning him into a creature of the night. This, though, was part of the divine plan to allow Jacob to survive the bite of vampire Esau. Jacob's neck became sparkly rock hard (like a Twilight vampire) and cracked Esau's fangs. The righteous Jacob was unique in history in being able to become a vampire and not lose his soul. (He did not even need a gypsy curse to put it back.) This is indicated by Rashi's comment that Jacob lived the life of a vampire like Laban, but still kept the commandments. Jacob survived as a vampire, which explains the rabbinic statement that "Jacob never died." Who else, besides for a vampire, does not die even after they are buried?   

Down through the centuries, Jacob has guided his children in fighting vampires. The vampires, seeking revenge against Jacob, have waged a never-ending campaign to destroy the Jewish people by inventing anti-Semitism. It was a vampire intelligence that came up with the idea that Jews need blood for their matzah. The vampires' efforts culminated in the Holocaust. (As we know from the novels of Dan Simmons and Guillermo del Toro, the vampires were allied with the Nazis.) 

With the defeat of the Nazis and the near destruction of the vampires, the Jewish people appeared safe. The following decades saw enormous growth within the religious community. Unfortunately, a new phase of the vampire campaign was about to arise as the vampires realized that contrary to their original experience with Jacob, Jews made particularly effective vampires. For one thing, Jews are immune to crosses. (See the example of vampire Fagan in the novel Artful.) 

These sentiments are expressed in the song "Torah Today." A rebbe leads his class in this song of Jewish success, but, in an ironic foreshadowing of the horrors to be revealed, their statements hint at the true connection between Judaism, antinomianism, and vampirism. The fact that the children do not appreciate the true meaning of what they are saying demonstrates how spiritually unprepared they are for the vampire onslaught.      

Distant memories of a time not long ago

Vibrant shadows of an era we would want to know

In our minds an image glowing true tzadikim in every town

And the sounds of learning were ever growing 

All has vanished never to be found

Somehow slowly the sun is rising once again

Building boldly can we recapture what was then

The Jews in this period of vampire free sun rejoice even as they mourn the loss of pre-war Europe. What they fail to understand was that, even then, there existed the spiritual rot of antinomianism indicated by the term "true tzadikim." Whenever you see a seemingly superfluous adjective in front of some virtuous position, you know that you are dealing not with the virtue but with its antinomian rejection. For example, why would anyone use the term "social justice?" Is there a kind of justice that is not social? The reality is that justice, with its claims of property and individual rights, often does not satisfy certain people as it does not allow them to redistribute property as they see fit and force people to comply with their utopian blueprints. The solution is to reject justice in the name of a higher ideal of doing whatever you happen to feel is right at the moment. Advocates of social justice believe that the only way to truly be just is to commit injustice and reject individual liberty. From their perspective, they are the ones who are truly just and defenders of justice are really the ones who are unjust.   

Similarly, how can you talk about a "true tzadik?" Is there a "fake tzadik?" As with social justice, a conventional tzadik is held back by keeping to the letter of Jewish law. A "true tzadik" understands that Torah itself holds up the world and negates the actual practice of halakha. So the only "true" way to learn Torah is to do so while eating a ham sandwich. Such learning makes a particular sound that grows as the tzadik takes pleasure in contemplating this righteous paradox. Any Torah scholar who balks at such a "holy" deed is simply a "fake tzadik."  

These secretly antinomian Torah scholars so beloved by the Jewish people, realizing what lay behind the Nazis, embraced the vampire ideology as the true fulfillment of everything they ever wanted to get out of Judaism, power, and immortality (in this world no less). This explains why their bodies vanished and were never found. These rabbis, having come to their vampire maturity, are now set to bring about their version of the messianic End of Days by turning the Jewish people into a vampire army and destroy the world. This is indicated by the lines:        

We've set our hearts to form a plan  

Unrelenting so much to regain

Can see the future from where we stand

Let's move closer we can build the flame

Who but a vampire can be unrelenting in plotting for the future? 

In describing the transition from rabbi to vampire we are told:

Their life is learning they strive with great intensity

Others advancing each day a daf devotedly 

On that night they gathered to show what matters

The Torah world stood as one with pride

In silent reflection with one direction

We could feel that time was on our side 

These antinomian rabbis in life only cared about Torah and not about morality. In fact, rejecting morality served to demonstrate their superior commitment to Torah. So, on a certain night, they gathered together to reject morality in the clearest way possible and became vampires. This allowed them to stand together with a unified hive mind knowing that, being immortal, time was on their side and they will be able to take over the world. 

(To be continued ...)  

In Search of a Sense of Wonder in Fantasy: Some Thoughts on Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut

Teel McClanahan III was kind enough to send me his novelette Lost and Not Found - Director's Cut. I read many novels and the occasional short story, but the hundred page novel is an experience in its own right that does not come around very often. This is certainly not an easy genre to work with. I can think of only one truly great short novel, Stephen King's Shawshank Redemption. The pitfall of writing at this length is that it is too long for the simple short story concept and not long enough to establish the character and plot of full length novels. This certainly applies to McClanahan's whimsical account of an unnamed former lost boy, who returns to Neverland as an adult and runs off with Tinkerbell. I was intrigued by the main character and some of the world's McClanahan describes, but there is no real plot or character development to allow for a meaningful story. While it might be acceptable to the world of post-modernism to eschew plot and character, as a reader of fantasy, I have distinctively old fashioned tastes and literary values. Most of all I desire from fantasy a sense of magic and wonder, something that establishment post-modernism can only look askance at.

McClanahan's attempt rethink the Peter Pan story has its parallel with the movie Hook and Dave Barry's Peter Pan prequels. His deconstruction of fantasy has its parallel in Neil Gaiman. Post-modernism and deconstructionism get a bad rap as a means for academic elites to sit on their thrones and arrogantly heap scorn over anything that does not fit in with their politically correct values and sense of what counts as literature. The thing that I admire so much about Gaiman, with his Sandman graphic novels and American Gods, is that while he is busy deconstructing mythology he does it from a perspective of love and admiration for it. One never gets the sense that he is talking down to his material. Rather it is his desire to find a way to make mythology meaningful in a post mythological age. I would contrast Gaiman with Gregory Maguire and his Wicked series. While I loved the musical version of Wicked, I find his books to be effused with this arrogant cynicism. His deconstruction of the Wicked Witch of the West seems to stem not just from an innocent desire to rethink the world of Oz, but as a put down to L. Frank Baum as a sexist male. To me, fantasy is about a sense of wonder. Even if we go into dark places; it should be as a sense of tragedy. If the hero is going to go down it should be in saving the world that he loves and that we the reader love in turn. A good example of this, again in a fantasy with a strong deconstructionist element, is Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series. Snarky moralist preaching of either the traditional or post-modern kind has no place in fantasy. While I love C. S. Lewis, this is the major weakness of the Narnia series. I think Lewis serves as a good lesson here, though, in that he can get you to overlook his Christian moralizing with the sheer sense of wonder he offers in Narnia. (That and a killer sense of satire that allows you to take his preaching with a wink and a nod.)

Lost and Not Found falls into the camp of Maguire. McClanahan walks into the world of Neverland not out of a childlike sense of wonder, but out of an adult's cynicism. I do not get this sense that he loves Neverland or Peter Pan. On the contrary, Peter is a contemptible child and Neverland, a child's world, is to be replaced by something more "adult" like Haven. The one thing about Neverland that he seems to like is Tinkerbell. If I were to sum up the novel it would be as his personal sexual fantasy with "Tink." (I assume it is not for nothing that the main character goes unnamed.) Not that McClanahan's love scenes, while numerous, are that graphic. That being said, they felt out of place and wrong and in that sense pornographic.

As a lover of fantasy literature, I look forward to the day when fantasy achieves the literary respect it deserves, when Lord of the Rings is seen as not just great fantasy, but one of the greatest works of twentieth century literature period. As much as I want this, I would not have it by selling out to post-modern deconstructionism. Fantasy should be the bastion to stand against such cynicism. If that means that we never get the respect of the "literary" types then so be it.

Rowan Atkinson for Drood

I recently finished listening to the audio production of Drood by Dan Simmons. Drood is a fictionalized account of the last years of Charles Dickens' life as told by his friend and sometimes collaborator Willkie Collins. The title refers to Dickens' final unfinished novel, the Mystery of Edwin Drood. I was familiar with the story from the satirical musical version of the story, which has multiple possible ending voted on by the audience. The novel contains numerous running gags on Edwin Drood and other better known elements of the Dickens universe.

Dan Simmons is one of the greatest living science-fiction novelists. Simmons' work has a highly literate quality to it; things like a robot John Keats to having the gods hire classical scholars to report on the ongoing Trojan War. Drood is a literate, historical novel that often goes into the realm of the fantastic. The narrator, Willkie Collins, is an opium addict, who hallucinates. The novel dips in and out of the occult (Collins and Dickens may have mind controlling beetles stuck in their skulls, implanted by a criminal mastermind and Egyptian cult leader.) and we have no idea what is to be believed. Simmons needs to be congratulated for his ability to present the world of nineteenth century England where there is no aspirin or reconstructive surgery to deal with the aches and pains liable to accumulate in the body of a middle aged man. Hence opium. Think of Rush Limbaugh's addiction to Oxycodone just with hallucinations to make things more interesting.

For what it is worth, Guillermo Del Toro is down to direct a film version of Drood. My proposal would be to have Rowan Atkinson play Collins. Not that Atkinson looks like the real life Collins, but this is the sort of role that requires heavy doses of smug superiority even in the face of a contrary reality, something that Atkinson does better than just about anyone. Collins spends most of the novel venting his hatred of Dickens, gripping about the absurdities in Dickens' fiction and how he is truly the better writer. This is one of those characters who charms by simply being a horrible human being.

Rape is Never Funny (Except when it Involves Shakespeare or Stanley Kubrick )

A few weeks ago, in our book club, one of the guys made a crack about rape. This elicited a heated response from a number of people, particularly one of the girls who declared: “rape is never funny.” This past week we got a visit from one of the administrators of Aspirations who spoke to us and told us in no uncertain terms that, while we were all adults and it was acceptable to talk about adult topics, jokes about rape would not be tolerated in the group. With all due respect to feminists and other concerned people, while rape is a horrible act, it is one horrible act among many others and like all other horrible acts, and, in part, because it is such a horrible act, it is subject to humor and can be very funny.

One of my all-time favorite films is Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It is about the world getting blown to bits in a nuclear holocaust, courtesy of Peter Sellers (in three roles) and George C. Scott. The climax of the film is a man falling out a bomber while riding an atom bomb and waving his cowboy hat. This is soon followed by mushroom clouds going up across the globe to soft relaxing music. I may be perverse but I do find something funny about the annihilation of almost the entire human race. (Those lacking a convenient mine shaft to flee to.) It would seem only a matter of consistency that if I could laugh at the idea of billions of people dying than I should also be able to laugh at the idea of one person being raped. And Stanley Kubrick helps us on this front with Clockwork Orange, which has rape set to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.

Clearly, rape can be funny; even Shakespeare uses rape for laughs. In Titus Andronicus, Demetrius and Chiron rape Titus’ daughter, Livinia, (and, for good measure, they also cut off her hands and slice out her tongue.)

Demetrius: So, now go tell, and if thy tongue can speak,
Who’t was that cut thy tongue and ravish’d thee.
Chiron: Write down thy mind, bewray thy meaning so
And if thy stumps will let thee play the scribe.
Demetrius: She, how with signs and tokens she can scrowl.
Chiron: Go home, call for sweet water, wash thy hands.
Demetrius: She hath no tongue to call, nor hands to wash:
And so let’s leave her to her silent walks.
Chiron An ‘twere my case I should go hang myself.
Demetrius: If though hadst hands to help thee knit the cord.
[Titus Andronicus act II scene IV)

For all you feminists out there, Titus gets his revenge on Chiron and Demetrius; he cuts their throats and has Livinia hold a bowl in her stumps to catch the blood. Titus then bakes them into meat pies, (so Sweeney Todd like) which he serves to their mother Tamora. (Titus then kills Livinia to “end” her shame.)

Rape can even make for good family-friendly musical fun. Consider the Fantasticks with its Rape Song:

Rape!
R-a-a-a-pe!
Raa-aa-aa-pe!
A pretty rape!
A literary rape!
We've the obvious open schoolboy rape,
With little mandolins
and perhaps a cape.
The rape by coach;
it's little in request.
The rape by day,
but the rape by night is best.

Just try to see it.
And you will soon agree, señors,
Why Invite regret,
When you can get the sort of rape
You'll never ever forget.
You can get the rape emphatic.
You can get the rape polite.
You can get the rape with Indians:
A very charming sight.
You can get the rape on horseback;
They'll all say it's new and gay.
So you see the sort of rape
Depends on what you pay.
It depends on what you pay.

And the song continues for several more verses, all involving suggestions of possible styles for a good “rape.” (This is meant as a staged abduction of a girl by a theatrical troupe so that her neighbor will be able to come to her “rescue” and bring about all manner of happy endings.)
I raised some of these issues with the administrator. I asked him if we would even be allowed to read something like Titus Andronicus, considering how it makes fun of rape. I also asked him if he thought the Fantasticks, with its singing about rape, could be considered funny. His response was that yes such things were funny, but that it was only funny when done by such people. Apparently, rape is only funny when it is in a published source. I am reminded of the Haredi response when faced with the fact that great rabbis in the past had done something that they now wish to ban: "it was ok for them, because they were so great and because they lived in holier times. But we should not be allowed to do this."

I am not trying to minimize the real-life horrors of rape. I also recognize that society has certain conventions about making jokes about bad things in front of people who have suffered them. (For example one does not crack Holocaust jokes in front of Holocaust survivors.) I can accept that rape is included in this convention so one must be careful in whose company one makes rape jokes. But to say that somehow rape is not funny is absolutely ludicrous. Personally, I take Shakespeare, Stanley Kubrick, and the Fantasticks as better guides to what is funny than any angry feminist.

To be Cyrano de Bergerac

This past evening I went to see a production of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, which was put on in Schiller Park here in Columbus. I was familiar with the play from seeing the film version, starring Gerard Depardieu, in high school. This was free theater so I did not have too high expectations. While most of the actors were fairly mediocre, John Beeker, who played the title role, was outstanding. I would definitely pay good money to see him perform. The music was also very good. (It was taken from Cirque du Soleil’s KA.)

Cyrano de Bergerac (a real historical figure) is about a swashbuckling seventeenth-century swordsman (A character similar to Alexander Dumas’ three musketeers and, more recently, Arturo Perez-Reverte’s Captain Alatriste.) His sword is only matched by his wit and his skills as a poet, something he puts to good use in the play’s opening as he dispatches an opponent with his sword while composing a ballad to commemorate the occasion. Standing in Cyrano’s way are his tendency to speak his mind and thumb his nose at the rich and powerful, thus making for himself many enemies, and his literal long nose, which disfigures his face. Because of his nose, Cyrano finds himself unable to pursue his love, his cousin Roxane, for fear that she will laugh at him. Instead of pursuing her directly, he comes to do so indirectly when he befriends Christian, a fellow soldier in his company, who has also fallen in love with Roxane. Christian has a beautiful face but lacks the necessary skill with words to win Roxane. Enter Cyrano to fill the void; he writes the needed love letters and poems for Christian and even coaches him on what things to say to her. Cyrano and Christian make a perfect team; Christian provides the face and Cyrano provides the mouth. Unfortunately for Cyrano, though, it is Christian’s lips that get to kiss Roxane while he has to stand by as the loyal friend and watch.

As with most great characters, one comes to identify oneself with the Cyrano in a very personal way. I see a lot of myself in Cyrano or at least see in Cyrano something that I could and should be. Cyrano is a highly intelligent, witty, charming and likable individual, who tends to offend people. He is someone full of principles/pride and will sacrifice everything for them, though it is not always clear which one he is standing for. He is someone with a noble romantic soul with the capacity to love in ways that few can. Yet for all this, he is doomed in love because of his deformity, his nose. Cyrano’s nose, though, is really a stand-in for the injuries in Cyrano’s own mind. It is he who thinks of himself as ugly and incapable of pursuing love. While Cyrano’s nose holds him back it is also what allows him to love as intently as he does in the first place. One suspects that if Cyrano would not have become the gallant swordsman and romantic if he had been born with a regular nose. It is his nose that isolates him and makes him feel as intently as he does. Like Cyrano, I am witty, intelligent and charming, though I do tend to put these gifts to use by thumbing my nose at convention and playing by my own rules. While I am likable, I do tend to offend people. I think in terms of duty and obligation; I believe that I owe people a debt for their friendship. I have learned the hard way, though, that other people do not think in terms of duty and obligation and therefore do not feel they owe me anything for my friendship. I have a pretty enough face, but in the end, I am also scarred. Not by my nose but by my depression and Asperger Syndrome. These things have stopped me from finding love.

It is a pattern that has repeated itself several times already, the last time just recently, where a woman has been attracted to me by my wit and charm only to flee as soon as she came to see my depression and Asperger Syndrome and how it affects my life. The irony here is that I owe the wit and charm that attracted them in the first place to the same depression and Asperger Syndrome that robs me in the end. My wit and charm is simply the light side of my depression and Asperger Syndrome and is as much a part of them as the dark side which people have no difficulty labeling as such. My depression and Asperger Syndrome isolate me and keep me away from love but my isolation serves also to make me acutely aware of love and my need for it. I look hungrily at all the normal people out there who seem to have little difficulty with love yet fail to truly appreciate it. I wonder what it would be like to be normal. Utterly boring, I suspect, though they do, by and large, seem to be happy.

At one point in the play, Cyrano is challenged whether he is being Don Quixote, fighting windmills. I have, in my time, been faced with that challenge. As much as I may love the musical the Man of La Mancha, I have no wish to be Don Quixote. I will settle for being Cyrano de Bergerac.

An Ode to Villainy and Joss Whedon

I have, in the past, made mention of Joss Whedon and his show Firefly. Firefly was probably the greatest television show to be canceled after only eleven episodes. Whedon also did Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, which I have a certain respect for and which were far greater commercial successes. What all of these shows have in common is Whedon’s ability to take B movie concepts and turn them into something special. With Buffy and Angel it was through satire; these were cheesy horror shows that spoofed cheesy horror shows, themselves included. Firefly was a sci-fi western that spoofed both science fiction and westerns aplenty, but managed to be so much more. It is a show that one cannot watch without getting attached and, upon getting to the end and realizing there is no more, finding oneself shaking ones fists at the universe demanding more. There is a reason why, despite the fact that the show failed, a movie version was made; the fans would not give up on it.

Whedon has established himself as one of the great outside the box thinkers in Hollywood, a talent on display in a short film, made for the internet, titled Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Dr. Horrible is a musical send up to cheesy science fiction villains. The main character, Dr. Horrible, played to perfection by Neil Patrick Harris, is a lovable but hapless science geek, who yearns to become a great villain. He is in the process of trying to invent a freeze ray to aid him in his villainy and win the heart of the girl of his dreams. Standing in the way of this noble dream is Dr. Horrible’s tendency toward mishaps and his arch-nemesis, Captain Hammer, played by Nathan Fillion of Firefly fame.

Those familiar with my sense of humor will understand why I feel such a strong kinship with Dr. Horrible. I have a thing for high villainy and world domination. Add in some heartwarming melodies and it makes me want to rub my hands together in a Montgomery Burns sort of way. Excellent!

Act I of Dr. Horrible has already been posted and acts II and III will be coming up in the next few days. The film will be available to watch for free until July 20.

Girls Who Love Murderous Barbers (or at least those played by Johnny Depp)

My friend, Dragon, recently saw the Sweeney Todd film and has now been converted into a fan of the musical. For those of you who are not familiar with Steven Sondheim’s masterpiece. It is about a nineteenth-century London barber named Sweeney Todd and his downstairs neighbor Mrs. Lovett, who runs a pie shop. Todd likes to murder his customers as his way of taking revenge against the world and Mrs. Lovett, ever the practical one, helps dispose of the bodies by grinding them up into her delicious meat pies. What can I say; Dragon is a very cool person and she has excellent taste.

What befuddles me though is that her favorite song from this musical is Green Finch and Linnet Bird. The song introduces Johanna, Todd’s lost teenage daughter. This is a run-of-the-mill song about a young girl coming into her womanhood and wanting to be free to experience the world. It is a pretty song but there are much more interesting versions of this type of song. I would point to Cosette’s In My Life in Les Miserables or Luisa’s Much More in Fantasticks. Much More is the source for my most fervent prayer: “Please God please don’t let me be normal.”

To me going to Sweeney Todd for a song like Green Finch completely defeats the purpose. It lacks Sondheim’s trademark complexity and furthermore, the song contains not a single reference to blood, guts, or anyone getting murdered. Green Finch is not My Friends, in which consists of Todd singing to his razor blades and demonstrating a truly remarkable ability to transition up and down the music scale. What about Todd singing Johanna, which is him slitting the throats of his customers, and singing how he no longer needs to get his daughter back as he now has something else to live for? And then there is Priest in which Todd and Lovett sing a duet about how various people might taste as pies.

Mrs. Lovett: It’s priest. Have a little priest.

Todd: Is it really good?

Mrs. Lovett: Sir, it’s too good at least. Then again, they don’t commit sins of the flesh, so it’s pretty fresh.

Todd: Awful lot of fat.

Mrs. Lovett: Only where it sat.

Todd: Haven’t you got poet or something like that?

Mrs. Lovett: No, you see the trouble with poet is, how do you know it’s deceased? Try the priest.

Todd: Heavenly. Not as hearty as bishop, perhaps, but then not as bland as curate either.
Mrs. Lovett: And good for business – always leaves you wanting more. Trouble is we only get it on Sundays.

I must confess that the musical tastes of women lie outside of my field of comprehension. My musical sensibilities are rather simple. I like powerful heroic songs with loud bangs, like what you get in Richard Wagner. If it has some really dark humor and blood to go along with it, then I am all the merrier.