10/6 Post-Class Blog Post

 

“Neoconservative doctrines turn our attention precisely away from such societal processes: they project the causes, which they do not bring to light, onto the plane of subversive culture and its advocates.’ (Habernas, 102)

Though I constantly refer to media (theater in particular) in my blog posts,  I continue to ground the somewhat heady and abstract theory that we are reading for class in the elements that I am comfortable in. I have been constantly thinking about the connection between Brechtian theatre and what Habernas discusses in his paper. Brechtian theatre goes against everything that Neoconservatives do in their doctrine: it places all the emphasis on societal processes and issues, to the point of making the audience uncomfortable (the alienation effect). For example, in the Brecht show The Good Person Of Setzuan, the audience follows the story of Shen-Te, a prostitute who is granted a tobacco shop from the Gods above. In order to protect her shop, Shen-Te dresses up as her male alias Shui-Ta. Shui-Ta uses his masculine prowess to keep control of his shop, but eventually is tried for the murder of Shen-Te herself. The Good Person of Setzuan inherently focuses on class struggle, materialism, and how people in a capitalist society use economics to frame morality.  At the production at Rollins, we updated the play so that we focused on coffee since coffee in our contemporary times is very much like tobacco was when Brecht was writing the play. In our acting, our director wanted us to focus on talking directly to the audience when it was necessary, to alienate them. When the audience laughs at something horrible (like a homeless person fighting to get into a home), the action of the play stops, and the actors comment on it directly. Why are you laughing at that audience? Why laugh at people who are needy and that need can lead to greed? Thus, the audience is alienated from their own reactions to the work and thus has to think about why things are like this. This idea is completely the opposite of what Neoconservatives focus on, which is to turn away from societal processes.

A picture from our production, where the ensemble physically becomes the factory itself, the workers struggling under the capitalist system.