Occupy: Political Party or, Well, Just a Party?

May the best narrative win.

Looking around in the golden glow of the wall sconces at the Roebling Tea Room, I found Anthea and Vanessa at the bar talking about Occupy. Anthea, in for a short stay from the UK, and Vanessa, from Venezuela, were recounting a conversation with a protester from earlier in the evening.

Still damp from a fine and chilly mist blowing around in the November evening, I just wanted a little whiskey in a glass. But I was all ears.

“She was young, yes, but so very eloquent,” said Vanessa. “These people have no agenda but to say 'there is a problem.'”

“But is that enough?” asked Anthea. “When I asked her what they wanted, she couldn't answer. What kind of protest movement has no goal?”

Vanessa thought for a moment. “I don't think there is a goal in the traditional sense. They just want to be heard. They have reasonable complaints, I think. Companies have too much power.”

Anthea smiled. “I just don't think I understand exactly what they want. What would it take for the protestors to say they achieved something?"

It's a good question. What is happening down there at those Occupy protests? I contend that how you answer that question says more about where you get your Narrative than it does about what is actually happening.

Narrative: A Working Definition

We are not Fact or Data Driven. We are Narrative Driven.

Here's how it works: something happens. People talk about what happened. People who weren't at the event must rely on how other people talk about the event. Different versions of the event are passed around. One or two versions rise to the top and become the “Narrative.”

The Narrative need not be fact-based or fair. These are incidental. It merely needs to be believed. It's often shocking, scary, sexy, or funny and almost always has a spin or slant to it.  When the event is political in any way, like Occupy, there are often at least two competing Narratives battling for your support.

It's American Idol for Stories.  It doesn't matter who can sing better.  It only matters if we like the singer.

Occupy: Waterloo or Bonnaroo
As far as I can tell, the Narratives told by supporters of the Occupy protestors include:

1. The 99% of America wants the 1% to pay more. These percentages refer to the proportional amount of total US wealth that individual people have.

2. Wall Street and Washington are corrupt, filled with criminals who use power and influence to “game” the system to unfairly and unethically amass wealth.

3. American democracy is broken and until drastic changes are made in how people are allowed to participate in politics, the US will continue to decay.

4. College debt is burying young people; education should be a right, not a burden.

Those who are critical of Occupy largely seem to think that there is NO legitimate protest at Occupy-- the only story is about the protestors themselves:

1. The protestors are anarchists and communists, interested in destroying order in America.

2. Most people involved in the movement are drug users, criminals, or opportunists who want a free lunch and state-supported unemployment.

3. Many protestors are college kids out to get wasted and bang on drums.

4. A significant number of protestors are hypocrites: wealthy kids who are “slumming” with the unemployed for the sake of adventure or to collect great stories.

There Is No "Truth," Only Narrative

In this, I see a larger view of all conversation about politics in our country.  The battle lines of politics are not idealogical; they are anecdotal.  Most people form opinions about the President, Congress, candidates, political parties based on the dominant stories in the media.  Because people tend to get their media stories from one side of the political spectrum, we are in a constant state of story battle.

Subsequently, the strongest Narratives are the ones that transcend media lines:  killing Osama was great for America, Congress sucks, unemployment is too high. When the Narrative differs across different media, the story gets less strong.  Is Obama a failure?  Are taxes too high?  Is there too much regulation? Your answer is merely an extension of the Narrative that you believe. 

Which story will solidify the Occupy Narrative?  Will it be rich, hypocritical protestors staying at the W hotel?  Filthy, violent communists raping naive coeds and pooping on cars?  Evil Corporations swinging sweetheart deals with politicians?  How about the police brutalizing protestors?  Maybe it'll be well-intentioned emergency officials getting attacked by crazed protestors.  Perhaps it'll be bailed-out Wall Street execs awarding themselves huge, end-of-year bonuses while unemployment numbers creep higher.

Which brings us back to the charming Vanessa and Anthea, two foreign nationals with the perfect amount of objectivity. Their conversation, on a stormy night in late autumn, affords a telling glimpse of American culture.  They don't know what Occupy is because there is no dominant Narrative. The competition over the successful Narrative is still in full swing.

Which Narrative will win your vote?

Apocalypse, Soon

Our last, best days.

We're screwed!

Oh, sure, Harold Camping's Rapture didn't come to be. Along with many of you, I got a real kick out of imagining the “end of the world.” I mean, none of us really thought it would happen. But it was fun to pretend, wasn't it?

It's kind of amazing how much we all got into it, too.  It kind of took over.  Everyone has been talking about it.

I think we all enjoyed Rapture Weekend 2011 for the same reason we like roller coasters: it's fun to remind yourself that death is on the way, but not quite yet.

And that's what interests me: most of us, at some point or another, like to contemplate The End of Days. In fact, I would argue that many stories in the media depend on the idea that The End is near.

It's All Over

In case you haven't heard, the world actually IS still ending. Well, the world in which the United States is first-place is ending. The American Age is ending.

Even nature knows that we've already peaked as a nation. You can't escape the bad news, people.

In the few newspapers still in print, you can read about terrorists, the widening gap between the poor and the rich, the always growing threat of extremism, earthquakes, floods, oil spills, and superstorms destroying our communities. You can read about the enormous cost of the our military actions in Middle East, the tens of thousands killed in the drug war on the US-Mexican border, how fat everybody seems to be getting, and how our bridges and roads are falling apart.

On the internet, you can read about how broke everyone is (except for the people who are so not broke) or that public education is not working and that we should weep for our children. Especially our brown children. You can learn the costs of our unjust health care system and the of unemployment numbers that haven't been seen since the Great D (don't say the whole word; it's bad luck). You can read about the incredible and growing divide between the rich and everyone else.

On the tv, you can get your mind blown about the size of the deficit. You can also learn about how easy it is for kids to find jaw-dropping porn or bomb-making instructions on the web. About how the bees are disappearing and the glaciers are melting.

But that's not the bad news. The bad news is much worse.

I am talking about the sheer number of people who seem to believe that we're in the age of the United States' “Last, Best Days.” Capital letters and quotes. The whole shebang. It's all over, baby. Prepare to be second best in the world. Or maybe third best. The future will be all China. Or India. Or Mexican immigrant. Whatever.

Our greatest national strength has always been optimism. Our greatest strength now appears to be fear. Look at the last thirty or forty years of politics. The biggest thing that seems to get us out to vote (whether it's for Dems or Repubs or Tea Partiers or Rent Is 2 Damn High or whatever) is fear that the other side might win and then ruin everything.

Team Fear

Fear drives our culture. It drives our commerce. Everyone is afraid of getting sick. Of dying. Of getting robbed. Of litigation. Of growing old and ugly. Of becoming unimportant or uncool.

America has always had fear-mongering. It's as old as the Republic itself. Every generation worries that the good ol' days are way better than today and tomorrow.  That's not new. 

What's new is the open derision of hope-mongering.  The strongest message out there seems to be “don't believe it can get better.”

As we all have a laugh about the egg-on-his-face Harold Camping and his ridiculous followers, we may be tempted to be smug. How delicious it is to read about the crestfallen believers who can't comprehend that The End didn't happen.  "What a bunch of clowns," we might think.  "Fringe nutjobs!"

But I think the popularity of Camping's prediction says more about us all than we like to admit.  

For now, you'll have to excuse me.  After cleaning up from my awesome Rapture Party (sorry, I really meant to invite you all), I have to figure out how I'm going to pay for my retirement after Social Security is dismantled.  I also need a good plan to deal with my massive school loans-- anybody have a suggestion? Oh, and I should probably look for a job; there's no way my teaching job will exist in a few years.  I need to sell my car, too-- gas prices are way too high!  And does anyone know a reasonable place to move in Canada?  I'd like to have health care when I'm elderly.

If I make it that long.  Anybody have plans for the October Apocalypse?  Or should we all save it up for the Mayan 2012 Fest?

No One Is Alone

notes from the director

Into the Woods

High schools are wild and wonderful places.

North Shore is filled with energy and exploration. Whether in the classroom, the gym, or the theatre, teenagers are dynamos engaged in the rhythmic pulse of life. I always marvel at the spectacle of starting a theatre production at school. Auditions are exciting and stressful affairs, powered by the electricity of hope and determination. The buzz in the hallways minutes before we start rehearsal reflects the intensity of the teenage life: the strong will for greatness measured by the tense fear of failure.

What happens in our school reflects what happens in our homes, with adults and children. We all want to dare to be wonderful. But we're also afraid that our mistakes will keep us from happiness.

Which do we want more?

Do we want to be daring? To chase adventure and all the risks that come with it? Or do we want to be safe? To protect what we already have and try to avoid losing our most precious treasures?

Welcome to thrilling and terrifying woods of our lives.

Stephen Sondheim, composer and lyricist of Into the Woods, has left out no terror or joy in this piece. We'll watch the characters leave home, lose friends, make new friends, fall in love, fall out of love, and lose their parents.

It's heavy stuff. But we are comforted by the presence of many of our favorite characters: Cinderella, Little Red Ridinghood, the Big Bad Wolf, and Jack and the Beanstalk all walk the stage in this piece. The Baker and His Wife are also here, although we don't celebrate their story too much anymore. Look carefully in our production and you'll see the playful Three Little Pigs, the careless Hansel and Gretel, the graceful Little Bo Peep, and the brave Woodsman.

And the Giant is going to knock your socks off.

So will these kids. They're working for themselves, these actors and musicians and crew members, but they are also working for you. Enjoy them. And, if you can, listen to what they say.

They'll tell you that we must be careful what we teach our children. That being nice and being good are not the same thing. That being brave sometimes requires being vulnerable. That saying hello to new experiences requires us to say goodbye to old experiences.

And they'll tell you that no one is alone.

Welcome to another wonderful season of North Shore Masquers' theatre! We're delighted to begin our Year of the Family with one of the greatest theatrical works of the 20^th Century, Into the Woods.

We dedicate this piece to the children who became our parents. May we remember that they were kids who braved the woods of their own lives. They might leave us, but they are always here.

Cartoons and Mirrors

A film review.


Once again, Pixar uses brightly colored playthings to smash us to pieces, only to glue us together again.

Prickly pieces have punctuated Pixar's productions in the past. In Finding Nemo, we find a desperate father absolutely devastated by the death of his long lost son. In The Incredibles, a family gets ripped to pieces by secrets that question identity and trust. Wall-E gives us harshly dystopian world in which an orphaned, trash picking robot is the only 'life' left on a planet destroyed by humans. And who can forget the brilliant opening sequence in Up? The perfect confection of boy meets girl leads unstoppably to the bitterness of loss and widowhood.

Dark stuff for kiddie movies. These people at Pixar aren't messing around.

This summer's Toy Story 3 avoids none of the bleakness, either. The end of childhood comes to toy-stewarding Andy, and never in the film do we see him happy to go to college. The focus remains on the toys, however, and here we find abandonment, attempted homicide, and the annihilation of a family.

I'm reminded of the unvarnished Grimm tales. Before Disney (ironically the parent company of Pixar) got a hold of a Grimm tale like "Cinderella," the story was filled with harsh consequences. For instance, the “evil” stepfamily abused Cinderella and constantly lied to her. Cinderella's name comes from the fact that she picked her food from the ashes in the fireplace- often for the sport of her family. Late in the story, when faced with a too-small glass slipper, one of the sisters cut off her own heel to make a gory fit. The prince recognized that Cinderella as the true owner of the shoe simply because “there was no blood in” the shoe when she slipped it on. Birds that spent the story helping Cinderella finish the tale by pecking out the eyes of the sisters, leaving them blinded for a life of darkness.

Yikes.

What makes a Grimm “children's story” tick are the abject desolation and violence that many stories of our time whitewash. Oh, sure, our stories have explosions and death; we love a good chase scene and showdown. But most of our stories often leave us where they found us, counting on the idea that all will be right in the end. The status quo will be preserved. The good guys (or girls) will win and everything will be returned to normal.

The storytellers at Pixar make no deals with us. They grasp that an authentic representation of the world must include irreversible consequences. On one hand, Pixar films seem to offer escape and bliss: we go to these movies expecting to have our heartstrings pulled while we giggle and laugh. On the other hand, Pixar films abuse us with the burdens of our sympathies: we lean forward, inhaling, worried that these little dolls/fish/robots might not actually survive how awful everything is.

We adults watching these films know that the world is an unforgiving place. Bad things happen to good people. Friends leave us. Homes are destroyed forever. People die. We know what's on the line for Nemo's dad when he breaks down in the face of how incredibly large and dangerous the ocean is. We understand that Wall-E's trash dump world is a reasonable, if avoidable, future to our own fragile green planet. And we know that Andy's loyal and determined toys, like all playthings, are all destined to be tossed off by a boy who outgrows his own childhood.

These Pixar characters are destined to be changed forever by their travails, left with permanent scars and irretrievable pasts. In Toy Story 3, Woody and Buzz and the toy gang go through a one-way door, forever leaving the familiar comforts of grown-boy Andy's bedroom. And Andy, too, goes through his own threshold, leaving his emptied bedroom for college. Andy, like his erstwhile plastic and fuzzy friends, will never be the same.

And we, watching from the chilly dark of our cineplex, recognize these primal forces at work. We know that these animations are merely ephemeral pixies, pretty things that glow from hard drives. (It's just a cartoon!) But something about the distance of it all-- the remove of the cartoon coupled with the remove of the cinematic experience, opens a window into the very center of us.

In the dazzling color of all, something wonderful happens. Through the unique alchemy of animation, Pixar makes us kids again. Witches are real, as are giants and monsters. We re-encounter the way we experienced stories as children. We look up at towering kitchen tables, looking through belt buckle perspectives and are reminded just how big and scary and thrilling this world can be.

Where nostalgia helps us shine up our memories, focusing on the good and the beautiful, Pixar's Toy Story 3 gives us the entire memory. We see mom's heartbreak at our newly emptied room. We remember our own favorite and worn toys from our childhood, knowing that these well-loved pieces are likely in a landfill somewhere.

And we remember that first, last time we looked at the place we grew up, that first time we left home. We clearly see that one way door that led from our technicolor childhood to our complex and ever-shifting adulthood.

For a moment, in that half light of the cinema, the fragility and durability of these animated toys pulls back the curtain. And the beauty is more than enough.