Tynan's Anger

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Few music videos have ever drawn as much endless debate, controversy, and mystery as Radiohead's "Just." One of the highlights of their second album The Bends, the album that established Radiohead as international leaders of anthemic alternative rock,"Just" is one of the better songs Radiohead ever recorded. Strangely, the band may actually be underrated in the music video department, and none of their video tops their exploration of existential middle age malaise that left the most horrific thing anyone has ever heard unspoken:

"Yes I'll tell you, I'll tell you why I'm lying here... but God forgive me... and God help us all... because you don't know what you ask of me."

Radiohead's video has spawned endless debate among the band's fans, and over the past 14 years the question has never stopped raging on forums across the Internet. But how many of these debaters know of a precursor set all the way back in the 1957, by legendary playwright and Tynan's Anger patron saint John Osborne? Osborne's The Entertainer, his devastatingly brilliant follow-up to his breakthrough Look Back in Anger, followed the fall of the British music hall scene as personified by Archie Rice. Archie Rice was immortalized by Lawrence Olivier's greatest modern performance on both the stage and in the 1960 film. Left out of the film, however, was this particularly fascinating parable in the play's final scene, delivered by Archie after he has lost everything and is giving his pathetically dated performance one last time:

Before I do go, ladies and gentlemen, I should just like to tell you a little story, a little story. This story is about a man, just a little, ordinary man, like you and me, and one day he woke up and found himself in paradise. Well, he looks up, you see, and he sees a feller standing next to him. It turns out that this feller is a saint or something. Anyway, he's on the welcoming committee. And the feller says to him---the Saint---says to him: 'Well,' he says, 'you're now in paradise.' 'Am I?' he says. 'You are,' says the Saint. 'What's more, you have earned yourself eternal happiness.' 'Have I?' he says. 'You most certainly have,' says the Saint. 'Oh, you're well away,' he says. 'Can't you hear the multitudes? Why, everyone is singing, everyone is joyful. What do you say, my son?' So the little man took a look around him at all the multitudes of the earth, spread out against the universe. So he says to the Saint: 'Well, can I get up where you're standing, and take a proper look?' So the Saint says: 'Of course you can, my son' and makes way for him. And the little man stood up where the Saint was and gazed up at the sight around him. At all the Hosts of Heaven, and all the rest of it. 'All the wonder and the joy of eternity is round about you,' said the Saint. 'You mean, this is all eternity and I'm in Paradise?' 'That is so, my son. Well, what have you to say?' So the little man looks around again for a bit, and the Saint says: 'Well, my son?' 'Well,' he says, 'I've often wondered what I'd say if this ever happened to me. I couldn't think somehow.' And the Saint smiled at him kindly and says again: 'And what do you say, my son?' 'Only one thing I can say,' says the little man. And he said it! Well, the Saint looked as if he had been struck across the face by some great hand. The Hosts stopped singing and all the Angels hid their faces, and for a tiny splash in eternity there was no sound at all in Paradise. The Saint couldn't speak for a while, and then he threw his arms round the little man, and kissed him. And he said: 'love you, my son. With all my soul, I shall love you always. I have been waiting to hear that word ever since I came here.'

What's the point of this blog post? I cannot say.

Labels: Bends, Entertainer, high art/low art, john osborne, just, lawrence oliiver, Music video, Radiohead, weird juxtapositions

-Finally finish the John Osborne biography, and get cracking on the David Mamet biography as well
-Rewatch August: Osage County with one of my best friends Claire in hopes of it giving her a life altering experience, as will The King of Kong
-Hopefully get a chance to see The Seagull, despiting a scheduling mishap on my end and a tepid review from Ben Brantley
-See at least one more play in New York
-Watch a Woody Allen movie I haven't seen yet
-Get started watching the John Adams HBO miniseries (starring personal hero Paul Giamatti) on Demand
-Watch the original Funny Games
-Watch one of the movies recommended in the Osborne biography

Labels: august: osage county, david mamet, funny games, john adams, john osborne, nerd spring break, paul giamatti, the king of kong, the seagull, woody allen

I suppose I should address David Mamet's diatribe in The Village Voice on his newfound aversion to the left wing. He is, after all, arguably the most influential American playwright of the last 25 years, and I'd argue that an introduction to his work is bound to fuck up the styling of most young playwrights for at least a few years (Oleanna pretty much permanently castigated me to critical aspirations). Still, I feel immensely unqualified to write about it, as I did not see Boston Marriage, Romance, or November. I would feel worse about this, if I didn't hear such nearly universally terrible things about the former two. The latter play had all the indications of closing the store on Mamet's career, but I think I was not the only one surprised when it got a glowing review from John Lahr and did exceptionally well at the box office (perhaps the result, as Ben Brantley put it, of being a "David Mamet play for people who don't like David Mamet.") But because I haven't seen these plays, I'll focus more on the politics and past cases of lefty playwrights gone right.

Mamet's long had indications of his right-wing leanings, even in his earliest work, which had a frank honesty towards the brutality of dog-eat-dog capitalism, be it real estate (Glengarry Glen Ross) or Hollywood (Speed-the-Plow). He also fiercely criticized political correctness in my personal favorite of his, the aforementioned Oleanna. Even when his plays were scathing critiques of the culture of capitalism, there was a sort of acceptance of capitalism's logic behind it all. The biggest indication of late, of course, has been his right-wing Israel book The Wicked Son and his rant on Hollywood in Bambi vs. Godzila. He hasn't just been a contrarian, he's been an outright reactionary. It's arguably what we've loved most about him. Now we just have direct evidence of the fact.

Michael Billington raises the absolutely worthy consideration that his dogmatic conservatism may be making him a worse playwright, as he loses the moral nuance that characterized his earlier work. He cites Kingsley Amis and John Osborne as playwrights who suffered after there newfound conservatism. As an Osborne devotee, I must raise a red flag here, because as John Heilpern pointed out in his recent biography, Osborne was always more contrarian than conservative, and he certainly never had a political mantra as direct as what Mamet has provided here. So, I guess to sum up, I'm dissappointed by Mamet, though not particularly surprised, and I don't particularly expect all that much from his later career. It was nice while it lasted.

Labels: ben brantley, david mamet, john heilpern, john lahr, john osborne, kingsley amis, michael billington, november, politics