Wild Ideas and Staged Readings

So, a wild thought occurred to me as I was reading The National Review's take on Will Arbery's just-closed play, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, about which I've written before. I've been wanting someone to talk to about this play for a while, but almost no one in my immediate world is familiar enough with the script or with the issues involved. And everyone in my world is pretty busy with their own things that they'd love to talk to me about if only I were more familiar with them.

But, among the many ideas the play pitches into the air for characters to bat back and forth is conservative Rod Dreher's Benedict Option. Arbery apparently sent Dreher a draft of the script. Dreher notes, however, that Arbery has not responded to Dreher's emailed questions. Likely, Dreher surmises, Arbery is reticent (as he is in national news interviews) about sharing his own stance. As a playwright, he presents an honest selection of characters who represent a cross-section of conservative Catholic thought in 2017. For Arbery to register whether he supports one or more of the characters would be to upset the balanced, complicated picture his dramaturgy produces. (This seems similar to Lucas Hnath's keeping mum about his beliefs in reference to his excellent play The Christians.)

But Rod Dreher lives here. I live here. It is in my power to create a staged reading/discussion event and invite Dreher to participate.

This is a wild thought because, although I find Dreher's writing often compelling, the two of us stand on opposite sides of a worldview gap. We may concur about President Trump's many shortcomings, but on issues like abortion and sexuality, we would be opponents.

It's a strange kind of opposition in this strange time.

One of Dreher's posts today celebrates Democrat John Bel Edwards's gubernatorial win over Republican Eddie Rispone yesterday, a victory widely seen as a rebuke of Trump. I celebrate along with him.

Trump had campaigned strongly in Louisiana and elsewhere for Rispone, even coming personally to Louisiana on three occasions for pro-Rispone rallies. Such rallies, predictably, turned in to pro-Trump rallies. Dreher points out that Rispone had no discernible platform beyond "Trump likes me; I like Trump." If anything, Edwards's victory signals that pro-Trump rhetoric alone isn't enough to swing a state like Louisiana.*

Edwards, by contrast, has held on to his position as one of the very few Deep South Democratic governors largely thanks to his stalwart pro-life credentials. He signed into law incredibly restrictive anti-abortion legislation during his last term.

I am, as I have mentioned, heartily against most abortion restrictions. I approach reproductive matters from an entirely different place, holding entirely different warrants, than Dreher does.

I support Edwards despite rather than because of his anti-choice stances. There are a number of reasons; his expansion of medicare, his stabilizing the state's finances, his openness with his electorate (he hosts a call-in radio show weekly), his support for teachers, his general alignment with Democratic rather than Trumpist values. In my ideal world, I'd have someone like Edwards but who also works to protect the right not to be forced into continued pregnancy or childbirth, who doesn't treat pregnancy as a functional punishment inflicted on people (disproportionately on women) who have sex. I'll take Edwards, though, because his anti-choice stance makes him a viable candidate. It's the kind of pragmatic calculation Deep South progressives regularly have to make when voting (and the kind of calculation conservatives in other parts of the country have to make about their candidates).

There are other big worldview differences between Dreher and me. Unlike Dreher, I simply fail to see any dire cultural threat from the spectacle of a few drag queens in 30 or so cities reading books to children in public libraries. I'm baffled at the shibboleth status that Drag Queen Story Hour has acquired among a particular bandwidth of cultural conservative. I don't know, but I imagine there's a number of ways that my faith expression (liberal gay United Methodist) would be obnoxious from his Orthodox perspective.

Nevertheless, I'm intrigued at the thought of having a good, long conversation with him about this play. He'd be an ideal conversation partner here. (In the unlikely event you're reading this Mr. Dreher, please do contact me!)

And beyond the wouldn't-this-be-cool factor, a productive conversation with Dreher might restore a bit of faith in the possibility of a pluralist civic ethos. Two people who disagree strongly and are unlikely to convert each other have a deep conversation about faith and politics. What a spectacle. Someone should write a play about it.

We'll see.

*Dreher cites another possible factor in Edwards's victory, one I find depressing yet difficult to discount: LSU won last weekend against its long-time arch-rival Alabama (a rare feat). Spirits in Louisiana--pride and contentment about Louisiana--were high this last week. Had LSU lost, a note of dissatisfaction may have tipped things more in Rispone's favor...

Heroes of the Fourth Turning

Yesterday I read Will Arbery's new play (currently at Playwrights Horizons in NYC), Heroes of the Fourth Turning. Rod Dreher at The American Conservative blogged about it a few times, giving it high praise for its empathetic portrayal of white Catholic conservatives.

Empathetic is a loaded descriptor here, for reasons I'll get to in a moment.

The play, set in 2017 Wyoming (just before the total solar eclipse, just after Charlottesville), features the troubled, mostly twenty-something alumni of Transfiguration College (a real place where the playwright's parents work and where he lives). We see a few hours from the ending of a party celebrating the inauguration of the College's new president, beloved president Gina, who doesn't appear until the final scenes.

The other characters represent representative cross-sections of white conservatism. Teresa, aptly described by Dreher as an "Ann Coulter type," is in many ways the standout, Gina's former star pupil now blogging merrily as an intellectual powerhouse of the Right. She adores Steve Bannon, argues that Trump represents the next, necessary face for conservatives. Kevin is lost soul, desperately lonely, desperately horny, pathetically self-aware of how pathetic he is. He's a bit of an incel, though he never uses that term. Emily, Gina's daughter, is a deep-feeling soul questioning some of the harsher sides of modern-day conservatism. Justin is the oldest of the alumi at 38; he entered college after a stint in the Marines. His perspective aligns with Dreher's own Benedict Option (which gets name-checked here, as do a range of other theological and political works). A war is coming, he's convinced. The best Christians can do is batten down the hatches until it passes.

Most characters are convinced that some kind of conflict is happening. Teresa is eager for it. She wants warriors and castigates Kevin as a "soy boy," too weak-willed to stand for anything. Emily recoils at the thought of making war. So too does Gina, once she comes. She and Teresa have at it, former star pupil versus former favored professor.

Arbery gives every character some grand monologues. As Dreher notes, Teresa in particular sings well the tune of Sohrab Ahmari (from the recent Ahmari-French debates). Reacting to Gina's castigating Trump and his ilk as no true conservatives, Teresa lashes back:

Not being measured. Not being polite. I don’t want to be polite anymore. We can’t lie to ourselves. We’re past that. We’re in Crisis. They’re coming for our tabernacle. They want to burn it down. They want to destroy the legacy of heroes like you. So I propose leveling up. I propose looking at the truth in the face. Knowing what it looks like. Knowing what we look like to them. It’s not going anywhere. I propose not taking any shit. Not ignoring all the hypocritical bullshit. Going blow for blow. And being ready for the war, if it happens. When it happens. You call us racist, we’ll call you racist. You call us white, we’ll call you black. You call us Nazis, we’ll call you abortionists and eugenicists. You call us ignorant Christians, we’ll call you spineless hedonistic soulless bloviating bloodbags. But you stop doing that, and give this thing space and time to work itself out, we’ll stop too. You focus your efforts on making this a better nation, an American nation, a republic of ideas, we will too.

Challenged by Emily about the Christian precepts of love and empathy, Teresa slaps her down:

Oh don’t with the empathy. Liberals are empathy addicts. Empathy empathy empathy. Empathy is empty. Hannah Arendt says we don’t need to feel what someone else is feeling – first of all that’s impossible, second of all it’s self-righteous and breeds complacency, third of all it’s politically irresponsible. Empathize with someone and suddenly you’re erasing the boundaries of your own conscience, suddenly you’re living under the tyranny of their desires. We need to know how to think how they’re thinking. From a distance.

Gina's response is devastating, at least in my own star-pupil-who-loves-getting-accolades-from-professors eyes. She essentially declares that the school's great works curriculum has failed with Teresa, who's twisted it into a Machiavellian warfare strategy. Teresa's character spouts a viewpoint I find dangerous and repulsive, but the moment where Gina practically disowns her just stings.

I'm fascinated how and why this play has caught the fancy of New Yorkers. I tend to distrust it when NYC seizes upon a play as a "real" or "respectful" portrayal of a non-left/progressive demographic. Generally, when I scratch the surface of such accolades I find the same old "aren't they awful/fascinating/scary" stereotyping and "aren't we so much better" back-patting. I imagine the play would be very different, and very differently received, were it about white evangelicals. (Of course, I must admit that the characters' conversations would probably be a bit less erudite; Catholic higher ed institutions score better at intellectual rigor and cultural literacy on average.)

Part of the interest, however, seems to be that reaction against empathy. The dramaturg's intro to the printed edition of the play (and kudos to Playwrights Horizons for making such editions available immediately) cites a recent Invisibilia episode, "The End of Empathy," which I listened to while running today.

Both it and the play require me to chew on them a bit more.