Joe Cillo

Blue Jasmine

Directed by Woody Allen

 

This film is outstanding.  It is the best Woody Allen film since Annie Hall.  In fact, it may be his best ever.  These are iconic characters whose struggles and disintegration capture the spirit of our own time.  This will become an American classic in the tradition of Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Godfather, The Great Gatsby, Long Day’s Journey into Night.  The story is complex with many strands and subplots.  But it does not become a jungle.  Like a well written symphony, it is balanced, properly paced, and modulated.  The focus is maintained on the two lead characters, Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) and her adopted sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins).  Jasmine recalls Blanch in A Streetcar Named Desire, an extremely vulnerable woman whose comfortable affluent life is disintegrating and taking her down with it.

But the film goes beyond being a psychological study of one woman, however representative of her time and class she may be.  This film makes a statement about the vacuousness and bankruptcy of the American money culture, which has come to dominate our increasingly beleaguered middle classes, who anxiously strive for success and status as defined by the accumulation of wealth and its accoutrements.  Jasmine’s husband, Hal, (Alec Baldwin) serves as an allusion to Bernie Madoff and the rapaciousness of the Wall Street bankers and executives that brought about the recent financial malaise that is still afflicting much of the country.  His crimes and dishonesty destroyed not only himself and his wife, Jasmine, but also took away the hopes and dreams and opportunities of numerous of lower class people with whom he came in contact, such as, Ginger and Augie (Andrew Dice Clay).  This illustrates the impact that the crimes of the banks and finance world have had on everyday working people across America: dimming their prospects and creating difficulties and obstacles and burdens on their lives that will weigh them down for many years.

The central theme of the film is the arduousness of the descent that many Americans are now experiencing in their lifestyle, standard of living, and sense of well being: the emotional toll this is taking on individuals, personal relationships, and families.  A wide swath of the American population knows that life used to be better in America — much better — not only as a statistical abstraction, but in their own particular circumstances.  And there is a connection between that general degradation in the quality of life in America and the unfettered pursuit of wealth without bound by this class of voracious, unscrupulous hustlers in the finance world who effect a superficial garb of legitimacy.

The film does offer a ray of hope in the straightforward honesty and simple workaday lifestyle of Ginger and Chili (Bobby Cannavale).  Although they are both flawed people, their flaws turn out not to be fatal to their human bonds and their psychological balance.  There is a vibrance and vitality in their sharing of simple pleasures and daily concerns that leaves one with a feeling that they might be able to go on and create a workable life together.  But they are clearly vulnerable and the stability and the hopes that they share today could easily be derailed by the intrusion of the collapsing lives of those in the upper tiers of society represented by Jasmine.  The film is a dismal tragedy, but there are many comic aspects to it that provide a lighthearted feel that allays the overall grimness and prevents it from becoming dreary or oppressive to watch.  It ends on a note of ambiguity in a minor key.   Go see it.  It is a classic portrayal of key trends in contemporary American life.

Hannah Arendt

Directed by Margarethe von Trotta

 

 

This is my kind of film.  It is a film about ideas, about the big picture, about the ambiguities and contradictions in human nature, about broad philosophical implications of ordinary events.  If you have never had a serious thought in your life, if you like to go to the movies to be entertained, to escape from your humdrum existence, to have your fundamental preconceptions, your basic world view and moral outlook on life confirmed and validated by some contrived story line and stereotypic, one-dimensional characters, then don’t go see this.  It’s not for you.  The friend I went with was yawning.

In contrast to the previous film I reviewed about Wilhelm Reich, this film, also a dramatization, is much better conceived and much better executed.  It is altogether a superior effort.  The character of Hannah Arendt is effectively and convincingly created by Barbara Sukowa.   I also liked Julia Jentsch, who played Lotte.   The nature of her relationship to Hannah Arendt wasn’t exactly clear.  She was not a relative.  She served as a kind of secretary and all purpose assistant, but the relationship seemed to have a marked personal quality as well.

Although the film effectively draws the character of Hannah Arendt and summarizes many of the major aspects of her life, the central concern of this film is her coverage of the trial of Adolf Eichmann in the early 1960s for the New Yorker magazine, and the aftermath of its publication.  Eichmann had been a top level S.S. officer in the Third Reich, who was responsible for the transport of millions of Jews to death camps.  He had been renditioned by the Israeli Secret Service from Argentina and brought back to Israel to face trial for war crimes.  Hannah Arendt, a Jew who was briefly held in a Nazi detention camp in France before escaping with her family to New York, volunteered to cover the Eichmann trial for the New Yorker, and the New Yorker accepted her offer.

She did more than cover the trial.  Hannah Arendt was a trained philosopher who studied with Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.  She had published several major philosophical works before covering the Eichmann trial including The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and The Human Condition (1958).  She brought her philosophical acumen and formidable erudition to bear on her reporting of this trial.  It was entirely fitting and appropriate.  We have to congratulate the New Yorker for choosing her to report on this trial.  No one could have covered it like she did, and no one could have raised the issues implied in this trial with such clarity and force and intellectual depth as she brought to them.  The outcome was six long articles that appeared in the New Yorker in 1963 followed by a book, Eichmann in Jerusalem:  A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), which is still in print.

I read the opening article from the February 16, 1963 issue of the New Yorker.  From the outset, Arendt not only reports on the trial vis-a-vis Eichmann, but she analyzes the trial and sets it in its political and historical context, which she has the knowledge and capability to do.  Her understanding of Jewish history and culture and the contemporary political context is especially rich.  It would be hard to imagine someone doing a comparable job in terms of quality and depth of understanding.  She seems uniquely qualified for this assignment and the New Yorker  did itself and the world a great favor by choosing her for this task and providing her with a venue to put her singular perspective before the public.

Arendt saw the trial as not being about Eichmann and what he did during the Third Reich, as much as it was about a political agenda of Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.

this case was built on what the Jews had suffered, not on what Eichmann had done. (New Yorker, Feb. 16, 1963, p. 41)

It was history that, as far as the prosecution was concerned, stood at the center of the trial.  “It is not an individual that is in the dock at this historic trial, and not the Nazi regime alone,” Ben-Gurion said, “but anti-Semitism throughout history.” (New Yorker, February 16, 1963, p. 54)

The logic of the Eichmann trial, as Ben Gurion conceived of it — a trial stressing general issues, to the detriment of legal niceties — would have demanded exposure of the complicity of all German bureaus and authorities in the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish question; of all civil servants in the state ministries; of the regular armed forces, with their General Staff; of the judiciary; and of the business world.  . . . the prosecution . . . carefully avoided touching on this highly explosive matter — upon the almost ubiquitous complicity, stretching far beyond the ranks of Party membership. (New Yorker, February 16, 1963, p. 52)

So from the outset Arendt sees the trial as going far beyond Eichmann.  And indeed, as the trial goes on Eichmann’s significance diminishes in relation to this broad  historical drama.

Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a ‘monster,’ but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown.  (New Yorker, February 16, 1963, p. 113)

Half a dozen psychiatrists examined Eichmann and found that “his whole psychological outlook, including his relationship with his wife and children, his mother and father, his brothers and sisters and friends, was “not only normal but most desirable.” (New Yorker, February 16, 1963, p. 67)

Eichmann, the Nazi S.S. officer who presided over the transport of millions of people to their deaths, was a perfectly good guy.

He went to considerable lengths to prove that he had never harbored any ill feelings toward his victims, and, what is more, had never made any secret of that fact. (New Yorker, February 16, 1963, p. 76)

Arendt goes on to explain that he had a Jewish mistress during his service in the S.S., a rarity among S.S. officers.

His enlistment in the S.S. was not motivated by ideological fervor or even political conviction.  He said, “it was like being swallowed up by the Party against all expectations and without previous decision.  It happened so quickly and suddenly.”  He had no time and less desire to be properly informed; and he did not even know the Party program, and he had not read (as he never did read) Mein Kampf.  Kaltenbrenner had said to him, Why not join the S.S.? and he had replied, Why not?  That was how it happened, and that was about all there was to it. (New Yorker, Feb. 16, 1963, p. 80)

What disturbed people about Arendt’s take on the Eichmann case is that Arendt saw that the face of Evil is not a monster, not demonic, not a raging lunatic, but a mediocre bureaucrat, an ordinary man, with a wife and a healthy family, who would never have done what he did had he not been caught up in large historical currents which he did not create and had very little personal interest in.  Somehow it didn’t sit well with people that such an inconsequential person could be responsible for the deaths of millions of people, whom he did not hate, and actually did not seem to have any strong feelings about.  He was just doing his job to the best of his ability and trying to survive and get by.  He understood what he was doing, to be sure.  He didn’t pretend to be ignorant of what was going on.  But he said he would have shot his own father if the Führer had ordered him to do so.  For Eichmann the overarching value in his life and his outlook was to follow the program, to do what he was told, and to execute his assigned tasks faithfully and effectively.  And that is exactly what he did.  He was the quintessential bureaucrat.

Arendt argued that making Eichmann the public face of the Holocaust was a historical and cultural cop out.  It was an evasion.  It is not that Eichmann was not responsible and should not be held accountable.  Arendt agreed with his sentence and was glad to see him hanged, but she also saw that Eichmann was being given too much credit.  He was being made into a false symbol: a personification of something that was much bigger and deeper than any one person could represent or be responsible for.  I think her assessment of the trial and of Eichmann is absolutely correct.  The film does a very good job of presenting the philosophical issues as well as the personalities involved.  It is an excellent achievement, although heavy to watch.

What interested me about this film and about the Eichmann case was its relevance to contemporary events in the United States.  If you think about the contrast between Adolf Eichmann and Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning, you notice something significant.  Snowden and Manning are both rather inconsequential individuals, of unimpressive backgrounds and credentials, very much like Eichmann, who found themselves cogs in a huge bureaucratic machine that they realized was monstrous.  But what distinguishes them from Eichmann is that they were not content to just continue in their jobs, carrying out their assigned tasks, oblivious to the dire consequences that they knew would ensue from their work.  They threw a monkey wrench into the machine, at great cost to themselves, rather than let the Beast continue on its ruinous rampage.

In 1934 Eichmann applied for work in the Security Service of the S.S (the S.D.).  The S.D. had been founded by Himmler to serve as an intelligence service to the Nazi party.

Its initial task had been to spy on party members — an activity giving the S.S. an ascendancy over the regular party apparatus.  Then it had taken on some additional duties, becoming the information and research center for the Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police, or Gestapo).  This was the first step toward the merger of the S.S. and the police, which was not carried out until September of 1939 . . . (New Yorker, February 16, 1963, p. 86)

A similar evolution is in progress in the United States, where the intelligence services are being inexorably merged with state and local police departments.  It is an important point to emphasize that in a totalitarian state the intelligence services, protected by the utmost secrecy, and charged with spying on citizens — and indeed, everyone — ultimately become merged with policing functions, so that what results is one monolithic oppressive force within society, intimidating and brutalizing with impunity anyone deemed a threat or subversive.  Edward Snowden has exposed the mountains of data being gathered by our own intelligence services on every American citizen, and indeed, nearly every citizen throughout the world.  The security services claim that they need all this information about who we talk to and associate with in order to protect us — and many people among the citizenry buy this line, or are at least indifferent to it.  But it is only a matter of time before those massive amounts of data will be turned with a most heavy hand and without the possibility of challenge or recourse against the people who now comfort themselves with the thought that this is all benign and innocent.

Eichmann . . . seems to have known nothing even of the nature of the S.D. when he entered it — which was not really strange, since operations of the S.D. were always top secret.  According to what he told Captain Less, he joined the S.D. under a misapprehension . . . (New Yorker, February 16, 1963, p. 86)

Edward Snowden, and many others like him, had no idea of the nature of the work he would be doing for the NSA.  But, unlike Eichmann, he became increasingly shocked and appalled at the nature of the work he was expected to carry out.  In response to Snowden’s revelations, the NSA has vowed to tighten their selection process so that only the Adolf Eichmann’s of the world can work for the intelligence services.

The totalitarian state needs the Adolf Eichmanns of the world.  It despises the Bradley Mannings and Edward Snowdens.  Every conceivable vilification and depredation is being heaped upon them.  At all costs they must be discredited and punished mercilessly.  A totalitarian state, or a state that has pretentions of becoming one, like the United States, cannot allow people like Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning to become heroes.

But it is important to point out:  the difference between Adolf Eichmann, and Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, is one of values.  Eichmann valued only following orders and being a good soldier, whereas Snowden and Manning had a vision for society that went beyond themselves.  They were capable of evaluating what they were doing and passing judgment on their own professional conduct, because their vision of themselves and their relation to society went beyond simply doing their jobs, understood as carrying out their assigned tasks as they came down from on high.   They actually cared about how people would live in the kind of society being fashioned by the work they were charged with carrying out.  Eichmann did not.  He had no vision of society beyond himself and his immediate circle.  It is very important to understand where these values held by Snowden and Manning come from, and how they become instilled in children.  It is important because it is the best hope of preserving America as a society where individual freedoms and basic civil rights for average citizens are protected and institutionalized in both law and culture, just as it is important for totalitarian states that want to crush such people and snuff out those values in order to enslave everyone.  The Edward Snowdens and Bradley Mannings of the world are an obstacle to totalitarianism.  Eichmann, the quintessential bureaucrat, is the totalitarian hero and ideal.

The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think; that is to think from the standpoint of somebody else.  No communication with him was possible, not because he lied, but because he was surrounded with the most reliable of all safeguards against the words of others, or even the presence of others, and hence against reality as such.  (New Yorker, February 16, 1963, p. 106)

This film and its theme, the banality of evil, is highly relevant to our own time as   America moves increasingly toward a totalitarian police state.  This can be seen in the erosion and often complete disregard of the Constitution and its protections of citizens rights against the prerogatives of government.  The current President, who is supposedly an expert on the Constitution, has shown more disrespect for the Constitution than any President in recent times.  The indifference of average citizens in allowing this to happen, the narcissism of simply focusing on one’s own job, one’s own living, one’s own problems, one’s own success and promotion, without regard to one’s connection to the whole; the failure to perceive that the quality of life within the whole society matters to one’s fate as an individual; this lack of perception, this narcissism of unrelatedness is the greatest danger to America as a free society.  The biggest threat to the United States is not terrorists blowing up buildings.  This is what the Security State wants people to believe, and this phantom is promoted relentlessly in the media that constant threats of this type are afoot.   But actually, it is the indifference of average citizens to the ever growing presence of the Security State and the erosion of basic liberties for others as well as oneself that is the much more profound threat.  There is an obliviousness that allows one to think that the government can trample the rights of others, disregard the Constitution, violate civil rights, even commit heinous crimes against people portrayed as “enemies of the State,” and somehow that will never come home to me.  What affects others does not affect me.  That’s their problem, not mine.  This attitude on the part of the average citizen is the most ominous threat to America as a free society.  It is the Eichmannization of the citizenry that is our most profound enemy.

Eighty million Germans had been shielded against reality and factuality by the same self-deception, lies, and stupidity that had now become ingrained in Eichmann’s nature.  These lies changed from year to year, and they frequently contradicted each other; moreover, they were not necessarily the same for the various branches of the Party hierarchy or the people at large.  But the practice of self-deception had become so widespread — almost a moral prerequisite for survival — that even now, eighteen years after the collapse of the Nazi regime, when most of the specific content of its lies has been forgotten, it is sometimes difficult not to believe that mendacity has become an integral part of the German national character.  (New Yorker, February 16, 1963, p. 111)

This could describe current conditions in the political and cultural climate of the United States.  There are so many lies being promoted by the government and the “information” media to the public with such a heavy handed insistence, being repeated so often and with such uncritical aplomb that they have almost become clichés.  People who point out the lies, the contradictions, the inconsistencies, the delusions, and question their sources are labeled ‘crackpots,’ or ‘conspiracy theorists.’

How many lies have the American people been told and accepted as fact going back many years to Vietnam, Iran-Contra, Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, climate change, among many other issues?  We seem to eagerly embrace hysteria and sensationalism, particularly when it provides opportunities to vent boundless spite and venom upon some demonized enemy.  Israel was probably hoping for such an opportunity in the trial of Adolf Eichmann, but it did not work out so well, because Eichmann turned out not to be a demon with fangs and horns, but a rather mediocre, almost innocuous, person.  Had he been in a different position with different responsibilities, no one would ever have heard of him.  It was almost bad luck, rather than malice, that resulted in his presiding over the extermination of millions of Jews.

Living in America you know that most of the population is deluded about many issues of vital public importance.  And yet, they are content to remain in that condition of numb indifference focusing mostly on themselves and their immediate circle, and when they do cast their eyes beyond that short field of vision, they see only bewildering, amorphous threats, and thus defer to the authorities to take care of it.

David Rousset (French inmate of Buchenwald) They [the S.S.] know that the system which succeeds in destroying its victim before he mounts the scaffold . . . is incomparably the best for keeping a whole people in slavery.  (quoted on p. 42, New Yorker, February 16, 1963)

This is understood by the United States government, and particularly by the Security Services.  This is why it is so important to destroy the Edward Snowdens and the Bradley Mannings, and to prevent such people from coming into existence.  Controlling the available information, controlling access to resources and information, controlling the attention and preoccupations of the public, while at the same time keeping one’s own actions secret and invisible, is key to maintaining and growing the Security State.  This is why it is necessary to keep track of everyone’s conversations, who talks to who, and what people look at and read on the internet.  It is the preliminary step to controlling and limiting who one can talk to and what information one may see and be exposed to.

The trial of Adolf Eichmann and the penetrating analysis of it by Hannah Arendt illustrates the perverse extremes to which a Security State can go, and those extremes are made possible and realized by the inconsequential, unthinking, unreflecting bureaucrat, obsessed with his own personal security and indifference to the consequences of his own actions beyond the fulfillment of his given duty.  Adolf Eichmann lives today, and is, in fact, very much in demand by the intelligence services of the United States government.  The Israelis were right to hang him.  But they thought they were hanging Anti-Semitism.  That would have been the simple, scripted outcome that the Israeli government was hoping for.  In actuality, Eichmann wasn’t even an Anti-Semite.  Instead, the trial revealed a much more profound truth: that the excesses and atrocities of totalitarian states are not fundamentally a manifestation of collective hatred, but rather a reflection of collective numbing of sensibility that brings on collective complicity and collective willful blindness.  The greatest Evil is turns out not to be a crazed terrorist throwing bombs and spitting venom.  The greatest Evil is a mundane, banal, average bureaucrat, going about his job, doing what he is told, even when he knows he is participating in madness.

This film, directed by Margarethe von Trotta is an excellent introduction to these issues and the personality and life of Hannah Arendt.  It directly bears on some of the most pressing trends in the political culture of the United States, and is illustrative of the human foundations of every totalitarian state.  I highly recommend it.

The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich

Directed by Antonin Svoboda

 

There are many things about Wilhelm Reich that never made sense to me.  I was hoping this film would clarify some of them, but it did not.  In fact, seeing this fictional depiction of him made me even more puzzled.  I have read many of Reich’s psychoanalytic writings and always judged him to be the smartest and best of the younger generation of psychoanalysts that succeeded Freud.  Reich understood the social implications of psychoanalysis and he understood the limitations of therapy focused individuals and the particular symptoms they present.  He saw the “neurotic” symptom as a manifestation of a structural problem that has to be understood in the context of one’s general character.  The symptom never occurs in isolation, but always in the context of one’s personality and familial constellation.  Similarly, the problems of individuals, although always specific and unique to particular circumstances, occur at the same time within a wider social context that provides the soil and the nurturing for similar kinds of difficulties that arise in the lives of many individuals living under those same cultural circumstances.  It is therefore necessary to understand and to address mental illness not only on the level of the individual, but also as a manifestation of cultural and social malaise.  This was one source of friction between Reich and the political and institutional establishment.

But there were others.  I am not as familiar with his later work on what he called “orgone energy.”  I was hoping  that the film would shed some light on this since this was what led to his wrangling with the U.S. government, the FDA, the American Psychiatric Association, and the Justice Department.  However, this film is not an in depth presentation of ideas.  It is a dramatization, not a documentary.   There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but the outcome differs considerably from my expectations and hopes. 

If we take the film on its own terms, and evaluate how well it accomplishes the tasks it sets for itself, I would only give this a grudging C minus.  It is nice to see someone lifting Wilhelm Reich once again into public view, but what you get here is a kindly, benign, grandfatherly figure who seems harmlessly eccentric, yet for some reason is relentlessly and severely pursued by the FBI and the FDA — quite unjustly as it appears.  But it doesn’t make sense.  If Reich were crazy, if his ideas were loony, if he were simply on some bizarre, fruitless quest destined to go nowhere, why would the FBI and the FDA spend so much time and energy trying to thwart him, stop him, silence him, and eventually put him in jail?  Reich was a much more rough edged person that what is portrayed in this film.  Reich was combative, driven, stubborn, nonconforming, egotistical, and paranoid (perhaps with good reason).  And his ideas were subversive.  However, one does not get that from this film.  I would like to see a little more clearly who was out to get him and why. 

Reich had considerable difficulty in his personal life.  The film shows some hints of ambivalence in his relationship with his daughter, Eva, but we don’t get any insight into this, no deep exploration that might reveal character or psychic conflict.  There is nothing about his background in Vienna, nothing about growing up, his parents, his first wife, Freud makes only a cameo appearance, and we do not see his influence on Reich nor the reasons they parted ways.  It is very shallow biographically.  It is hard to understand the point of this film.  Are they just trying to portray Reich as the hapless victim of a mindless vendetta by the U.S. government?    Is that all there was to it?  The film is completely vacuous on this score. 

The film brings up Reich’s disappointing relationship with Albert Einstein, but it leaves open whether Einstein himself considered Reich to be a quack or if Einstein’s aides blocked Reich’s access to Einstein and prevented their collaboration.  This is another point where, in my view, the dramatization does not offer enough substance to do the issue justice.   A more straightforward, documentary approach would have been more satisfying, here, and in many other issues raised by the film.  

To get started on understanding Reich, you have to understand his ideas on psychoanalysis and particularly his differences with Freud and the intellectual debt he owed to Freud.  In Reich Speaks of Freud, Kurt Eissler conducted a lengthy interview with Reich about Freud and related topics that is fascinating for its illumination of the personal relationship between Reich and Freud and the intellectual differences that led to their parting.  You can get a much better feel for who Reich was as a person and the direction of his ideas from this volume than you can from this film.  But this lengthy interview leaves much unexplored and unexplained, and that was where I was hoping the film would pick up and expand.  But, alas, it did not.  The film creates an impression of Reich that differs markedly from the Reich we see in this 1952 interview.  The Reich in the film is a tame version, a soft soap version of the Reich in the interview.  It is clearly a fictionalization and one that tends to obscure and distort rather than enhance ones understanding of the subject.  I came away very disappointed in this film.  There is a lot more I would like to know about Wilhelm Reich.  I hope someday someone will put together a film that will treat him with the depth and insight that he deserves. 

Seen at the Jewish Film Festival, Castro Theater, San Francisco, July 30, 2013.  

 

 

Higgins, Mary; and Raphael, Chester M.;  Eds. (1967)  Reich Speaks of Freud.  New York:  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Celebrating its “four-and-twentieth” season, Marin Shakespeare Company has reached even farther into theatrical history and come up with a pre-Shakespearean hit, Thomas Kyd’s “The Spanish Tragedy.”
Kyd’s play was packing playhouses by the time Shakespeare arrived in London, and “Spanish Tragedy” was revived over and over, even after The Bard began producing his own work. He certainly would have seen it at least once, and dramatic evidence suggests he borrowed from it here and there.
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” for instance, is rooted in the young prince’s vow to avenge his father’s death, a vow inspired by the father’s angry ghost. In “The “Spanish Tragedy,” it is the father who’s bent on getting revenge for his murdered son. Revenge is a character that lingers onstage in company with the ghost of another murder victim. (Revenge looks and sounds not at all as you might expect.)
The ghost’s former love — now a bereaved young woman — could almost stand in for Ophelia, and “Tragedy’s” smarmy, sneaky young nobleman could double for Iago, the villain in “Othello.” To top off the resemblances, Kyd even scripted a play-within-a-play as payback for the guilty parties, and as in Shakespearean plays to follow, the bodies begin to pile up.
Director Leslie Schisgall Currier has revived this gory old favorite, set it in a multi-level castle and cut it down to a manageable two hours and forty minutes’ playing time. The action begins with a tolling bell and a long funeral march of white-masked mourners. The deceased follows the march, describing the foul deeds that have made him a ghost. Ghost stays visible throughout the play, accompanied by Revenge.
The Duke of Castille, the King’s brother, describes the battle and shows off its most famous prisoner, Balthazar, Prince of Portugal. Horatio has helped apprehend him, though the Duke’s son, Lorenzo, claims that he was the real nabber. Lorenzo’s sister, Bellimperia, captures Balthazar’s attention, and in no time, speculations begin that a marriage between the two would cement peace between their nations. The young lady, however, had been the sweetheart of Don Andrea, now the Ghost pacing the battlements. She is not available, though her servant vows that the lady’s affections have recently turned to Horatio. This information enrages Balthazar; Horatio’s too much in his way.
But despite all the royalty represented onstage, the most complex character in “The Spanish Tragedy” is the judge, Hieronimo. When he finds his beloved son murdered, Hieronomo’s reaction is similar to King Lear’s over the corpse of his daughter, Cordelia. Justice now equals revenge.
In this large, outdoor performance space, trained voices enhance the show. Julian Lopez-Morillas is superb as Hieronomo, commanding the stage with a big voice and big emotions. Scott Coopwood, as the Duke of Castille has a similar presence, as does Jack Powell as the Viceroy of Portugal. Both Elena Wright in the role of Bellimperia and Jessica Powell as Hieronimo’s wife, Isabella, have roles with heavy vocal demands. Erik Johnson plays the ill-fated Horatio, and in three widely varying roles, Steve Price, who grew up on the Peninsula, portrays a Portuguese nobleman, a petitioner and a hangman. In a last-minute substitution on opening night, Liam Hughes took over the role of Balthazar. Twenty-five additional cast members round out this generously-sized production.
“The Spanish Tragedy” will play at the Forest Meadows Amphitheatre on the Dominican University campus until August 11 and in repertory with “A Comedy of Errors” after July 27. Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening performances are at 8 PM, with Sunday matinees at 4 PM. For tickets, directions and more information, call 499-4488.
As with all outdoor performances, dress for the weather and bring extra layers as the theatre gets cooler after dark. Picnics are welcome.

Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle

Josh Kornbluth is best described as the Woody Allen of the West.

Presently Josh is performing at the Ashby Stage a.k.a. the Shotgun Players.

Most of his previous work consisted of monologues delivered below street level (The Hungry Id (sic) in San Francisco and La Val’s Subterranean in Berkeley).

Now, merely twenty years into the business, Josh no longer descends below the sidewalk to get to the stage to perform in the case of SEA OF REEDS.

The fulcrum of SEA OF REEDS is his dilatory Bar Mitzvah at the sagely post-adolescent age of 52, four times the Hebrew National average for such ceremonies.

Josh explains, that as the son of communist parents, he spent his early years being a non-Jewish Jew and it wasn’t until he became a father that he became a humanist Jew believing that the collective imagination of man was actually God.

Assuming Josh is correct, God’s primary residence in Silicon Valley.

As prescribed by tradition, Josh is directed by his presiding rabbi to read a passage from the biblical prophets called the Haftorah.

Because Josh’s ceremony is in July, his reading assignment is from the Book of Numbers, Chapter 25 to be exact.

While most of Israel is hot during July, Josh holds his Bar Mitzvah in the Negev where one can bake matzo on the sidewalk.

In the passage Josh reads, the peripatetic Nation of Israel is temporarily abiding in Shittim; no scatological overtones intended.

Shittim was crawling with Moabite Shiksas and soon some wayward Israelites were dating—to use a PG-13 euphemism—the locals i.e. the Daughters of Moab.

As usual, one thing inevitably leads to the next; it’s a slippery slope: first it’s sidelong glances, then holding hands and in no time, these randy exogamous Israelites were kowtowing to the Pagan Goddess Baal Peor.

Baal Peor, is most politely translated, is the Cleft Deity; some theologians attribute modern pole dancing to her.

This Pagan Fertility Goddess demands rigorous obeisance and specific forms of surrender from her acolytes and votaries; none of which are PG-13 in priggish societies.

As reported in Numbers 25, Baal Peor revelry eventually spills into public view.

Zimri, the son of Salu, and his Midianitish consort Cozbi, the daughter of Zur make a public spectacle of themselves.

Phinehas, Zealous the Grandson of Aaron, is appalled by their exhibitionism.

Phinehas takes a javelin in hand and skewers both Zimri and Cozbi—the woman symbolically through her belly.

Thanks to Phinehas’ moral vigilantism it was believed that a plague was stayed from the children of Israel thereby saving thousands of lives: A seemingly happy ending.

Josh thinks he is expected to reconcile himself to this bit of tabloid zealotry.

Instead, his response is an elegant exhortation for tolerance and it is possibly the core message of the play.

If you go to the play, you owe it to yourself to stopping texting at this point and listen carefully to his Bar Mitzvah address.

One bay area critic has mistaken Josh’s earnestness and sincerity for didacticism—which is apparently a misdemeanor in theater.

The play is filling with amusing boyhood reminiscences of being raised peripherally Jewish without becoming Jewish.

It is filled with intelligent humor without falling back on the usual shticks like sex or politics.

Rather than going solo, this time Josh has Amy Resnick (who starred in Haiku Tunnel with him) to prod him along.

Amy is part director and part surrogate Jewish mother.

A quartet provides musical support as Josh plays the reeds of his oboe.

The play, while not elitist, is sophisticated humor; it prioritizes artistic success well ahead of popular success.

David Dower directs this delightfully entertaining piece.

For tickets call 510-841-6500 or go to shotgunplayer.org.

 

Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle

Josh Kornbluth is best described as the Woody Allen of the West.

Presently Josh is performing at the Ashby Stage a.k.a. the Shotgun Players.

Most of his previous work consisted of monologues delivered below street level (The Hungry Id (sic) in San Francisco and La Val’s Subterranean in Berkeley).

Now, merely twenty years into the business, Josh no longer descends below the sidewalk to get to the stage to perform in the case of SEA OF REEDS.

The fulcrum of SEA OF REEDS is his dilatory Bar Mitzvah at the sagely post-adolescent age of 52, four times the Hebrew National average for such ceremonies.

Josh explains, that as the son of communist parents, he spent his early years being a non-Jewish Jew and it wasn’t until he became a father that he became a humanist Jew believing that the collective imagination of man was actually God.

Assuming Josh is correct, God’s primary residence in Silicon Valley.

As prescribed by tradition, Josh is directed by his presiding rabbi to read a passage from the biblical prophets called the Haftorah.

Because Josh’s ceremony is in July, his reading assignment is from the Book of Numbers, Chapter 25 to be exact.

While most of Israel is hot during July, Josh holds his Bar Mitzvah in the Negev where one can bake matzo on the sidewalk.

In the passage Josh reads, the peripatetic Nation of Israel is temporarily abiding in Shittim; no scatological overtones intended.

Shittim was crawling with Moabite Shiksas and soon some wayward Israelites were dating—to use a PG-13 euphemism—the locals i.e. the Daughters of Moab.

As usual, one thing inevitably leads to the next; it’s a slippery slope: first it’s sidelong glances, then holding hands and in no time, these randy exogamous Israelites were kowtowing to the Pagan Goddess Baal Peor.

Baal Peor, is most politely translated, is the Cleft Deity; some theologians attribute modern pole dancing to her.

This Pagan Fertility Goddess demands rigorous obeisance and specific forms of surrender from her acolytes and votaries; none of which are PG-13 in priggish or civil societies.

As describe in Numbers 25, Baal Peor revelry eventually spills into public view.

Zimri, the son of Salu, and his Midianitish consort Cozbi, the daughter of Zur make a public spectacle of themselves.

Phinehas, Zealous the Grandson of Aaron, is appalled by their exhibitionism.

Phinehas takes a javelin in hand and skewers both Zimri and Cozbi—the woman symbolically through her belly.

Thanks to Phinehas’ moral vigilantism it was believed that a plague was stayed from the children of Israel thereby saving thousands of lives: A seemingly happy ending.

Josh thinks he is expected to reconcile himself to this bit of tabloid zealotry.

Instead, his response is an elegant exhortation for tolerance and it is possibly the core message of the play.

If you go to the play, you owe it to yourself to stopping texting at this point and listen carefully to his Bar Mitzvah address.

One bay area critic has mistaken Josh’s earnestness and sincerity for didacticism—which is apparently a misdemeanor in theater.

The play is filling with amusing boyhood reminiscences of being raised peripherally Jewish without becoming Jewish.

It is filled with intelligent humor without falling back on the usual shticks like sex or politics.

Rather than going solo, this time Josh has Amy Resnick (who starred in Haiku Tunnel with him) to prod him along.

Amy is part director and part surrogate Jewish mother.

A quartet provides musical support as Josh plays the reeds of his oboe.

The play, while not elitist, is sophisticated humor; it prioritizes artistic success well ahead of popular success.

David Dower directs this delightfully entertaining piece.

For tickets call 510-841-6500 or go to shotgunplayer.org.

 

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT, LIKE IT OR NOT

Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.
― Sophia Loren

First, it was horsemeat.  We thought we were eating succulent bits of beef but to our horror, we discovered we were shoving Dobbin into our lasagna.  Worse, we have been devouring him topped with cheese, tomato and soupçon of lettuce in our burgers.  We were horrified.  Tesco, a major seller of deceptive equine products ran full page ads apologizing for misleading their customers, insisting they had no idea that they were mislabeling their products.

The rest of the world scoffs at English fastidiousness. “So what?” they say in at least 358 different languages.   The French adore horsemeat…in fact they hint that is why they are so romantic in bed, in contrast to the British who apologize before they even mange to get started.  The Irish add a wine sauce to anything and once tasted don’t give a damn.

But horsemeat in our dinners is not the worst of it.  Oh, no.

Now that we have managed to come to terms with the brutal fact that the glorious winner of Epsom Downs faces a future in our goulash, we have another gastronomic hurdle to cross.  Sixty percent of the tuna we buy to fill our children’s lunch boxes and add flavor to our casseroles is not tuna at all.  It is escolar, an oily fish that causes diarrhea.  That is why so many of us have that irresistible urge to relieve ourselves after indulging in those cute canapés topped with a pimento.  And you thought it was the conversation.

The fact is that most restaurants serve escolar and tell us it is albacore tuna. No wonder we cannot figure out why that delicious Salad Niçoise sent us to the loo within moments of savoring it flavor. It wasn’t that drink you had to wash it down.  It was tacky escolar putting on airs.

Everyone knows that we are what we eat.  It is now apparent that when we feed our children stew, they could easily be neighing for their supper in a matter of weeks.  What is far more frightening, that tuna fish sandwich that every child cannot resist could very well send him swimming in the Atlantic never to return.  It has already happened in my family.

My Aunt Gert swears that the reason her daughter Penny became an Olympic swimmer was that she ate nothing but tuna fish for SEVEN years.  She stopped eating it that unforgettable day when she cramped up just as she was approaching the finish line in Rome in 1960.  She blamed her loss on nerves, but we know better.  It wasn’t the pasta either.

My mother’s staple casserole was tuna fish mixed with cream of mushroom soup topped with crumbled crisps. She served it at every party.  We never understood why everyone who ate it got the “flu” the next day.  We thought it was Ohio weather.

The moral of this shocking tale is that if you want to win the big fight, eat a bull and if you think you are gay, eat fruit.

WHISTLE POWER

Whistle and dance the shimmy
You will find your audience.
Anonymous

Robert Smith has been arrested several times for whistling on the streets of Portland Oregon. Residents said he was disturbing their peace.  The court listened to shop owners, pedestrians and outraged mothers’ complaints and last February, decided that Smith was free to whistle as long as he didn’t stand still.  Now, Robert Smith walks throughout downtown Portland, whistling a penetrating, tuneless melody so loud you can hear him blocks away.   “I get more self-worth out of whistling. I do it every day — weather permitting,” he said. “I’m not out here to be the best whistler in the world. I’m just trying to make people smile.”

I think that is a lovely attitude, one that all of us should think about adopting.  Whistling is a delightful way to spread joy, catch someone’s attention and call the dog.  My sister could whistle before she could say a sentence.  She, like Robert Smith, used to love to whistle while she walked.  The difference is that my sister was a fat, adorable three year old who toddled happily in the neighborhood; Smith is a grown man; a construction worker, who should have better things to do with his time.

However, the end results for both of them are the same.  When neighbors saw my sister wandering through Birkhead Place, they would call my mother and say, ”Ida, your kid ran away again.”

That served to alert my mother and give my sister the attention she wanted. She too had no intentions of being the best whistler in Toledo, Ohio.  She wanted her mother.  My sister’s whistling often took her out of our gated community and into the main thoroughfare.

One summer day, in 1944, my sister wandered out of the house whistling and attracted a mangy dog who fell madly in love with her unique melody.  The dog followed her down the street, past manicured lawns and budding maple trees, across busy intersections and crowded parking lots until at last, a policeman noticed the tiny, dimpled whistler followed by a large, flea infested hound.

He stopped my sister and said, as kind policemen did in the days before they carried guns and a chip on their shoulder, ”Darling where are you going?”

My sister, who had not mastered speech as well as she had her tuneful art, said, ”Dog!” and she smiled at the policeman expecting him to tell her she was a brilliant child because she said a complete word.  At this very moment, my mother dashed into the street her apron strings flying behind her yelling, ”Marsha Dee!!! STOP!!!”

The policeman stopped.  Pedestrians stopped   My sister kept walking and whistling her way past the drugstore toward the bakery.  She pointed to the dog.  “We hunnry.” she announced.

The policeman went into the bakery, bought a bag of cookies: He gave one to my sister and one to the dog.  “Say thank you,” my mother said to my sister.  The dog barked, my mother popped a tranquilizer and the policeman continued his beat.

The moral of this story is: There was a time when a whistle got you a cookie, but now-a-days, all you get is a citation.”

 

 

 

BETRAYAL

Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle

Harold Pinter’s BETRAYAL is presently being performed by the Off Broadway West Theatre Company.

At the onset, this complex play appears to be aiming at a precise definition of a seemingly simple word like betrayal; in the end it seems to have diffused the word into a vaporous hollow abstraction.

Jerry betrays his best friend and publishing associate, Robert, by snaking Robert’s wife Emma.

For five years Jerry and Emma conduct assignations in a cozy love flat not far from where they work … imagine eating a late afternoon lunch, with wine, perhaps a little dessert and then going home to their respective families … duplicitous almost to the point of schizoid.

When Robert married Emma, Jerry served as his best man.

Not long after the bouquet had withered and the garter had faded on the rear view mirror, Jerry ambushes Emma in her upstairs bathroom; he professes his adoration and adulterous love for her and plants the first kiss and the first brick in the road to infidelity.

After the affair begins to feel like a second year Birkenstock, the publishing business calls Jerry to New York leaving Emma alone with Robert.

In Jerry’s absence, Emma compromises her romantic integrity and makes love with her own husband; naturally she finds herself pregnant and has to explain to her returning Lothario that it’s okay; she was essentially faithful to him, after all, it was her own husband.

As C.S. Lewis once said, “Once you let go of reality, the possibilities are endless.”

Once the subterfuges, circumlocutions and prevarications get started, the three vertices of the love triangle are no longer communicating, they are collaborating on a script.

Jerry, as played to the Klieg lintels by Brian O’Connor, is an absolute rascal, a regular Paolo Malatesta; seducing with literary pretentions and pulp fiction in hand; you wouldn’t trust Jerry at a petting zoo let alone with your wife; what was Robert thinking?

Emma is an enigma: an attractive woman with options whose healthy sense of entitlement assures her that good wine, good food and frequent trips to Italy are just not sufficient.

Director Richard Harder perhaps does his best work with Emma, who is finely played by Sylvia Kratins.

Kratins’ Emma never sits still; her restless spirit keeps her head on a swivel, her eyes spinning like a rotifer and limbs in constant motion trying to get comfortable in the here in now while her mind is occupied elsewhere; is she Lady Macbeth or Madame Bovary?

Lighting is another creative strength of the show; low intensity illumination provides the audience with a keyhole feel: an intimate sense that we are eavesdropping on conversations; much in vogue these days given the liberties the NSA has taking with our liberties.

Keith Burkland as Robert is the axel about which the play revolves on.

Burkland’s Robert is opaque: a mystery shrouded in a reservation.

Is Robert mistakenly trusting Jerry and Emma or is he disinterested to the extent that he is willing to time share little Miss Francesca di Rimini?

Burkland is both an artist and a craftsman; polishing and burnishing his character until you can almost feel the tweed; acting is not what he does, it is who he is.

BETRAYAL is the best of Pinter and Richard Harder elevates it a step higher.

If you enjoy intimate theater where acting is an art, you don’t want to miss BETRAYAL at the Phoenix at Mason and Geary.

Call 1-800-838-3006 or www.offbroadwaywest.org.

The Haunted Valley

Short Story by Ambrose Bierce, Commentary

 

 

“The Haunted Valley” was Ambrose Bierce’s first published story.  It appeared in 1871 in the Overland Magazine.  It deals with gender ambiguity, same sex relationships, racial bigotry, and murder in the American West.  The story is divided into two parts.  In the first part, the narrator is traveling through a remote area, presumably in California, although it doesn’t say so specifically, where he encounters Jo. Dunfer, a rancher whose most salient personal qualities seem to be his bigotry against Chinese people and his penchant for whiskey.  Dunfer launches into a narrative about taking on a Chinese man, Ah Wee, as a cook and servant five years previous.  Ah Wee and a man named Gopher assist Dunfer in felling trees for a cabin he had wished to build on a remote part of the ranch.  Ah Wee is incompetent at felling trees and Jo Dunfer admits to killing him for this and other faults.  The narrative is disrupted at this point by a dramatic scream and Jo. Dunfer’s collapse.  Jo. Dunfer’s assistant [Gopher, although he is not named at this point] enters and the narrator briefly encounters him.  This incident is not explained in any great detail and the narrator leaves it in this ambiguous state.  He departs Jo. Dunfer’s residence in a disturbed state of mind and on his journey chances to come upon the grave of Ah Wee with this curious inscription.

AH WEE — CHINAMAN

Age unknown.  Worked for Jo. Dunfer.

This monument is erected by him to keep the Chink’s

memory green.  Likewise as a warning to Celestials

not to take on airs.  Devil take ’em!

She Was a Good Egg.

The choice of pronouns is an operative point.

The second part of the narrative takes place four years later when the protagonist returns to the same area.  This time he encounters Gopher, the other (white) assistant to Jo. Dunfer.  The narrator inquires about Jo. Dunfer and is informed that he is dead and in the grave beside Ah Wee.  Gopher accompanies the narrator to the grave and tells him that indeed Jo. Dunfer had killed Ah Wee, but not out of frustration with his abilities as a house servant, but out of jealousy over Ah Wee’s relationship with himself, Gopher.  One day Jo. Dunfer had caught Gopher and Ah Wee together and killed Ah Wee with an ax in a jealous rampage.  Dunfer buried Ah Wee in the grave and created the curious memorial marker.

Now comes the crucial turn on the very last page of the story which I will quote.

“When did Jo die?” I asked rather absently.  The answer took my breath:

“Pretty soon after I looked at him through that knot-hole, w’en you had put something in his w’isky, you derned Borgia!”  [referring to the narrator’s previous visit, four years prior]

Recovering somewhat from my surprise at this astounding charge, I was half-minded to throttle the audacious accuser, but was restrained by a sudden conviction that came to me in the light of a revelation.  I fixed a grave look upon him and asked, as calmly as I could:  “And when did you go luny?”

“Nine years ago!” he shrieked, throwing out his clenched hands — “nine years ago, w’en that big brute killed the woman who loved him better than she did me! — me who had followed ‘er from San Francisco, where ‘e won ‘er at draw poker! — me who had watched over ‘er for years w’en the scoundrel she belonged to was ashamed to acknowledge ‘er and treat ‘er white — me who for her sake kept ‘is cussed secret till it ate ‘im up! — me who w’en you poisoned the beast fulfilled ‘is last request to lay ‘im alongside ‘er and give ‘im a stone to the head of ‘im!  And I’ve never since seen ‘er grave till now, for I didn’t want to meet ‘im here.” (Bierce, p. 126)

I found three different commentaries on this story and I believe all three misunderstand it.  Bierce is admittedly not striving for clarity, but the story is clear if one is attuned to the possibilities of cross-gender identifications and same sex relationships.

Peter Boag (2012) in his study of cross-dressing in the American West states that “Ah’s sex is never entirely clear; feminine and masculine pronouns interchange readily right up to the story’s conclusion. . . Thus Ah Wee may have been a Chinese woman dressed as a man, or a (typically) feminized Chinese man” (p. 192)

William Wu (1982) read the story as Ah Wee being a girl whom Dunfer had won in a poker game.  Wu notes that the reader is misled through the whole story to think that Ah Wee is a man, but fails account for this misleading or to perceive the significance of the pronoun changes in the story.  Wu is focused on the racism in the story and thus misses the sexual implications that are really the crux of it, resulting in a misunderstanding of the murder and the sex triangle.  (Wu, 1982, p. 22)

Hellen Lee-Keller (2006) also tries to normalize the story in the same way as Wu.

As the tombstone indicated, Ah Wee was not, in fact, a he, but rather a she, and Dunfer killed Ah Wee in a fit of jealous rage thinking that Ah Wee and Gopher were involved in a sexual relationship.  Ultimately, Dunfer, who had fallen in love with Ah Wee over the years, fell into despair when he realized what he had done, started drinking heavily again, and grew even more anti-Chinese.

Lee-Keller follows Wu in seeing Ah Wee as female all the way through, but she doesn’t address Dunfer’s referring to Ah Wee as ‘he’ throughout, and seems to call into question that there was a sexual relationship between Gopher and Ah Wee.  In other words, she suggests that Dunfer killed Ah Wee out of misunderstanding and self-delusion.

The straightforward assumption that Ah Wee’s is a girl, won in a poker game, and subsequently killed in a sex triangle, does not make sense of the text, the shifting pronouns, and particularly the contrast between Dunfer’s and Gopher’s constructions of Ah Wee.  If you follow the shifting pronouns, there is a logic to their modulations.  They do not “interchange readily right up to the story’s conclusion,” as Boag reports.  Ah Wee is portrayed as a man by Jo. Dunfer through the whole story up until the very end of his narrative, with the exception of the curious epitaph on the tombstone.  Dunfer always referred to Ah Wee as ‘he.’  If Ah Wee were a girl, won in a poker game, why would there be any need for Jo. Dunfer to disguise her as a man, or for Ah Wee to adopt the identity of a man?  If that were the case, then it would mean that Jo. Dunfer imposed the male identity upon her out of his own psychological need for a male sexual partner.  But if that were true, why would he even take a girl home to his ranch, if what he really wanted was a boy all along?  The idea that Ah Wee was a girl straight up is untenable.  It fails to make sense of Jo. Dunfer’s referring to Ah Wee as ‘he’ throughout, and Gopher’s pronoun shift when he begins to talk about his own relationship with Ah Wee.  If you think Ah Wee was “really a she” as Lee-Keller thinks, then you have to explain why the whole story leads you to assume Ah Wee is male.   I don’t see any way to do that.  The story will simply not make sense if Ah Wee were really a female all the way through from the outset.

Alternatively, if Ah Wee were a female-to-male cross dresser, as one possibility suggested by Boag, it would mean she was presenting as a male throughout the story.  A full grown adult male would make an unlikely prize in a poker game and this raises a question mark over the whole tale about Ah Wee being a prize in a poker game.   This is Gopher’s version probably concocted to mask the fact that Ah Wee left him for Jo. Dunfer.   The poker game story is Gopher’s attempt at face saving.  Ah Wee was very likely Gopher’s lover before leaving him for Jo. Dunfer and moving to his ranch in rural California.  But was he/she male or female?

If she were a cross-dressed female-to-male, a la Alan Hart (see Boag, pp. 9-14), then you would have a female who gender identified as male becoming involved in “homosexual” relationships with two different males.  A rather convoluted  maneuver for a female to make.  This is not a realistic scenario.  I was not able to find any instance of a female who gender identified as male, who then went on to form sexual relationships with other men in her cross gender identity.  Somebody out there come forward if you have a counterexample.  There is no plausible interpretation of this story where Ah Wee is a natural female.

Gopher says that “the scoundrel she belonged to refused to acknowledge her and treat her white.”  This refusal to acknowledge her I think refers to Jo. Dunfer’s denoting Ah Wee as ‘he,’ that is, refusing to acknowledge his/her full identification as a female.  In other words, Jo. Dunfer insisted on Ah Wee’s biological gender as the proper identifier rather than accepting her psychological identification as a female.  This seemed improper and disrespectful to Gopher, and he attributed it to Dunfer’s shame and denial of his own relationship with Ah Wee, and consistent with his further maltreatment of her.  Gopher referred to Ah Wee as ‘she,’ when he was relating his own relationship to her, fully acknowledging Ah Wee’s psychological make-up.  This makes sense of the pronoun changes in the story and is consistent with the details in the narration.

The most likely scenario is that Ah Wee was a male-to-female cross-dresser, probably fully gender identified as female in the mode of Mrs. Nash recounted in Boag’s Re-dressing, Chapter 4.

Mrs. Nash was a Mexican male-to-female cross-dresser who successfully passed herself off as a woman among the U.S. Seventh Calvary in the 1870s and 80s for at least a ten year period during which she was married to three different soldiers in the Seventh.  Although it was widely known that she had a beard and shaved every day, she dressed and lived as a female, winning high praise as well as financial rewards for her skills in laundering, sewing, cooking, delivering babies, caring for infants, and witchcraft.  When she died of appendicitis it was discovered that “she had balls as big as a bull’s.  She’s a man!” (Boag, pp. 130-137)  The story became a national sensation.

I believe Ah Wee was a comparable figure to Mrs. Nash, a biological male who dressed and psychologically identified as a female.   Both Gopher and Dunfer knew Ah Wee’s “real” gender.  However, Jo. Dunfer did not recognize Ah Wee’s cross-gender identification, referring to him/her always as ‘he,’ whereas Gopher, loving Ah Wee in her cross-dressed identity, referred to her as ‘she,’ when he began talking about his own feelings for her.

The story told by Gopher of Ah Wee’s having been won in a poker game and his following her to Dunfer’s ranch suggests that the original attachment was between Ah Wee and Gopher.  Gopher was involved with Ah Wee as a cross-dresssed male-to-female.  Jo. Dunfer came between them by some means or other.   The poker winnings story seems unlikely to me.  If Gopher loved Ah Wee with the dedication that he seems to evince, why would he wager her in a poker game?  More likely is that Ah Wee fled with Dunfer to get away from Gopher.  But Gopher was a persistent, hopelessly attached lover who pursued Ah Wee to Dunfer’s ranch, got himself hired as a ranch hand by Dunfer, and continued his relationship with Ah Wee whenever possible.

Dunfer caught Ah Wee and Gopher together and killed Ah Wee in a jealous rampage.  Gopher suggests that the encounter in which they were caught was actually innocent in that he was reaching into Ah Wee’s clothing to remove a spider.  But this again sounds very self-serving on Gopher’s part.  Dunfer had almost certainly known of Gopher and Ah Wee’s prior relationship and very likely had an inkling that they were continuing on the sly behind his back.  The violent jealous rampage was probably the breaking of a dam of accumulated suspicion and resentment.  Dunfer confessed to killing Ah Wee before the authorities, recounting the version he had given the narrator and the case was judged a justifiable homicide.  He then erected the grave that Bierce describes with the curious epitaph, where he acknowledges, finally, her true (psychological) identity as a female.

In response to the narrator’s question about the time of Dunfer’s death, Gopher levels the accusation that he, the narrator, had been the one to poison Dunfer.  The “revelation” that comes over the narrator at that moment is that Gopher is making a confession.  Indeed it was Gopher who had killed Jo. Dunfer and buried him beside Ah Wee.  How does he know this?  Both he and Gopher know that he, the narrator, did not poison Dunfer.  So why would Gopher make such an accusation?  The accusation that the narrator had been the one to poison Dunfer is Gopher’s thin — or rather outrageous — cover story, and it brings up the suggestion that Jo. Dunfer did not die of natural causes.  Why would Gopher make such an accusation if he knew Jo. Dunfer had died a natural death?  In fact he knew perfectly well that Jo Dunfer did not die a natural death.  The narrator grasped all of this in an instant hearkening back to the moment in Jo. Dunfer’s house when he

saw that the knot-hole in the wall had indeed become a human eye — a full, black eye, that glared into my own with an entire lack of expression more awful than the most devilish glitter.  I think I must have covered my face with my hands to shut out the horrible illusion, if such it was, and Jo.’s little white man-of-all-work [Gopher] coming into the room broke the spell, and I walked out of the house with a sort of dazed fear that delirium tremens might be infectious.  (Bierce, p. 120)

The narrator’s visit to Dunfer’s ranch gave Gopher the opportunity he had probably been seeking for some time.  Gopher could claim that the narrator had poisoned Dunfer and thus cover his tracks as the murderer.  Gopher had plenty of motivation.  Gopher had loved Ah Wee, but Ah Wee preferred Dunfer to him — at least that is the way it seemed to Gopher.  Dunfer had taken Ah Wee away from Gopher — allegedly in a poker game, but most likely by other means. I think it probable that Ah Wee left with Dunfer willingly to escape Gopher’s clinging attachment.  Dunfer treated Ah Wee badly, according to Gopher — this is plausible — and eventually killed her in a jealous fit for continuing her relationship with Gopher.  It was Gopher who buried Dunfer beside Ah Wee.  It all fits.  Ah Wee is consistent with the type of male-to-female cross-dresser described earlier in the case of Mrs. Nash and the Seventh U.S. Calvary.  Jo. Dunfer’s referring to Ah Wee as male but then changing the pronoun on the tombstone:  “She was a Good Egg”  indicates that he had no illusions that Ah Wee had a dual gender identity.

I think Bierce understood what he was doing, and realized some people would be confused by the story.  He probably wanted it that way.  I suspect the story is based somehow on real events and that it is not simply a product of Bierce’s fantasy.  It was his first published story, and I think it is significant that he would choose this topic as the subject of his first public effort.

The story was written around 1870, shortly after the Civil War.  The frontier was still very much an unsettled place of adventure and opportunity.  It was rapidly changing, however, as were prevailing attitudes toward the many variants of sexual expression.  America was becoming more anxious even as it grew stronger, men were becoming less confident in themselves and in their place in the emerging industrial society, and people were becoming conscious and questioning of the sexual behavior of individuals.  These strains and anxieties are reflected in the intense racism in the story.  However, the racial bigotry, which is quite blatant, does not extend to the cross-dresser.  The cross-dresser is a curious anomaly, but is not yet pathologized per se.  Sexual and gender deviance are being associated with race, and it would not be long before the reflexive racial bigotry that was taken for granted and widely accepted would be extended to sexual minorities of every sort.  This story represents a transition stage between a time when sexuality was less of a public preoccupation to one where it became central to one’s position and acceptability in society.

The three published commentaries on this story that I was able to locate gloss over or miss the full import of the pronoun changes which are the heart of this sordid story of sex and murder.  The tendency is to normalize the story, to heterosexualize it first of all, and to completely ignore, or fail to perceive, the cross-gender identification that is central to the whole drama.  But Ah Wee’s male-to-female cross-gender identification is the only way to make full sense of the text.  If you pay attention to it, the text is clear.  It might have been clearer to Bierce’s audience in the late nineteenth century than it is to us.  Cross-dressing and cross-gender identifications were much less obtrusive and much more amenable to integration in society than they are today, as Boag’s excellent examination of the subject points out.  The bigotry against the male-to-female cross-dresser, was not as pervasive or even as widespread in the nineteenth century as it is today.  Racial bigotry was certainly intense and taken for granted.  This story illustrates how the country had not yet solidified what would later become rigid stereotypes and expectations for masculinity and male sexual behavior, but present day commentators tend to project back onto the story our own present-day biases and preconceptions which were still forming at the time the story was composed and were far from the fully entrenched cultural norms they later became.  This historical blindness not only simplifies the story and robs it of its psychological complexity, it also neutralizes the lessons it has to teach us in how our own culture has evolved in its notions of masculinity and proper male sexual behavior.

 

 

Notes

 

 

Bierce, Ambrose (1984)  The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce.  Edited by Ernest Hopkins.  Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.

Boag, Peter (2011) Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London:  University of California Press.

Lee-Keller, Hellen (2006)  Ambrose Bierce Project Journal, Vol 2, No. 1.  http://www.ambrosebierce.org/journal2lee-keller.html

Wu, William F. (1982)  The Yellow Peril:  Chinese Americans in American Fiction 1850-1940.  Hamden, CT:  Archon Books.