into the real!

“The fiesta is a revolution in the most literal sense of the word. In the confusion that it generates, society is dissolved… Everything merges, loses shape and individuality and returns to the primordial mass” (51).

Our daily lives are incredibly structured. Everyone has a schedule, meetings, and customary gracious courtesies attached to the culture of their society.

Paz claims that fiestas shove people out of their controlled lives and plunges them into a chaotic world, where time is transformed, and people can just live.

Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan had a theory about psychic structures: that most of our lives we live within a structured, “symbolic order,” where everything has a name and a contained meaning. But sometimes, we are thrown into the realm of “The Real.” A world of pure emotion, senses, desire, etc. A world that resists symbolism; it’s just real experience. And in being thrown into such an ineffable state of being allows us to reorder our ordered world—so it is important that we do so.

This idea of acknowledging ourselves in the realm of the real isn’t new. In ancient Greek mythology, the god Dionysus represents irrationality and “liminal abandon,” or the lifting of inhibitions; in other words, “the real.”

The ancient Greeks thought this was as necessary as Paz and Lacan did. In the play “The Bacchae” by Euripides, the king of Thebes (Pentheus) prohibits worship of the god Dionysus. Pentheus is subsequently murdered by his mother. In the eyes of the Greeks, Pentheus’ death was actually justified, because he represents the rejection of all irrationality. But man needs to acknowledge the illogical side of himself. By prohibiting worship of Dionysus, Pentheus is symbolically banning the whole city from that escape into the Real. He is barring his people from experiencing the kind of world that Paz is talking about in the fiesta: the chaotic world of “thwarted impulses… (that) we hide within ourselves in our daily lives” (Paz, 53).

There is something necessary about the ability to just be, to live in a world with no structure, because it momentarily allows us to be free. When you scream, or you cry, or you kiss, or you mourn, or party (with either Paz or Dionysus), you deal with that aspect of your humanity that you otherwise cannot in our culture of control.

Art and Community

An orchestra is a community …that comes together with the fundamental objective of agreeing with itself…therefore the person who plays in an orchestra begins to experience agreement… the practice of the group that recognizes itself as interdependent, where everyone is responsible for others and the others are responsible for oneself. (Documentary Tocar y Luchar, around minute11:17)

In Venezuela, a new movement has emerged: a huge cultural push toward music education for the children. Thirty years after the initiative first began, there is now a community of musicians, and a community that wildly supports their children becoming musicians. This mastery and focus has lifted many communities in Venezuela. These people have come together and through art created true beauty, a sense of accomplishment and worth, significance and contribution in a group of people that might not have otherwise felt.

I am studying music, theater and the humanities, and I truly believe that collaborative arts can bring people together in a way that nothing else can. Think of your study groups; competitive math doesn’t lead to deep emotional bonds. A mere education of dates and formulas cannot link people together in such an emotional state as can art.

Romeo to my Juliet. Picture published in the Daily Universe

This is not as drastic a story as the documentary, but the same idea holds. Last year, in a college English class, we were allowed to choose our final projects. I produced a mini-Shakespeare play. My cast of 6 and I didn’t know each other's names, we were all completely different majors, and had nothing in common besides the fact that we were stuck in this GE. But through the process of brainstorming, writing, blocking, and acting, they became my best friends that semester. It was an interesting phenomenon. I took more pride in the rest of my schoolwork, because I was so proud of our little show.

That was a small example. I’ve probably been in over 100 shows in my lifetime (including concerts, musicals, etc), and every time it’s the same effect. I can see the blessings of teamwork, and trust. You rely on your fellow artists, and they rely on you.

A community should be based on the kinds of ideals that collaborative art generates: teamwork, responsibility, and trust. And through art, many times a community like that arises.

Masks and Humanity

“It was grotesque, this mask! But a humane social order is not always achieved without the grotesque, and sometimes not without the cruel… But let us not concern ourselves with masks.” Machado de Assis, Father versus Mother, 89

(this does not fit Machado's description exactly,
but it gives you an idea of the cruelty)

After taking a large paragraph to describe these masks chained onto runaway slaves, Machado de Assis casually says, "let us not concern ourselves with masks."

I think that is exactly what he would like us to concern ourselves with.

The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas had the idea that if we truly saw the infinite aspects of that person—then we would not have the capacity to willingly do them harm. But when we put a finite label on them, take away the face-to-face, put on masks, their humanity disappears, and we can justify hurting them.

This reminded me of the way propaganda historically has shown the enemy in war as monsters. Look at the way World War II had a continuous propaganda stream objectifying the Japanese people, turning them into daemons.  

 

In Machado de Assis’ story, Candinho catches runaway slaves for a profession, if you can call it that. How do we catch, bind, or beat another human?

How do you allow young men to attack a generation of Japanese?

We must make them inhuman with a mask.

Even though these slaves in the story are not always wearing the physical metal mask Machado de Assis describes, they have a label, the mask of “runaway slave.”  For Candinho, when the slave plead for the safety of her unborn child, he saw her only as “money.” When we went to kill thousands of Japanese, they were simply, “Japs”

The Japanese were fighting parallel to us. They had allies, land, and a way of life to defend. We didn’t sympathize, we labeled them, in order to have our young boys kill them.

With such a parallel to Candinho’s own situation—the potential loss of a child looming ahead— there should be a large case for sympathy on his part. But because the woman is no longer human in his eyes, “He did not give a hang about the miscarriage.”

Is it an unavoidable aspect of human nature to label? Is there a way we can look at our enemy with true humanity? Could they still be our enemies if we do?

Utter Defeat

Juan Manuel Blanes "Paraguay: Image of Your Desolate Country"  c. 1880

This painting is in reference to a war in Paraguay fought between 1864-1870, called the War of Triple Alliance. This war was a struggle for physical power over boundary lines; and occurred in the midst of a nationalist movement, when the South American Spanish and Portuguese colonies were attempting to gain their own identities. It was proportionally the most destructive war in modern history; more than 60% of the Paraguayan population was wiped out. This painting shows the desolation of a fallen people after battle.

In the background, as you face the painting to the right, there is a dead man in the distance hanging on the ledge. His arms draped unromantically sideways and above his head. This figure looks very similar to an iconic image in the musical “Les Miserables”: The picture of the leader of the revolution, Enjolras, after he is killed, and his body is upside-down, arms stretched out above his head, splayed across the very barricade he gave his life to defend. The story of Enjolras in Les Mis is similar to the Paraguayan fight. The small Parisian insurrection that took place in 1832, where there were street riots and resistance for a couple of days, ended up being destructive and essentially useless. They accomplished next to nothing, except devastation.

In both images there is also a pseudo crucifix representation. But with the important alteration of being upside-down. The fact that this martyr figure -- this revolutionary -- fighting for beliefs, is lying dead, with his head toward the ground.  His head isn’t even upright, facing the heavens; there is a total lack of hope for redemption or resurrection

Both images of dead men upside-down on the ground he was defending, are so powerful. I think it is repeated because of the feeling it imposes on an audience: complete and utter defeat. There is a kind of sensation of absolute despair. Revolutionary men fighting for identity, country, and self -- and losing, with no hope at all.