REELigion
Last week I had the good fortune to join a panel discussion on Bertolt Brecht’s very strange drama, The Good Person of Szechuan. The folks in the theater department at my college are producing the play this fall, and they invited faculty from various disciplines to comment, and though I had never read this work, I was pleased to be invited.
Turns out, this is a remarkable piece of literature. In brief, for those of you who might not be up on your Brecht: the play is set in the imagined city of Szechuan (Brecht was entranced with Chinese culture and philosophy but knew nothing of its reality on the ground) and tells the story of Shen Teh, a prostitute. Three gods come to visit looking for one good person in Szechuan, and everyone turns them away—except for Sheh Teh, of course, who puts them up for the night. They reward her by telling her to continue to be good and rewarding her with cash, so maybe she can get out of her current profession.
But this reward turns out to be a curse. Shen Teh buys a little tobacco shop, but she’s just too darn nice to run a business: people cheat her and flop on her floor and hide heroin in the store; she is quickly in danger of losing the business. Then she meets a fellow who desperately wants to be a pilot. She is overcome with sympathy, falls in love, and promises to give him money to go to Peking and fulfill his dreams. He of course takes advantage of her, loving her in even worse shape than before.
In the midst of all this, Shen Teh realizes, to her credit, perhaps, that she’s not really cut out for business, so she does something quite remarkable: she creates an alter-ego, a tough cousin named Shui Ta, who is…a man. No one seems to notice that it’s really her when he shows up, suddenly, and lowers the boom: Shui Ta kicks people out of the shop, deals shrewdly with creditors, and eventually transforms the business into a big success. Of course, the Shui Ta persona kind of takes over…and people start wondering about where his cousin is. They suspect foul play. In the meantime, Shen Teh/Shui Ta is actually pregnant by the ne’er do well flyboy, who himself sinks into an opium-induced haze. Luckily the business is going well, and Shui Ta seems to be reaping the rewards; otherwise the appearance of a big belly might be a little…suspicious.
Long story short, Shui Ta is brought up on charges of kidnapping Shen Teh, and in a remarkable unmasking, he/she comes clean to the gods, who basically wish Shen Teh well and disappear. She asks them whether she can keep Shui Ta around, and they say, “Sure, but only once a month.” Sometimes we need the Shui Ta part of our personality when dealing with a tough world and its concomitant interpersonal battles.
Thinking about this play brought to mind that classic cinematic archetype: the hooker with the heart of gold. I was immediately brought back to Jamie Lee Curtis in Trading Places and Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas, and there are too many others to mention (well, maybe two more: the beautiful stripper in The Hangover, speaking of Vegas, and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, which I have never bothered to watch—but I bet I could tell you the plot, nonetheless). We should come back to a real classic, though, to really get at this connection: Never on Sunday with Melina Mercouri (from 1960).
What a brilliant film. Nerdy New York intellectual, Homer Thrace, goes to Greece, having studied it in the abstract for years, and he’s looking to encounter the Platonic ideal in person. He runs into the beautiful Ilya, who is much beloved by all (much beloved, and often…she’s a prostitute). She just wants to enjoy her life and does so, with gusto. But Homer decides that he must transform her into a beautiful, cultured woman. So he executes his plan: he pays her expenses, she gives up her profession, they read ancient Greek philosophy and literature together, and it looks like she will in fact be reformed by the power of the intellect and civilization. What a success story.
Only problem: Homer has actually run low on cash, so the local pimp, who could never buy off Ilya himself, has bankrolled the latter-day Pygmalion and thus provides the material conditions for his project. Ilya finds out, and the arrangement is over: she kicks Homer out and goes back to her amorous ways, much to the satisfaction of everyone else, including her Italian paramour, who, it is suggested, just might win her, not by trying to change her, but just by hanging in there and loving her.
There are many damning criticisms to be made of this kind of character: when it comes to Shen Teh and Ilya, both seem to be made into “heart-of-gold” stereotypes by living a long life of exploitation at the hands of men. To escape this exploitation—and the ramifications of her overly extensive compassion—Shen Teh must become a man. The gods seem to play a big role in this bizarre transformation: they encourage her extreme altruism and remain fairly indifferent when everything goes awry. This is not a surprising critique of religion in the hands of someone like Brecht.
In Never On Sunday, Ilya is also convinced to trade in her identity, but unlike Shen Teh, she eventually realizes that the whole thing—the whole philosophizing, civilizing process—has been a sham. Instead of the great, transcendent values of religion and the philosophers, she opts for the immanence and immediacy of pleasure. And is she so wrong, this hooker with the heart of gold? Homer Thrace himself finally gives in: he wanted to sleep with her from the first moment he laid eyes on her, he finally admits, the civilizing enterprise has all been sublimation–but he is too late, and the moment is gone. But at least there is still ouzo to be had!
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