{"id":7276,"date":"2013-04-22T13:45:02","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T17:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=7276"},"modified":"2013-04-22T13:45:02","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T17:45:02","slug":"youre-gonna-have-to-serve-somebody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2013\/04\/youre-gonna-have-to-serve-somebody.html","title":{"rendered":"“You’re Gonna Have to Serve Somebody”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In yesterday\u2019s post, I talked about the unenviable invulnerability of indifference<\/a>, and, it so happened that the play I saw this weekend (Tom Stoppard\u2019s\u00a0Rock and Roll<\/a><\/em> at the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley<\/a>) touched on similar themes. \u00a0The play is structured around (among other things) resistance to Soviet-dominated Communism in Czechoslovakia. \u00a0At one point in the play, Jan gets into an argument with his friend Ferdinand (recently released from prison) about who represents a larger threat to the government: Ferdinand and his band of intellectual dissidents or the banned band Plastic People of the Universe<\/a> and their manager Ivan Jirous<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jan:<\/strong> Why do you think you\u2019re walking around and Jirous is in gaol?<\/p>\n

Ferdinand:<\/strong> Because he insulted a secret policeman.<\/p>\n

Jan:<\/strong> No, because the policeman insulted him<\/em>. About his hair. Jirous doesn\u2019t cut his hair. It makes the policeman angry, so he starts something and it ends with Jirous in gaol. But what is the policeman angry about? What difference does long hair make?<\/p>\n

The policeman is angry about his fear. The policeman\u2019s fear is what makes him angry. He\u2019s frightened by indifference. Jirous doesn\u2019t care<\/em>. He doesn\u2019t care enough even to cut his hair. The policeman isn\u2019t frightened by dissidents<\/em>! Why should he be? Policemen love<\/em> dissidents, like the Inquisition loved heretics. Heretics give meaning to the defenders of the faith. Nobody cares more than a heretic.<\/p>\n

Your friend Havel cares so much he writes a long letter to Husak. It makes no odds whether it\u2019s a love letter or a protest letter. It means they\u2019re playing on the same board. So Husak can relax, he\u2019s made the rules, it\u2019s his game. The population plays the other way by agreeing to be bribed by places at university, or an easy ride at work\u2026 they care enough to keep their thoughts to themselves, their haircuts give nothing away.<\/p>\n

But the Plastics don\u2019t care at all. They\u2019re unbribable. They\u2019re coming from somewhere else, from where the Muses come from. They\u2019re not heretics. They\u2019re pagans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I didn\u2019t love the show, and I think part of the reason is that I could never quite figure out\u00a0what<\/em> kind of paganism Jan and his heroes aspired to. \u00a0The show told me, at length, what they\u00a0didn\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0care about and couldn\u2019t be compelled by, but I remained unconvinced that they really\u00a0worshiped\u00a0or loved anything. \u00a0(About Jan\u2019s romantic subplot, in my opinion, the less said the better). I had too much sympathy for my age with the stodgy character who declared, \u201cI was\u00a0embarrassed\u00a0by the sixties. It was like opening the wrong door in a highly specialized brothel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The anti-war, civil rights, and social justice movements were turned outwards, in the service of others. \u00a0 But the tune-in, drop-out culture to which Jan and other characters in the play felt sympathies for found freedom by turning inward and writing off more of the world as irrelevant. \u00a0The more disconnected the characters were from the outside world (whether because of drugs or deadening cynicism) the less vulnerable they were, \u00a0But I felt more frustration and pity for them than the aging Communist Max, who kept loving his idol and trying to serve it, even as it kept breaking his heart.<\/p>\n

The Plastic People of the Universe may be pagans (Jan is an\u00a0aspiring<\/em> pagan), but, in the cozy Cambridge scenes, one of the Classics students translates Plutarch to warn us, \u201cThe great god Pan is dead.\u201d \u00a0 Plutarch goes on to tell us that a great lamentation went up at this news, but I\u2019m not confident Jan has something specific enough to miss or mourn.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As usual when writing about a play that touches history, I\u2019m mostly limiting myself to the representations of real people in the play, as I know nothing about Real!Jirous. \u00a0Also, fellow Patheos blogger Eve Tushnet saw and loved a production of this play in DC, if you\u2019d like her review for contrast<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In yesterday\u2019s post, I talked about the unenviable invulnerability of indifference, and, it so happened that the play I saw this weekend (Tom Stoppard\u2019s\u00a0Rock and Roll at the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley) touched on similar themes. \u00a0The play is structured around (among other things) resistance to Soviet-dominated Communism in Czechoslovakia. \u00a0At one point in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":7279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[51,39],"class_list":["post-7276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-epistemologyphilosophy","tag-at-the-theatre","tag-freedom-means-choosing-a-master"],"yoast_head":"\n"You're Gonna Have to Serve Somebody"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In yesterday's post, I talked about the unenviable invulnerability of indifference, 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