Voodoo Trickster

I think I have mentioned before, but I'm in a course called TransAtlantic Voodoo this semester. A trickster spirit has been mentioned before but in the book we're reading now, the description is just perfect:

"The divine trickster, ruler of the crossroads, controlled access to the spirit world and served as messenger between human beings and the other deities; he also governed chance and could be persuaded to alter a person's fate"

From the Book Spiritual Merchants: religion, magic, and commerce" by Carolyn Morrow Long

I just thought the connection with a more modern culture/religion was interesting and thought I would share.

J. C. Abbot, Literary Sleuth

It was a dark and stormy night. I was working late at the office. Knock knock. Apparently someone was knocking at my door.

"Who's there?" I didn't look up. I was working, like I already said.

"Help!"

"Help, who?" Then I thought better of that. "I mean, help whom?"

It was seven women. Students, they said. They had a problem, they said, and they needed a detective.

"You're students. You have a problem. You need a detective."

They were astounded at my extraordinary powers of deduction. They hired me on the spot.

"So, you said something about a problem?"

Petronius was their problem. Seems this guy wrote a book. Satiricon, Sityrica, whatever.

"So what's it about? This, er, Sit. . . Sat . . . book?

Nailed it. THAT was their problem. They wanted to know what the book was about.

"Hard to say." I was stalling. Maybe it would come to me. Maybe I could take a peek at the cover and, you know, make a judgment. Or maybe not. 

A week later, they came back. By then I had read the book.

I opened the file. Then I opened my mouth. "Death," I said. I shut the file. I stood up to show them to the door . . .

They didn't budge. They were tough, these seven students. They wouldn't take death for an answer. Explain, they said. I opened the file again.

"Does this guy Trimalchio have a clock and a bugler in his dining room, and does this bugler blow his horn every hour to remind him that time is passing?

Yes, they said.

"And does this same guy order a silver skeleton to be brought into the dining room and arranged in various poses?"

What choice did they have? Yes again.

"And does one of the freedmen guests say he's just come from a funeral? And does the wizened Sibyl in a bottle say that she just wants to die? And does Trimalchio say he has silver bowls with Cassandra's dead children depicted on them? And is Trimalchio's witch story about a man whose insides are stolen by witches? And does the late-arriving guest Habinnas say he's just come from a funeral, too? And does Trimalchio read his will aloud? And does he make his guests pretend like he's dead? And do they all conduct a mock funeral?"

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. They were very agreeable, these students.

"Plus, I'm leaving out other morbid stuff. So there's your answer: the book's about death."

But why? they asked. Agreeable . . . and curious, too, it seemed. A powerful combination.

"Look," I said. They looked. "Look, you paid me to tell you what the book's about. I gave you an answer. The answer, I mean. Plus, I threw in this nifty picture of a skeleton from Pompeii, gratis. Now you want to know why? How about you tell me."

They looked at each other. Evidently they were thinking. About what? And then one of them piped up and said, "Well . . . ." 

To be continued in person

Heard this one?

A Jungian, a structuralist, a feminist, a post-structuralist, a Bakhtinian, and a reception theorist walk into a bar. The bartender is Wakdjunkaga.

"What'll it be?" asks Trickster.

"A shadow figure?" asks the Jungian.

"A culture hero?" asks the structuralist.

"A challenger of orthodoxy and agent of cultural transformation?" asks the feminist.

"A metaplayer, dissolving order in the depth of open-ended play?" asks the post-structuralist.

"A situation-inverter, mocking but not changing the order of things?" asks the Bakhtinian.

"I'm not sure," says the reception theorist. "What do you think?"

It's Kind of a Funny Story

Jim, if only I could read your mind
And learn the torture that's tormenting you,
I'd gladly spare two men a lot of bother:
I wouldn't need to ask, or you to answer.
Now, since that's impossible, necessity
Compels me to question you. Answer me this:
Why have you been acting half-alive
These last few days, t---

Plautus, enough, enough. You forget that I've read your Pseudolus.

A hero's act enshrined in fame,
That will perpetuate my name.

Just stop it. You flatter yourself. The truth is that I do feel a bit depressed.

 Oh, dear!

I've been neglecting our blog.

 Oh, dear!

And when I do post something, sometimes it's like dropping a stone into a bottomless well. It never seems to hit bottom. 

 Oh, dear!

Finally, I feel as though my students and I did not do right by you. There was so much more to say about Pseudolus. 

OH, DEAR!!!

Do you really think that helps? I suppose I could do something to help myself -- maybe a blog post on your play?

It's stupid to entrust a plan
To a weak or wishy-washy man;
For all endeavors must depend
On how much effort you expend.

Ouch, that hurts. But okay, I accept the challenge. What shall I write about?

 "Phoenicium to her darling Calidorus . . ."

Yes, I see where you're headed. That letter from Rosie to her lover boy. I do find that bit interesting, for several reasons. Why did you write the play this way? Calidorus could simply have told Pseudolus about his predicament. Strictly speaking, there is no need for a letter. 

When the time is ripe, I'll let you know.
I don't want to repeat myself:
That's how blog posts become too long.

(deep sigh, accompanied by eye rolling) And then there's the other letter, the one from the Macedonian soldier to Ballio. Strictly speaking, that one is not necessary either. All that's required is for Harpax to present the ring, the one that made the wax impression the soldier left with Ballio, along with the rest of the purchase price. 

Yea, yea, forsooth.

So what's up with these letters? Why include them in the play?

Go ahead and ask.
Treat my knowledge as your Delphic oracle.

I'm struck by what Phoenicium writes at the end of her letter: "Everything I know I've tried to tell you clearly: / Now I'll put you to the test. One question, merely: / Are you in love or just pretending." Pretending? OF COURSE Calidorus is pretending: he's an actor on the stage, for goodness sake, playing a role!

So help me Pollux, I do declare
I've gone on a simply spectacular tear!

I mean, at some point this all becomes a bit ridiculous. Here's an actor playing a Latin-speaking Greek slave in a comedy set in Athens but staged in Rome before a largely illiterate audience, purporting to read aloud a barely legible letter written by a courtesan who speaks in verses replete with rhyming, alliterative, whacky language, e.g. teneris labellis molles morsiunculae, / papillarum horridularum oppressiunculae. And she is supposed to be asking Calidorus if this is all just pretense?

But look at the poet; when he starts to write,
He seeks what doesn't exist, and then he finds it;
He makes invented fiction look like truth.

Yea, I remember that part from the play. Anyway, I guess what I'm suggesting is that by introducing the letter, you bring to the audience's attention the idea of a sign. In simple terms, a sign is something that stands for something: I've used the example "red means stop, green means go" in an earlier blog to illustrate this. So here, in this play, Pseudolus draws attention to the function of letters and words as signs. He does this in various ways, but nowhere more tellingly than when he tells Calidorus that he sees Phoenicium "stretched out upon the boards, relaxed in wax." It's her name, obviously, the woman's sign that he sees on the wax tablet, not Phoenicium herself. He's confusing signifier and signified. It's silly, but it's telling.

Get moving,
Won't you?

Okay, okay, I know that I need to get to the point. The point is that whenever we draw attention from what is signified to the sign itself, we're pulling a Toto.

 ???

Toto is the little dog in the Wizard of Oz who pulls aside the curtain to reveal the sad little man at the controls of a machine that creates the mere image, the specter of a terrible, angry wizard that is frightening Dorothy and her friends. In other words, whenever we focus on the sign itself instead of what it signifies, we highlight the arbitrary nature of signs and the illusory quality of what we take for "reality." Or to put it another way, why shouldn't green mean stop, and red mean go?

I suspect that you're suspicious of me now.

Yes, I am. I get the feeling that with this play, you've constructed a world made of the finest tissue paper, and there you are, standing behind it, so that your own face is visible to us through the gauze. The letter at the beginning of the play is so obviously an "invented fiction" -- please, a literary Greek courtesan writing a verse letter in Latin for her favorite client with made-up words like oppressiunculae? -- that it draws attention to the fact that the entire play, too, is invented fiction.

Well, I won't back down.

I don't expect you to.  I don't expect you to be any less cunning than your creation Pseudolus. You're having some fun with us, and it is fun. Elsewhere in the play, you create a series of doubles to further amuse us and to underline (again) the playfulness of the play. The doubles for Pseudolus (Simia), Calidorus (Charinus), Simo (Callipho), and Harpax (Simia) suggest to me nothing so much as two universes that you have arranged to collide. It's as though you're saying: You think an old guy has to be crabby? Well, what about this fellow Callipho? You think Pseudolus is one of a kind? Well, what about this fellow Simia? You think identities are fixed, the world is stable, what you see is what you get? What are you, a dunce?

All the world's a stage.

That's Shakespeare, my flat-footed, clownish friend. Come on, let's go read some Ovid together. I think you'll like him.

Clouds, Chaos and Tongue

The trickster themes that are prominent within "Clouds" are fundamental ambiguity and boundary crossing. These themes make themselves known through Strepsiades's denounciation of the gods as well as Socrates who claims that the only gods who exist are the Clouds, the tongue, and Chaos. This claim alone shows that there is a lack of what is seen as traditional order within the play.Chaos shows that the world within the play is distorted. Whereas the mortal tongue is responsible for manipulation of mortals within the play. The Clouds are the polar opposite of Chaos and remain the voice of reason throughout the story.

However, the clouds themselves are acknowledged by Socrates and Strepsiades as ever-changing " So.: Have you ever gazed up there and seen a cloud shaped like a centaur, or a leopard, wolf, or bull? St.: Yes, I have... So.: They become anything they want..." (lines 445-450). Even though the clouds are the stability throughout the play they are also part of that instability.

While Chaos and the Clouds are the only two representatives of immortality the tongue represents a shiftiness among the mortals. At the beginning of the play Strepsiades seeks to be a student of the Thinkery in order to convince his creditors that he does not have to pay them back. While Strepsiades is a student he changes his belief in the gods when Socrates skillfully questions him. Later, Strepsiades changes his view of gendered and non-gendered words (mortar, fowl, etc.). When the Thinkery does not benefit Strepsiades he sends his son instead who masters the art of arguing. However, these are turned against as punishment for him denouncing the gods and not being an honest individual.

The Chorus Leader: the Meta-Trickster

I'm focusing on the speech of the Chorus-Leader where he addresses the spectators of the play directly. In this speech, the leader conflates a series of dichotomies, as tricksters are wont to do, and also creates dichotomies that were not apparent before.

• Firstly, the difference between playwright and play is collapsed. The Chorus Leader talks in the first person about producing the play. Though he does not discuss literally writing the play, his words indicates an awareness of the constructs of the competitions, the staging, etc., and a choice to be apart of the production. Though this reflects some theatrical conventions of the time, I still think it is important to note.
• Within the audience there are those who are worthwhile to produce plays for, supposedly those who supported another play by Aristophanes. Here, the Chorus Leader divides the audience not by class, gender, citizen status or intelligence, but on their appreciation of his plays.
• Then, the Chorus Leader notes the difference between his play and others that make his play stand out. This includes the lack of cheap gags, or false drama. But also, the Chorus Leaders seeks "newness" and originality.
• A final conflation is that between the stage and world and once again with the Chorus Leader and Aristophanes. With references to singular plays and playwrights, the speech moves away from defending what is being performed concurrently with the speech and instead refers to other plays, which expands the reaches of his speech beyond the singular event.

With the switch in subject of the Chorus Leader's speech from the play he is in, to the politics of the age, specifically Cleon's power and the new calendar, he switches positions of authority and knowledge and effectively tricks the audience. With the conflation of the dichotomy between play and real world, the Chorus Leader can transition from condemning the audience within the theater, to condemning plays that were once performed in a theater, to condemning politics that have nothing to do with theater. He has performed an argument from the inferior position and effectively tricked his audience as Strepsiades hopes to do.

The Chorus Leader appears again when the Better Argument and the Worse Argument are arguing. He again suggests that the audience get to here both arguments that these associates represent. This leads to the Better Argument looking out at the audience and realizing that so many of the leading Athenians fall into the pleasure seekers category of the Worse Argument. Here again, the Chorus Leader, though indirectly, indicts the audience, who probably pride themselves on their rationality (The Better Argument).

The Younger surpasses the Elder-ADD

In the story of the clouds there is an incident between Strepsiades and Pheidippides that demonstrates three themes of Trickster literature: 1)confusing polarities, 2)situation inversion, and 3) the confusion of categories. Towards the ending of the play, Pheidippides beats his father Strepsiades and tries to justify it. He argues that if a parent can beat a child to instruct it, than the inverse of that should be allowed as well. This is a confusing and subversive inverse since it really doesn’t make sense for a child ever to discipline in a parent for the means of teaching that parent a lesson. Pheidippides also argues that old men are actually in their second childhoods. While there is some truth in arguing that old people become childlike again, it still does not justify the right to beat your father. Pheidippides seems to have the role of father and some severely mixed up in his mind. Yet he continues with his convoluted argument by declaring that if the old are beaten in front of the younger, then the younger will also learn. In my opinion, this is an absurd conclusion, which still does not justify the beatings/ “discipline” of his father. Pheidippides then makes a reference to the animal kingdom where the son usually avenge themselves against their father. Pheidippides seems to have this gift of gab and argument. I think it’s even hilarious that he’s continuing to justify hitting his father by presenting this reference to animals.

Eventually gullible Strepsiades submits Pheidippides. Pheidippides takes it one step even further by suggesting he should also be able to beat his mother. At this point, I’m not sure whether Pheidippides is still serious. Pheidippides flips the role between child and parent and blurs the lines of who really “wears the pants.” In this scene the younger surpasses the elder, and the elder is tricked in an indirect way by the younger.