Ye Ol’ Snowflakes

June 17, 2017

Is this Honors English? Cause there’s sure a lot of Shakespearean drama.

First, we have a new ruler casting pronouncements into the void, ignoring the advice of counselors and family while blundering toward self-fulfillment as emperor. The story unfolds with narrative both tragic and comedic – through short, but intentionally vague, soliloquies.

And then, we have Shakespeare in the park.

Yeah, the alt-right was recently offended by a New York Public Theater’s presentation of Julius Caesar. The production’s costumes were contemporary and the title character, Caesar, was cast and dressed to look like the Donald. (You’d think he’d be honored, cast as the greatest general ever.)

Apparently, they take issue with the third act, where Caesar get stabbed to death by all his political buddies. So, a couple alt-righters disrupted a performance: one rushing the stage and renouncing the “normalization of political violence against the right” and the other calling everyone in attendance “Nazis” from his seat.

Both were escorted out by fit looking young men. Theater within theater.

Wow, the bunch that brought us eight years of hate Obama memes, lynching enactments and the “I Hate Hillary – Just for Fun” Facebook page are upset with casting a Trump lookalike to take the fall in act three of a four-hundred-year-old play?

Really? The play didn’t represent Caesar as evil. The story wasn’t even really about him; he’s not even on stage for over half. And in the end, the Caesar faction wins. Hmm.

Perhaps I’m overthinking it. Maybe the alt-right people didn’t read or, maybe, understand the play. Perhaps they can’t see anything other than the death scene. Perhaps, the alt-righters just doesn’t want to watch their hero struck down by the hand of political predators. In that’s the case, they’ll probably need to turn off the news.

It’s mid-June, two-hundred-twenty-one days since the election and too politically hot to suffer snowflakes. Toughen up,the republic expects the narrative to progress from Shakespeare to Poe before the story’s over.

In Peace and Justice,
osv