MY 12-MONTH VIDEO FAST
EPISODE 27 – WEEKS 40-41: That Man Behind the Curtain
[FADE IN: WINKIE GUARDS CHANT…]
This is Richard Loranger and welcome to Episode 27, covering Weeks 40 and 41 of “My 12-Month Video Fast”.
[OZ: Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.]
In 1939, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released The Wizard of Oz, Victor Fleming’s epic adaptation of the popular children’s book by L. Frank Baum. It’s easily one of the most beloved, most watched, and most written about motion pictures of all time. And oh god, I’m not about to do an explication of it myself, am I? I’m not sure! But I should at the very least mention that the reasons it’s held in such high regard are many. We could cite the technical mastery that pushed the boundaries of filmic representation of the time; the tactical use of Technicolor and the ingenious set design that pulled us into its world; the joyous and engaging characters wrought brilliantly by the actors all around (and yes, I’m thinking of you, Margaret Hamilton). But what has fascinated me most about the film over the years is the use of the same actors in Kansas and Oz, to show how those two worlds reflect each other, taking a step beyond the book. I think that most folks see that as how Dorothy imagines the inhabitants of her daily life as exaggerated and cartoonish versions of themselves. But I’ve always favored a sort of opposite read in which that nasty knock on the head actually jars her to her senses, and pulls back the curtain on America itself, allowing her to see the people around her in their true natures. I see Oz as Kansas unveiled, shorn of its social roles and its masks of conformity. Only the Wizard manages to retain his pretense in an effort to maintain his position of – somewhat patriarchal – power, until Toto, the most innocent character of all, unmasks him as the charlatan he is. And that moment is made all the more triumphant by his pitiful plea to pay no attention as he plainly pulls his levers of chicanery.
So why am I bringing all this up? Either it’s been on my mind or as an excuse to watch The Wizard of Oz. I like to think it’s a bit of both. And maybe a little more.
In 1968, American poet Muriel Rukeyser penned a short piece titled “The Poem as Mask” that would create a ripple effect through the burgeoning Second Wave Feminist movement around the country and world. It’s a personal poem that documents a seminal shift in perspective she experienced regarding her view of her self in society and culture. It’s poised as a response to a poem she wrote a couple of decades before titled “Orpheus,” in which she describes the death of the eponymous musician-god of myth at the hands of the frenzied Bacchae of Dionysius. As she later underwent a feminist awakening, Rukeyser renounced her depiction of the patriarchal system with the characteristic fervor of the era. Here’s a terrific recording of Muriel Rukeyser reading the poem herself.
[PLAY M.R.]
The Poem as Mask
When I wrote of the women in their dances and
wildness, it was a mask,
on their mountain, god-hunting, singing, in orgy,
it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,
fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone
down with song,
it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from
myself.
There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memory
of my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued
child
beside me among the doctors, and a word
of rescue from the great eyes.
No more masks! No more mythologies!
Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand,
the fragments join in me with their own music.
And wow. I love an epiphanic poem, don’t you?
So what’s going on there? (Oh god, now I’m going to explicate a poem. Nobody told me there was gonna be critical analysis!) One thing’s for sure is that she’s unhappy with her previous depiction of the wild (read: uncivilized), orgiastic women – one might even use the word “hysterical,” given its Greek roots suggesting a disorder of the womb. And that would fit in very well with that depiction, or a giving-in to the misogynist perspective that engendered it. In any case, she’s clearly discarding it disdainfully (I love how you can hear that in her voice, that I’ve always read in the text), and by referring to it as a mask, she indicates that it’s either something she (or the truth of the poem) was hiding behind or being obscured by. Even more interesting is how she identifies herself in Orpheus, the god who’s been dismembered by the uncivilized characters and, even more telling, “in exile from myself.”
This piece re-minds me of and connects strongly with another poem that I mentioned briefly a couple of episodes ago, in #25, “Corrode to Joy” – specifically “Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich. Among other things, it depicts a woman trying to re-find the essence of what she is without the bias of learned preconceptions. Rich composed this poem just a few years after the publication of “The Poem as Mask,” which is no coincidence at all, since Rukeyser’s poem and work and themes struck a gong or maybe a carillon resoundingly in the feminist mind. In fact there was a foundational anthology of feminist poetry published in 1973 titled No More Masks! (after Rukeyser’s poem) which I’d go so far as to say should be on everyone’s shelf. (More on this book in the episode notes. But really, just pick it up.) In “Diving into the Wreck” there is also a mask which figures prominently, though in that piece it is a source of power, allowing the speaker to make the dive whereby she may examine as firsthand as possible the remains of what she might fundamentally be.
So masks really get up to a lot, huh? They might be the social roles that people take on to blend in. They might be costumery meant to reflect how we’re really feeling under all that tin. They might be used to obscure one’s identity or to amplify it. They might be a lever for building your power or diminishing that of others. And so much of it is personal perspective. Just look at our cases in point for a sec. In The Wizard of Oz, are the characters more real, more identifiable for what they are in Oz or in Kansas? Only the Wizard as I noted seems to purposefully obfuscate his identity in Oz, where everyone else seems very much themselves; then when discovered, he shrugs it off.
Are we to believe him, who has been conning us all along, even back in Kansas? Can he change or have a good side too? I don’t have an answer for that. And what about the Winkey Guards, those fearsome battalions of the Wicked Witch, all in identical garb and movement as good battalions are? [SOUNDBITE] They’re set to slaughter our four intrepid heroes (and that mangy little dog, too) until Dorothy accidentally melts their boss [What a world! What a world!], the spell is broken, and the Winkies proclaim,
I often wonder what happens to them afterward, whether they take over the castle and live in sin with the flying monkeys, wander into town and look for work, or follow Dorothy around obsessively needing to serve the stronger master. Okay, I’m leading you on, because the answer is in the books, not the movie. Books? What are they? Worth checking out is what they are. L. Frank Baum wrote fourteen Oz books, and another twenty-six were produced by various authors after his death. But I believe you can find the fate of the Winkies in the very first one, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, where they return to their little town to lead happy lives. And in case you’re unaware, only the first half of that book was depicted in the 1939 film.
(And since we seem to be taking a tour of Oz in the Great Glass Elevator – um, okay – it’s worth reminding you that Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz was by far not the only film adaptation pulled from the Ozverse. Most of you will be familiar with the recent musical Wicked {not assuming you’ve seen it and I actually haven’t}, about the early life of the Wicked Witch, based on the 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire; there’s the 2013 James Franco vehicle Oz the Great and Powerful, directed by Sam Raimi {highly recommended to see in 3D if you get the chance}; and of course 1978’s The Wiz, starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson and directed by Sidney Lumet based on the Broadway musical. But did you know that there are over two dozen movies based on the Oz books, including a black and white Soviet version; and anime adaptation; a Polish series of theatrical shorts; scads of animated films with various stories; a Muppet version; a Tom & Jerry version; a 1925 talkie staring Oliver Hardy; a 1985 sequel to the original film, Return to Oz, starring Fairuza Balk in which Dorothy travels there during electroshock therapy {I shit you not and it is horrifying}, and several short silent films by L. Frank Baum himself from the 1900s and 10s {which you’ll be envious to hear I have on disc – but I can’t watch em right now}. So Oz must have something going on. Okay! End of joyful tangent and back to masks.)
So: masks. As we’ve just seen and I’m sure you already knew, masks can be looked at in all kinds of ways and used in all kinds of ways, physically and figuratively, to all kinds of effects. And we might not even agree on which they are. (Yay us!) They can be ripped off to reveal something’s or someone’s true nature (a certain naked emperor comes to mind, tho ick). They can be worn to allow one to play a role or function better in society (business suits come to mind – and yes, they’re masks, excreting mammal thou). They’ve been worn throughout cultures to assert roles, status, power – think uniforms as masks, both to assert oneself and to disempower those of lower rank. Look at makeup, used to conform or blend in, to portray an ideal (whatever that is), or to shred expectations and norms. (I do love my nail polish.) They can give you anonymity, let you act on whim or act the fuck out (which for some people are exactly the same).
We know these things, these behaviors. And looking at other life forms, I wonder to what extent they are specific to humans (or whatever you want to call us). Because we’ve also seen chameleons, we’ve seen stick insects and Arctic hares and katydids and octopi and cuttlefish and snakes that can disappear before a predator’s eyes (or while being one). And of course we use them to create safe zones in our lives, to pass, to hide. But we hide parts of ourselves all the time! We hide them to avoid situations that we don’t like, or we’re told to hide them, or that they’re wrong or unnatural or shameful. Until we decide to put on a breathing mask and go deep-self diving…
Masks are a part of our landscape, our culture-scape, our psyches, always have been like it or not. They’ve been the foundation for theater from the beginning, facial and otherwise. Think outward appearance as a mask – putting on a face. Public presentation as clandestine mask. I knew this guy teaching summer classes at one of the colleges in New York, who despite the swelter would always wear khakis, nice leather shoes, and a long sleeve shirt buttoned almost to the collar. He was a native New Yorker – very New York (whatever that means). And apparently he didn’t have sweat glands. I on the other had always wore shorts, Chuck Taylors, a t-shirt to soak up most (or some) of the sweat, and a short-sleeve cotton shirt on top. One day he asks me if I dress this way all the time.
“Pretty much,” I say.
“But what if you’re out at a restaurant?”
“Yeah.”
“A nice restaurant.”
“Don’t really go to them.”
“Or at church?”
“Church?”
“How about on a date?”
“I always wear clothes like this. They’re comfortable.”
He gives me this long, slow look, clearly adding up something. Finally he says, “You might be the most integrated person I’ve ever met.” I stand there a moment with a question mark tattooed on my forehead. “You need to disintegrate more,” he concluded.
I laughed, but after a time realized he was perfectly serious. He was trying to give me life advice, despite the fact that we were both in our 40’s, which I found a bit condescending. See, he found it essential to gauge how he should present in any given situation, to maximize the effect and benefit, and couldn’t imagine anyone else not doing so. We ended up being office mates for a while, and though he never let up on how poorly I dressed (and other advice for “making it” – see Episode 16, “Get-a-Job and Other Misnomers” for a translation), once he became comfortable with me he began freely talking shit about, well, anyone who wasn’t in the room. I decided that was the only time he wasn’t putting on a face, and eventually I wanted to put a mask on around him – or plant a bug to find out what he’d say about me to everyone else.
That’s a relatively benign example of clandestine social masks, at least as far as calculated and manipulative and toxic can be benign. At the other end of the spectrum, we have the Ku Klux Klan, America’s premier cult of cowards hiding their faces to commit hate crimes. (I hear they have a wizard too…) Ironically, the most likely model for those pointed hoods and cloaks is the capirote /kah-pee-róe-tay/, a traditional ritual garb worn by Spanish and Mexican Catholic penitents. More ironic is that the hoods gave the Spaniards anonymity to more fruitfully repent in view of but without individual judgement by their communities. The Klan, on the other hand…. There we see the same masks used for personal betterment and for enacting malice – against, among others, Catholics. The courage to gather oneself, to bring the pieces together, versus the unfettered drive to lose oneself to reptilian urge. Though the Klan has operated in three distinct periods of U.S. history beginning in Reconstruction (surprise), they remain a stain on the national psyche. And their presence has certainly helped to promote the value of anonymity in bad behavior like a virus, an airborne, mind-borne infection.
To call that group extreme doesn’t really carry the weight that it used to, sadly, and we can see that influence reflected in many facets of our society, often helped along by new technology (or the exploitation thereof). In the 1980s, for example, we saw a huge rise in the use of tinted car windows. Invented in the 1950s to reduce glare for drivers, the tech and ease of application improved over the decades to come to burgeon in the Reagan years. (Feels like there was a lot of shade being thrown around during that era.) By the turn of the century it seemed as if most cars had those windows and they were opaque. Sure, that helped with glare and safety to some extent, but it also seemed to give drivers a license to be assholes behind the wheel. Can’t see me, can’t judge me. And I’m sure not gonna judge myself. I recall thinking back then that a Hummer with black windows would make a perfect new symbol for America.
Back in Episode 24, “The New Flesh,” I described two camps of people as those who are mostly in it for themselves, and those who are out there for community. I think we can trace the rise of the former faction from the 80s onward, at least in contemporary times, as our government became more and more blatantly corrupt. I have a friend in Texas (Texas! mind you) who is against capital punishment NOT because he believes that mass murderers and serial rapists shouldn’t be put to death; he just doesn’t think the government should do it. His rationale? Because people look to the government as models for how to live their lives. I think that says a lot.
The bounty of anonymity for bad actors really came to roost during the pandemic. What? you say. Weren’t those malevolent MAGATS refusing to wear masks? True, but for those prone, or planning, or eager to commit theft and violent crimes, it was a boon. Even today, while some still wear masks for safety, it seems like most crime footage I see is of perpetrators in masks. Before COVID that’d be immediately suspect; now it just blends in.
As for the unmasked unmannerly, well they’ve had years of training on the internet, haven’t they? Decades of it at this point. That special place where you can be anonymous and not at the same time, where you can be as loud and rude as you want, or as loud and self-righteous as you want, or just be loud and dumb as a doorknob and ignore everything else that doesn’t tell you how good it is to be your brand of loud. Oh yeah, and it’s a pretty good indoctrination center, isn’t it? I barely need to go into any of this, since we all know it like a little hammer to the head, and how nice it would be to just wander into another room and leave the lizards to snap at each other. But to do so would be to disregard the fact that this behavior and virulence often (and more and more) carries into public, and sometimes explodes into public on a sunny day in January.
About as far from the public eye as possible are cyber criminals, for whom the internet is a giant buffet. That’s partly because said ‘net is basically a lunatic warren built by lunatic rabbits on a manic spree. It’s a lawless place – and it should be, which leaves us with the quandary of what to do with (or to) the amoral shitheels hiding around corners. I know plenty of people who’ve had their identities stolen, which is almost like a form of rape. I haven’t (yet), but my constant listeners might recall that last summer my credit union was shut down by hackers for 17 days, which was for me far more than an inconvenience. (That was part of an extended rant about out-of-control tech in Episode 9, “AI-YAI-YAI”.) Much more recently and, truth be told, one of the two impetuses (impeti?) that got me on this theme, my Facebook account was hacked on February 27, and has been inaccessible since then. Though I might sound like a pouting or tantrumy adolescent who’s had their Tik-Tok or gaming system shut down by Mom, I don’t use Facebook for play or even much for social interaction. Rather I’ve spent twelve years building contacts and promoting my creative work – and that of many others – and more and more the last couple of years to coax in trickles of income which is already pretty fucking meager. Worst of all, the violator didn’t seem to do much more than make my profile invisible to everyone, including me. The page is seemingly set to Private, and whether the content is still there remains to be seen (or not). It took me a couple of weeks to find out how to contact Meta Support, which is not an easy tidbit to come by (I’ll tell you how in the episode notes), and they have a “specialized team” “investigating,” but I don’t have high hopes about getting it back. So basically it was a meaningless and nihilistic gesture with no other aim than to spread the nihil. And to put a cherry on that sponge, I set up a new account called “Richard Loranger-newafterhack” with nothing on it but my picture and one post saying what had happened to the old account and to drop me a note here if you needed to. After about three days, Meta suspended that account – which had virtually nothing on it – saying it was “Against Community Standards”. So that’s all making me feel a bit under siege, like Meta and their AI flying monkeys are trying to snatch up my visibility and agency, making me feel, in a word, paranoid. (News flash: as I sit down to record this, that second account has become usable again, but that doesn’t feel like it mitigates much and I remain suspicious.)
(I’m just going to slip a note in here that used to be standard in this podcast, but has gone unneeded for some time. To wit: amidst the stress of this hack and Meta bullshit and the many hours I’ve spent trying to fix it, on top of mega-lost-time after having to reset my laptop, it taking over a week to re-sync my Dropbox, and having to do taxes {which felt like eating vomit this year, especially after hearing that they’re changing the name of Federal Tax Returns to “Elon’s Lunch Money”}, anyway amidst all that shitstorm and still not with sustainable employment, I ended up watching a few {er, several} movies over the last couple of weeks. I saw two in theaters, which I guess is still kosher: Last Breath, the Woody Harrelson/Simu Liu underwater thriller, which was pretty wet and thrilling, and The Monkey, the stunningly psychedelic and gory new Stephen King adaptation. And I watched three at home on my tablet, each of which I chose specifically to relieve stress in its own way: Deepwater Horizon, for the joy of watching a gigantic corporate structure explode {and for explosions in general, very cathartic}; In the Shadow of the Moon, an underrated Netflix time-travel flick about taking down a far-right revolution before it can get started; and The Autopsy of Jane Doe, because it always relieves my stress watching Emile Hirsch being so goddamned cute, even while being chased by really gross reanimated corpses. Plus it’s really scary. With only two and a half months left in the video fast, I’m sure this is a minor slip – I normally don’t even think about it – kind of like smoking a very stale cigarette during a dungheap of a week. My rationale: anxiety with three X’s. That said, why don’t we do summa this: [PLAY 3 LASHES]. Ahhh, that’s better.)
Speaking of nihilistic criminals, the second impetus that got me pogoing around this theme was, not surprisingly, the current federal “administration”. They seem in fact to be applying more and more monster make-up as the weeks go by. And to what end? To show their true faces or to obfuscate? That’s assuming that any of those optics are intentional, that is. Parsing out the functions of masks in regard to these, uh, “people” is complex at best, especially when we include the roaring hordes of pretense we call Congress. So just for a minute, to save time and (likely necessary) breath, let’s focus on, or maybe better take a sideways glance at, the two Perps in Chief, Pinkyfingers Drumph and the Musky One. (Sounds like a terrible band name, actually – and I hear they’re both kind of musky, tell the truth.) No simple masks here; these two are each sporting some toxic variation of seven veils.
First and most obvious, Littlefingers grins through a mask of woven lies at all times – seemingly always has, regardless of whether he’s able to recognize that or not. At the same time he purports to be ripping the masks off of his “opponents” (i.e., anyone who doesn’t kiss his stinky pinky toes), which is projection at its shiniest finest. Not that said “opponents” don’t have masks, clandestine or not, because everyone does, but those that Li’l Stinkpot claims to be nabbing are mainly fictitious as well. He certainly has torn the cloak of civility from politics, I’ll give him that. Meanwhile Muskito stands close behind, puppeteering or penetrating, it’s hard to tell. His language seems to have degenerated into a ketamine babble, but no matter – he’s a man of action, always has been. What his actions are and the purposes thereof are…veiled, in shadow for purposes of obfuscation. (Hmm, what common political phrases start with the word “shadow”? I wonder…) I’m not going to sit here and say these are attempts to weaken the Federal Government; I’ll leave you to parse that out on your own. But I am going to pose perhaps the most tedious and overasked question (yay!): Why do this? Of course the most common and tedious answer starts with something like, Wealth and power… Okay, fine. But I read that question a little differently. I’m not thinking of their goals or endgames, which I’m sure historians will discuss and debate for…as long as there are historians [gulp]. I’m seeing it as an inquiry into what causes them to do this. What drives this endless and increasingly destructive behavior?
I know, I know, you’re going to say, How can you possibly know that? How can anyone? But I’m going to posit at least one approach to an answer, or part of an answer, that makes both common and scientific sense based on facts that we do know. And for this I’m going to refer back to a lot of information that I discussed in Episode 12, “Drink the Light,” in which I explore the workings of the neurotransmitter dopamine. I’m not going to do a lot of summary here, so it might be worth giving that a listen or reviewing the transcript, at least if you get a little lost. If it helps to know, the essential info on dopamine is imparted in the first half of that episode, till about 18:30. Or maybe you won’t need it at all. Okay, here goes.
First let’s take a half-step back and start by looking at another salient feature of Droopy’s public persona, i.e. his creation and fostering of the MAGATS (Make America Great Again Trump Supporters). What’s remarkable is how well he sustains their anger and sense of victimhood, though it’s not that hard really, because those feelings create dopamine, and lots of it. Every time they feel that disdain, that frustration, that rage and hatred, however misdirected, every time they have thoughts of violence (or enact it), they get a big jolt of that shit. And it feels good, and goddamn does the brain want more. And that, my friends, is called conflict addiction, which I also mention in Episode 6, “Intentionality and the Blackhawk Blues”. It’s not only self-sustaining; like any addiction, it grows – because the nature of dopamine is to make you want more of whatever starts it squirting in the first place. It’s part of the evolutionary development of the brain, and it’s not going anywhere. It’s especially easy for Dump to stir up a predilection for conflict because he clearly has the same addiction, and has fostered it beautifully over the years. And hey, whatever his original intentions (if any) in spreading it amongst his followers – more likely he noticed it got him more attention, another huge dopaminergic need, so he upped and upped and upped it – like I say whatever his early intentions for nurturing it, the MAGA zombies so clearly fall in line with his administration’s efforts to weaken the country. Synergy!
I suspect it’s a different case with our musky Boy from Brazil, despite his predilection for that Strangelovian salute, which I don’t think he put out there to create conflict but to assert power. (Bannon, on the other hand, clearly has the former intention.) But Mump and Dusk clearly do have a big commonality, namely an addiction to accruing…you guessed it, wealth and power. Don’t kid yourself – it is absolutely an addiction, and works neurologically in exactly the same way as fucking crack except much, much stronger, and the more you indulge, the more that’s the only thing you want to do. It all comes down to irrepressible urge. I mean, look at these guys. They’ve got dopamine leaking from the eyes. I suspect it may be the only neurotransmitter left in their brains. Their midbrains are flooded with heavenly voices singing, “Get more now,” and their frontal cortex is on fire devising more and more ways to get, well, more and more. That’s the end and all of it: the getting. They’ve each been at this a long time, and they’ve got tons of strategies and tools and ways to mask their real motivations. Because that’s what addicts do.
Have you ever known anyone with a bad addiction, especially one that changes their behavior, their body, how their brain works, like opioids, or crystal meth, or gambling? Hopefully you haven’t, but so many have. And if left unchecked, what do they become? How heart-wrenching is it to watch a friend or loved one slowly become detached, disengaged, dissociated from everything else, until their every action, every motivation is focused on one thing: to score. (Now there’s an interesting word.) How many have turned to theft, self-harm, assault, or worse behaviors which would have been unthinkable scant years prior? And why does this happen? Because addiction is a disease.
So here we have a whole mess of people (emphasis on mess) who are “running” and “leading” this country and who are diseased. Who are in the throes and thrall of a severe disease that controls their behavior and disconnects them from any sense of values or value, unfortunately including the value of human life and life in general. Which is exactly the same with all the corporations and their “investors”. Turns out Plato was right with his whole philosopher-king thing: the only person fit to lead, to rule, is one who doesn’t want to. And now, Houston, we have a problem.
OZ: No, my dear, I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad wizard.
How’s that for an answer based on facts?
I sometimes wonder if the human species as we know it is evolving or splitting into two species, one of which, perhaps through the mammalian parts of our brains, has a growing sense of compassion and the value of life, while the other, regressing or atrophying to a more reptilian state, has none.
And on that incendiary note, I think I’ll leave you till next time.
Finally a cliffhanger! Took long enough.
The good news is that I sat down this week, or my mind sat me down, to work out the themes and potential titles for each of the remaining episodes of this podcast, of which there will be six, the final one posting on May 31. And no, I won’t do a title reveal – sorry but this isn’t Stranger Things, much as I might wish it were. But I will say that in the next ‘cast, which will drop on Saturday, March 29, I might give some hints on quick and convenient ways to remove an alien facehugger without spilling a drop of acid.
Been enjoying these recent episodes and the podcast in general? Tell people! This Facebook facefuck has flatlined awareness of the podcast. I’ve just had the first week since I started with zero downloads. So please, tell your friends! Go on Spotify or Apple Pods and give it a good rating or review. I’m almost done with the year – and the ‘cast – and it’d sure be nice to bow out with some visibility.
This has been Episode 27, covering Weeks 40 and 41 of My 12-Month Video Fast.
Thank you for listening! And march on with whatever face you need.
[FADE OUT WITH WINKIE CHANT…]