Campaign Coverage and Theatre Reviews

This morning there are some pieces arguing that it’s time for Bernie to drop out of the race. There are also pieces suggesting Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz still have a path to the nomination.

Bernie won 4 states last night. Rubio won 1 and Cruz won 3.

You can make various “rational” arguments about why pundits say Bernie has no path and Rubio and Cruz might. They involve party elites and big money and all that: establishment types are fine with Hillary, not fine with Trump.

But it seems to me there’s a simple prejudice in the media as well: that Trump and Bernie are, whatever the candidates’ charisma, not mainstream enough for the country they wish to lead.

Trump comes under attack more for his character than his positions, Bernie for his positions more than his character.

What does this have to do with theatre reviews?

I have been reviewed by theatre critics for almost two decades now, and I’ve noticed that it often feels like a decision has been made ahead of time about whether one has written a “mainstream” play or a “fringe” play. It has never been exactly clear to me how such determinations are made. But a quality comes through in the way the review is written: either 1) This play could reach a broad audience due to its mainstream relevance or 2) This play is idiosyncratic and eccentric and will not appeal to a broad audience.

Both types of reviews can be positive or negative. Dying City was a “mainstream” play that was mostly positively reviewed and Teddy Ferrara was one that was not. Picked was a “fringe” play that was mostly well reviewed, in contrast to On the Mountain.

I can understand why this is: the Iraq War (Dying City) and the prevalence of bullying (Teddy Ferrara) felt like mainstream concerns to the critics who reviewed these plays, and Picked’s exploration of an actor’s psyche as he deals with rejection and On the Mountain’s dramatization of a single mother’s insensitivity to her traumatized daughter felt less so.

But though I understand this way of thinking, I think it needs to be interrogated. I remember a banker telling me how much he identified with the themes of rejection in Picked. On the Mountain appealed to older audiences very far from the Pacific Northwest music/recovery scene where the play was set.

My theory: reporters and critics have internalized a “cultural superego” that tells them what is mainstream and what isn’t, and it’s their projecting their own personal superego into the cultural one that results in the “mainstream” or the “fringe” narrative for both works of art and elections. This is how an idiosyncratic play about a narrow slice of life can be treated as universal, and why a Democratic Socialist candidate who is a genuinely new force on the national scene can be minimized despite his broad appeal.

It is almost impossible for people to become aware of their superegos since for most they make up the very heart of their psyche. The superego tells us what is and isn’t, what’s good and bad, what’s normal and abnormal. These are not areas most adults are willing or able to put into constant question.

So this is a problem without an evident solution. I suppose one can hope that more and more people will feel free to publicly disagree with the way cultural and political events are framed. We can hope that in so doing they will create connections with others that will in time lead to decentralized communities that advocate for a more diverse and unpredictable political and cultural life.