F Scott Fitzgerald

Our Farcical Phase

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Our Farcical Phase

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.”

Karl Marx

Let me begin this scholarly screed by introducing you to some of the lovelies who frequent the Felliniesque get-togethers at Mar-a-Lago.

I mean, we’re in John Waters territory here, in the land of farce, grotesque exaggeration, caricature.

From John Water’s “Female Trouble”

Speaking of which, Thursday a week ago (18 July 2024) on the stage of the Republican National Convention, Hulk Hogan endorsed Donald Trump, “the quadrice-indicted twice-impeached once-convicted popular-vote-losing adderall-huffing insurrection-leading ear-diapering testimony-ducking judge-threatening lawyer-ignoring witness-tampering day-one-dictatoring disabled-veteran-dishonoring inheritance-squandering rube-fleecing clown-makeup-smearing language-mangling serial-sexual-predating draft-dodging casino-bankrupting butler-bullying daughter-perving hush-money-paying real-estate-scamming bone-spur-faking ketchup-hurling justice-obstructing classified-war-plan-thieving golf-cheating weather-map-defacing horse-paste-promoting paper-towel-flinging race-baiting tax-evading evidence-destroying charity-defrauding money-laundering diaper-filling 88-count 78-year-old fluorescent tangerine felony factory.”[1]

At the end of his speech, Hogan ripped off his shirt to reveal a tee emblazoned with 

TRUMP

VANCE

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Not surprisingly, the literature of Nero’s Rome provides us with an ancient parallel to our current farcical state of affairs. Check out in your ample spare time The Satyricon by Petronius the Arbiter.[2] Here’s a still from Fellini’s cinematic treatment of Petronius’s classic, from the chapter known as “Trimalchio’s Dinner.”[3]

In his famous statement, “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce,” Marx was riffing on the Hegelian idea that history repeats patterns but in different ways, e.g., the French Revolution leading to Napoleon I (tragedy) and then to rise and fall of Napoleon III (farce).

Or, to draw a North American Parallel, the American Revolution is followed by the Civil War (tragedy) and then by the MAGA revolution (farce).

However, the thing is that when melodrama is exaggerated it becomes comic a la Reefer Madness, but when farce is overly exaggerated, it can become terrifying in a creepy clown sort of way.

I mean, imagine being trapped in an elevator with Don, Jr.’s fiancé Kimberly Guilfoyle! Imagine the future White House wedding. 

Bring in some pillars and Cecile B DeMille.

[1] from the poison keyboard of Jeff Tiedrich. 

[2] Which also provided TS Eliot with his epigraph for “The Waste Land.”

[3] More fun facts to know and share. Fitzgerald’s working title for The Great Gatsby was Trimalchio.

You Can’t be Any More Out of It Than Dead

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Cotswold cottages with hollyhocks and roses at sunset, Mickleton near Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, England.

You Can’t be Any More Out of It Than Dead

Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all.

WB Yeats

Perhaps the only people who die happy are James Dean types who, defying speed limits, enjoy an intense adrenaline rush right before a fiery crash instantaneously switches off the lights. Dean died young as did F Scott Fitzgerald, who legend has it, suffered a massive heart attack at 44 while making love to Sheilah Graham, a gossip columnist. Nevertheless, I doubt that he died happy. One of the symptoms of a heart attack is a feeling of impending doom.

Of course, the opposite of dying young is enjoying an extended lifespan, but you don’t want to overdo it. Chances are that if you succumb at the way overripe age of 97, you’ve outlived your spouse – maybe two – and perhaps one or two of your children. Chances are you’re sick and tired of wheelchairs, sick and tired of constant confusion, or simply sick and tired. 

Even if you’re happy right before your death, after the event, you’re simply dead, so nothing matters to you anymore anyway. You don’t pick up on those Happy Heavenly Father’s Day Facebook posts, nor, on the plus side, does the Braves’ bullpen blowing a save bother you. Fact is that you can’t be any poorer than dead, or, as Flannery O’Connor’s Francis Marion Tarwater puts it, “The dead don’t bother about particulars.”

It would be nice, though, to die in a relatively serene era of history, puttering around a cottage in the Cotswolds’ in the 1870s, say, not fixating on the Franco-Russian war, but tending to your roses, having time enough to notice the lovely russet sunset beyond the hedgerows. Wouldn’t it be nice to die in a place of peace and quiet surrounded by loved ones who realize that death is the mother of beauty? 

That’s the way to go. 

Copyright: Copyright © 2013 Tom Bartel