Osama the Hero
A prize-winning play names Osama as a hero. (Hat tip: Tim Blair)
assignment asks students to name a contemporary hero who is prepared to give up personal wealth for what he believes in and is inspirational to many people.
This is the opening premise for the prize-winning play Osama the Hero by English playwright Dennis Kelly, who wrote it soon after the invasion of Iraq.
It won Britain's $20,000 Meyer-Whitworth award last November, after its first Australian production in Sydney.
The show, with a cast of five, now comes to La Mama with the stated aim of getting audiences to consider some of the implications of the so-called "war on terror".
"It's a deliberately provocative title designed to shock us into action," says the play's director, Syd Brisbane. "Dissent about what's happening is hard to find. You need strength and purpose to keep the debate moving forward."
Perhaps the play's director really means "shock us into inaction" and to keep us moving backward away from Osama, The Hero. But then he wouldn't be much of a Hero then, would he?
Nothing follows.
posted by wretchardthecat at 6/20/2007 06:21:00 PM
13 Comments:
"Shock us into action"?
What sort of action, I wonder? Or is he just using standard lefty boilerplate, without thinking much about it?
Maybe this is broad performance art, a Greek tragedy within a tragedy witnessed on the world stage, and one in which the playwright and director are felled by their hubris and hamartia. It's even a little cathartic for those of us who choose to believe this is all a drama, at least at some cosmic witness’s level.
May One have mercy upon us all.
The playright fancies himself the brave iconoclast shocking the small-minded Babbits.
In fact, he could not possibly be more slavishly conformist to his own social milieu.
Yes, violence post-911 is much more paramount. Now that the West has had it's eyes opened to it. And Osama is a hero for giving up his wealth for the cause of...murdering thousands of civilians, in the quest to force women into burqas and a life of servitude, submission of the world to islam and sharia law, and the extermination of Jews.
Freakin' heroic.
well said
Buckhead
Of course the counter-reaction to this is the National Front. Or something along those lines.
Elites have a duty, as elites, to mobilize the nation in defense. When they abdicate that, as in Weimar, or now Britain, others will take their place.
No one believes in the "bravery" of artists because "shock the bourgeois" is lame when you run away from shocking the Muslims. Van Gogh was brave. So too South Park. This man is a coward.
And he also signals the Average Joe to look elsewhere for leadership. I understand Weimar more and more now.
Perhaps it's an ironic title. One can only hope.
Good, God. We've had decades of increasingly-gratuitous and decadent assaults upon civilized sensibilities in the name of 'art' -- by people who still think they're bravely offering an alternative perspective.
These people ARE the arts establishment. And the awards they shower upon one another are for political fidelity. Our own Gang of Four.
But watch what happens when somone comes along to challenge or dissent from their cosseted, pedestrian and increasinly ossified worldview. The nerve!
It's amazing the sorts of things an FSB bribe will buy.
(.... SPREEENGTIME .... for HEEETLER .... in GEEERMAANEEEE...! )
""It's a deliberately provocative title designed to shock us into action," says the play's director, Syd Brisbane. "Dissent about what's happening is hard to find. You need strength and purpose to keep the debate moving forward.""
Buzzwords and weasel words. That's the sort of language only obtainable through immersion in 1. Academia, 2. Professions attempting to fashion themselves as intellectual (such as certain segments of the entertainment industry), or 3. Pretension.
Dissent about what the West is doing in response to radial militant Islamicism is easy to find. What's hard to find is informed, intelligent debate from those self styling themselves as "dissedents". I find that all the liberals who've taken the time to truly inform themselves - not even in depth, just inform themselves of the basics of what we face today - don't side with the "dissent" i.e. Ron Silver, Roger L. Simon, etc. They understand the issue. And pardon me for the opinion, but I somehow get the impression that Brisbane doesn't.
The whole premise is wrong.
OBL did not give up wealth and move to Afghanistan to fight for what he believed in. He went to Afghanistan with sackfuls of wealth to recuit and supply an army. He never served as a soldier, but stepped straight into a position of command.
A rich boy uses personal wealth to build up a private army who obey his every command and this is supposed to qualify as giving up his wealth. WTF? How does employing thousands of people to do as you say qualify as giving up your wealth?
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