In a fast tempo play, the spectators are not given the time to absorb any possible emotions displaced in the scene, and thus they are forced to remain, figuratively speaking, behind the fourth wall that divides the scene from the public. If the scene is funny, the spectators will laugh. If it is not, they will remain indifferent, but at no time will they feel a tragic empathy for the characters in the play.

In today's real-world plays we can also talk about how the tempo of the 'acting' determines whether the scene is comic, boring or tragic. For some spectators, the Gulf War was presented in a slow tempo -- pictures of macabre incinerated bodies and devastated villages. These spectators developed a strong affectivity with the actors present in the scenes of the war. For other people however, the Gulf War was conducted in a fast tempo -- pictures of an aerial war that resembled a video game more than anything else. These latter spectators were not allowed the time to establish an affectivity with the actors of the war. This recession from the scene permits a lack of empathy that could provoke laughter.

"Kicking Baghdad's ass" could become comic because for our imaginations, it is the same as the 'harmless beat'. We don't see any blood or burnt bodies. We just see a fluorescent-green video arcade that according to CNN will lead to the destruction of the Iraqi forces.

The real war becomes superficially an image war, where the image is but a deceiving representation, a theatrical interpretation, of the real.

Thus in most of today's geo-political conflicts, it's not the tempo of the actor per se that counts. Rather, it is the tempo which the 'theater producers' at CNN or at the Arab CNN-style Al-Jazeera channel portray through the actors that gains significance.

_________________________________________________

The Play : 'Jerusalem'

The Characters : Arafat, Sharon, Gr. Mofaz, Barghouti, Israeli soldiers, Palestinian fighters, Chorus.

Among the many spectators : Jillali from Algeria, seat 14 K.

Joe from the United States, seat 15K.


The play starts but rather than talking about it, let's talk about the spectators. Jillali is an unemployed man with a Ph.D. degree in philosophy. All day he sits, his back against a wall, waiting with his friend, another unemployed man with a Ph.D. degree in History. They wait (I won't say for Godot, but they wait anyway).

They talk about how they can get out of their country, how they can leave the bled and go find work in the European El Dorado. Otherwise, they watch a lot of TV in the café at the corner of a Boulevard whose last details they know by heart despite themselves. They watch the Al-Jazeera channel sipping on a café-au-lait that lasts for hours.

On TV they see kids throwing rocks, and an army encircling villages, curfews imposed, buildings razed. Time to time, they see bodies torn apart by missiles rocketed from helicopters or distanced tanks. Later on they watch the funerals and the masses crying and calling for vengeance. They see this everyday. It has become their soap opera, one where the main actors are the soldiers and the fighters. They have become effectively attached, just because they don't have anything else to do.

Joe is in the same theater. He is sitting right next to Jillali. Joe is also very interesting but in a different way. He's happy to be an American. He lives in a city called New York. He usually wakes up at 8 o'clock, showers, brushes his teeth, dresses up, leaves the house, and then takes the subway to work. Just like Jillali, Joe has memorized every detail about the subway by heart. However, unlike the boulevard, the subway moves.

Joe leaves his job around 6:00 and then rushes to meet his friends for a couple of beers. Later on, he goes back home. He's too tired from work. He doesn't feel like reading that New York Post he bought for 25 cents. He ends up getting his world news from comedians like Jay Leno or David Letterman. Sometimes though he gets to see a late hour news flash on CNN. There is a 1 minute report on the Middle East where he watches Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat repeat their unintelligible rhetoric, and then he watches an interesting 6 minute report on the local neighbor that just had quadruplets.

SHARON : Arafat is a murderer, a terrorist just like Ben Laden.

ARAFAT : The Palestinian blood is not like water. It will be avenged.

Exit Sharon, Arafat. Enter quadruplets.


Today however, Joe has decided to do something different to break the routine. He is not meeting his friends at the bars. He is going to a play called 'Jerusalem' starring Sharon and Arafat.

He takes a seat next to this Algerian guy probably just as old as he is. The play starts and it seems that it's too slow for Joe's fast tempo. He gets a little impatient and becomes totally indifferent to what's happening on the stage. He feels like he needs to do something else. He pulls out the New York Post he didn't read last night.

Jillali is completely absorbed in the play. He is boiling with the emotions displayed. He is feeling anger, grief, pain, empathy.

The page-turning of his neighbor redirects his attention to seat 15 K. Jillali cannot understand the indifference of his neighbor to the suffering projected on the stage.

He asks his neighbor to respect the silence of the theater. Joe excuses himself, puts the Post down. However he gets impatient again, leaves the theater and rushes to the bar to join his friends.

Jillali mistakenly takes his neighbor's lack of interest for a haughty snobbishness. Not only was his attention redirected but part of the hate, grief, and pain previously projected on the scene. For Jillali, Joe becomes an active actor that showed up for a couple of seconds and then exited. Jillali keeps on watching, listening. The curtains are not closing. He is pretty sure that the American actor that showed up for a couple of seconds is completely linked to the intrigue, and has something to do with the non-closure. There is no catharsis, no purification. The hate and the grief just keeps on increasing. The plays goes on for hours, days, years, decades. He cannot take it anymore. It is too much. He decides to leave the theater.

The managers demand a visa for the exit. He is trapped. It is a conspiracy. He is pretty sure Joe had something to do with it again.

He goes back to his seat again, but it is just too much for him. Impossible. He can no more stand the inaction, the powerlessness. He feels suffocated in this no-exit huis-clos. He finally decides to join the scene, join the play, join the fight.


If I am not mistaken.

If I am not mistaken, other Algerians have also joined scenes in plays dealing with Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Bosnia and in other tragic play titled 9-1-1.

Some have been killed during the acting and others, after a couple of years, decided to return to their seats.

Others, however, have succeeded in obtaining a visa that permitted them to leave the theater and join Joe's world. The experience of these escapees has varied. Some have decided to take this chance as a catharsis, a closure to their ancient miseries. They have succeeded in getting assimilated to their new world and some, I've heard, even drink beers with Joe.

Some other escapees however, especially those who had joined the scene for a little bit, were not able to repress the traumatic memories and feelings that had marked them in the theater. Outside, in Joe's world, they cannot but think of the extraordinary disparity.

These latter ones, even after leaving the theater, remain actors. Take the example of Jilalli's brother, Mohammed. He is now an American resident, but he cannot understand his new society. It looks like a huge entertainment center. He feels surrounded by Mickey and Donald and Ronald and Wendy and Ken and Barbie and George and Bill that ask him to be happy because being happy is nice, and it makes you feel good. They also tell him stuff like 'We love to see you smile' or 'Two Thumbs way up !' or 'Need a date ? Call 1-800-GOOD-SEX'.

But Mohammed just doesn't get it. He would like to be happy and smile but there is a lot going on in his mind. He cannot understand the indifference and blindness of this huge Disney-park-society populated by post-modern zombies.

He stops someone in the street and tells him about the play he saw in the theater. The other answers back by giving him the time.

Mohammed still doesn't understand. Everything is fast in the city. The dollar certainly makes things go faster. Everything is accelerated. He starts screaming in the streets and gets arrested for being a party-poopr. But Mohammed doesn't care. He feels like pooping all over the party. It needs to stink so that people stop and think. No one wants to listen. No one wants to know.

The zombification continues and there is no salt, no remedy.

Ever since Mohammed has become a revolted man. He looks like Osama Ben Laden. He says he's an Islamist but doesn't really know much about Islam. Anyway, he says he's an Islamist because Islam is the Other. It is not the incomprehensible western society he lives in. It is simply the Other, the ideological symbol of the pariahs, of those who have refused to choose to conform. He embraced Islam the same way a majority of the Black discontent of the 20th century embraced the Nation of Islam, the same way non-conformist anti-capitalist Carlos Ramirez embraced it. They embraced Islam not for what it is but simply for being the Other.


Islam is a religion that has been so prostituted, it now looks like a dirty ideology.


Mohammed remembers how back in the 1970's, back in Algeria, he was also a rebel, a non-conformist. There too, he adopted the culture of the Other. Then, the Other looked like James Dean or Bob Marley and sang songs about Zion. But we're in the 21st century now, and even in Algeria, things have changed so radically that the Other now looks like Ben Laden, but still embodies the same principle as that of James Dean, that of the marginalized, the misunderstood.

Now, whenever the population is unhappy, no matter how irreligious it is, it starts chanting the name of Ben Laden and defaming that of president Bouteflika. The late riots that followed the floods of Bab El Oued last month can attest for that.

Everyday Mohammed and Jillali still pray for Ben Laden. Something tells me that the prayers will stop once the play is over. The blind Mauron argues that they will stop once Jillali's tempo is accelerated. How ? I am not very sure if either solution is in Joe's hands.

Search www.g21.net [ ] Our Link Partners the Web for