HowlRound: Several months ago on Halloween, three elementary school kids costumed as the Grim Reaper, Abraham Lincoln, and Donald Trump patrolled my Greater Chicago neighborhood. It was impossible not to try to find meaning in this odd grouping. Did the pairing of Abe and Donald imply that the then-presidential candidate, if elected, had the potential to achieve the greatness of Lincoln? If so, what role did Death play? Months later, that trio seems to have foreshadowed a rare moment of national mourning and widely felt anxiety or panic in which the unanticipated ascendancy of a controversial new president rivals the unexpected passing of another polarizing political figure who presided over a divided nation. Within arts communities, the inauguration of President Donald Trump has created a pall akin to a funeral cortege that keeps circling.
3 comments:
This article states in such beautiful words what I feel we are all feeling right now. The panic and fear expressed by the author as "widely felt anxiety or panic in which the unanticipated ascendancy of a controversial new president rivals the unexpected passing of another polarizing political figure who presided over a divided nation" recalls to me the fear of being circled by sharks in the open ocean. Every morning I scroll though facebook waiting for the first bite at my heels under the political news of the world's water. I know it is there but it isn't until I feel the teeth on my skin, like they day I read the ban on immigration, that I know the real consequences of our future four years. This is also stated well by the author in saying the arts community is taking Trump's election in a way that feels as if we are circling a funeral over and over again. These feels all too true with the gloom that has settled over Purnell in the previous weeks. I can only hope we can push forward and take that dark fog and put it on stage for an audience to criticize and say not only why did this happen, but also what am I going to do to change it?
This is as optimistic as a liberal article can be in a Trump presidency, but I can’t say I necessarily agree with it. I hope that the optimism in this article turns out to translate to truth, but I almost feel as though it is painting a false hope scenario. It is a great thing that arts funding increased even with republican-controlled government, but I almost feel as though Trump’s government is so unprecedented it is impossible to compare it to an “average” republican governance. For example, the recent vote that confirmed Betsy DeVos as education secretary was not even a partisan issue—it required a tiebreaker (and alleged bribes) to achieve. I genuinely believe the author of this article means only the best, but there is a certain amount of fault in believing that Trump is an instance of American history repeating itself. I think we do need to wait as a society for what is to come, but there is really no way of knowing what Trump may do. All this being said, this article was extremely well written and properly concluded via an outcry for the necessity of equality—I am slightly disturbed by Joshua Ruebl’s comment posted on the original page of the article, but my thoughts on his comment are too substantive and will be saved for another time; I do strongly disagree with his words, though.
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