R.S. Benedict
0:30
Welcome to this month’s bonus episode of Rite Gud. For this edition of the book club, we’re taking a look at rhinoceros and absurdist play by Eugene Ionesco. This play was inspired by the playwright’s time in Romania when he was younger seeing everybody around him one after the other turning into fascists to Nazis, and this was back in the day. So we’re talking about like actual fascists like card carrying fascists and card carrying Nazis, not the sort of poser loser imitator types that we have now. And this was happening, especially within the academy.
Simon McNeil
1:06
Yeah, that’s exactly correct. And IONESCO’s work on the in rhinoceros was largely driven by seeing people within the school setting that he was in converting to fascism that seemed like one by one, they all kind of fell down that rabbit hole. And this play was largely in response to that
R.S. Benedict
1:25
he wrote it a good while after the war, though this wasn’t during this wasn’t this was written afterward. And I saw this interview with him a really interesting interview, and he says, rather sheepishly, I was not a hero. So he was not like a brave guy sticking up for it, he kind of had kept his head down to keep from getting getting killed, I guess.
Simon McNeil
1:48
I think that the context of this play being something that was written after the war is something that is important because IONESCO also didn’t see both the initial conversion of people to fascism and, and also the horrors of how that all turned out. And the ability to see in retrospect, just how bad things got,
R.S. Benedict
2:10
right. Now, before we go into too much of a discussion about it, let’s talk a little bit about the play itself. This is a pretty short play. Unfortunately, I’ve never gotten a chance to see a live performance, which is too bad because I’m sure it rocks. I’ve gotten to read it. And I’ve gotten to see there’s a bunch of performances on YouTube. But to be frank, they’re not very good. And I saw this one, I think from Ohio and the guy, the cast is John is very clearly chosen because he has rock hard abs, not because he’s a particularly good actor. It’s just, well, you got to run around in your underwear with a rhinoceros on your head, so you better be in really good shape. So they picked the guy who was in the best shape, not necessarily the greatest actor, but I mean, good for him on on being good at exercise. I don’t know. So there’s also a movie with Gene Wilder, I haven’t seen it. So I can’t say if it’s good or not, I don’t know. But I am fond of IONESCO or a IONESCO however you pronounce it because for some reason, my little like rural public high school fucking loves to do his place. We loved putting on his plays. And yes, I was a drama kid. I’m not proud of that. I’m not bragging here. But yes, I was in drama club. And for some reason, our little high school drama club absolutely loved the work of Eugen IONESCO. And despite the fact that oh, it’s French Absurdism that’s supposed to be inaccessible, and weird and awful. There’s just something really delightful of shouting a bunch of nonsense. Like, yeah, the Bald Soprano. It does have all these, I’m sure there’s a lot of philosophical stuff behind it. But there’s a bit where you’re just bellowing incoherently at each other. And to a high school kid, like that’s really fun. It’s got a lot of overlap almost with that kind of cheese, monkey randomness, humor. That’s just completely intoxicating. So I really liked IONESCO as a teenager.
Simon McNeil
4:07
Well, I’ll tell you, you’re lucky that your high school drama club had such good taste because mine was I was also drama kit. Mine was mostly either Shakespeare or Gilbert and Sullivan.
R.S. Benedict
4:17
Who? Yeah, we like the weird shit. The guy who ran our drama club was this teacher who basically didn’t want to run it. So he didn’t really do anything. He would just sort of wander off to the woods beside the campus and smoke a joint while the students kind of did what they wanted. And what they wanted was French Absurdism Goddamnit is a solid choice. It was a solid choice. It was it. They did finally perform the bolt soprano when it was really fun. They had a great time the audience really liked it, surprisingly. Like it went over graded got a ton of laughs
Simon McNeil
4:52
Yeah, well, I mean, these are funny plates like and I mean, especially like I really liked the urine rhinoceros which is it interesting when you consider how dark it gets that it stays consistently funny throughout.
R.S. Benedict
5:04
Yeah, yeah, it is funny and then all of a sudden it’s really, really not funny. But then it’s kind of funny again, in a really fucked up way and it’s which I think captures a lot of the weird feeling of seeing people fall into like fascism or fall down. Especially I know this isn’t OG fascism, but something like internet radicalization. On the one hand, it’s heartbreaking because you’re seeing people that you really like falling into this. But then on the other hand, it’s funny because it’s like, like, you’re really you’re you’re looking at that you’re following these fucking clowns, you know, like, you look like at someone like Steven Crowder, and he’s just an embarrassing clown man. Yes, consistently dressing up in women’s clothing, screaming and shoving his ball sack at his male co workers like he’s a clown, but at the same time when a friend of yours or a relative is constantly like reposting or reblogging or sharing or whatever term you’re gonna use on your social media app of choice. It’s like, oh, no, not Yeah, no, you man. You’re not falling for this shit. But how are you falling for this shit? God. In this play little synopsis. It’s a quiet little town I guess a French town people just start turning into rhinoceroses, one after the other. They just keep turning into rhinoceroses. And it starts with an interruption of one or possibly two rhinoceroses running past a cafe and causing a disruption and, and trampling a kitty cat. Rest in peace kitty.
Simon McNeil
6:42
Yeah, poor cat, poor
R.S. Benedict
6:43
cat. And it’s just this weird thing. And then the guy goes, our main character goes to work. And he’s saying like, yeah, there was a rhinoceros there. No, there wasn’t a rhinoceros. Yes, in the newspaper on newspapers are full of shit. And then a rhinoceros attacks the office where he works and the fireman rescues them and is like, yeah, we got a bunch of rhinoceros related incidents going on all throughout the towns like the fuck whites. And I think that is the scene when it’s revealed that the rhinoceros was a human. Like, it’s not just an escapee from a zoo or whatever. It’s, their coworker has not shown up to work. But his wife shows up to work and she’s in a panic because her husband’s not well, and then a rhinoceros shows up and as attacking things and she’s like, there’s my husband, and the wife, Mrs. Bush, she is right or die. She just jumps on that rhinoceros and goes away because she can’t leave him. And it’s this really funny, surreal, Goofy, weird scene. And as it’s going on, people are yammering about like silly questions like well, what kind of rhinoceros was a one horn or two horn? Is it is it an African or is it an Asian rhinoceros? And then like, at some point, it just starts becoming really disturbing. I think the scene with John and John’s apartment is when it starts to turn. Like it goes from being silly and to being like, oh, fuck, that’s really upsetting. Actually, this guy is like trying to kill his friend. That’s real fucked up and it ends in this like, almost like a post apocalyptic zombie movie, where everyone except Behringer and Daisy or rhinoceroses, and Daisy and Behringer are like pledging to each other like our love will save the human race and their relationship, which was never this great love affair. It was never this great relationship. It was just sort of like casually dating and the relationship just immediately falls apart under the strain of this like Rhino pocalypse. And we’re left in this alarming situation where there’s only one human being left. And he’s not a strong hero type. He’s not we’re going to talk more about Behringer in a little bit, but he’s not like this. He is not you know, Pedro Pascal. In the last of us, He is not like a big hot, you know, post apocalyptic zombie daddy who’s going to save the day. He’s this really pathetic little man, you’re
Simon McNeil
9:00
just complaining about headaches, most of the play and he’s constantly hung over drinks too much. He
R.S. Benedict
9:04
is just always hung over. He’s just a complete fuckup total slacker. And that’s it. And that’s kind of what we’re left with. And the last line of the play I think the translation that I have is I will not capitulate. It doesn’t come across to me I’m sure it depends on how it’s directed and certain productions make it one way certain productions make another way, but to me, it doesn’t feel terribly inspiring at all. It just sounds like this kind of pathetic guy going like I’ll be okay like No, no, you won’t know your fuck parents or you are going to drink yourself to death in this situation. Yep. So it’s remarkable how this play manages to be really funny, but also really upsetting and disturbing, often at the same time, and it becomes less and less funny and more and more like sad and creepy, but it’s still almost a little bit funny. At the same time, which it’s so perfectly captures that weird, surreal, horrible feeling when you do see a friend or a loved one start to fall down the rabbit hole? Yeah, exactly. So why don’t we talk a little bit about our hero quote unquote Behringer? Yeah, he’s a fucking drunk as previously stated he is a pathetic drunk. He’s a fuckup. He’s a slacker. We see he’s late to work. He’s really disheveled. He’s always got a headache because he’s always hungover and he makes excuses for his drinking, too. He’s not really self aware about his drunkenness. He’s just like, Oh, I just had a little bit like you fucked up, dude. You’re fucked up. He is a terrible boyfriend to Daisy. He’s horrible. He’s a piece of shit loser employee and I love the detail, which is so depressing is that he doesn’t change into a rhinoceros, but not really because of courage, but it’s because he can’t. There’s a scene where he kind of tries to take the rhino pill or whatever. And he’s just like, he just can’t he just physically it won’t happen for him. This change is not happening. I kind of like this. I think it works a lot better than if he was this heroic iron willed, giga Chad who’s like all defeat all the rhinos, just this pathetic little man. And I think this is definitely coming from Eugene Enesco. himself. He said that when he saw he witnessed the rise of fascism in Romania. He says, Yeah, I really was not a hero here.
Simon McNeil
11:21
Yeah, I agree. I think that with how Behringer is portrayed, it really does get the sense that it wasn’t a matter of any heroic resistance to fascism so much, just simply, you know, like, not look, just not doing it. Because it didn’t happen exactly like you said. And I think there’s this painful sense of being left behind and being ambivalent about his relationship to it, but also perfectly aware that it’s not a good thing, like when John is transforming, and he starts talking about how they need to overturn moral laws and return to a state of nature. He’s like, Oh, that’s not good. I don’t like that. But he doesn’t have the intellectual capacity or, or the strength of will to do anything other than kind of say, well, no, no, that’s bad. We need to have some sort of a moral order, but I can’t articulate what that is.
R.S. Benedict
12:07
Yeah, he doesn’t have a good argument against it. He’s not philosophically or physically or morally strong at all. He like kind of sucks as a person he just doesn’t change just because he can’t and he just can’t and that’s it. It’s almost because of his like weakness and failure that he can’t change and not because of any any of his positive qualities. I guess. Maybe he can’t become a rhinoceros, because rhinoceroses don’t drink. I don’t know. Yeah, maybe he’s just too hungover. Maybe he’s just too fucking drunk to be a rhinoceros. I don’t know. It’s just like this sad, pathetic thing. And that breakdown he has at the end where he’s like, he forgets what he looks like. There’s this eerie moment where he’s pulling up pictures and putting them around. And he can’t identify the faces in them and he can’t can’t recognize his own face. It’s so creepy. You’re just like the end of this plays this long monologue where we’re watching Behringer have this complete breakdown. And the fact that he kind of wishes he could do it. I feel it like a lot of really good media about fascism, made by people who lived through that era does, I think address or reference the seductiveness of it? Which is not to say that it’s good, but there is some part of you that’s like that might be like, on the other hand, it might be nice to just be a big strong dumb fucking dipshit who doesn’t make moral decisions anymore? Because being a moral ethical person with a conscience is really hard sometimes. And sometimes it’s kind of like I don’t know wouldn’t it be nice to just be a total piece of shit and not feel bad about it? Wouldn’t it be nice to just be a big mean violent person and never feel guilty about it? And I occasionally I’ll look at like, I know this is an OG fascism but you know, fascist adjacent like, extreme right wing artists and content creators and see like, man, that guy’s making so much money. With zero effort and zero talent, like Steven Crowder was offered millions and millions and millions of dollars to do comedy that was not funny. Like there’s that really shitty right wing country singer whose whole career was astroturfed. And he’s getting propped up by all these like nerds and bow ties. There’s Ben Shapiro was a failed screenwriter who’s now making a zillion dollars because like Peter Thiel, or whatever billionaire psychopath is bankrolling his entire thing like there are all these little hipster kind of counterculture, right wing fashion adjacent movements bankrolled by like super wealthy sugar daddies and there’s this part of you that kind of thinks like, Wouldn’t it be nice I could just quit my job and make would it be be an artist quote unquote, all day if all I had to do was like say shitty things every once in a while. Probably be an easier life than what I’m doing which is making art in my free time when I’m not working full time. You know? Yeah. Ah, like I couldn’t bring myself to it. And I could never bring myself to it. But like, occasionally it’ll be like, I don’t know, that sounds pretty nice just to be rod Dreher and like, blog for a living and live a Hmong, a bunch of strapping Hungarian young men, while insisting that you’re not gay. As long as you know too much about other people’s dicks, you can just keep that job and make six figures and eat oysters all day. Sounds pretty good. But then there’s
Simon McNeil
15:31
this hollowness to it all. I think that at the end of the day is where I kind of like, oh, yeah, I can I can. Yeah, like,
R.S. Benedict
15:37
all these people are rotting from the inside. They’re fucking miserable. Steven Crowder, holy shit is. It’s like he’s got a disease of the soul.
Simon McNeil
15:45
There was a thing I saw recently about Tim Poole. And he was saying that he’s not even able to come up with this cat or show affection for his girlfriend outside of feeling some sort of domination. And I just was like, What a horrible way to have to live. Like, just like to imagine that you’re reducing every single relationship every moment of affection and love in your life to nothing but just commanding others. It’s, I wouldn’t want that, you know?
R.S. Benedict
16:16
Yeah, like, it’s very clear. None of these people are happy. I mean, Steven Crowder is such a glaring example the way his marriage completely fell apart because you see a man who I mean, I’ll say a Steven Crowder is not a heterosexual man. It’s very clear, but he has to pretend to be pretend to be this dominant, alpha male and so well, that that didn’t work for you very good, did it you got a really shitty marriage that’s over now. And you are being divorced in the most public way. And the entire world saw that footage of you telling your pregnant wife to get a miscarriage by touching dog Madison like this is you are just thinking about like, at least once one of Ben Shapiro’s devoted listeners has tried to attack a synagogue. Like I can’t imagine being a Jewish man, and one of your devotees tries to burn down a synagogue. I don’t think many people could live with themselves. If that happened. Like I’m not even Jewish, but if a devoted fan of mine tried to burn down a synagogue, I’d be like, What the fuck dude, I’d like wanna die if that happened. I would feel so bad. Yeah, like I’d be catatonic hearing something like that. That would just freak me out so bad. I couldn’t do that. But part of me every once in a while you’ll get it. You’ll get it like, Man, if I would just why don’t we have all this fucking integrity? I could just fucking say some really hateful shit on the internet and make like millions of dollars a year. With very little effort. It looks pretty good. Yeah. And a lot of fascistic, or a lot of media about fascism by people who lived during those eras, I think does address or talk about that very uncomfortable side of it, which I I appreciate. Because it is so uncomfortable to acknowledge that but it’s it’s there. It’s 100% there. Well, yeah. I
Simon McNeil
18:09
mean, you can look at something like Solow, and how like for all those guys are just committing atrocity, after atrocity. And it’s an adaptation of Assad book. And not a comfortable play to watch in any way, shape, or form. But the villains seem to be having at least a good time for half of it. So I get what you mean. But also, I think one thing that becomes really important when we look at a lot of this, a lot of this work that comes out of Europe, in the immediate aftermath of the war, and between, like the 50s and the 70s, is that they really have to, as well address being the survivors of atrocity and dealing with the fact that so many people that they knew and liked, either did or supported horrible things. Like I’m thinking about, like the number of people in the academic circles, folks like gammu, who was very influential on on IONESCO moved in, like how many of them had extensive correspondences, or even were students of Heidegger? And then he turned into a Nazi.
R.S. Benedict
19:12
Yeah, I think a lot too, about that, I guess the equivalent of the baby boomer generation in Germany, like growing up with that. Just knowing my parents did this thing. How do you fucking How do you grow up knowing that like, how do you take any of their attempts to raise you in a moral way? Seriously, that’s gotta be so surreal.
Simon McNeil
19:35
And I think that is part of what feeds into this idea of the absurd that underpins absurdist theatre is this unmooring from moral certainty and this this idea that life is simultaneously funny and joyful, but also just awful a lot of the time and trying to find some way to capture all that at once. And yeah, I really think to a certain extent with Behringer. That’s kind of what this play trying to do and I think that’s why it’s so critical that he is kind of pathetic is that you need somebody that can be funny and humorous and charming and also kinda awful.
R.S. Benedict
20:11
Yeah, yeah, it, it strikes me so much. It’s a lot of the self hatred of the person who like you kind of kept your head down and you survived. And you survived because he kept your head down, but you’re looking at yourself. You’re like, man, a lot of people who were a lot, like better than me a lot braver than me fucking died because they had balls and I didn’t. Like that’s gotta feel weird. Knowing that. Yeah, that’s got to feel pretty fucking weird. Just keep thinking of that interview where he’s saying, I was not a hero, man. So that’s Behringer. That is our dubious hero question mark. And I mean, he’s really bad. He’s not just pathetic to there is a scene where he slaps his girlfriend in the face. And like, I know, this was back in the day when domestic violence wasn’t taken quite as seriously, but even so it’s like, oh, wow, wow, that’s real bad, too.
Simon McNeil
21:04
It’s clear within the plane that you’re not supposed to think that anything. Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
21:08
you’re you’re not supposed to excuse that. It’s like, oh, no, you did a real bad thing, dude.
Simon McNeil
21:14
Yeah. Especially with the extremity of the situation when that happens. He should. You just shouldn’t. And the play is really clear that he shouldn’t.
R.S. Benedict
21:22
Yeah, yeah, it’s this really horrifying and uncomfortable moment. So he’s just not in any way like strong or good or noble. He’s just kind of a kind of a dirt bank really the entire time. And he’s the one non rhinoceros by the end of it. He’s the one Yeah, presumably even the nice little housewife whose cat got squished probably turned into a rhinoceros if she didn’t get trampled by rhinoceros herself,
Simon McNeil
21:51
even the socialist union
R.S. Benedict
21:51
guy, even this Oh, God. Yes, he can we talk about that guy? Yeah, let’s do that. But yeah, so one of Behringer is co workers is this socialist union former teacher, very contrarian guy who’s like staunchly refuses to believe in the existence of the rhinoceros plague at the at the beginning and it’s just this a pain in the ass dude. And by the end of it, he’s a rhinoceros. Do Dard the sort of good boy employee is a rhinoceros. The misir Puppy on the boss is a rhinoceros. I found votes are being such an interesting one. Because his contrarian ism and petty so much of his principles, were really about kind of having a chip on your shoulder and having this petty resentment for anyone else being more powerful than himself, which is kind of the way in it was that little thread that this rhinoceros kind of caught and just pulled and pulled and pulled. When it’s so great, the scene where we don’t see him transform, we just find out about it later and it was a daisy or Dard telling Behringer like oh, yeah, remember boatyard? was was really really anti rhinoceros. He’s like, Yeah, I really liked Mozart. He was a great guy. Turns out he turned into a rhinoceros. Oh, fuck that guy. I never liked him just like trying to reconceptualize and I love the detail that DDR ends up changing just for a really petty reason, which is that Daisy won’t go out with him. Yeah, that’s all it took. But then again, like how many dudes got radicalized? Because like, I can’t get a girlfriend. A whole Insell movement, the entire Insell movement is based on the pretty girl doesn’t like me, guess I’ll be a Nazi.
Simon McNeil
23:43
And there’s a lot of people that have pointed out that that a lot of fascism is effectively inseparable from misogyny. That you don’t get fascism without misogyny in the next.
R.S. Benedict
23:54
No, no, not at all. So seeing
Simon McNeil
23:57
that being expressed in the play, I think is valuable.
R.S. Benedict
24:01
Yeah. Yeah, it’s eerie because it’s like, so real. And I know it’s corny to say, Oh, this place so relevant in our time, but it does kind of feel like that. Just seeing that kind of personality type like your, your formerly weird counterculture kind of crunchy Boomer uncle suddenly, like getting sucked in through Alex Jones, and suddenly become talking about how we should put immigrants in camps and like, oh, fuck, dude, man.
Simon McNeil
24:32
Finding out that the local health food store owner was actually kicking back large sums of money to that trucker convoy thing. Yeah, like, like stuff like this is happening all over the place. So there’s this question that that that it’s something that comes up a lot, which is why do men fight their servitude stubbornly as though it was no salvation. Yeah. It’s a question that has shown up ever since like, going back in political philosophy as far as Spinoza. So it’s not exactly a new question. Yeah. That became like a really pressing question in the aftermath of fascism. And I think it’s still one that is relevant that you got all these people whose whose own interests are actually actively working against,
R.S. Benedict
25:23
right. Speaking of cat hardly was very upset about the scene in the book, or a kitty sample. Yeah. That was so good to win in how it’s so sad and pitiful, because it’s this innocent little critter that gets trampled. But then they hopefully get cat funeral with a cat sized coffin. And it’s really kind of silly again. Yeah, it’s so effectively done. And that it like, really is this sad, awful little thing. And then like, suddenly, it’s kind of funny in a goofy way again,
Simon McNeil
25:59
and balancing that is something that theater of the absurd, really tries to do. Yeah, it’s really the sort is part of the avant garde movement. But we do have to look at as being its own special little corner of it. Because it’s not like you have other like Brecht, basically, like, straight up looking at the audience and saying, This is a play, you need to know this is a play. And this is what the player is trying to tell you. And theater of the absurd isn’t really doing that so much. And instead, it’s trying to basically play your emotions like an instrument.
R.S. Benedict
26:30
Yeah, yeah, I remember this interview with IONESCO that I saw, he talks about how he was influenced by puppet theater that puppet shows like Punch and Judy type stuff really informed his idea of theater. And for him, that is his idea still of what theater should be like. So in all of his plays, at least he says he kind of treats the characters like puppets. They’re these exaggerated, ridiculous caricatures. And they’re sort of at the mercy of everything around them. Yeah. And they just sort of get bashed around and act crazy and yell.
Simon McNeil
27:04
And he uses some really interesting techniques. Especially this happens a lot more in the first half the play, where you get a lot of call and response, almost like a Greek chorus sort of element where you’ll have pretty much the entire cast all like repeating lines or shutting lines back and forth to each other where it almost becomes very musical.
R.S. Benedict
27:23
Yeah, it’s great. And characters are having two different conversations at the same time, and they kind of overlap.
Simon McNeil
27:28
Yeah. And so from a purely kind of formal perspective, I really like a lot of what this play does with language to use it in a way that isn’t just straightforward to people having a conversation on the stage sort of sort of stuff.
R.S. Benedict
27:45
Yeah, that’s terrific. I find it so interesting, too, that there is kind of like almost a little joke about wokeness in it too. For a play from the 50s is a bit of where was it Behringer makes it rather racially insensitive comment about like Asian or African rhinoceroses and someone’s going like, Hey, come on. That’s not cool, bro. Yeah, I was just kind of tickled that like, Oh, shit. We’re still telling those jokes. They were okay. Like, hey, cool. That’s not cool. You can’t You can’t talk like that anymore. Yeah, all right.
Simon McNeil
28:20
I’m no truck with those racial questions. I lose. I think it’s something like that is what he says. Yeah. debenture, yeah. And then later that guy turns into our masters, right?
R.S. Benedict
28:29
Even the logician turns into a rhinoceros. And it’s still wearing is that
Simon McNeil
28:34
that’s such a wonderful little, when would they see the logician out the window, and point out that they know that’s him because he’s still got the hat on. That is just this wonderful moment of kind of cutting the tension just a little bit so you can get a bit of a chuckling before it goes back into the darkness.
R.S. Benedict
28:49
Yeah, it’s so effective.
Simon McNeil
28:53
And I mean, this is a play where a lot of the action involves people watching out a window or something awful happens on the other side, right? So the fact that you’re dealing with that structurally and you’re still managing to make it tense and to make it exciting and to make it humorous, it’s it’s a challenge.
R.S. Benedict
29:07
Yeah, it almost kind of brings to mind Seinfeld. Like you could kind of see like Jerry looking out a window and like he’s still got his head on grandma Yeah, the rhinoceros is Jerry I don’t know. Right? Is
Simon McNeil
29:31
that That’s a disease return to rhinoceroses.
R.S. Benedict
29:36
Master of your domain episode, but instead of masturbation, it’s about turning into a rhinoceros. And George would be the one survivor because he’s just too pathetic. Yeah, he’s just to pathetic. Yeah, Elaine would absolutely turn into a rhinoceros you know, she would she was very trendy. Yeah. Pudy would clearly go rhinoceros Newman would be like the first one. Want to go full right now, sir? Is that guy?
Simon McNeil
30:02
Absolutely he’s absolutely yeah. That would be what would incite the character to make the bed about who would be the last in terms of analysis.
R.S. Benedict
30:08
Yeah. Elaine going in I’m dating a rhinoceros rhinoceros Jerry
Simon McNeil
30:18
you know now that you mentioned it so I thought does use a lot of call and response humor to it does. So maybe maybe there’s more of a thread there than we’re thinking.
R.S. Benedict
30:27
Yeah, yeah, I could see it. I could I could absolutely see this. But anyway, I’m getting off topic. I’d like to talk a little bit about John are Behringer is much more like successful put together friend alpha male John and it struck me while reading this. There’s a lot where John kind of needles Behringer, about everything about his lifestyle about his diet about his drinking habits about his his sleep schedule, and a lot about his clothing. He’s constantly like, you don’t have a tie. Hold on. I have a tie. Hold on. There’s a great scene where you just pick pulls out of every pocket like yeah, I got an extra tie. I got an extra comb for you. I got an extra mirror. I had an extra that. There’s like one thing that he doesn’t have. He’s like no, I don’t have like a shoeshine stand for you. I’m sorry, bro. But one thing I’m wondering is if it comes across differently to a contemporary American audience, because the sight of a man paying a lot of attention to being well dressed to a contemporary American audience is going to come across differently than it would for like a French audience of the day. I mean, aside from that one particular Twitter account that we all know and love the the workwear guy, for the most part, actually caring about how you dress as a man that much might be might come across as fussy and blink maybe a little bit gay. But I think something I realized while reading this, like no, this is a hustle, grind set guy. This is like the present day American equivalent would be a hustle grind set guys, do you even lift bro, where’s your grind said, bro? Bro, are you investing, bro?
Simon McNeil
32:03
The version of play I watched I think I watched a different version than you because I was born with a very kind of stripped down minimal set. And there wasn’t really much in the way of costuming or anything like that other than just the outfits they were wearing. And Shawn certainly presented more like the the put together professional who was was neat and cared about his appearance, but because that was what you’re supposed to do.
R.S. Benedict
32:24
Yeah, yeah. I mean, because it’s a play, you’re gonna play it differently. And it’s in a social context. So that’s the kind of cool thing about live theater. Yeah. But I’m just sort of wondering about how it comes across. Because the version of it that I saw, it wasn’t a super elaborate set. But I think it was very, very deliberate that the guy they picked for John is like the most muscular member of the cast. This very like alpha male, big athletic type, because like, this is what a man is supposed to be.
Simon McNeil
32:54
Yeah. And really, they make a good contrast between John and Behringer, because of the fact that Shawn is put together and is, you know, somebody who presents success and presents being on top of things and yeah, being self confident. Yeah, he
R.S. Benedict
33:13
strikes me as the type of guy who would brag about how many books he reads, but they’re all like those dumb self help books that are all the same five tips. Titles like unfuck your life or whatever. 12 rules for life, the bros Guide To Being Awesome. How to Epic when your life
Simon McNeil
33:32
I tried wants to read 12 rules for life to do a critique of it. And I didn’t make it past the first chapter was absolutely
R.S. Benedict
33:39
I could see you bleeding from your eyes while trying to read that book.
Simon McNeil
33:43
The only reason I didn’t throw it across the room was because I was using my phone. So I just deleted the PDF. No, it was badly written. I read a lot of psychology. I read a lot of philosophy. So when I say it was badly written, it’s not like I just didn’t understand the style. It was just it was badly written.
R.S. Benedict
34:01
Oh, that’s not great. That scene where Behringer goes and visits Joan.
Simon McNeil
34:07
Oh my gosh. Oh, wow. Yeah. And John, like when John says, I’ve got one aim in life and I’m heading straight forward and he just charges across the room straight at Behringer bear dress like jump out of the way. We’re also gonna get trampled. It was shocking.
R.S. Benedict
34:25
Yeah. And that even we know he gets out of it somehow but the scene doesn’t end with Behringer escaping it ends with Behringer trying desperately to hold the door shut screaming for help. While John just like slams against it over and over again. Just trumpeting and bellowing it doesn’t end on like it is in a way absurd and silly because it’s it’s an actor wearing a rhinoceros mask slamming back and forth, which is a very silly and ridiculous image. And he’s I think by then he’s in his under Where to you put them like, oh my god, you know, this is his friend who always kind of dumped on him for being kind of a fuckup. Like straight up trying to murder him.
Simon McNeil
35:10
Yeah, just pretty much out of nowhere, just out
R.S. Benedict
35:14
of nowhere he was visiting him to check up on him because he was sick. And that was it
Simon McNeil
35:20
turns out what he was sick up was moral standards. Yeah.
R.S. Benedict
35:23
Yeah. And that it’s striking that John is the one who goes and changes and not Behringer. Because John is doing what it’s he’s supposed to do. And it’s sort of bougie respectable ways leads to it so well that desire for self improvement and that desire for strength and it made me think a little bit about how much of this like weird culture of like men self improvement and fitness. So many fitness bros get into this weird fascistic mindset. And I’m not trying to like say that exercise makes you a fascist like, no, that’s ridiculous. I go to the gym. Like, all the time. I fucking love working out. I love putting on muscle tone, but like, there is this weird type of overlap between, you know, gym, bro, I’m worried about how my muscles are going. And then into this extreme desire to dominate.
Simon McNeil
36:15
There’s an interesting thread throughout the history of fascism with diet and health. Oh, yeah, even going back as far as like really early theorists who fed into fascism like Peredo and his obsession over breeding better peas. Hmm. Have you heard of the Pareto Principle? I don’t think so. Okay, so if you do any, like business type certifications, you’ll definitely hear this because it’s all over the place in that space of the Pareto principle is the argument that 20% of the peas plants produce 80% of peas, okay, which was basically just because Pareto was using a small sample size and you just have to have a couple of implants. But but it’s been widely adopted is a truism. So Pareto was mostly a horticulturalist, although he was also quite a eugenicist as well, of course. And he was an early thinker that kind of fed into a lot of Italian fascism. And a lot of what he was looking at was how to improve crops, and how to selectively breed the pea crops specifically, to make them more productive to make them get better yields, and also to make them get healthier yields. This carries on with like, the futurist, Italian futurists who were also quite tied to Italian fascism had their own, like really weird ideas about how to rewrite the rules of cuisine that got quite silly with like spraying perfume in people’s faces, while they lettuce and stuff like that. Right. And then Mussolini launched the entire like, revamp of the Italian diet.
R.S. Benedict
37:47
That’s why he fucking lost man.
Simon McNeil
37:51
The best pasta,
R.S. Benedict
37:53
you’re not gonna get separated Italians from their spaghetti, you can’t do it.
Simon McNeil
37:57
So this is something that has always been part of fascism is this obsession with health? It’s something that some people have commented on that this, this idea of this fear of contamination, and this obsession with health on the level of the personal body easily translates to fear of contamination and obsession with health, the social body, so it’s almost like the same thing that makes a person start going, Oh, no, I can’t have seed oil, because it’ll make me you know, have too high estrogen levels. That impulse is almost like a microscopic version of fascism. And so it’s not surprising that the people who end up kind of with the one also sort of gravitate toward the other.
R.S. Benedict
38:39
I can see that I know Hitler was an actually a vegetarian, but wasn’t he like super obsessive about diet and health? He was really intense anti smoker. Yeah. And then you have the sort of Silicon Valley freaks who were into health but in very weirdly unhealthy ways. Like, if I drink blood, I’ll live forever. My favorite is that rich guy was like, I’ve managed to reverse the aging process. And it’s like, you don’t actually look younger, you just look weirder. The one who took blood transfusion from his children and is also taking what he refers to as non feminizing estradiol. Yeah, buddy.
Simon McNeil
39:19
That guy is actually apparently stopped taking blood from his kid because he found that it wasn’t working. Oh, good. That same sort of concern about contamination and food is all over Silicon Valley as well. But things like that Soylent thing? Yes, or the juice arrow and trying to like they need a fresh squeezed juice, but it’s actually just using the bag because it’s all a grift.
R.S. Benedict
39:40
In the outline, you jotted down some notes you said if you wanted to talk a little bit about desire and fascism. Yeah, the nose.
Simon McNeil
39:48
Yes, that was kind of where I jumped ahead a little bit with that, quote, the full of which is the fundamental problem and political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly and that Wilhelm Reich reading effort. Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation? Now, I don’t know if your audience is likely know who Wilhelm Reich is. He’s one of my favorite weirdos. Wilhelm Reich was a student of Sigmund Freud’s, he was a German Marxist. And I believe he was also Jewish. He ended up fleeing Germany during the war and landed in America, where he started working on a grand theory of everything that involved I’m not sure whether it’s pronounced or going or going, Oh,
R.S. Benedict
40:37
that guy, that guy who was trying to control the weather with sex and
Simon McNeil
40:41
the guy who was trying to control the weather with sex energy. That’s exactly the guy.
R.S. Benedict
40:43
Hell yeah. There’s a Kate Bush video about that guy getting arrested there is
Simon McNeil
40:48
and the American prison system even back then was so horrible that his health suffered incredibly, and he died shortly thereafter. Cheese. Yeah. So Well, I mean, being a being a Marxist in the states in the post war period wasn’t exactly very fun. Anyway,
R.S. Benedict
41:05
a Marxist in the states who was trying to control the weather with fuck energy like, yeah, the government’s Yes. Do you? I’m sorry. Yeah, too cool to be allowed to
Simon McNeil
41:14
live. Yeah, they actually banned him from selling his books. God damn, it was intense. That’s why he went to jail was because he was told he wasn’t allowed to sell his boxes, because he had these magic boxes that were supposed to cure cancer. What and this guy was at the time, he was actually one of the leading figures in light microscopy. It was very early in the discipline, he had done a lot of work isolating, I think it was cancer in blood cells, identifying blood cancers using a microscope by recall correctly. And so based on those findings, he thought he was onto something. But then he kind of went off the rails because he was also a little bit crazy. And and ended up making magic boxes to cure cancer. And so he was sending these things as far as Hollywood because there’s a few people in Hollywood who were quite fond of the you know, the magic fuck energy idea.
R.S. Benedict
42:01
Yeah, that sounds fucking amazing. Like everyone in Hollywood would be in favor of the magic fuck whether idea.
Simon McNeil
42:07
Yes. And he was also selling his books of political theory of psychoanalytic theory, and of magic, fuck energy theory. And of the three, I’m not sure which one of those is the ones that the government was most objecting to. But he was told he wasn’t allowed to sell the books. And then he told the American government that he was going to continue speaking freely. And they said, Well, your books are crossing state lines, this is now a federal matter. And he went to federal prison. So that’s the Wilhelm Reich in that quote, they’re talking about because one of his works of political theory that was back before he went a little bit nuts, was called the mass psychology of fascism. Which was one of the earliest works looking at fascism as a psychological phenomenon. Okay, it’s a fascinating piece of work that a lot of people tried to build on, including, of course, Deleuze and Guattari. Because that’s a quote from anti Oedipus, okay, which is Deleuze and Guattari. He’s extensive critique of Freud, and Lacan and fascism. And they were kind of looking at fascism as and this is a bit of a simplification, but as being this desire to kind of pull everything back into the self and make everything self similar. And so they saw this as being something that could basically arise in anyone and that, because of how they viewed how psychology worked, would arise in any one at given times in places. And it’s just a matter if it was one force among many. And the problem was, when that force kind of took over and started driving the bus. Their argument for why people would do this, like, fight for their own subjugation was because by doing that, they could help to make things all more like themselves, by making themselves more like an undifferentiated mass, but also by forcing the masses to be more like themselves. So that’s kind of like, where I think with this play, we see a bit of that, first of all, we see kind of, because that call and response, kind of people repeating the same statements over and over again, because that’s so prevalent, early in the play before anybody starts turning into rhinoceroses, we kind of see how those roots are already there. And people kind of want to persuade everybody to be like them. But then they also start just turning into this undifferentiated mass of rhinoceroses that are very difficult to distinguish from each other. Yeah. And so I think there is an element in this play of that same picking out this idea of what people want from fascism is to make everything the same as that that makes sense. So that was kind of where I was going with that was also having the excuse to talk about Deleuze and Guattari. Which, I mean, I would never do that right.
R.S. Benedict
44:58
I mean, any any excuse is to bring the fuck energy weather machine guy into the conversation is a good one. We love that guy that
Simon McNeil
45:06
guy rocks. We love that guy. We love that guy any chance to talk about Wilhelm Reich always take and the key force song is a banger.
R.S. Benedict
45:12
Oh, it’s great. The music videos really good to
Simon McNeil
45:15
see and getting Donald Sutherland to play the dad was just inspired casting.
R.S. Benedict
45:22
Yeah, it adds an A weird layer to it though that it’s about rakes boy seizing his father’s machines like well, the knowing that he’s harnessing the fuck energy makes this a little weird. I don’t know about that.
Simon McNeil
45:35
I mean, also remember he was a student of Freud’s.
R.S. Benedict
45:38
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, just adds a whole nother layer to that. That music video.
Simon McNeil
45:46
Oh, yes. No, it’s a delightful. It’s a delightful piece. It’s one of my favorite music videos.
R.S. Benedict
45:51
Oh, it’s great. Yeah, father be an old proud because it’s raining is like I know it. My son harvested the fuck machine. I’m so proud. I did it. I’m a good dead. Yeah, I will include a link to that Kate Bush video at the bottom of this app, the Episode notes.
Simon McNeil
46:12
My understanding is that reg son has always been very much kind of a supporter of his father and attempted to kind of preserve and protect his father’s legacy. So there’s also like as much of a weirdo and as much of a weirdo with specifically sexual interests as right was, I don’t want to get the wrong idea that there was anything untoward with his kid.
R.S. Benedict
46:30
No, no, not at all. And honestly, I think it’s like kind of great and charming that he was a weirdo in a way that’s like not evil or harmful. If he was a weirdo crockpot in like a fun way, where he wasn’t hurting anyone with his sex, whether machine it didn’t, it didn’t do anything. It was fine.
Simon McNeil
46:47
One important thing to kind of understand about how science has changed over time is that when Wright was doing a lot of his early work, which was really formative on his later work was still when science was very much a grand theory mode. And so scientists would regularly try to tie all phenomena into something Central. And that was largely what he was doing because he was trying to take psychological phenomena he identified and he was trying to tie them together with things he’d seen operating inside cells with microscopes. And then he was trying to tie that to Aurora Borealis. Sure that methodology is not one that people really use anymore, for good reasons. But it wasn’t that it was entirely deranged it even though it sounds bizarre and deranged. Now it was that he was trying to find this great thread that would tie everything together. And he thought that was life energy, which he saw as being explicitly tied to the orgasm, because of a psychological way.
R.S. Benedict
47:41
Honestly, that rocks. I wish he was right. I wish that was the universe we lived in. Yeah. I want to believe
Simon McNeil
47:50
Yeah.
R.S. Benedict
47:53
So rhinoceros, yes. Rhinoceros?
Simon McNeil
47:58
Should we talk about the absurd specifically a little bit and how you’re an author versus a as part of the absurd is part of a specific kind of brand of existentialism? Yes. Let’s talk about that. Yeah, so French, existentialism was really heavily influenced by World War Two. And whether you’re looking at kemu or Sartre or Beauvoir, all these people and their work was trying to come to terms with this horrible event that they’d all been through. And Khumbu in particular was really kind of focused on how to deal with the fact that there was no moral order to the universe, the idea that there wasn’t a moral order to the universe was just self evident to anybody who lived through the war. You could live through that and see all those atrocities from the Nazi death camps to the firebombing of Dresden on the other side, too, and still believe that there was some specific moral arc that was built into how the universe worked. And so commu was like, Well, if that’s the case, there’s no moral to the universe. So why don’t we just all kill ourselves? And he picked at this in a lot of different ways. And when he came down to his, you basically just have to love it all. He said, What else can I desire than to exclude nothing and learn how to braid with white thread and black thread a single cord stretched to the breaking point? I like that quote, because I think it’s really what kind of drives home exactly what absurdity and specific was trying to say about the universe is that there’s no way of separating out the good and the bad, that you have to take in everything. And that all of it, the good, the bad, the funny and the miserable. All has to kind of come together or it doesn’t come at all. So you get the sadness of the loss pet the cat that dies, but then also the funerals kind of funny because it’s this tiny coffin, and they’re all being so grave. And it’s this little thing. And I think that balancing act that this play does with emotions, I think is really critical to an understanding of absurdity because you have to have to do it all at once.
R.S. Benedict
49:56
Yeah, that’s not easy to do. No, it is really looking hard to strike that balance without sounding callous, or without sounding like you’re undercutting the horror of it, or without defending it? It’s really, really tough.
Simon McNeil
50:11
Yeah. And so I think what I really loved about this play was that it did pull it off. And it is a very difficult thing to do. I mean, if a piece of media that comes out that’s even vaguely existential is there’s a very good chance that I’ve watched it or read it. And I’m often pretty critical of it. Like I’ve really, really wanted to like everything everywhere all at once. But I don’t think they read enough. kemu I don’t think they really understood absurdly well enough for what they did in that movie. Yeah, and I know, that’s, that’s gonna be an unpopular opinion. Because I know a lot of people love that
R.S. Benedict
50:45
movie, people get a little intense about that movie. Yeah, they do. I
Simon McNeil
50:48
know. It’s weird, because I mean, it was fine. It was a decent piece of entertainment. Michelle Yost, one of my favorite actors, and I’ll walk you through the phonebook. But it’s just it’s a testament to exactly how hard it is to pull that off. And to get that sense that you need to take everything, everything all at once. And that’s that’s hard to do in art, because it’s really difficult to cram the entire world onto a stage set. And this is a sense that goes back to the origins of a lot of existential thought, like even Nietzsche was in his early writing, talking about how what made tragedy important was that by grappling with both the best and the worst of life, it affirmed all of life, it says that it’s all important that all matters. It’s all something irrelevant. But then he said, and it’s really hard to do. And this play, manages it, it pulls it off, and then it fits the whole world onto the stage in a way. Yeah, it does. We have our panoply of very different people who blur through the play and eventually kind of all fall into this unifying mass movement and just being a rhinoceros. But at the same time, we get this sense that all these people are people who live in the world and do have cats and who can be terrible boyfriends or fashionable, you know, like men about town and that, like, all those things are part of the same thing.
R.S. Benedict
52:11
Yeah, especially I think in that first scene, the scene in the cafe when you get, there’s so much hustle and bustle, there’s so much going on in life, you got the housewife going back and forth with their cat, the groceries or in the groceries wife or trying to like make a little money off of her. There’s the cafe owner, the waitress, just all these different people in all these different walks of life, there’s sort of a community and they’re all kind of going about their business going about their lives. There’s the old gentleman trying to trying to hit on the little housewife. There’s the his buddy, the logician who’s just being a nerd, and then all of a sudden a fucking rhinoceros just charges through and starts disrupting all of it. And that
Simon McNeil
52:49
sense that like that the whole world is this disordered thing that at any moment, anything could happen. But that, in order to understand the world, you have to take in that disorder and that that possibility that everything could just be overturned, a rhinoceros could charge to the street and trample you, like, notwithstanding the obvious metaphors for fascism, and how people kind of fall into these modes of thought that this play explores that idea that the only way to be able to live a good life is to take in everything all at once and, and recognize the interconnectedness of both joy and sorrow. And that’s really central to how this place constructed.
R.S. Benedict
53:28
Yeah, it’s such a contrast where we get this, we start in this exterior. It’s a cafe, like it’s a terrace or something. It’s one of those outside cafes where you’re just kind of hanging out and sip a cup of coffee for several hours or something, I guess, which sounds pretty great. Yeah. And by the end of it, it’s just Behringer alone in his apartment screaming. And there’s just a bunch of like glowing rhinoceros heads going by you. That’s it, that that’s, and it’s so bleak and eerie. I hope to someday be able to see a production of this live, I’m sure my high school was never able to put it on just because it’s a little tricky to stage. Because you know, you need the rhinoceros costumes, you need the rhinoceros props, there’s a couple of scenes where you’ve got to apply makeup very, very quickly. And it takes a good bit of craftsmanship and a good bit of budget to stage it really well at least stage it as the way it’s written. The version I have, which I found was very interesting that there’s a ton of very detailed stage directions about how things are supposed to look. Yeah, which is a little atypical, sometimes of theater scripts that I’ve read, but IONESCO was very, like very particular about how he wanted this to look which okay, I get it. I respect that. So unfortunately I haven’t been able to see a live stage of it, but stage show of it, but it really is a terrific and quite a remarkable play.
Simon McNeil
54:52
Yeah, it really is. And I think it’s really worth kind of giving attention to like I doing I do encourage people to not just read it, although it is good reading it to see the stage direction, because that is unusual. And it is also part of what that focus on not just the word said. But on the other stuff happening on the stage as part of what made the avant garde, what it is when you eventually get people like our toe who were literally like, blasting bright light in people’s faces and stuff like that, to startle them that comes from the same well of treating theatre as being more than just the words. And I think that that’s a really important element of it. And the safe direction helps to point in that direction. But I also think is really something that like watching one of the performances on YouTube, or or maybe the movie is good, I don’t know. would be probably something that people should do as well, just because I think it really is something that you have to kind of see.
R.S. Benedict
55:46
Yeah, yeah. Especially the scene in John’s room just comes across. Yeah, differently. Seeing it staged.
Simon McNeil
55:52
Oh, yeah. It’s interesting. The two of us had pretty different experiences at the scene in Johnston, because I was dealing with the one that had the very stripped down costuming, but the actor who plays John was really quite good in that scene, and his body language changes, and he starts charging around the stage and bellowing and it was really very
R.S. Benedict
56:16
effective. Okay, maybe you should send me the link to the one you saw because the one I saw was not very good. Okay, so no disrespect for them. They’re college students. But I’m sorry, this was not maybe yeah, maybe send me a link so that I can include that so that I can watch it and maybe our listeners can watch it because watch a better version than the one I watched. Okay. Yeah,
Simon McNeil
56:36
but just it didn’t have any of the rhinoceros has the costuming is all dependent on. Wow. Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
56:42
this one had some very good rhinoceros heads. I’ll give them that they had some terrific rhinoceros heads.
Simon McNeil
56:48
And that also kind of points towards one of the joys of theater, which is how every company can kind of put their own mark on a workday.
R.S. Benedict
56:53
Yeah, I could imagine why like making a bunch of rhinoceros heads might stretch the budget of your theater department. They’re not terribly well funded. But
Simon McNeil
57:04
I think this was maybe a professional performance that was recorded, but it was old. It looked like probably, I had to guess. Probably 70s or 80s.
R.S. Benedict
57:13
Oh, I saw a French one on YouTube. That looks good. But my French is terrible. So like, I don’t know how well I could really watch it. Yeah, I get a sense that we are winding down since we’ve been talking for about an hour. So before we go, what would you like to plug?
Simon McNeil
57:29
I don’t have much new at the moment. Let’s type in my blog. My most recent thing is I wrote an extensive article about distich fluent communism and the ranny ending of Elden ring, which appeared in a recent edition of CES the press.
R.S. Benedict
57:45
Oh, very nice.
Simon McNeil
57:48
So if anybody wants to read 6000 word argument about why Randy says the best thing to do with power is to put it back down again. Sure, then that’s there and sees the press and they are an incredibly good magazine that I always like to blog regardless.
R.S. Benedict
58:01
Yeah, sees the press rocks. Okay, well, thank you so much for coming on the show and thank you all for listening and supporting us. Be sure to check out our Discord and until next time, keep reading and keep writing good and keep not turning into a rhinoceros. Good night.