Just Do It Over (8a)—Soliloquy, with Chair

A year ago on Round and Square (1 September 2011)—Styling Culture: Revise, revise, revise

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Just Do It Over."

[a] Hamlet/Ophelia RF

Click here for the individual sections of "Soliloquy, With Chair."

Chair 1                    Chair 2 

I can't help it. I have tried to look away; I have tried to ignore it. I just can't stop thinking about a (sort of) talking chair...and a "mystery guest" at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.

[b] Psycho-prop RF

For the last twenty-seven hours (ever since 9:03 p.m. Thursday night, Central Daylight Time) I have been thinking about soliloquy. Yes, I understand that it is not exactly an everyday word—the kind we use at the water cooler, along with "Snooki," "O-Line," "moderate," and "carbohydrate." Soliloquy is a noun, but it emerges from a pretty powerful cluster of verbal ideas. A soliloquy is something a person does. While I know that many readers of Round and Square have no problem at all with a word such as this, let us not forget that we reach 118 countries, and that not every English word is obvious to some of our most dedicated readers. Let's define it, and then discuss the way that Clint Eastwood talked trash to an empty chair. The opening of last night's final hour of the Republican National Convention was something between a train-wreck and performance art. The only thing everyone agrees upon is this:

No one has ever seen anything like it.

Here's a definition of "soliloquy." Focus on the "talking alone" idea. It lies at the heart of the strangest thing that I have ever seen in politics—and I have been watching since I was a little tyke in the late-1960s. This definition has everything to do with our "just do it over" approach to a pretty exciting political denouement in a major convention gathering.

Soliloquy         So·lil·o·quy         [ sə lílləkwee ]

                     NOUN 

                1.Talking when alone: the act of speaking while alone, especially when used as a theatrical 

                   device that allows a character's thoughts and ideas to be conveyed to the audience

                2. Section in play: a section of a play or other drama in which a soliloquy is spoken.

             [14th century. < late Latin soliloquium "a speaking alone" < Latin solus "alone" + loqui "speak" ]

Here is what I am moving toward (that toward which I am moving). There was a twelve minute soliloquy last night in the final hour of the Republican National Convention. It sent me running for parallels in the world of high drama. Suffice (it) to say that I found none in my experience with politics, and I have spent a good deal of time thinking about everything from Preston Brooks beating Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner in 1856 with a cane on the U.S. Senate floor to the founding emperor of the Han dynasty, Liu Bang (r. 206 BCE - 195 BCE), urinating into the cap of an official who had irritated him with his remonstrance during a court session.

[c] Mystery RF

This was different, though. This was an iconic actor...talking to a chair.

The chair was supposed to contain an American president named something like Barack Ophelia. Eastwood was scheduled for five minutes, but he persisted in talking to the presidential chair for almost twelve (one imagines nervous aides from, oh, about 1:35 on, wondering what was happening). "Odd" does not even begin to explain it. The only thing that will suffice in circumstances such as this is a full viewing. The performance was not vetted. There was no line-by-line check by various aides, nor so much as a "give us a sense of what you plan to do, Mr. Eastwood." Moreover, the "mystery guest" appearance (it was supposed to be a secret, but the chair was let out of the bag a day early) cut out a highly-crafted documentary introducing a very human side of the Republican nominee. The damage was (at least) two-fold.

Eastwood Chair 11:24

When I picked my jaw off the floor, I spent a little time thinking about where to "put" this post in the world of Round and Square topics. "Displays of Authenticity" crossed my mind, as did "Remonstrance" and even "Exilic Response" or "Bricolage Bibliothèque." There is a lot going on in this eleven-minute plus clip, after all. Even a glance at it will make you realize that the best topical home for this wooden, eastern, Clintonian soliloquy is Just Do It Over. 

[d] Alas RF

I am certain that is what many people were thinking, from Romney campaign aides to bewildered independent voters in their living rooms. Clint—just do it over. It was hard to imagine this making anyone's day. If that sounds "political," think again. Round and Square doesn't bother much with politics, but it can't stop focusing on those places where politics and events in the news intersect with questions of culture, psychology, economics, and neurobiology. 

Clint Eastwood's soliloquy—with (alas) an empty chair—speaks to memory, loss, anger, and confusion. Our gorges rise at it. Something is rotten in the state of Tampa, and Mr. Eastwood speaks to the empty shell of memories of the past. Unlike Hamlet's musings, though, the skull/chair seems to be talking back, and Clint is translating the words of the "chary" Yorick. Unlike last night's performance, Yorick's skull doesn't tell Hamlet to tell (someone) to do-something-to-himself (watch the clip again if you missed this).

                     Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him...a fellow* of infinite
                     jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a
                     thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is!
                     My gorge rises at it. [Hamlet V.1, 179-188]             *Chair?

Indeed, how abhorr'd in the imagination is the twisted chair of prime time carnage that some have called ad lib and others have spoken of as a weird twist on psychotherapy. We'll look at the political culture of it all tomorrow, but for now, just think about Clint channeling Hamlet. I just wanted to change the channel, but I couldn't look away.         

NEXT 

Click here for the individual sections of "Soliloquy, With Chair."

Chair 1                    Chair 2

[e] Talkin' Back RF