Light Cue 23

I think Charles Mee is one of the most interesting writers alive today. He publishes all of his plays to his website for free download. This speech is by Tyndarius from his Orestes 2.0:

If I would speak to you, how should I speak?

I know one mustn’t use certain expressions these days,
among your generation.
One mustn’t call people barracudas, for example
no matter how they behave.

Shall I apologize?
This was your mother, after all,
my daughter,
even if she was a slut.

But one mustn’t speak this way, I know.
For this is rude and might offend one’s feelings.

(He takes his time)

There are words these days, I know, that cause a certain pain–
like”slut” or “sweetie” or “dear” or “peg leg,” or–”watermelon.”

There is some quality of magical thinking in this, a certain
“primitive” turn of mind, if I may use the word, that seems to fly to
the belief that if one disposes of a word, one disposes of all the
dreadful or disagreeable things that have become attached to it.

So that if one simply doesn’t use the word “articulate,” in referring
to a certain sort of person who is articulate, as though a certain sort
of person’s competence with language were an exceptional matter, then
the exceptionality of this articulateness will disappear.

Or, if one will eschew the word “community,” in speaking of a group of
people, as though that group shared a monolithic culture in which they
all acted and thought in the same way, then one’s language would not
create ghettoes in which these groups are constrained to live. One
should never refer to the black community, for example, or the gay
community. One should refer, rather, to the black residents in a
southside neighborhood.

Then, too, one ought not to say “oreo” in reference to black Americans
who have abandoned their culture, or refer in a similar fashion to
Asians as bananas or Mexicans as coconuts.

One ought not to say “illegal alien,” when one has available such
vocabulary as undocumented worker or undocumented resident.

One ought not to use the expression “qualified minorities,” as though
minorities were in general unqualified.

One ought not to use the word “swarthy.”

One ought not to say “blonde and blue-eyed” unless one is prepared to
use the expression “brown-haired and brown-eyed” as an expression of
equal attractiveness.

One ought not to say “inscrutable” in speaking of an Asian.

One ought not to say “Dutch treat,” as though to say the Dutch people
are cheap.

One ought not to say “fried chicken,” under any circumstances as I
understand it.

One ought not to say Jew–or I should say that some people prefer the
expression Jewish person, and in any case that the word should never be
used as a synonym for stingy. And that it should always be used as a
noun, never as a verb.

One ought not to say buxom or fragile or feminine or pert or petite or
gorgeous or stunning or statuesque or full-figured or in any other way
refer to the physical attributes of a woman.

I can accept all this with equanimity.

And yet, one can commit murder and find the words to justify it.

This is your sort of civilization, then. It speaks nicely and behaves
barbarously.

Indeed, it thinks that speaking well, putting a nice face on things,
will transform the very stuff of life on earth.

No, no, no.
You’ve come unhinged.
You’ve lost your bearings altogether.
You’ve assaulted the very foundations of your home.
You’ve forgotten who you are, where you come from.

You remember nothing: not your parents, nor the values they held dear,
not your country, nor the polity it once held in its grasp, or at the
very least aspired to, not your history, nor your religion, nor even
the most rudimentary tenets of ethics or gentleness.

And this is what you ask me to give my blessing to.
No.

(To Menelaus)

As for you, Menelaus, I don’t expect some form of civil behavior from a
man who has just returned from rendering an entire civilization into a
smoking ruin, while his own home sinks in rot and violence, husbands
murdered by their wives, mothers murdered by their sons, sleeping
children shot through bedroom doors. I know of a boy who poured
kerosene on a derelict and lit him on fire and burned him to a crisp,
not thinking he, the boy, had done anything wrong. That’s the value
they place on human life in the world that boy comes from. And soon
enough such boys will fill your neighborhood. You flatter yourself that
you are an old-fashioned sort of man, but you’ve no idea what it is you
ought to be old-fashioned about.

And I will tell you this:
for the murder of my daughter,
I expect the murderer to suffer the punishment of the state.
No more. No less.
That’s what I mean by a civil society.
I’ll hold you responsible.
Let us begin there to put the world to rights.

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Tags: charles mee, orestes 2.0, plays

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