A Date with the Father of Modern Drama.

Last night we caught Ibsen's An Enemy of the People down at the Shakespeare Theatre. After we got home, I skimmed through the play, which I hadn't read since I was in tenth grade, and was amazed at how closely the production followed Ibsen's script. However, one notable exception was in a pivotal scene in the newspaper office in which Mrs. Stockmann comes to fetch Doctor Stockmann home; whereas Ibsen's script calls for Mrs. Stockmann to stand solidly with her husband and support his fight, the production omits those lines. In fact Mrs. Stockmann becomes little other than a prop to indicate Dr. Stockmann's competing allegiances -- she and the children are bargaining chips in the town's eventual war against the good doctor.

The best thing about the play is that Ibsen takes on everyone. The conservative town fathers are shown to be concerned about nothing more than their economic bottom line. The rabble-rousing newspape editor is revealed to be nothing more than a pandering turncoat, willing to sell out his causes based on the latest popularity poll. The printer Aslaksen comes in for brutal lampooning of his "moderate" approach to everything, and as representative of the middle-class, Aslaksen is devoid of opinions other than those given him by the mayor. Even Dr. Stockmann himself comes across as obsessed with the truth to such an extent you wonder if it's really the truth he's so passsionate about or whether it's a personal desire to be right about nearly everything.

In the end, Ibsen's message resonates heavily with Nietzsche's critique of democracy in that both lament the ability of the majority -- whom they characterize as largely self-satisfied dullards -- to rule over the minority. The ruling class, the bourgeoisie, and the radicals are all corrupt, smug, and self-serving and only a very few -- what Althusser labeled "Bad Subjects" -- break from the pack.

Ibsen's play does a tremendous job of showing these power relations and how they make a mockery of high-minded ideals like truth and justice. For Dr. Stockmann, it is simply impossible that anyone could possibly act in a way that isn't in accordance with truth, and he consequently insists that he has the right on his side and that will carry the day. However, while obviously not a Marxist, Ibsen lays bare the material relations of society such that the audience understands how capital exercises its sway over society: the liberal newspaper editor sacrifices his ideals (if indeed he ever had any) to keep his paper afloat; he in turn relies on the printer, who represents the property owners, whose property values and business prospects rest on the town baths, whose board of directors has no interest in losing their capital investment over something as silly as contaminated water that's actually poisoning their patrons.

Which reminds me of the Post's so-called coverage of the aftermath of the Guatemalan Civil War, but that's another post for another day....