4 ~ Sunday, May 12, 1991 - North Shore News

Help us Superman,
or we shall sink!

SHAKESPEARE would have loved the times we are in.
He saw humanity and nature as one, locked in 4 strange

but profound embrace.

It has been suggested that
Shakespeare was the last and the
greatest of the old-world thinkers,
who saw the events of weather
and season, storm and stillness, as
being deeply interwoven with the
affairs of men and women, magi-
cians and elves, mutants and
kings.

Somewhere after Shakespeare, it
became unfashionable among
playwrights to have the thunder
clap every time the protagonist
had a dire prediction to make.

{think that was a mistake. It
screwed up one of our fundamen-
tal connections, namely the actual
connection with the forces of
nature.

We are part of nature. Some-
where the thunder does clap, and
we must all remember this or we
will fall into the craziness of
thinking that we are somehow
isolated, alienated, alone —
nature being way over there, like
God, and us being so far away
over here.

With the loss of the
Shakespearean belief in the linked
destinies of great nations, men
and the forces of nature, we were
plunged into a painfully
schizophrenic view of the world.

Keep in mind that what we see
is determined almost wholly by
the form of the communication.
And all forms are false.

In the natural world, there are,
to begin with, no ‘‘stories.”’ There
are no screen adaptations. There
are no movies. No poems. No
canvases, No news events. No de-

cades, no centuries. No terms of
office. No fiscal years.

The idea of *‘drama’”’ did not
even exist until Homer invented it
while covering the Trojan War.

With the coming of modern
cinema, scriptwriters have been
locked into paralysis by fear of
creating a deus ex machina situa-
tion, wherein the ‘‘Seat of the
Gods’’ would descend onto the
stage and the main character, hav-
ing got himself into a corner he
couldn’t get out of, is saved by
intervention from the heavens.

Yet life, if properly lived, is full
of deus ex machina situations.

What would have blown
Shakespeare away about the scene
today is the way practically
everything has turned apocalyptic.

Shakespeare would have loved
doing a play about Canada, had
there been enough materials avail-
able at the time.

Some would say there isn’t
enough yet, but fet us assume that
Shakespeare himself could not fail
to see in the tale of the collapse of
the great Canadian empire some-
thing to rival Julius Caesar.

After a while, if you have
enough raw media firepower,
events begin to acquire an amaz-
ing story-like shape. it is not that
there is really a story (just one
more coincidental event in a si-
multaneous cosmos-wide co-
event).

it is just that the cameras, tape
recorders, notebooks and
deadlines have blasted some kind

Bob
Hunter |

of tale out of the hard limestone
of reality, threading together
events, personae, plots and
counter-plots as deftly as the Bard
himself.

What an epic! At the centre, in
an old castle that is flaking away
thanks to acid rain, a king who
seized the crown in a brutal coup
many years ago, now turns to the
man he once defeated, and begs
him to go forth to save the
kingdom that is crashing down
around their heads, thanks to the
greed and cruelty of the king, who
has secretly sold his country out
to the Americans...

And just then, the ozone layer
disintegrates and all life on Earth
begins to die of ultraviolet radia-
tion from the sun.

Shakespeare would run with this
material, I just know it. And all
we are talking about, among the
myriad of awesome screenplays
waiting to be written, is a minor
sub-plot in one minuscule se-
quence in a largely irrelevant
ethnic period piece called The Rise
And Fall of Canada.

All I could think when I learned
that Joe Clark had been handed
the job of saving Canada was that
the end was in sight at last. Batten
down the hatches and make sure
the preserves are all OK. We are
at the last ditch.

Indeed Shakespeare could not
fail to brew up a wonderful la-
ment on the duplicity (even futili-
ty!) of man, taking the raw mate-
rial of Joe Clark, Brian Mulroney,
Canada in the year 1991, pirouet-
ting separatists, finger-wagging
Bible thumpers, greedy premiers
committing hara-kiri, chunks of
decaying meat hanging in the na-
tional art gallery, a dandy put in
charge of the armed forces, a
pork farmer flown at taxpayers’
expense over to Saudi Arabia to
drum up business in a land where
no one eats pork...

If Joe Clark can save Canada,
Superman lives.

The ultimate melt-down from
reality into story-form has occur-
ted. National destiny has become
a comic book.

Oh well, maybe it'll have a deus
ex machina ending. Why not?

a

Boating feature correction

AN ARTICLE in the April 28
News boating feature, Free bout
check-ups, inadvertendy gave the
impression that certain marine
regulations regarding mandatory
safety equipment are not onfore-
ed.

While the Canadian Coast
Guard does not enforce such laws,
any boater pulled over by the
ROMP Marine Squad will be
charged if they do not comply
with Small Vessel Regulations,

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