MUSING ON CULTURE: Donald’s washing machine

Sophia Linispori and Konstantina Mavropoulou in "The washing machine" by Thanasis Triaridis

Last month I had the opportunity to see Thanasis Triaridis’ theatre play “The washing machine”. Two mothers meet three times at a public laundry. In the first meeting, mother A looks distraught, shocked, deeply sad: the previous day her son was given the “honour” of carrying out the public decapitation of a girl. Mother B looks happy and pleased, congratulates mother A for her son and answers her concern that her son did something noble, obeyed the law and the law takes care of everyone. The law says that girls are not useful, thus they need to be eliminated.

In the second meeting, sometime later, mother A is mainly concerned with the lack of girls. What will this mean for her son’s future? Both mothers seem to be at ease, though, both used to the idea that the law exists for the general good.

Third meeting: mother B is distraught, in despair, in agony. Her son is the next to be publicly decapitated. He’s not very intelligent, he has some kind of intellectual disability (?), he’s not useful. Mother A firmly believes that this is the right thing to do, it is the law. She says she understands how mother B is feeling, but it is for the common good and, after all, she may try to have another child and be luckier the second time around.

Triaridis’ play, as well as Paul Lynch’s book “Prophet song” (a tale about Ireland slipping into totalitarianism – Booker Prize 2023), made me feel claustrophobic, anxious, transmitted a feeling of impotence. Just like the first weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency and the avalanche of executive orders, some of which constitute a direct attack on human rights and a society’s humanity. We are watching a man in a large democracy seeing himself as the king and ruling like a tyran. Republican members of the Congress seen to have quickly got used to it. As Jason Linkins was writing in The New Republic, “The GOP's total withdrawal from governing is nearly complete, and they’re increasingly determined to push the entire legislative branch into functional irrelevance.” They got used to it; we shouldn’t.

As we are being bombarded by news about everything Trump and his cronies say or do, feeling anxious, impotent, negative, thinking feeling tired and thinking it is not worth fighting, we are ignoring the signs and attitudes of hope. This is not going unchallenged. Rebecca Solnit, author of “Hope in the Dark”, gives us shots of hope every day through her social media. Smaller or bigger acts of resistance, to which I believe the media should be paying more attention, should they wish to be something more than the tyran’s loudspeaker.

I confess that I was taken aback by the swift compliance of organisations such as the National Gallery of Art or the Smithsonian Institution to Trump’s executive order demanding for an immediate end of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programmes in all federal agencies and entities, referring to them as “illegal and immoral discrimination programs”, and threatening with withdrawing federal funding. I didn’t understand why they were so quick to comply. OK, it is an order and they do receive federal funding. Maine Governor, Janet Mills, for instance, told the President that she only complies with state and federal laws and that she will see him in court.

A few days after the first news about the museums, trying to reflect on their actions, I thought that they did what they were ordered to do, but eliminating some “dangerous” words such as “diversity, equity, inclusion” from their websites doesn’t mean they are not continuing with the work they are doing. Then news came that Stonewell National Monument scrapped references to transgender and queer people from their website, thus eliminating the people who actually had something to do with the existence of this national monument today.

In this moment, continuing to reflect on these cases, I hope, on the one hand, that along the years DEIA (let’s include ‘access’, it is important) policies and programmes have brought some systemic change in the organisations – so that it is not necessary to actually mention some words. But I am also wondering why cultural organisations receiving federal funding did not ask the President for some clarifications before implementing the executive order. What is “gender ideology”, for instance? Jon Jarvis, former director of the National Park Service in the US, did exactly that and I doubt he got an answer.

Rebecca Solnit was also commenting recently that “What they think is the power invested in them is not in them; it's actually the willingness of people to obey their orders. So far the court has told a lot of their orders to go fuck themselves. Without obedience they're helpless.”

There are many ways of resisting. This is happening and we should all give it a larger projection, we need it. As The New Republic was reporting, “Do not obey in advance” (the advice historian Timothy Snyder gave dismayed citizens following Trump’s first election) has come back, part of the demonstrations of university or hospital staff.

The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, which received orders from the National Endowment for the Arts to cease operating "any programs promoting 'diversity, equity, and inclusion'”, announced that it will decline federal funding and added: “Hateful rhetoric and policies like these have no place in our artistic communities; what they call ‘DEI’ is what we call our values. We identify and uplift artists who have been historically marginalized, and we materially support their ability to create their world-changing work, full stop.”

Alfred Street Baptist Church, a historic black church in Alexandria, Washington DC, cancelled its concert at the Kennedy Center (which was taken over by Trump), stating that “We believe that the new leadership’s opposition to the Kennedy Center’s long-standing tradition of honouring artistic expression across all backgrounds is misaligned with our unwavering commission to proclaim and practice the transformative and redemptive love of Jesus, to pursue justice, to promote equality, to embrace the gift of diversity and to care for all of the creation. Many others cancellations have occurred, at the same time that the Kennedy Center’s new leadership has scheduled a concert with the J6 Prison Choir, formed by men who were imprisoned for their involvement in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, swiftly pardoned as soon as Trump was in office.

In his State of the State speech, the Governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, reminded his audience that “Tyranny requires your fear, silence and compliance. Democracy requires courage.” (if you don’t wish to watch it all, watch from 29:40). Judith Butler reminds us that Trump (and others), in some cases, make declarations to test the waters and often take a step back. But she also says that “in other cases, the outrageous claim is its own accomplishment. He defies shame and legal constraints in order to show his capacity to do so, which displays to the world a shameless sadism.” And just as Butler affirms that “Amassing authoritarian power depends in part on a willingness of the people to believe in the power exercised”, Ezra Klein, in an article for The New York Times, tells us “Don’t believe him”: “Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.”

I often pay a lot of attention into what happens in the US, in the cultural field and beyond. Because I know that, sooner or later, some things will come our way. Also because, the way our world works, the vote of someone in Texas affects us all. Jane Fonda, accepting the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, asked her colleagues: “Have any of you ever watched a documentary of one of the great social movements, like Apartheid, or our Civil Rights Movement or Stonewell, and asked yourself would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge? Would you have been able to take the hoses and the batons and the dogs? We don't have to wonder, anymore, because we are in our documentary moment.”

We (I) feel angry, outraged, anxious, and also sad and impotent. I think it is OK, but we also need to get our act together. We shouldn’t get used to the washing away of our humanity. This is about community and this is about scale. This is about the power of coming together for a common cause and about doing the best we can, even if our range does not exceed our homes or neighbourhoods. This is about love, care and hope. This is about solidarity, in its fullest sense.

Monday, 24 February 2025

Donald’s washing machine

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