With House GOP’s still hungry to gut all funds for PBS, it was as interesting time to watch the network's version of “Macbeth” starring (“Sir”) Patrick Stewart. The production is an excellent example of why Republicans would want to sabotage the network and its programming.
Shakespeare’s play is rife with adult themes; those only hinted at in the text are brought to blossom in this modern interpretation…and then some. Macbeth and his Lady have a sensually charged relationship. Said hungers then choose power as a new conquest. They unite in murdering the king and placing Macbeth in his place. And that brings us to another adult theme; murder and violence.
In the PBS production, some of this is revealed symbolically - lots of blood stains on hands, face, and anywhere else - and some of it more graphic. Now, if this were a horror film or murder mystery along with the usual cheesy performances and expendable characters, the gore and loss of life would be unmoving par for the course. But because the world of director Rupert Goold has the weight of reality, characters (even immoral ones) that we are deeply invested in, and emotional dimension, the violence unsettles. Rather than Wile E. Coyote racing off the edge of a cliff, this feels like the father in Nebraska who inexplicably shoots his child. This brings up the third element that Republicans largely object to.
PBS’ “Macbeth” is a study in emotional illness. But when it's “Morning in America”, picture-perfect nuclear families sparkle the landscape, gays do not exist, rape never necessitates abortion, citizens acquiesce to the "moral majority" of their priest-politicians and there is certainly no such thing as skyrocketing mental illness. And because there isn’t, there’s no need for universal healthcare to treat it.
Lastly, this “Great Performances” production did not come from one of the Big Media companies that can now donate unlimited monies to both parties while tightening their stranglehold on the market. One can rest assured that, had this been a FOX Entertainment vehicle - desexed of naughty parts, supercharged with thrilling car chases, and featuring Johnny Knoxville as a more “Christianly” Macbeth - it would be coddled as wholesome, American entertainment.
So, there you have it. Sex, violence, illness, and decentralized media: four things that don’t exist in a GOP utopia. But lest we leave it at that, there is a fifth and far most powerful one.
Stewart and the rest of the exceptional cast play characters awash in immense moral ambiguity. We hate Macbeth for his tyranny. We empathize with him for his madness and see ourselves, all too clearly, in moral concessions made for short-term gain. For Macbeth, it was rulership over an entire country. For us, it may be ignoring a waiting car to sneak in on a good parking spot. But the seed of selfishness is the same, no matter how large one may let it grow. The fact that this is universal struggle undercuts any single person, group, or nation's assertion that they alone own the moral high-ground. When any political party deludes itself into thinking that it does anyway, they stand on the precipice of a cliff. The fall is always a long and ugly one.
Hence, Republicans are frequently dealt a seismic crack in the hot nucleus of their imaginary planet. Pitiful excuse making and denial follows in the wake when a representative has homosexual relations with a page, a president manufactures “evidence” to incite war, and a senator divorces his wife as she lay stricken in a hospital bed. We expect such bad behavior of Democrats for they are a study in moral ambiguity. But it is for their denial of the same that Republicans are the hypocrites.
