Reading is Resistance: Bloomsday

As Bloomsday approaches, and as our reality continues to resemble the first draft of a Pynchon novel, and as the torrent of events coming from the Trump administration establishes a permanent colony in my brain so that it's nearly impossible to go through a day without some half-yelling conversation with my partner about these fucking guys, I've started thinking about the nature of politics in Ulysses. Like just about every topic in Ulysses, the more one begins to think about it, the more one finds. There is, of course, The Citizen spouting off, and rumblings of potential city council or mayoral elections. Characters revisit one of the great political scandals in Irish history and the viceregal cavalcade winds through the streets of Dublin and through the events in the book as a reminder of the constant presence of a distant power. There's also plenty of identity politics as well, as Leopold Bloom, a non-practicing Jew, navigates his relationship with the Irish nation.

And, like all great books, if you put effort into the project you can find a way to make the politics in Ulysses relevant to our experience today. Though, there is no election or slide from democracy to fascism happening in the book, it is clear we are also watching a long standing (and undecided) conversation about what kind of nation Ireland should be, not just in terms of home rule or British rule, but also, like us, about what it means to be Irish, what it means to live in Ireland, and what it means to consider yourself a citizen of Ireland.

But when I think about politics and Ulysses through the lens of resistance and our personal relationship to resistance, I think less of the grander architectures and political landscapes of the book and more about one character: Leopold Bloom. Some of Bloom's political moments are overt, as when he debates The Citizen about what it means to be a member of a nation, while others are more policy specific as when he proposes a tram to move cattle so herds no longer disrupt traffic and when he recommends the government put a small amount of money in the bank for every child so that, as interest accrues on that deposit, every person has a financial safety net, while still others, like his acceptance and support of Molly's sexuality, we would see as overtly political even though Bloom (and perhaps Joyce) would not. Finally, other events and scenes in the book illuminate two other traits that seem to drive Bloom's political opinions; his curiosity and his imagination. Often, the reforms he offers in the course of his day start with him asking a question, and follow from him imagining an answer.

It isn't terribly original to describe Bloom as a reformer. Both the specific policies mentioned above Bloom offered in response to encountering a specific problem, I've talked about his drive to reform elsewhere and, though my memory is failing me at this point, he or another character might describe him as such. But our political moment is one of resistance, not reform. It is an existential struggle for a particular type of American nation, and it is a conflict with massive repercussions both in the short term and in the long term. But we can still draw from the core of Bloom's (and perhaps Joyce's) political beliefs and his motivations for reform.

Even in his wildest fantasies, in Circe, when he is able to enact a kind of hallucinatory wish-fulfillment, he doesn't imagine conquering other nations or accruing vast amounts of wealth or wielding god-like ultimately powers, but, essentially, of becoming a kind of uber-Robert Moses minus the malignant elitism that stained Moses' achievements, instituting vast social, technological, and economic reforms that would greatly improve the living conditions and lives of all those under his purview. Sure, it's foolish, filled with impossible technology, short on meaningful details, and, well, in a scene with gender swapping, S&M, and talking furniture, but ultimately it expresses a deep and profound desire, one that is (well I wanted to say “shockingly” but what shocks us anymore, so...) distressingly rejected by significant currents in our contemporary politics; to help every human being as much as possible. For Bloom, the goal of, well, everything, including government, isn't the preservation and elevation of a nation or nationality or even an ideal, but the preservation and elevation of people.

Furthermore, Bloom does two other things that illuminate his values. First, he checks on Mina Purefoy at the hospital because he heard she is going through a particularly difficult birth. Second, he follows Stephen, who is visibly drunk, into Night Town. These two big events, along with a series of smaller moments throughout the book, display Bloom's compassion. He is not a saint, he is not perfect, he has his flaws, and he makes his mistakes, but ultimately, Bloom is sensitive to the lives of those around him. He wants to ease the suffering of those who suffer and improve the lives of everyone.

What brings all of this together, what defines Bloom both as a human being and as a political actor, what makes him heroic and what makes him a role model for our own times and our own resistance, is the combination of three fundamental principles; curiosity, imagination, and compassion. For a famously difficult, confusing, and oblique book, Ulysses seems pretty direct in terms of how it thinks we should interact with our politics; a set of values that can easily be transferred from the politics of reform, to the politics of resistance. Perhaps that is universal and the distance between those two political acts is not nearly as far as I first thought. But it also could be specific to our political moment; there is a way to understand Bloom's values beyond politics, as core attitudes, or behaviors for being a decent human being and when the regime in power is so virulently anti-humanist, being a decent human being is an act of resistance in itself.

So, what does Bloom the reformer teach us in the resistance: Seek to know more than you know now, look beyond what has been done to discover what can be done, and do what you can to make the lives of others better.

Want to here me blathering some more about Ulysses? I'll be at Sherman's in Portland on Bloomsday.

The Muppets Take Ulysses

I haven't been able to get this idea out of my head since Riss came up with it last week. With every stray brain moment I have I seem to be expanding the concept, refining i, developing it, exploring it. And it's pretty close to the only thing we've been talking about in that time as well. Riss doesn't talk sports, we're reading different books, and it's a whole lot more satisfying than talking about the state of the world. The thing is, once you make that first initial breakthrough, once you see that first character equivalent, the whole idea seems so perfect that it makes you wonder if there were some underlying intentions. The idea: A Muppets version of Ulysses by James Joyce.

Stay with me. You like The Muppets right? So I'll start the post where Riss started the idea. I'm going to describe a fictional female character for you. She's a confident, voluptuous would be the term, vibrant woman, secure in her body and her sexuality, with an almost aggressive sense of life, who happens to make her living as a singer. This, of course, is Miss Piggy. But it is also Molly Bloom. I'm going to say this again just so I can watch myself type it, Miss Piggy and Molly Bloom are essentially the same character. Really the only difference between the two is that Miss Piggy's volume is set to “vaudeville” while Molly Bloom's is set to “novel.”

If you're familiar with both, you're probably seeing how it all falls together, like in that last scene in The Usual Suspects, but, well, most people aren't so I'll go on to describe another fictional character, this one male. He is kind, decent, industrious in his own way, committed to doing his best and making the world a better place even if he's not entirely sure how to do it, and can be a bit of a know-it-all mixed with an occasionally annoying dash of milquetoast. Said character could be none other than Kermit the Frog. And Leopold Bloom!

Also, the central conflict in the relationship between Miss Piggy and Kermit is that Miss Piggy is always looking for a formal consummation of the relationship, getting married, and, for reasons that are never made clear, despite his obvious love for Miss Piggy, Kermit is never ready to go all the way. The central conflict in the relationship between Leopold and Molly is that they haven't had sex, consummated their relationship if you catch my drift, in nine years, and not for lack of Molly's effort. In both cases, there is an Odysseus wandering far from his Penelope.

What's especially interesting to me about this (not just because it allows me to combine two of my favorite things ever) is that this idea renders an unfilmable novel, filmable. The problem with Ulysses as a movie is that it is a novel of the interior. Bloom's character is developed and demonstrated through presentations of his thoughts, dreams, and fantasies. We are shown what kind of person he is by sharing his thoughts. But long experimental presentations of thought don't translate well in film. 

However, by having Kermit play Bloom, Bloom's character is established through Kermit's character. Kermit brings 40 years of character history to whatever work he is called upon to perform. You don't need to show his thoughts to show his character because his past does it automatically. Same thing with Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, Sam the Eagle, Link Hogthrob and all the other Muppets. The unfilmable intellect doesn't need to be filmed when the character is assumed by the figure portraying it. 

Furthermore, the more visually bizarre aspects of Ulysses like the Circe episode where characters change gender, the setting changes, flights of fantasy are indulged, and inanimate objects talk, are already part of the Muppet universe. The director doesn't have to do anything special to create a scene where a belt buckle talks, because in the Muppet universe nearly everything talks. This inherent accepted strangeness also makes it easier to deal with the wild style of an episode like Oxen in the Sun. The language in Oxen in the Sun progresses through all of the stages in English literature, which is awfully hard to film without looking silly; unless you show Kermit the Frog and the other characters in costumes from the various time periods, or have other Muppets costumed from different time periods milling in the background. 

For some reason, Muppets in particular engender an imagination permission that allows us to completely accept the absolutely ridiculous. Furthermore, (yes, there's another furthermore) the Muppet archetypes also allow the filmmaker to communicate some of the complexity of Ulysses. For example, in one episode Bloom goes to a restaurant to get some lunch but is disgusted seeing all the men stuffing their faces with all manner of food. In a book you can describe the men and the food. You have time to build the impression of disgust. But movies don't offer that time and so you can never get to the essence of this moment. Unless, of course, you can show Kermit look into a restaurant filled with pigs eating out of troughs swilling steins of beer. You see! You see! And Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem playing in the bar in the Sirens episode. And think of the cameos!

If you do see, and I accept that many will not, you're already filling in the blanks. Stephen is played by Fozzie (more on that later in another forum), the Citizen is Sam the Eagle, Simon is Rolf, Mary Lou is Gerty, Gonzo is Bella/Bello (the role of a lifetime) and Wayne is Haines (and, it's an actual black panther of course).

So two things, since I like to try and find some kind of conclusion for the end of these posts. Yes, thinking about this is a ton of fun for me, but I legitimately believe The Muppets take Ulysses would be an excellent movie. And you'll be seeing more of this. I mean, if you want to you'll be seeing more of this, because Riss and I are going to pass some of our idle hours on a blog devoted to this. Drop me a comment if this is something you'd be interested in participating in. (Any storyboard artists out there? Brian Henson is that you.) So, introducing the, at least to Riss and me, the infinitely amusing new internet project The Muppets Take Ulysses.