Harold Pinter Is Disappeared
After William Shakespeare, Harold Pinter is my favorite English playwright. He is one of those English-speakers who questions his own language. This area of questioning eventually strays into areas of exploration that have nothing to do with the existential celebrations of white supremacy.
When I read One for the Road as a young, white, liberal college kid of the late 1980s, I—even I—would never imagine that 2005 would find English speaking people still using torture as a primary means of governmental communication. Sure, I knew about Chicago police officers attaching electric wires to the genitals of young Black Panthers in the 1970s, but I supposed that torture for new millennium would be completely outsourced. So the use of English speakers in One for the Road was, to me, a kind of meditation on torture in a “neutral country” representing the implied Anglo victory over “the mistakes of the past.” Every ‘knows’ that the image of the Anglo represents a “universal theme”—right? Well, anyone who does not get their daily news from a fake blond with fake breasts and strong Asian features, should know that I—even I—was woefully wrong.
The Anglos need celebratory fiction these days. There is a “war of civilizations” going on and Harold Pinter is not useful for any form of propaganda designed to make Anglos and their swarthy, obsequious puppy dogs the representatives of the Sole Voice of Reason in the Universe… So Miguel de Icaza selected a quote from Harold Pinter, his Nobel Prize acceptance speech that definitely shows he will not be invited to any over-world parties in Washington for the next decade.
I feel that it must be mentioned that I read Harold Pinter alone. I’m sure we students had to read one play for a class but after that I went out by myself into this work. There were no social rewards for my interests in Harold Pinter and there are no social rewards for my interests in Harold Pinter. In spite of all of this lack of sensational gratification, in the heart of the greatest empire ever, here is this Blog post in sincere respect for Harold Pinter. Humanity still lives on in spite of the white-power phosphorus.
Also, in another “attack” on PBS, I must mention that there was television adaptation of One for the Road that aired on PBS sometime in the last millennium. But I am confident that it will never be seen again on PBS thanks latest “conservative” backlash that has advertorial segments featuring Anglo children sitting in the United Nations imparting wisdom from the mouths of puppets. “The more we get together the happier we’ll be.”