Something went terribly wrong when dying spectacularly made good media … but we could not go forward with ordinary living, where death has a natural place.
My last review for The New York Times on 22 August 2006 was a notice of “Reverend Billy’s Tent Revival” at South Street Seaport’s Spiegeltent. As I noted in the review, Bill Talen‘s work seemed to me to be somewhat more complex than its parodic surface would indicate. Bill’s been performing as a preacher since 1994, starting on Times Square streetcorners, where he refined his brand of radical comedy, and his venues have been growing larger ever since.
I’ve been unable to follow his career as closely as I would have liked, but noted that my suspicions were becoming confirmed; there is a tragic quality to Bill’s work (which he pursues with his partner, Savitri D), and Bill is unafraid to allow the darkness of doubt into his rhetoric. In the past few days I’ve been reading jeremiads (a uniquely American prose form, as Sacvan Bercovitch’s 1978 book ascertained) by the likes of reporter Chris Hedges; today the Reverend Billy brings his own latest jeremiad to Alternet. “Why America Slept” is a vision of considerable darkness, far from comfortable. In this quality too, Bill is an interesting contrast with some other contemporary downtown performance artists; in an interview today, one of them noted that her own “themes are so dark, but [my] show itself is entertaining and funny, so I would hope that the themes stick with audience members, but in a comforting rather than traumatizing way. … Last night after our invited run-through … another person said, ‘I felt comforted when it was over.’ That’s what we want.” Neither Hedges nor Talen seeks to provide comfort, and I would venture that the best art provides the discomfort that reflects an honest self-knowledge. Certainly this is Talen’s effort:
The American dream turned out to be deadly because it sold tickets to a long series of apocalypses — they are the epitome of good (funny-scary) entertainment. Then, something went terribly wrong when dying spectacularly made good media — a diverting nightmare shall we say — but we could not go forward with ordinary living, where death has a natural place. The leaders of the dream, the captains of consumption and militarism — culturally silenced those who thought that death was a natural part of living. The special effects of mass death continued, while individual death was pushed into endless assisted living, and Americans slept on and on. We took our imperial eternity for granted. We shopped and bombed to push back the emptiness. We swiped the plastic for yet another amazing funny apocalypse. And then one of them, in mid-joke –
“Why America Slept” can be found in its entirety here. Later this year, the University of Michigan Press will release The Reverend Billy Project, a part of the press’s “Critical Performances” series, written by Talen and Savitri D and edited by Alisa Solomon of the Columbia University School of Journalism, which covers Talen’s career as a radical performance artist.
Thanks for these thoughts — yes, Billy can be very dark, I agree — and for mentioning the book, which will be out in a couple of months. It is full of wonderful narrative description and analysis by Billy and Savitri about their work. I’ll be eager to read what you have to say about it. Please note that the publisher is University of MICHIGAN Press (not Minnesota). Thanks again.
I’m eager to read the book, Alisa — and thanks for writing in about it. Good to hear from you; it’s been a long time since 1983 and those hours doing the housekeeping for PAJ on Spring Street.
I’ve made the correction to the publisher’s name; thanks also for that. One should never serve as one’s own fact-checker if one can help it.
Thanks, George. Ah, yes, those — um, good? — old days at PAJ! Long time, indeed — but I’ve been reading you with pleasure and profit in the meantime.
Same here, Alisa. And quite — um’s the word.