Dialogue Concerning Samuel Beckett and Snakes on a Plane

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I’m sitting with Raul (another gay philosopher) on my front porch, and we’re celebrating the Samuel Beckett centenary by exchanging silences.  We had been discussing the second act of Beckett’s Happy Days, in which Winnie, a middle-aged woman is buried to her neck in a mound of dirt.  Raul reminded me of Not I, where the stage is in total darkness except for the character Mouth, “about eight feet above stage level, faintly lit from close-up and below, rest of face in shadow”:

“Winnie has an obsession with her gewgaws, but she can’t manipulate them.  Mouth is worse off.  She has a shattered consciousness that she tries to reintegrate without the assistance of her own corporeality,” says Raul.

“I'm totally into your corporeality …”

He ignores me.  “She’s just a mouth floating in the void.”

“You’re saying that Beckett turned the stage into some ghoulish specimen jar.”

“No, just the opposite.  The fact that the characters are constrained makes their struggles more poignant.”  Raul pauses to dab a tear with the corner of his Kleenex.  He’s getting agitated.  “Popular media go the other way.  It’s all about the possibilities inherent in excess, not constraint.”

“Endless, inane chatter; quick-cutting of images; ever bigger explosions—”

“Right, but we can't sustain that.  I think the Blogosphere’s overwhelming response to Snakes on a Plane signals a newfound regard for constraint in art.”

“As in the constraints on the agency of the creatures that would terrorize the passengers?  Is that what you mean?  Like, where are the snakes going to hide—the beverage cart?”

“Yeah, like Samuel Jackson yelling into his radio, ‘We got motherfuckin’ snakes!’”

Comments

[q-man]

... not that either ... all right ... something else again ... so on ... hit on it in the end ... think everything keep on long enough ... then forgiven ...

[Enrique the Gay Philosopher]

Yes, q-man. You've discovered a great truth that lay hidden for many years: Beckett's prose was made for the Web.

By the way, it was not I who discovered this but he! ... HE!

[ahfukit]

There's a guy in my neighborhood who looks like that. Jogs by in tank top and shorts.

Really.

[Enrique the Gay Philosopher]

Assuming you’re referring to Raul and not Samuel Beckett, yes, great beauty is a very unsettling thing. The first time I met Raul my tongue went numb and I started flapping my arms like some stupid animal. Our relationship is perfectly Platonic, I’m sad to say. We spend our hours together discussing the Great Questions. Why are we here? Why would the creature Man climb down from the trees and develop consciousness only to become more acutely aware of his own impending extinction? Is there some special reason dog noses look so much like electric sockets?

[tournedo]

One of the things I like about the Net is that every day you get to play a part in shaping it -- even when you're a wandering Jew like me. Check out this site. It invites you to make up dialogue for an imaginary movie. What does this mean?

[ahfukit]

Enrique, your last comment really tickled me. Well done.

[Enrique the Gay Philosopher]

Thanks for the link, tournedo. "A snake is hard to shoot. It won't look you in the eye like a man will. But it swerves. It slithers." I'll remember that line. I hope someday soon to be drunk enough to speak it with conviction.

Thanks, ahfukit. And it's true what I say about dog noses, isn't it? There are days when my dog looks to me like a visitor from another planet: that super-sized, splotchy tongue; those frightening, dark wavy edges on her lips; those yellowed teeth hanging down from her alien proboscis. I really do love her, though. Man is perhaps the animal least worthy of Dog.

[ahfukit]

Yes, it is. My theory is that the corresponding plug prongs are buried somewhere deep in the hind quarters of each peer.

[ahfukit]

Re: Snakes on a plane. I'm thinking phalli constrained in two dimensions.

Speaking of internet porn, turn that plane on its edge and call it the side of the erotic barn that porn-o-graphers can't seem to hit even with an endless stream of fresh pudenda coursing/slithering through the big studio. Again constraint might be the answer -- a carnal governor, say, someone with the mettle of a Happy Tutor to assist in aim, execution, and guidance in the fruitful planes of expression.

[Enrique the Gay Philosopher]

Phalli constrained in two dimensions, like Hermes’s caduceus tracing a riddle in the air, asking “When is the Happy Tutor not a Happy Tutor?” (Answer: When he’s abroad.) The subject then appears as a philosopher king who claims an early poverty but who nevertheless found the means to shoot rats with a .22 unlike the rest of us schmucks who choked the dirty little animals with our bare, malnourished hands.

As for the plug prongs, aren’t they long gone? We lost them somewhere in the meadow. Pudenda slither past the plug prongs in the grass, alas.

[Rachel Tension]

Bare, malnourished hands? Oh please, Enrique, pass me Raul's fucking Kleenex.

[Heather]

Lol! Can I steal your electrical socket-dog nose metaphor for a poem? Maybe the wavy black mouth too!