The Power of Positive Thinking

photo of Norman Vincent Peale by Roger Higgins, World Telegram

A recent NPR piece revealed that Marble Collegiate Church was Donald Trump’s spiritual home. The piece also described the influence one of the church’s famous pastors, Norman Vincent Peale, the author of The Power of Positive Thinking, had on Trump's thinking ("How Positive Thinking, Prosperity Gospel Define Donald Trump’s Prosperity Outlook,” NPR, 8/3/16) The NPR story goes on to quote Michael Hamilton, a historian of American Christianity at Seattle Pacific University thusly, "Peale got very interested in the notion that the Gospel could unleash power, that having a divine relationship with God could unleash power within a person for success. And he defined success pretty broadly, so it partly included material success. God didn't want people to be poor." One might note that this is a little different from the description of Protestantism offered by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism where the importance of values like hard work and frugality lay in the fact their possessor had received God’s grace. The Peale notion is a little more raw and relates to the juggernaut of willfulness that’s characteristic of salesmanship and success while that espoused by classical Protestantism emphasizes the spiritual side of things. When Trump commented about his campaign after a fractious week when his own Vice President broke ranks to endorse the House Speaker Paul Ryan that “It’s never been so well united” (“Trump Says campaign ‘never been so well united,'" LA Times, 8/3/16), he was exhibiting the power or shall we say the delusion of positive thinking. Salesmen rarely tell the truth. Their product is always great. You have to buy it. A good salesman could sell you manure or the wall that Trump is not only going to build but make Mexico pay for.  One wonders what Norman Vincent Peale or his student Donald Trump, would think about Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, one of the masterpieces of modern American literature, that deals with a tragic character who can’t talk himself out of his fate and who buckles under the weight of circumstances.

Ivo van Hove’s A View From the Bridge

In his preface to Miss Julie Strindberg talked about "new wine" bursting “the old bottles." Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge might be an example of putting old wine in new bottles, placing a classic Greek Tragedy in the mode of Sophocles’ Oedipus in a modern setting. Ivo van Hove’s direction of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge now takes another kind of vintage wine, in the form of the Miller script, and pouring it in a yet an even newer bottle. Vessels themselves speak for antiquity and there are a lot of them in the current Young Vic production along with some other anomalies such as a beating drum and a narrator (Michael Gould) who functions as Greek chorus--though one of the unintentional anomalies, that of English actors and actresses like Michael Strong (Eddie Carbone) and Phoebe Fox (Catharine) trying to fake Brooklyn accents, can interrupt the viewers willing suspension of disbelief. It’s hard to tell if A View From the Bridge stands the test of time in the way that Death of a Salesman does.  Eddie’s repeated “The guy ain’t right,” which is said about Rodolfo (Russell Tovey), the man his niece wishes to marry, is no match for the haunting mantra of Salesman, “Attention must be paid.” But it’s the set itself that constitutes the originality of this particular production. The simple white stage, designed by Jan Versweyveld, like Sally Jacobs' famous white box used in Peter Brook’s l970 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the solo door exit at center functions as a canvas on which the tragedy will play itself out. Those familiar with the work of the painter Adolf Gottlieb might experience a shock of recognition as an explosive red ball of blood appears against a stark white background. Gottlieb’s work may not have influenced the director’s imagination. However, the impulse to see Greek tragedy, however realistically updated, as a turbulent, boundary breaking abstract expressionist painting might ultimately be the legacy of van Hove’s interpretation of the Miller classic.The current rendering gives new meaning to the term “family entertainment."

Vampire Academy

The teaser for a forthcoming movie called Vampire Academy reads “They Suck at School.” This is an ingenious triple entendre. “Attention must finally be paid to such a person,” was what was said about Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. Well, attention should be paid to this advertising locution. Of course vampires suck blood. But what the teaser is also saying is that vampires who are thirsty for blood also have no time for their studies. Naturally, when they're not sucking blood, vampires are also sucking other things. And the reference to fellatio is the coup de grace. You can almost hear the Witches of Macbeth alternating  the addictive combination of blood, semen and failure in between their “double, double toil and trouble.” Vampire Academy is based on the young adult series by Richelle Mead, of which six volumes have already been published (in addition to Vampire Academy, they are Frostbite, Shadow Kiss, Blood Promise, Spirit Bound and Last Sacrifice) and the poster of the film, which locks onto you like a drone as you exit the subway, features the two fetching leads, Zoey Deutch (who plays Rose Hathaway) and Lucy Fry (in the role of Lucy Dragomir). Okay students are always admonished  to "stick with the winners,” and stay away from those kids who are bad news, but even if these girls are at the bottom of the class, it’s obvious they won’t have any trouble honing in on their prey. The promo for Vampire Academy is almost as successful as that for a l968 film called Succubus, which lured filmgoers with the prospect of sexy paranormality. The difference is that the succubus doesn’t suck at school or anywhere else. According to Merriam-Webster Online, it's merely “a demon assuming female form to have sexual intercourse with men in their sleep"

Death of a Salesman

Salesmen love you when they are selling. It is hard to differentiate the mark from the love object, and sometimes the person to whom a pitch being made inspires a passion that is almost romantic. But we are all salesmen, since we all want something and are usually willing to sell part of our selves to get it. In the most basic example, a person who wants the love of another has to sell him or herself to get it. Seduction is a pitch in which both mental and physical credentials are presented for evaluation to the potential buyer. Naturally, there is a degree of reciprocity. A male, in the classical formulation, pursues a woman, but once he has succeeded in getting her attention, he must in turn be won over if the knot is to be tied. There is a famous scene in The Man With Two Brains where a beautiful prostitute opens her mouth and starts rendering Gene Chandler’s "Duke of Earl" at an ear-shattering pitch. While the knight may wear his shining armor to make his conquest, the princess he is after will have to be beautiful and not a bitch to clinch the deal. The love of a mother for her child is always looked at as a bond in which there are no quid pro quos or caveat emptors; it’s defined as unconditional love. But even the mother-child relationship partakes of salesmanship. If the mother is in fact devoted to her child, she wins the kind of adoration that James Cagney demonstrated in the famous prison mess hall scene from White Heat, in which Cagney goes berserk when he hears of his mother’s death. On the other hand, the character of Precious in the movie based on the Sapphire novel Push has an abusive mother who hasn’t fulfilled her part of the bargain, and in the end only earns her child’s scorn.