FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Down with Democracy!

Rant Number 476 6 February 2012

‘You, common cry of curs!’ Thus Caius Marcius Coriolanus scolds his spiteful enemies: the people. And the people’s scheming tribunes. The politicos, today the New Labour boys, the Cameronians, the crafty demagogues who manipulate and lead by nose the fickle herd. The contrivers of the hero’s misfortunes. Unable to bend, to flatter, to play the democratic game, the valiant defender of Rome’s gates is pushed out of them, into exile, lifelong banished from hearth and home. ‘Down with democracy!’ I imagine the noble Roman muttering to himself, as he starts his life as a miserable wanderer, a stateless nonentity, thirsting for revenge.

Ralph Fiennes’ sanguinary movie, Coriolanus, is based on Shakespeare’s thrilling political tragedy. An invective against democracy – and much else. It makes you think.

Is Coriolanus a fascist? Impossible. Too aloof, too disdainful, too aristocratic. Fascism means mass, populist movements. The Duce and the Fuhrer were men of the people. Hitler and Mussolini courted the masses like lovers do their beloved and were repaid with passionate, hysterical adulation.

Coriolanus wants to be Consul but he cannot stoop to perform the obligatory rite of showing the people his wounds. Scars sustained in fighting for Rome. He loathes the vile mechanics, their foul garlic breath, their smelly caps, all of it. It is this honesty, his failure to fake it, to pretend that leads to his ruination.

Fascism aside, can you picture democratic bosses like Tony Blair or Dull Dave looking down on and turning up their nose at their working class constituents? Mocking them? ‘You smell of cheap booze and wear the wrong kind of jeans and trainers: give me you vote and sod off, you, stinking plebs!’ Not on, is it? The masses demand psychological and physical kissing and cuddling, pressing of the flesh, flatteries and lies galore. Of course, when they twig they have been fooled – like in David Cameron’s pre-election promise to safeguard the NHS now on the brink of privatisation – they get angry. It serves then right!

If the mob asked for it in its foolishness, however, it does not follow Coriolanus is quite right. First, Shakespeare’s play begins with citizens complaining of being driven to starvation. ‘I speak this in hunger for bread, nor in thirst for revenge’, somebody says. Livy, the Roman historian, tells how the price of corn had risen steeply. Grain was expensively imported and in the Senate the patricians sought to make the people bear the brunt. Hence the not unjustified mass discontent. Rapacious money-lenders played a role in this, Livy says. Huh! The bankers again! (Darned, rotten, bastard capitalism. Nothing has changed much in 2500 years, see?) Anyway, no one should be blamed for not wanting to die of hunger. The plebs had a case.

Second, General Coriolanus has fought well and conquered for his country, yes, but ‘he did it partly to please his mother’, we learn. Vanessa Redgrave’s riveting Volumnia, the hero’s overpowering mom, almost steals the show. The old pasionaria is terrific! Still, never mind bad Dr Freud’s gobbledygook, a man highly mother-dominated makes you wonder. Hence historian David Starkey attributes Henry VIII’s own warped character to his being brought up in an all-female household. Pig-headed Lord Cardigan, of Charge of the Light Brigade fame, was also like that. Shakespeare brings out Volumnia’s tigerish tendencies – no CND, peace-loving feminist female is she but a ferocious, warlike Roman matron. So, there!

Third, what manner of man really is Caius Marcius? Pride seems to be his essential characteristic. Pride, before Christianity took over, was a virtue. Is he then like the magnanimous model, the ‘big-souled’ man of Aristotle’sNichomachean Ethics? Magnanimity too is commendable. Coriolanus is proud but, says Aristotle, the magnanimous man is rightly so because he is deserving of pride. His major quality is greatness. He is concerned with great things, indeed, worthy of the greatest things. So it would follow that our hero, who thinks himself worthy of high honours, is really worthy of them. His great claims, e.g. to be Consul of Rome, would accord with his real worth. All kosher then?

Actually, Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean, the happy medium, suggests that Coriolanus’ character may be out of kilter. His pride is perhaps excessive. A hint of vanity? Some undeveloped adolescent fixation? Coriolanus has fought like a lion for Rome and won but...does it mean he can lord it over others? Was fighting not what a Roman nobleman was supposed to do in the first place? Why such an inflated sense of self? Why the fury? Ralph Fiennes does portray a man so tormented with his sense of greatness to appear at times almost like a psychopath. Or a raging schoolboy. That is the suspicion.

The movie’s ethnic casting also bemuses. The Volscians, Rome’s rural enemies, are all-white (or pink, really), unmistakeable cross-wearing Serbian peasants. Rome instead is multi-ethnic, her faces enlivened with chromatic dashes of minority hues. What’s the message? The Volscians clearly are the underdogs and Rome is the militaristic bad boy. Does Rome stand for Obama’s multi-cultural & imperialist America? But the actual Serbs – aren’t they the slayers of many innocent Bosnians, Muslims and Croats alike? Why does the great black South-African actor John Kani have to be a Roman imperialist? Hinting at Colin Powell? God knows.

The bloody class struggles and civil strife of ancient Rome ended with the Empire. Caesar Augustus unified the warring factions, leading the Eternal City to rule the world. Happy universal tyranny? Truly, it was democracy’s funeral. Surely Coriolanus’ shade exulted, somewhere in Hades.

Looks remote but...despite the propaganda, the hypnotic reiterations of the talisman word - democracy - is the world perhaps witnessing the sunset of this Western provincial construct? The free market, the banks, the parliamentary charade, the politicos – are they the pinnacles of human achievements? Are perhaps better models emerging?

The tumults in the Arab world - the media naturally plug them as democratic yearnings but there are alternative explanations. Something new? Terrifying, majestic in its beauty? Such as the restoration of the sacred, to put it with Roger Scruton?

That would be good.