VICTORIA - In the Bible, Samson is a hero who used his superhuman strength to do God's will by pulling down pillars in a Philistine temple, killing thousands and himself in an act of vengeance. But in what's sure to be a controversial interpretation of the story, a Victoria choir will next month present Samson as a suicide bomber. | How very "progressive" of them |
| Drudge yesterday had a link to the video of a lecture at AEI on the subject of "Why Liberals Act That Way." We might even have had a link to it here. The speaker's premise was that Liberals (capital L) train themselves not to discriminate, regarding discrimination as a Bad Thing. I guess the logic would be that if racial discrimination is wrong then every other kind of discrimination is, too. This leads to the development over time of a convoluted thought process that will allow the "thinker" to consistently avoid being caught on the side of right or good. |
Simon Capet, music director of the Victoria Philharmonic Choir, says he wanted to update Handel's Samson oratorio to be relevant to today's audiences by drawing comparisons to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.
| Obviously it couldn't be relevant to today's audiences by presenting a tale of amour, betrayal, degradation and finally the utter smiting of one's enemies. To do so would involve taking a position on which side was right in the dispute between the Israelites and the Philistines 3000 years ago and, really, we couldn't do that. |
"We didn't want to just present the work as a simple morality tale," says Mr. Capet.
| "That would be entirely too simple. And moral." |
"There is a social and political commentary here that's important."
| Because without social and political commentary, it would only be music. |
While the music will not change, the setting of the oratorio will be 1946 Jerusalem.
| Not, of course, 2004 Jerusalem. |
Mr. Capet says he chose the period to draw comparisons to the bombing of the British headquarters at the King David Hotel by the militant Zionist group Irgun in that year. Menachem Begin, who ordered the attack, would later become Israel's prime minister and win the Nobel Peace Prize. | Because having a islamic suicide bomber would be terribly offensive. Not to mention dangerous |
Mr. Capet says presenting Samson as a terrorist is not meant to offend anyone or point the finger at one group, but to challenge our notions of what a terrorist is.
"Is there any difference between pulling down a pillar or blowing a bomb?" asks Mr. Capet.
"Samson killed thousands of people. To show him in the traditional mythological sense does a disservice," Mr. Capet says.
| I doubt the Philistines fit thousands of people into the temple/feasting hall. And showing him in the traditional "mythological" sense hasn't been perceived as doing a disservice to anyone (with the possible exception of the Philistines) for the past two or three thousand years. |
The choir would not be the first to drawing comparisons between Samson and terrorism. "There's a large focus on this right now, with Israel being presented as the Samson figure," says Andrew Rippin, dean of humanities at the University of Victoria and a specialist in Islamic studies. American journalist Seymour Hersh coined the term "the Samson option" in his book about Israel's development of a nuclear arsenal.
Shadia Drury, a philosophy professor and Canada Research Chair for Social Justice, recently compared Samson to World Trade Center bomber Mohammed Atta in a talk at UVic.
| It's that outmoded good-evil thing, y'see. They only look different. Probe beneath the surface and you'll find they're not really that different. Except for the smell. |
In her book, Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics and the Western Psyche, she argues that terrorism is a biblical problem. "The concept of a collective guilt is a flawed morality," she says.
| "So if it's flawed, you might as well chuck it. It's better to go through life with no morality at all than with a flawed morality." |
"The idea that 'We're on the side of God and everyone else is evil' has and always will be disastrous."
| It assumes the existence of evil, y'see, and to that particular kind of mentality there is no such thing. Everything is shades of gray, and since they're all gray the distinctions among shades can be discarded. Good and evil are relative things, that can be used or discarded as we please. The world becomes remade in the John Lennon image, with no God, no country, "nothing to kill or die for," nothing more important than the solipsist self. |
Ms. Drury says she thinks the choir's modern interpretation of Samson -- scheduled to run April 5, 7 and 8--is heroic.
| "Not that you should take that description literally. I mean, it's not like they're going to defend right or something." |
But local Rabbi Itzchak Marmorstein says comparing Samson and the Irgun bombing will offend Jews and Israelis.
| That doesn't matter, of course. |
"It's an inappropriate comparison that promotes a shallow understanding of history," says Rabbi Marmorstein. "Israelis never supported Irgun or that kind of terrorism. They weren't heroes ... and Begin went into politics legitimately decades later. He wasn't some crazy terrorist."
One man who is already uneasy about the performance is Samson himself, played by Vancouver Island tenor Ken Lavigne. "I'm really struggling with this," says Mr. Lavigne, 33. "I can't help but feel that a number of people will not enjoy this rejigging of a biblical hero."
| Why should the audience's feelings or opinions be taken into account? Since we're non-discriminatory in our outlook, their opinions are no more important than those of the people who don't go to the performance. |
Mr. Lavigne says he has warmed up to the idea of putting on an Irgun uniform and wearing a bomb-belt to sing the emotionally charged part since discussing it with Mr. Capet. "Simon wants to get people talking about music and its relevance today," Mr. Lavigne says.
| And what's more relevant than a singer in a boom belt? |
"In the end I've had to accept that whoever I thought Samson was, what he committed was an act of mass murder." |