On a stunningly beautiful Spring day, recently, with cherry blossoms in full bloom and the air just on the delicious side of steamy, I found myself in my local movie theater taking in the most recent MCU offering (that’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, for the uninitiated), ‘Guardians of the Galaxy 3’. If you haven’t seen the previous films in this trilogy, don’t worry, every aspect of the dialog is intended to get clueless audience members up to speed on who the characters are, and how they’re related. The main points of a film like this is the explosions, the monsters, a few well-paced fight sequences, and the one-liners. Buried deep in the mix is a fairly well thought out critique of contemporary leadership and urban planning. In this installment, we learn the origin of one of the most intriguing members of the Guardians team, Rocket, a racoon-like mutant who, it turns out, is the result of an experimented conducted by a sinister leader known as ‘The High Evolutionary’ (THE), played by Chukwudi Iwuji. Rocket was one of a lucky litter of racoons plucked from a cage to receive a brain upgrade that made him a technical master. In flashback sequences, we learn that he was incarcerated for a long time and bonded with a tight-knit group of mutants whom he was unable to save when it came time to flea. Rocket’s technical prowess, known to audiences and his fellow Guardians is impressive to the degree that his creator wants him returned – to learn from him, or simply destroy him, it’s never quite clear. THE’s obsession is his achilles heel, but also the whole point of the movie as the team Mantis, Nebula, Drax, and Peter Quill, joined by Peter’s ex-girlfriend, Gamora, travel to an alternative Earth that is just as banal and desperate – they lounge in a middle-class suburban home and witness brawls and drug deals in the inner city – though inhabited by evolutionary upgrades of animals, the end results of the experiments that originated with Rocket and his friends. As Peter Quill intends to face off with THE, he points out that the alternative Earth is no better than the real one, and the point is taken. In fact, THE is just in the process of moving on to make an improvement on the improvement in a fashion that rings quite true to life-long inhabitants of NYC.
Later that day, I went with my companion to see a free production of Moliere’s ‘Tartuffe’ in Prospect Park. While I haven’t given much thought to the play specifically since I’d read it in college, it’s themes have always resonated with me. While religious and moral hypocrisy are thematically front and center, Moliere also explores the frustrating paradox of upper-class life. Tartuffe appears to be successful not simply because of his prowess as a con man. He also has the ability to manipulate the courtly manners that preclude brash exposure of hypocrisy based on instinct. His detractors twist and whine to make themselves understood by those who revere him and the exposure scene can be be read as either a moment of revelation or one of futility. It takes Elmire coaxing her husband Orgon under a platform and out of sight to witness his wife’s would-be seduction by his supposed friend to finally expose Tartuffe’s hypocrisy. In this act, the question is asked, would we rather witness the act or prevent it altogether? Why must we coax hypocrites into demonstrating their behavior rather than instill virtues that make such behavior all but impossible in the first place? This minimalist production and under-the-stars setting created a perfect mood for this play and I look forward to more productions from Moliere in the Park!
Reading on the Subway. 