Colonialists in Our Midst
Last summer in Glover, Vermont, I wrote and directed a little play, a seven minute reduction of Alfred Hitchcock’s environmental fable The Birds. It ends with humanity wiped out by the avian community. I remember a lovely Chinese film set in Tibet, called The Horse Thief. There is a sky funeral ceremony shown in the film. These handsome vultures devour the hacked up corpse of a revered monk as the gathered people chant. At least that’s how I remember it. It may have been in silence, but I don’t think so. In any case they observe and pray. My little play, unlike Hitchcock’s film offered no hope at the end (not even the grace of being consumed as in Tian Zhuangzhuang’s film.) I wanted the audience to understand that clearly so, as one of the birds of the title, I told them so through the technique of direct address. Certainly that part of the human psyche that allows itself to be ruled by the corporate mentality is dooming life on this planet for the majority of the dominant species. The corporate masters, the privileged top one percent of the economic hierarchy, are busy setting up retirement communities for themselves and their progeny, gated communities far away from the rabble in pristine pastoral settings (remember the framing story in The Decameron.) They and their servants will eke out the hard years. See Zardoz if you want a small taste of how it will be.
