I tend to read the oddest things on vacation. Well, that’s not true, as I tend to read at least one lightweight specfic or mystery novel, and that’s about what anybody would call vacation reading. But I will also pick up from the shelves of my hosts any sort of book which catches my eye, which in this case was a collection of Ibsen, from which I read “An Enemy of the People”, which I had never read. It’s one of those plays that always seems to be topical even while dating badly (at least in the translation I read); the doctor who goes from pillar of the community to enemy of the people when he crosses the political and economic interests of the town’s leaders could be Richard Clarke.
If I were to play the lead, though, I suspect I’d be awfully tempted to play him as a villain, whose arrogance and isolation lead him to parlay his one good idea into a vendetta against the world. I also suspect that Dr. Stockman would have been as adamant and as alienating with a wrong idea; he happens to be right, which is in a way the tragic part. Or, I suppose, the tragedy is that the right idea comes to the person most able to recognize it and most willing to do something about it, but least able to get the required action done. His rant about the evils of democracy—he can’t understand how his scientifically proven warning can be ignored by ignoramuses who haven’t any way of knowing whether he is right or wrong, and who therefore have no business making any decision about it—leads me to wonder which side I would be on, myself. He’s a technogreen, an Al Gore caricature. Of course, the mayor, the newspaperman and the businessman are if anything more contemptuous of democracy, although they find it useful enough. Where Dr. Stockman want to ram the Truth down the gullet of the recalcitrant People, the civic leaders are happy to dope the compliant People with lies in order to achieve their own modest goals (lower taxes, political favor, stability, unity, etc). So it would be wrong to cast Dr. Stockman as the villain, but as a hero, he’s a pretty villainous one.
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.