“The Shakespearean Moment” in American Popular/Political Culture: Editorializing in the Age of Trump
James S. Baumlin | Missouri State University
Publication: Volume 6 Issue 1
Abstract | This present essay meditates on media deployments of the term, “Shakespearean,” offering an analysis of its political implications. As a micro-instance of Shakespearean appropriation, such TV-editorial invocations of the Bard’s name and writings reflect on the ways that some (not all) American television audiences interpret and respond to the present historic moment. It’s the thesis of this essay that the so-called “Shakespearean moment” makes history visible: In times such as these, we come to recognize that “all the world’s a stage” and that we, as audience/witnesses of the contemporary theatrum mundi, are active participants in that political history.
As a corollary to this thesis, the present essay explores the several ironies informing Shakespeare’s tragic archetypes (specifically Hamlet, Lear, and Macbeth); these character-types, in turn, “hold […] the mirror” (Hamlet 3.2.18–19) up to our own political culture and its “players.” Within Shakespearean tragedy, a character’s emotional/moral intelligence—which includes the capacity to distinguish right from wrong (irrespective of one’s choosing right over wrong)—rests in an equal capacity for self-reflection. Within one particular strand of American politics today, this capacity proves lacking. “The Shakespearean moment,” thus, draws politics, social psychology, and stage history into its purview. Perhaps an awareness of the ironies inherent in this moment can give citizens—as audience/witnesses of the theatrum mundi—the means to read, critique, and resist the cultish authoritarianism currently promoted by that singular political strand.
As a coda to this thesis, the present essay notes how different Western epochs— Romantic, “high” modern, and postmodern—identify with specific Shakespearean character-types. These shifting identifications reflect the evolving “category of the person,” as charted by Marcel Mauss. The social psychology of personhood remains “in process” today, and Shakespearean drama seems prescient in anticipating our ways of experiencing and representing the self. So, having lived through the first quarter of the 21st century, we might ask: In which Shakespearean character do we discover our current cultural “mirror”?
Key words | Self, Persona, Theatrum Mundi, Shakespearean Moment, Irony, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Sophocles, Oedipus, Donald J. Trump, New York State Prosecution of Trump, Political Theatre, American Popular Culture
James S. Baumlin (jbaumlin@missouristate.edu) is a Distinguished Professor of English at Missouri State University, USA, where he teaches coursework in early-modern English literature (Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton), critical theories, and the history of rhetoric, having published extensively in these fields. He has also widely published on rhetorical theory and composition pedagogy. His current research focuses on the history of Western ethos from antiquity to the present day.
MLA Citation for this Article:
Baumlin, James S. ““The Shakespearean Moment” in American Popular/ Political Culture: Editorializing in the Age of Trump.” Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, 23 Jul. 2024, pp. 2.28–2.43, https://ellids.com/archives/2024/07/6.1-Baumlin.pdf.
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