Mark Stoyich doesn't show much imagination in his review of The White Devil (GLW #418). Webster's play deals with the social and political issues of the Renaissance. He can hardly be blamed for not dealing with those of the twentieth century.
The question is whether there is anything in his play that we might still relate to. A reviewer in a Marxist newspaper might be expected to see that there is.
Webster is much more oppositional than Shakespeare. Of all the Jacobean dramatists he is the one most like Brecht, using alienation effects to destroy illusions and mystifications, and to expose the real social and political conditions of life. (Most of Webster's story is based on real events.)
Webster's effects, like Brecht's, are not at all subtle. So I don't see how Stoyich could have missed them. Webster depicts the corruption of the Church, the paranoid self-will of absolute princes, the unscrupulous brutality of a decadent ruling class, the double standards applied to women (as ever), the opportunism of careerists, the servility of the yes-men who surround the "great", etc. The parallels with political elites and their hangers-on in the twentieth century are pretty obvious.
The production wasn't dull. It was carried off with great energy and wit. The actors were all well cast, and performed with vigour and clarity.
Jacobean tragedy, apart from Shakespeare, isn't often performed. This production is an opportunity to see how a politically shrewd dramatist (writing under an absolute monarchy) responded to the decay of the state apparatus in the years leading to the English Revolution of 1642.
As one of the ideologues who helped to form the climate of opinion in which a king could be executed, Webster deserves better from a Marxist newspaper.
David Brooks
Glebe NSW
Refugees
The recent desperate protests by asylum seekers at Woomera Detention Centre are another indication of the inhumane conditions faced by people seeking refuge in Australia.
Philip Ruddock's threat of jail sentences for the protesting asylum seekers is bitterly ironic. These asylum seekers, having fled war-torn countries, in some cases facing torture and having lost relatives to brutal repression, face virtual jail from the time they arrive. Australia is the only country in the world to mandatorily detain asylum seekers who are unable to obtain papers.
One guard from the detention centre described the protesters as "like a pack of wild animals". Yet most animals are treated far better than these people. Imagine the frustration of risking your life to flee brutal conditions, and, having finally made it, finding yourself and your family, children included, locked up indefinitely.
Lawyers from Woomera indicate that those protesting have not been allowed even to apply for refugee status. They have been detained since November last year, and have no idea of their rights. They are afraid of deportation to possible death. This is not only arbitrary but indefinite detention.
The Refugee Action Collective calls on the Federal Government to immediately free the refugees from this inhuman incarceration. Increased funding should be spent not on barbed wire fences and water cannons, but on settlement services for refugees.
All refugees must have the right to permanent residency. That is the only human solution.
Paul Benedek
Refugee Action Collective
Sydney
[Abridged.]
Mutual obligation
It is only reasonable to impose additional social obligations upon relatively privileged people. Why can't this "mutual obligation" obsessed government understand this? Why is it hell bent on imposing new requirements on social security recipients who are relatively underprivileged?
In its most extreme form, the "mutual obligation" ideology says that simply because someone receives income from the state they should (if humanly possible) give "something back to society". This is absurd. Whether someone is paid "unearned" income by the government, a family member or a share trust — or is paid a wage — is intrinsically irrelevant. What matters is how well off people are, all things considered.
Social security payments are made to seriously disadvantaged people to make them better off. The problem is that even after the payments are made — assuming them to be made with few strings attached — the recipients often remain badly off because they were so badly off to start with and because the payment levels ae so low.
Such people do not have unmet obligations to society, the reverse is true.
Brent Howard
Rydalmere NSW