Recent events

The Paris Hilton media spectacle has demonstrated how infused with "reality TV" all of modern culture has become. The spectacle of capitalist television is captured by its lurid mixture of race, sexuality, and a grotesque misrepresentation of a political symbol filtered through exploitative class, race, or gender hatred.

In the 1930s, the playwright/actor Antonin Artaud tried to shake up the theatre world with his incendiary manifesto for a Theatre of Cruelty. Full of bombast, Artaud could land stinging blows upon the hypocrisy of his age.

Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle, the theater is not possible. In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds.

Who could have watched even five minutes of the Hilton spectacle and not feel the oracular penetration of Artaud's critical wit?