On being a “political” composer

I am frequently puzzled and not a little miffed by hearing myself referred to in the media as a “political” composer. If you read the critical commentaries, you may know that my operas are “ripped from the headlines.” In fact if you google the term “docu-opera” you will find the first result is a reference to Nixon in China. Another compares the term to its historical predecessors, concluding that operas like Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer have been around long enough for the term to be considered a “value-neutral descriptor of sub-genre, like opera buffa or verismo opera.” The reason for my puzzlement is because I consider the themes that I choose—global politics and social revolution, or international terrorism or the creation of the atomic bomb—not simply “mere news,” but rather human events that have become mythology. They constitute
a nexus of communally shared perceptions and responses in much the same way that the mythological lore, the sagas and fairy tales and epics and ritual dramas of preindustrialized societies were a symbolic expression of the collective experience of a tribe, a city state or even a nation.

Joseph Campbell, that great student of mythology wrote,

“Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd. (“The Hero With a Thousand Faces”, Joseph Campbell, p. 249, Fontana, 1993).

But I take a very different tack on mythology, especially when it comes to our contemporary myths, although I concede that I have to stretch the classical definition. Biography, history and science have come to constitute our myths, whether they are people (Lindbergh, Ghandi, Babe Ruth, Michael Jackson) or events (Pearl Harbor, the moon landing, the JFK assassination, 9/11) and so on. The OED’s first definition of a myth is “A purely fictitious narrative usually involving supernatural persons, actions, or events, and embodying some popular idea concerning natural or historical phenomena.” (I know what you’re thinking: Michael Jackson spot on.) “Legend,” according to OED implies a “nucleus of fact,” and that may be closer to what I’m doing, but I use “myth” in the sense of a narrative that, although based on real people or real events, has been taken up in the collective unconcious of a society to the point where its truth content takes second place to its symbolic power. Andy Warhol understood the immense psychological grip that iconic images from the media have on our subconscious—the glamorous smile of Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy in mourning, Elvis with a six-shooter, an electric chair, and so on. Many of these images, the moment we see them, launch narratives in our minds. And true to the OED’s definition of a myth, they “embody some popular idea concerning natural or historical phenomena.”

The “supernatural” element is essential to what we regard as a myth. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to think how the media, particularly the electronic media, “supernaturalizes” events, amplifying and distorting certain elements while diminishing or even suppressing others.