A Play in One Act
Heaven and Hades
By G. L. Horton
copyright © 2000
Geralyn Horton
The four characters are gathered around a drawing board, brainstorming
a commercial spot for television. BEALE is a top executive.
SAM (or SAMANTHA), the art director, is the youngest. The
characters can be cast without regard to the gender or ethnicity
of the actors playing them: and, once cast, the actors and director
should feel free either to exploit or ignore gender and/or ethnicity
when creating the characters.
BEALE
Sorry, poeple. It just doesn't sing for me.
(SAM wordlessly tears off the sheet of drawing paper, crumples
it and throws it away)
ALEX
Shoot.
BEALE
It wasn't all bad, but --- (pause)
KIP
An earlier idea I came up with was a back country road, in terrible
shape, potholes--
ALEX
I told you. Potholes says city to me, Kip.
SAM
Or at least highway.
KIP
No, this is hillbilly rural. If potholes isn't the term--
BEALE
The soundtrack's Country-Western?
SAM
Ugh.
KIP
Maybe at first, but-- so call the pothole things gullies or ditches
or whatever. It looks like the car's in for a really
rough time on this one lane road, maybe it's unpaved , stretching
away through a really repulsive landscape. Slag heaps, junkyards,
broken down motels--
SAM
Country-Western
KIP
Country-Western's the first choice of the largest listner group.
SAM
And the poorest. Who cares what they like, if they can't
afford the car?
ALEX
Besides which, there are almost as many people who hate country
Western as like it. I'd surf right by this crap in the first 3
seconds. Wouldn't you, Beale?
KIP
But it's changing! Morphing from the first shot!
As the driver drives through this junk heap, the car smoothes
everything out. The luxury of the car spreads over the surroundings,
everything goes great. The gully-ditch thing becomes plush,
the smoothest green on the golf course. The motel's now a mansion.
ALEX
I think I've seen this.
SAM
Not in the last year or two. With upgraded animation--
ALEX
Could work, I suppose. If the precedents are like, allusions.
KIP
It never pays to get too far off the archetypes. They're
the nature of the beast.
ALEX
OK. I see this crummy road, yeah, but the guy isn't bowling over
the landscape transforming roach motels. We keep the farm
country image for positive--
SAM
Have you seen the country lately?
BEALE
Agribusiness.
SAM
Farms are about as interesting as burlap. Miles of the same
crop, all the same size and about the same color--
ALEX
BUt country the image is still--
KIP
Never mind. Forget it.
SAM
Does that mean we get to scrap the twang?
ALEX
So. He's tooling through a city, but stuck on the crummy side
of the tracks. Keep your obstacles, Kip: junk,
decay-- and here we can use potholes. But instead of your
potholes that grass up or part like the red sea, as his car goes
over them they change to --uh--silk. Or red carpet.
Yeah, red silk carpet! Whatdaya think? Plus with car
plus carpet you get a subconscious kick from the pun.
BEALE
Brilliant! Could be. What do you think, Sam?
Can you work with it?
SAM
I think so, yes. Red's the carpet color, that'll be rushing
you forward, the mud morph's ocher to pink or maybe gold.
ALEX
And! Trash in the gutter, newspapers, mostly whitish stuff,
rolling along, like blown on down from the blast of the car; that's
waves. No, foam-- or bubbles--
KIP
Why not petals? Apple blossom?
ALEX
Too effete. Sparkling bubbles. in a brook burbling alongside.
While, the wall, no, -- dumpster, imagine this long line of green
dumpsters-- turns into this utter this sort of manicured cricket
green--
KIP
So now a cricket green is superior to my golf course, is it?
BEALE (singing, sarcastic)
"Hail, Brittania!"
ALEX
Cricket or golf, or croquet field, whatever. But elegant,
see? Civilization. Utopia.
BEALE
Elgar. Paradise.
SAM
Shades of green.
KIP
Tender shades.
ALEX
Tenderish. Not too tender.
KIP
Tender worked for GM.
ALEX
Last year. By now the public's bored.
BEALE
I like the elegance, elegance so perfect it's like ice.
SAM
It glitters.
KIP
What's wrong with "gleams" ?
ALEX
Glitters like a prize, like fairy dust that dreams are made on
SAM
Picking up the gold from earlier, the dust.
KIP
What dust?
BEALE
Gold dust. I like that. Financial but also insubstantial
ALEX
Right. So the rest, barbed wire, garbage cans, junkies,
bums, whatever--even rats-
KIP
Transformed into knights in armor! You know, the way a kid
will take a lid off a trash can and make it his shield?
SAM
Metal cans? Do they still use metal cans?
KIP
We can go from galvanized iron to gold, but I think green plastic's
too big a leap.
ALEX
Green cans blend into the dumpsters.
SAM
This armor's gold, too?
KIP
Gold or silver.
BEALE
It could all be gold, the car set in it like a jewel. Or like
a saint's bone in a gold and crystal reliquary.
ALEX
Stay with me now, we add drama. These rats scurrying around
the garbage in the alley. The car magics, they become-
KIP
Ponies! Ponies pulling Cinderella's coach. The
car, the car's the coach. Turns into the coach.
SAM
Coach? Isn't that--?
BEALE (sings)
"Bippity- boppity-boo!" (spoken) Mess with Disney, you guys,
we'll be in court until the Second Coming.
ALEX
What is this, Kip: the guy's Cinderella now?
KIP
Maybe he's with Cinderella, Alex. He's, you know, the prince.
BEALE
Prince is not so good. Like gawky Charles. Who fantasizes
being Charles?
ALEX
Or the artist formerly known. Or short Arab guys with mustaches
and head hankies.
SAM
Cinderella, that's another line entirely. I see that as
pink, soft edges.
KIP
So maybe we don't go with the rat and pony thingee.
ALEX
keep the guy, definitely. This is definitely a guy spot.
BEALE
Sound track?
KIP
I'd say classical.
ALEX
Classical for class, but synthesized, with a contemporary beat.
Not effete.
KIP
You seem awfully nervous about effete, Alex.
ALEX
We can't get too far ahead of the public, Kip,Sweetie.
SAM
As you surf onto the spot, shouldn't it feel more like a
feature film than a music video?
And everybody likes movie music, it's a wash.
KIP
Classical will do that, too.
ALEX
I don't know, kiddo. The MTV generation has the demographics,
now. They can afford upscale. But movies don't say
"class" to them like to their parents.
KIP
All this time, we show as little of the car itself as possible.
From the driver's view: just a few perfect details so a really
sophisticated viewer could identify the make and model,
but most people just get an impression, the sense of that transformative
power. The last shot goes transcendent-- the car disappearing
into a a realm of light, -- only the logo in focus.
BEALE
Just one shot of the logo? That's the whole id?
KIP
We could put the name at the bottom of the last frame, very tasteful--
ALEX
Been done, done, done! Lowest impact.
SAM
Worse, you drain away the power of the final image, the
transcendence thing. I see it like the Emerald City of Oz,
but with details sort of blurred in the shimmer. So the
viewer can put what he wants there, whatever works for him.
BEALE
His or her own version of Heaven.
ALEX
Great. But if she happens to blink when the logo's on, they
never get that our car is what"s gonna do it for him. We
need some specifics, we need them right along.
KIP
Specifics limit your audience.For every guy who wants to see big-breasted
blonds, there's point three guys and one woman who doesn't.
For every customer who likes monochrome upholstery, there's one
who prefers contrast.
ALEX
So? Customization computes. The customer these days can
order exactly what he wants, no problem to give it to him.
KIP
That's only solved at the point of purchase. This is mass
media. We can't customize the image, not yet. Like Sam says,
we have to come up with something vague yet suggestive enough
so that the beholder will add the perfection.
ALEX
If Sam were really good, we'd all want what Sam's picture tells
us to want.
SAM
I'm good.
ALEX
You'll never get me to want a herbacious border, Sam, no matter
how many satyrs and nymphs you show romping in them. And
Kip there claims to be immune to the allure of diapers and sticky-fingered
hugs, tone deaf as far as our species' siren-song of reproduction.
SAM
I'm very good. Both of you--Give me your attention a dozen
times a day, and you'll change. You're talking to the artist
who made Sloan's Summer Whisk a national object of desire.
ALEX
For the idiots who watch Oprah.
SAM
Any idiots, if they'll just watch what I do! But I can only
go to work once I get the public's attention. More-- my
real problem is the quality of attention. Usually the context--
in the middle of a football game, or after a hard day at the office,
people will only look at certain kinds of things, in certain ways.
I wish I had them meditating, chanting, a waking dream
state. People can be like that in galleriess.
KIP
Like in church.
BEALE
That's my department. Trust me.
ALEX
A new account?
BEALE
One step at a time.
SAM
I feel ready for a breakthrough.
BEALE
My dear, you are. I guide my artists so that each creative contribution
takes its place as part of a larger vision. A world of choices
so dazzling that what lies outside its boundaries is not simply
beneath contempt, it's well nigh unthinkable.
SAM
Yeah? Well, I've made the unthinkable attractive,
too. Anorexia, addiction, mutilation-- I've got the technique
to do it, all I need is--
BEALE
What?
SAM
Inspiration, I guess.
ALEX
So which is more inspirational? Money? Or the fear of being fired?
SAM
Projecting, Alex? Headhunters call me, all the time.
I have to beat them off with a stick. While you two--
KIP
Sam's right, Alex. A picture is worth a thousand words.
ALEX
Some are. Others have a short shelf life.
BEALE
Don't be such a clod, Alex. Sam is a true artist.
For the artist, materials at hand are motivation enough-- no need
for the carrot or stick. Do you imagine the cloistered illuminators
really worked to gain heaven or escape hell? In their cold
dank cells, starved and celibate, they were content
to make pictures-- most of them. Because the making of pictures
is bliss. Sam really does find beauty in cars and beer bottles,
just as the anonymous stone carvers of the Middle Ages found beauty
in the self torment of saints, or Michangelo in the muscular terror
of sinners at the Last Judgment. Sam's happy as a
pig in shit. This is a wonderful time to have an artist's eye,
to be talented!
SAM
How do you figure? Kids I went to school with, some
of the best of them, if they can't work in commercial they can't
make a living at all--
BEALE
Then they are fools! But at least they had the chance to
try! There used to be taboos about class and sex and belief,
to say nothing of how hard it once was, just to get hold of a
few ounces of paint, or to see another artist's work. The
slavery of apprenticeship--
SAM
Like everyone these days can afford to go to art school--
BEALE
Not everyone, but thousands, hundreds of thousands. Millions
more learn from books or computers, and photography puts the world's
museums in their laps. Master the old techniques or scorn them--
your choice. No church or state to prescribe subject matter;
no patron to flatter. Best of all, release from the tyranny
of truth.
ALEX
Aren't we getting a little off track, here?
BEALE
Not at all. We are proceeding straight on down the crooked
track of your time--and a fascinating time it is.
SAM
I don't quite see what you're getting at.
BEALE
That's because it's not visual, Sam. A few more years, lots
of hard work from your cohorts, and possibly nobody on earth will
get it.
KIP
The tyranny of truth?
BEALE
What passed for truth, of course. Always and only a kind
of rule of thumb, a compilation of what 's worked pretty well
in such and such a place, or what's come down from the forefathers,
or what everybody just assumes. All up for grabs,
now.-- Neither Scripture nor Nature sits on the Court
of Appeal
KIP
Well, maybe artists can do whatever they want. But if they
want what they do to be seen, they have to function within the
market.
ALEX
Naturally.
BEALE
Naturally, Kip?
KIP
I used to write poetry.
ALEX
Give me a break.
KIP
So I used to think about how advertizing copy was like a poem.
Metaphor, emotion, every word counts--
BEALE
Lots of similarities.
KIP
But you can't do both. There's something about the process
that's different, and it interferes--
SAM
One of my teachers said something like that--
BEALE
Small minds, maybe. Really creative people can
do it all.
ALEX
But why bother? If there's no market for it, no audience?
BEALE
There will be. Can't you see it coming? The great
convergence, where international conglomerates will preside
over a new drawing of the cognative map. All the old meanings,
parocial associations beaten into kids to preserve the tribes--
the united mass of mankind will vote in a new virtual order, based
on market value: one dollar, one Euro, one pound sterling, one
vote. And you, my friends will be their unaknowledged legislators,
because you are the masters of metaphor.
ALEX
Us, huh? Not the CEOs.
BEALE
Well, if you are the legislators, call them the executive branch.
ALEX
I'll bet. And this great global ad campaign: sounds to me more
likely to be dumbing down than some great rush of creativity.
What can the whole undeveloped world buy, anyway, more than a
Coke or a Pepsi?
BEALE
Everything, oh ye of little faith!
KIP
They don't make in a year the price of a pair of Nikes.
BEALE
This cognative dissonance, this is what has to be worked out.
What could be more exciting? The great conglomerates will compete
to supply stories and images, facts and skills, as well as food
and gadgets; what will be the mix if the rich realize that controlling
the fantasies of the poor is in their best interest? When
computers can trace every purchase, every net search and profile
what every consumer is likely to want and how much he is willing
to pay for it-- and you people perfect the arts of inducing wants--
what will humans be?
ALEX
That's a rhetorical question, right? You don't expect us
to answer that?
BEALE
Of course not.
KIP
Just trying to think about it gives me a headache.
BEALE
What about you, Sam? Are you pained or excited by these
revolutionary prospects?
SAM
Not really. It sounds all right, there'll be a job for me--
BEALE
Oh, yes. A most important one. Making images, shaping
souls. In service to whatever system, in sickness
and in health, idealistically or cynically, bouyed up by
utopian hopes or sunk in despair. The dawn of the Age of
Mammon: my time--like most times. Forgive me for indulging
in the luxury of calling it to your attention. But don't
worry. You'll forget all about it as soon as you walk out
the door.
(With a snap of BEALE's fingers, ALEX, KIP AND SAM go rigid,
their eyes glaze over, and Zombie-like they file off
stage.)
THE END
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