Saturday, May 5, 2012

Camelot: The Possibility of Things Hoped For

In the last two weeks I have had two nice experiences.  The first experience was that I had the opportunity to go see the musical Camelot with my family.  (The play was put on by the Performance Now Theatre Company- http://www.performancenow.org/- which always does a really nice job).  I first saw Camelot, I believe, when I was in middle school, as part of a field trip to see Wheat Ridge High School's production.  Since that time it has been one of my favourite musicals.  I have always been drawn to the combination of joy and tragedy that is found in Camelot.

The second experience was that I received in the mail a copy of Jürgen Moltmann's latest, and perhaps last, book, Ethics of Hope.  I had pre-ordered this book so long ago that I can't even recall when it was.  Over the course of the last five years, or more (?), I have been continuously drawn back to Moltmann's work, and I was particularly excited about the publication of a distinctly ethical text (To be fair, this text has existed in German for a couple years, but I have been far too lazy to put in the time of working through it- slowly!- in German).

I bring up both of these experiences together because both experiences, in addition to the dissertation proposal that I am currently working on, have left me thinking about utopia.  I'm sure that most of us, probably in high school, have read a number of texts about utopias.  I'm also fairly confident that for most people I wouldn't be breaking any new ground when I say that etymologically this term comes from Greek, and literally translates into the phrase  "No Place"--  οὐ ("not") and τόπος ("place").  Utopias are utopic precisely because they could never exist.  Perfection is that which always eludes us, which, no matter how far we stretch out our arms, is always just past our fingertips.  Camelot offers a perfect, and particularly humourous vision of utopia.
The city of Camelot is purported to be a place where even the weather is completely subject to royal decree.  Camelot is a magical place where it never rains until after 8:00 PM, where the Autumn leaves blow away altogether (at night of course!), and where the moonlight must appear by 9:00.  In short, there's simply not a more congenial spot for happily-ever-aftering than there in Camelot.  Arthur, although certainly not alone, conceives of his city as a place which can change the world. He says, "We'll invite all the knights, and all the kings of all the kingdoms to lay down there arms to come and join us."  The world will no longer be a place where people no longer kill people because of invisible boundaries.  The world's mantra can no longer be, "Might is right."  Camelot, as conceived by Arthur, will literally reshape the world into a place which fights for 'justice for all'.  He wants to do away with class distinctions, with jingoistic warfare, and with petty  rivalries.

Yet, unsurprisingly these lofty goals ultimately fail.  Camelot is, at its heart, a love story.  It is story of a man, Arthur, who loves his queen with all his heart.  Yet, it is also the story of Arthur's love of the hope that Camelot offers.  Tragically, it is also the story of Arthur's heartbreak.  Arthur, the king who has cast aside even his own ultimate monarchical power for the sake of justice, finds himself betrayed and alone.  Camelot is the story of Arthur's heartbreak.  It is the story of Guinevere slowly but consistently destroying her relationship with Arthur.  It is the story of the ripple effects of individual actions.  Yet, as much as any of these, it is the story of hope in the face of destruction.  If you're unaware of the story, the short version is simply that Queen Guinevere is caught in an adulterous relationship with, Lancelot, the greatest of all knights.  She is tried before Arthur's newly-founded criminal courts and sentenced to death (certainly a bit harsh, but still a step up from the prior system whereby she would have had no legal rights).  Lancelot escapes from Camelot, and is therefore not also tried.  Arthur's dilemma is that his love for Guinevere, despite his broken heart, cannot allow the judgment to stand, but if he were to overturn the ruling of the court he would destroy everything he had created Camelot to be.  It would again simply be a place where might makes right, where unequal power relationships are the order of the day.  Rather than overturn the judgment, he sets her execution for a place and a time in which Lancelot, being the gallant knight, will be able to swoop in and rescue her.  The penultimate scene demonstrates a bloody battle in which many people die in the battle between the forces of Camelot and those which came with Lancelot.  Guinevere is rescued, but the battle leaves behind a trail of bodies nevertheless.  This trail of bodies is the embodiment (quite literally) of the ultimate destruction of Camelot and all that it stood for.

Yet, there is yet hope to be found for Arthur.  The musical ends with Arthur alone in the woods, as he prepares to fight a battle that he doesn't want to fight against Lancelot's army- a battle which is based on retribution, a battle which has no concept of 'justice-for-all'.  A young boy comes to Arthur, hoping to fight in the battle.  Before sending the child away, Arthur says to the boy, "Each evening, from December to December, before you drift asleep upon your cot, think back on all the tales that you remember of Camelot. Ask every person if he's heard the stories.  Tell it strong and clear if he has not- that once there was a fleeting wisp of glory called Camelot...Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.  Camelot was a utopia, because it never fully existed outside of Arthur's mind.  Yet, as utopia, Camelot serves as a reminder of what could be.

It is precisely in this act of remembrance, of the proclamation of 'one brief shining moment' wherein the hope of Camelot is found.  Arthur recognizes that his own actions, as well as the actions of those around him, have killed the utopia (indeed, as is the nature of utopia, the utopia killed itself).  Camelot has returned to the way things used to be.  Yet, Arthur sees in this moment continued hope.  He isn't trying to secure his own legacy, but rather proclaiming that, even for a short while, the world was changed for the better.  He wants Camelot to be proclaimed throughout the world so that it can serve as a demonstration that hope still flies.  Camelot was a failure, but that failure is not permanent.  Thus, even though his own life didn't turn out as he envisioned, and even though his love of Guinevere would now remain always as a vestige of a tormented past, Arthur's love affair with hope has survived.  The future is open.  Even in the face of continuing tragedy, of continuing violence, of continuing hatred, hope springs eternal.

 I intended this to be a post about two experiences, it turns out to be a post primarily about only one.  Yet, this one experience is, in some sense, a universal experience- it is the experience of a world of brokenness.  For those who have read Moltmann's work, he reminds us that hope is not the hope for utopia.  Hope is not the process of waiting on something good to happen.  Hope, on the contrary, is about making happen that for which we hope.  Hope is not a  naïve belief that everything will always be good, but the recognition that our lives, even if only for one brief shining moment, are meaningful outside of ourselves.