Back on the Che Gang

Full Embarrassing Disclosure: I had a brief, second-hand flirtation with the cult of Che when I was in high school. In other words, I knew absolutely nothing about him except that he was a pure, beautiful tenor who sang with searing (searing) intensity about the plight of the downtrodden and oppressed -- and he did that angry, ironic waltz with Eva Peron. Yes, friends, I fell in love with Mandy Patinkin as Che Guevara. I emerged from my fleeting, Patinkin-inspired enthusiasm for Che a sadder, wiser, and more historically informed young woman. I got over Che Guevara very quickly. My fondness for Mandy Patinkin lingers. Whether that is proof of superior taste or of vestigial foolishness is a question I prefer not to ponder.

With apologies to Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber:

(sung to the tune of Don't Cry for Me, Argentina)

Oh what a circus! Oh what a show!
The intelligentsia's gone to town
Over the death of a thug they call Che Guevara.
They've all gone crazy, mourning all day and mourning all night,
Falling over themselves to get all of the misery right.

But who is this great San Ernesto?
Why all this howling hysterical sorrow?
What kind of tin god has walked among us?
How will we ever get by without him?

Fortunately, we don't have to get by without Che Guevara. The wretched of the earth might not have much use for him these days, but the pierced and pampered of the earth have claimed him as their own. The descamisados may have forgotten him, but the fashionistas are still swooning over an image which biographer Jon Lee Anderson calls -- you'll have to try really hard to suppress the gag reflex here -- "the virile personification of youthful defiance against the status quo, whatever the status quo is." And Hollywood, always unflagging in their eagerness to glamorize murderers and thugs when there's money to be made, is presently giving Saint Che a great, big, virile, el Jeffe-approved, bear hug. Meanwhile, it's a safe bet that three quarters of this country's college freshmen are lapping up Hollywood's poisonous treacle faster than they can polish off a venti mocha frappacino.

I might take comfort in the notion that those crazy kids will eventually grow out of their infatuation with Che, except that we seem to have become a culture that disdains adulthood as much as we despise the innocence of childhood. We are perilously close to a "perpetual adolescence," and in Che Guevara and his devotees we can see perpetual adolescence writ large. I suppose that's harmless enough in a society that treats Che's image as merely another "brand name," a label that proclaims how a particular consumer wishes to be seen by others. Ultimately, Che-olatry is merely a pose, but its implications are troubling (especially for an inveterate worrier like me). When the habit of mind that can transform a murderous thug into a fashionable pose -- that can twist tyranny and murder into a work of art -- collides with certain historical contingencies, what results is . . . well, the twentieth century.

In an excellent article in The New Criterion, Anthony Daniels offers both a scathing review of The Motorcycle Diaries and a devastating critique of the cult of Che. Here is the heart of Daniels' essay:

The film clearly intends to suggest that Guevara was a youthful idealist, and that his idealism—so generous, so disarming—was the source of his later opinions and activities, such as his liberal and open-handed signing of death sentences after perfunctory trials, his support of regimes that had killed millions and scores of millions, and his wish that much of the population of the world should be immolated in a nuclear war for the sake of an alleged point of principle. The film is thus the cinematic equivalent of the Che Guevara T-shirt; it is morally monstrous and emotionally trivial.

"Morally monstrous and emotionally trivial" -- like so much of what passes for art these days, like so much of what the twentieth century slouched toward Bethlehem to give birth to.

I've ranged far afield here, and I haven't even begun to say what I had intended to say. That's the beauty and the curse of blogging, I suppose. The aestheticization of politics (and of morality) is kind of a preoccupation of mine, and I had some grand notions about how I was going to proceed with this post, but it's all beginning to collapse under the weight of my desire to go to sleep. I can only hope --in vain, I'm sure -- that your reading of my comments here will not have the soporific effect that my writing them did. And so good night.