A George Bernard Shaw Retrospective A Guide To G. B. Shaw On Home Video by Louis Proyect
(Swans - March 23, 2009) As Charles Marowitz observes in this special edition of Swans on GB Shaw, his plays are rarely performed nowadays. As a film critic, I was interested to see what was available on home video especially since reading Richard Seymour's The Liberal Defence of Murder for a Swans review left me with an unresolved attitude toward Shaw. Despite the playwright's socialist politics, Seymour makes the case that he was closer to Christopher Hitchens than he was to Swans, pointing to a passage in Shaw's Fabianism and the Empire that calls for better management of the Empire rather than ending it:
"Our concern in this Manifesto is not specially for the wage-earning class, which is taking its own course and reaping only what it has sown, but for the effective social organization of the whole Empire, and its rescue from the strife of classes and private interests."
Shaw's plays represented a dual challenge to me. Were they the masterpieces that my high school teachers insisted they were (Shaw was not taught in my college at all)? Were they weak politically despite Shaw's socialist reputation? As it turns out, these questions could not be answered with a simple yes or no. It is far easier to answer another question, which is whether his works still have the capacity to entertain and inspire. On this, I can offer an emphatic yes. On the politics, one can say that Shaw was limited by his Fabian preconceptions but since his plays dealt with class contradictions inside Great Britain rather than relations with the colonial world, they are not only unobjectionable but positively inspiring. Nobody hated the class system more than Shaw, at least those making their living as writers -- that is, until the Great Depression turned a whole new generation of writers against the decaying social system.
Before launching into a discussion of the six videos I managed to take in, let me make a few observations about Shaw as artist. The first thing that struck me was how so many different genres appear to be influenced by Shaw, from the screwball comedies of the 1930s to PBS Masterpiece Theater's "Upstairs, Downstairs." As a shrewd observer of the social conventions of the rich and the poor, he found their conflict an endless source of artistic inspiration even as he was on record for calling for their abolition. Perhaps there is no British playwright who has a better knack for mining both the foibles and the strengths of the servant class than Shaw -- except of course for Shakespeare.
The other thing worth noting is Shaw's linguistic gifts. Listening to his dialog is a reminder of how much Anglo-American culture has declined since the 19th century. Just as there will never be another Beethoven, there will never be another Shaw. His ability to find the perfect turn of phrase for the occasion was obviously the outcome of his exposure to great British literature. Anybody who has read Jane Austen will be struck by Shaw's flair for the ironic observation. Furthermore, when you see some of the more inspired screwball comedies of the 1930s, you will recognize immediately that a Preston Sturges not only read his GB Shaw both in high school and in college, but absorbed the literary and dramatic style completely. Nowadays, in the decline of Western civilization across the board, a Hollywood screenwriter is more likely to have learned his craft by watching television situation comedies.
Except for Devil's Disciple, all of the videos under review are available as DVDs from Netflix and among them all but Pygmalion originated as BBC teleplays. Devil's Disciple is available on VHS at video stores still stocking them, as well as public libraries. As a rule of thumb, the BBC productions are hampered by their "stagy" character but distinguished by the quality of the acting, including performances by John Gielgud and Maggie Smith.
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