First Meditation-- from Profesora

I have just been listening to and laughing (with my son) about the songs and videos made by ParryGripp (www.parrygripp.com). His stuff is fantastic! Check out his stuff on YouTube if you haven't already. Though my son didn't really get all of it, this song in particular, "I can't stop Googling myself," made me laugh until I had tears in my eyes: http://www.parrygripp.com/I%20Can%27t%20Stop%20Googling%20Myself.html

The line in the song our son didn't get was "I've got to keep my relevance high." He knows how to use Google-- but hasn't lived long enough, or met enough people, to know how to recognize that line's satire of human vanity. I think Moratin would have liked the satire in the song "I can't stop Googling myself" (though I am sure he would have disapproved strongly of ParryGripp's funny animal videos. They are not very "verosimil"!).

Irene would be a perfect candidate for a satire by ParryGripp. But a part of me doesn't want to just laugh AT Irene and think she's silly. A part of me doesn't want to discount her as just another element in a funny video. She is a more complicated character, and the fact that I can have any compassion for her at all-- fearful, selfish, not-very-bright and scheming as she is-- is evidence of how the laughter provoked by thoughtful theatrical comedy is of a different kind than that provoked by a crazy animal video on YouTube, or a snarky song about contemporary attitudes.

I laugh about Irene's foibles (she is selfish; she is foolish; she is a hypochondriac) even as I see how she is who she is in part due to her larger social context, one in which women didn't have many options beyond marriage, and weren't often given the opportunity to be educated. I see her humanity-- and that is entirely due to Moratin's having WANTED me to see it. Moratin's play was very popular, and quickly became one of the best-loved plays of all time in (modern) Spanish literature. It was relevant then (though not in the way ParryGripp uses "relevance" in the Google song), and feels relevant now, for so many reasons having to do with what makes us human. "Verosimilitud" was not just a theory for Moratin: he truly wanted to make the human possibilities of theatre come alive for audiences-- and that kept them thinking about his art, and about him.