Over on Slate this week Brian Wise posted a piece about Donald Trump and his playing of Puccini’s Nussun Dorma at campaign events. Trump had been using a recording of Pavarotti singing the aria and the singer’s family had contacted him to ask him to stop.
Musicians have been complaining for years about politicians using their music at events without permission, and it’s always fun to ridicule a pol with whom you disagree when the artist whose work they’ve chosen to associate themselves with repudiates the “honor.”
So Wise writes:
Trump’s use of it might read as yet more evidence for those who already view the bombastic businessman as a fascist in the making… Not only is Turandot an opulent, Orientalist fantasy set in imperial China by a composer who never set foot in Asia; Puccini also held a sympathetic spot in his heart for the fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. The composer’s late-career admiration for Mussolini’s policies has prompted a new generation of historians to see his operas—especially Turandot—through a political lens.
It is “quite easy to read Turandot as a political allegory,” writes Arman Schwartz in the book Puccini’s Soundscapes, “one consistent with fascism’s own narrative of the degradation of post-World War I Italy and of Mussolini’s heroic rise.”
While I applaud the urge to dump on Trump (for so many reasons), trying to associate him with fascist sympathies because his campaign plays one of the most famous arias on the planet is a yuge overreach. Trump is essentially historically context-free. He grabs things and uses them (facts, images, music, ideas, tweets) because they are shiny objects that caught his attention in that jumbled stream-of-consciousness river that flows through his head. The backstory is irrelevant to him.
He uses a Star of David in an ad on Hillary Clinton because it’s a star and he didn’t stop to think it might have more specific meaning. He thinks US obligations to NATO allies are dependant on allies’ behavior because he’s unaware of the history. And he uses Puccini because it sounds heroic to him. Powerful. Not because it resonates with the fascist child within. Debates about connections between artists’ political views and their work have raged for years. But when you’re as devoid of context as Trump is, a song is but a song…
One of the most salient characteristics of Fascism is its embrace of political opportunism. Power is the end in itself and should be obtained by any means necessary. Any populist rhetoric that will move one toward power is embraced.
This is one of the reasons that it is difficult to define Fascism. Its proponents typically espouse any view that will help them gain power, and then abandon it when it is no longer politically useful. An example of the inconsistencies that follow is how Hitler was supported by reactionaries, but called his party National Socialism.
From this perspective, Trump’s erratic and inconsistent embrace of populist themes to increase his power is classic Fascist methodology. Sometimes he grabs onto ideas that are actually important, such as the disenfranchisement of American labor, but instead of genuinely pursuing those themes, he has no real concern about them. He drops them the minute he finds a new pet topic with which he can manipulate the media. If he were a better and more experienced Fascist politician, he would consistently hammer on populist themes. Good Fascists know the value of heavily repeated propaganda.
Sadly, empty populist rhetoric and fear mongering are a central part of even mainstream American politics. Trump’s use is just more obvious and crass.
Hitler’s Machiavellian appeals to populist emotion were extremely effective. The German counter-reaction to those methods after the war shape the country’s culture to this day as manifested in a deep suspicion of overt emotionalism even in the arts. They virtually equate overt emotionalism with Fascism. One example is their concepts of contemporary classical music holds to a stubbornly dry, objective modernism.
I forgot to mention that I don’t equate Puccini with Fascism. Puccini’s emotions might be a bit inauthentic and over the top, but that doesn’t make them evil. The artistic exploration and representation of emotion can help us understand human identity, but for Fascists emotions are merely a means to malignant ends outside of art and emotion. We cannot abandon emotion in art because it leaves us vulnerable to manipulation. Both good and evil can be strengthened by emotion. We must express our emotions intelligently and morally. Keep the Puccini, dump Trump.
Happy to see Brian Wise back at work.
As you say – classic fascism. My point isn’t that he isn’t a fascist – or that fascist ideas don’t resonate with him. I’m just saying that drawing connections to what may or may not have been fascist sympathies of the composer and believing they are implicit in this aria was Trump’s coded reason for choosing it is a stretch.
True. I doubt Trump was even behind the decision to use the aria. Probably some campaign manager.
BTW, Stravinsky was also a big fan of Mussolini. I think the Rite of Spring would work very well for some of Trump’s rallies, especially if he got some of his colleagues from Wrestle Mania to join in the presentations.