MARXISM IN THE WOODS
Ethan Kaplan At RISE:
DAFFY
Rabbit season.
BUGS
Duck season.
DAFFY
Rabbit season!
BUGS
Duck season!
ELMER
Gentlemen. The rise of modern capitalism has made antiquated any notion of seasonal livestock. Modern farming methods have ensured the widespread husbandry of previously wild game,
utilizing industrial production methods and a surplus of grain and soy to raise animals in dense feedlots powered by liquid dinosaur bones. Your antagonistic skirmish is but a vestige of a premodern sensibility based on scarcity and seasonality, which has no place in this postpostmodern age of abundance. The “seasons” now are seasons of taste, motivated only partially by nutrition and flavor but primarily by economic and mimetic factors. In fact, your argument has only increased the likelihood that duck and rabbit will be ordered, butchered, and eaten by a member of this audience. This is the basis of modern advertising: exposure alone is often enough to influence both conscious and subconscious decision making. Thus, ironically, your reflexively defensive postures have made it become both “duck” and “rabbit” season at once.
DAFFY & BUGS
Human season!
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Ethan Kaplan is a New York-based playwright, novelist, and musician with a BA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens College. He served as an adjunct professor of Creative Writing at Queens College and previously taught courses on writing skills, public speaking, and global affairs at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His play Speculation received a staged reading at the Flea Theater in June 2016, and his upcoming book White Horse, Lucky Stone was featured in the CUNY Turnstyle Reading Series in March 2017.
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