Masculinity, Narrative, and Annoying Brats: Jackanape and The Fingermen by D. Harlan Wilson
In D. Harlan Wilson's first foray into theater, Three Plays, I got the feeling Wilson wrote the plays without a particular eye to having them staged. This resulted in the plays having over-the-top staging directions, such as calling for luxury cars to drive across the stage. However, at least one of the plays had been staged before being published in the book. Likewise, “The Fingermen” had been staged before being published in his newest book of plays. In contrast, both the plays read to me more like something written with an eye to being practical to stage. They're also a bit more “high concept,” being somewhat easier to summarize in a single line. Despite that, it loses none of the humor or absurdity of Wilson's prior book of plays and his other work in general.
“Jackanape” is about a dinner jacket that crushes anyone who wears it. It's a concept that could easily be played as a straightforward horror or horror-comedy. Wilson does both and neither. He does things such as introducing an old man who repeats his scene several times, sometimes being murdered by the jacket, and other times simply hanging it on a coat rack.
The theme of the play seems to be about masculinity. One of the people killed by the jacket is a man named Dagny, who's been made to feel insecure about his name and feminine looks by his date. He wears the jacket to prove he's a real man, only to be crushed by it. The center of the play is the family who owns the jacket and the room it's kept in dealing with the domineering father.
The father, insisting on his place as the man of the house, ignores the problems of his wife and children. He makes the kids bring him food and alcohol, claiming he needs it to deal with the fact that the family's apparently been robbed of everything but the clothes on their back and the dinner jacket. He puts on the jacket, insisting that he needs it to not feel naked at the table. As he bloviates over the dinner his kids likely dug out of a trash can, the jacket predictably crushes him.
The metaphor of the jacket representing toxic masculinity as restrictive, crushing, and self-destructive is a bit obvious. However, Wilson makes it work very well with his humor and imagery. In one part, a pair of detectives investigate the jacket, several people having mysteriously died in the room its in, only to end up accidentally shooting each other.
The play also introduces a pair of androgynous homunculi after an apparent off-stage nuclear war. Here, the play goes into the effects of unchecked toxic masculinity turned outward to an absurd degree. These two sorry creatures seem to be the only thing left after the world's been destroyed in pure aggression. The two homunculi contemplate their bodies and evolution until one of them dies. The play ends on a darkly humorous note of a monkey swinging across the stage in a shirt the same color as the jacket, suggesting the cycle will repeat again.
“The Fingermen” is about a support group of men who've lost their fingers one way or another. A new member joins the group. The others try to tell him how they lost their fingers, but are often obviously either lying or exaggerating. They're constantly interrupted by each other, by children playing on an above balcony, and a phone in a nearby booth ringing.
Occasionally, the Fingermen nearly drift into discussions of subjects like ontology. Amp, the de facto leader, shuts these down quickly. It becomes obvious that the Fingermen is a very poor support group. Amp engages in cult-like tactics, such as claiming that everything outside the group is chaos, calling the new guy Fritz a “neophyte,” and doing his best to micromanage the group's discussions.
It becomes apparent that the purpose of the Fingermen is to provide a space for the men to tell themselves their own narratives of how they lost their fingers, usually in self-aggrandizing or self-victimizing ways, with little question. At one point, one of the members named Beryl claims he fell on one his fingers. While trying to demonstrate how, he ends up shattering his hip.
The children on the balcony above seem to represent the idealized versions the Fingermen hold of themselves, compliantly acting out their narratives, but occasionally falling off. When Amp tries to tell his story, the children get so loud acting it out, that he finds himself unable to continue. Several of the members end up dying over the course of the play when they try to answer the phone in the nearby booth. Communication from the outside world kills their self-image.
By the end, the Fingermen seem doomed as group. Fritz refuses to divulge his story, viewing the practice as narcissistic. Amp continues engaging in denial, even as the two remaining idealized versions of themselves die on the balcony. The phenomenal stories they wanted to live in are no match for the noumena coming roaring after them.
D. Harlan Wilson is one of my favorite writers working now, and this book enforces it. The two plays in here are hilarious and thoughtful. Even as I laughed through both of them, I came out going over the concepts he presented in them in my head. I would love the chance to be able to see them staged someday. I also hope Wilson will keep writing in theater. He's suited very well for it.
Ben Arzate lives in Des Moines, IA. His novel from Malarkey Books, Music is Over!, is forthcoming in Feb. 2022. Pre-order it or get it through the Malarkey Book Club. Visit his blog at dripdropdripdropdripdrop.blogspot.com.