Happily, the other major component of The Last Cargo Cult is considerably brighter. Interwoven with his survey of fiscal armageddon is an account of Daisey’s February 2009 visit to Tanna, an island in the unindustrialized South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, where the Army set up temporary outposts during World War II.
“They were only there for a few years, with their refrigerators and radios and chocolate and cigarettes,” says Daisey. “Then they vanished. Nothing makes something magical more than seeing it and wanting it, then having it removed.” After the Americans packed up and went home, sects that considered the yanks’ left-behind consumer goods to be religious totems — cargo cults — sprang up in their wake.
Though currency has come into limited use on Tanna, the majority of its residents live “in custom,” i.e. free of financial obligation, the way most Western children live with their parents. But on Tanna, the family structure encompasses the entire tribe.
The subject of cargo cults has appealed to Daisey “as its own resonant metaphor” for years. He didn’t know if there was a show in it until he read about John Frum Day. Every Feb. 15, the denizens of Tanna gather at the base of an active volcano, raise the American flag, and tell the history of America, as they understand it, in song and dance. Daisey happened to hear of the ritual in November 2008, just as the global markets were melting down. “I had this moment where I realized I had to go to the island,” Daisey says.
That moment is typical of Daisey’s binary creative process. “I only can work on things that I’m obsessed with. Preferably there’s more than one obsession, and they’re in collision with one another,” he explains. Moreover, “I have to believe there is an essential need in my society to hear about this [subject]. Lots of things don’t pass that litmus test.”
If making economics into an engrossing narrative was hard, clearing the relevance hurdle was never easier. Daisey feels a grim deja vu: The show that made his name, 21 Dog Years, was in part about a financial bubble a decade ago. That one was merely national. But he’s taking Cargo Cult to Ireland and Australia this year, which he can do because the 2008 crash reverberated planet-wide.
“The spikes keep getting higher and the drops deeper,” he laments. “But there’s no understanding, and certainly no political will, to make the hard choices or ask the hard questions that come from that.”
“No economic reform has moved forward to the point of even being discussed,” he rails. “By the time it is discussed, the banks will be making record profits, as they are now, again, already. The Dow will be back up. No one is going to want to discuss what’s wrong. No one. Nothing is going to happen.”
America, we need to talk.
The Last Cargo Cult is at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company through Feb. 7 Tickets are available here.
Still hungry for more Mike Daisey? Read some great outtakes from our interview.
A 40% shorter version of this story appears in today’s Examiner.
