BACKLASH: Let’s Willingly Suspend Our Disbelief

THERE is something in stage acting called verisimilitude. It describes the emotional distance between the performer and the spectator, and the point at which the latter is overwhelmed by the craft of the former to equate the craft with reality. It can also be called the ‘Willing Suspension of Disbelief’ which was coined by 18th Century English poet and philosopher, Samuel Taylor Coleridge to inject German idealism into the Romantic Movement in England.

The term became a measure of creative excellence. For instance, if the audience felt it was only experiencing a piece of art on stage and not a slice of real life, it meant the drama had fallen short of good art because the sequence of actions and dialogues and everything about the craft failed to move the audience from a state of disbelief to conviction. Other times, the performer is not so tasked to pull stunts to convince the audience who might have been conditioned by the larger environment outside the stage to accept in good faith the art on display. Such was the trust of the Sentimental Comedy that followed the licentiousness of the English Restoration Drama in England.

The protagonist in the Sentimental Comedy was usually a gentleman who approximated the best of English mannerisms. All the liberties of creativity were suspended and the dramatist was only permitted to present the moral view point. The background to this was that public stage performance was banned in England under the puritan regime of Oliver Cromwell who beheaded King Charles, disbanded the monarchy and decreed the parliament supreme.

Charles II was crowned in 1660 to mark the end of the interregnum and restoration of the monarchy. Theatre and by extension free expression was also restored. The new king, himself a theatre patron placed no restrictions and what came on stage could only be limited by the imagination and morality of the playwright. The sentimental comedy was evolved to return theatre from the liberties of the restoration era to family values. And so the actor on stage was programmed to reflect good values in spite of himself. He was to act well anyhow and the man in the audience was by the same mechanism programmed to accept the artificiality of the moment in principle even if his conscience refused to follow him.

This is where we are today with the sentimental performance of President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) on the leadership stage. We have been told to willingly suspend disbelief and accept every plastic stage business or act as excellent piece of creativity and a marked departure from the debauchery of the PDP era. Besides, there is something in the background called CHANGE upon which every act is denominated and rechristened beautiful. For instance, if PMB decides to run a federal government without ministers and other public officials, it becomes part of the change that he has promised to bring on stream.

We seem so haunted by the ugly performance of the past that everything on the current stage commands excellent description. If PMB said yesterday ‘no bailout for states’ and comes around today to say ‘N713 billion bailout for states’, it is a grand manifestation of the promised change and the Nigerian audience should approve the somersault with a thunderous ovation. Even when the performance appears to have no serious content, Nigerians should invent the content. They can, for example, say that the relocation of the military command centre to Maiduguri by PMB has helped greatly the war against the Boko Haram terror group and that since the relocation, attacks by the group has been minimal and very far in-between. They can add that PMB’s visit to neighbouring Chad, Niger and Cameroon was a master move that got the insurgents encircled within the forces of these countries. They can also say that the naira since the inauguration of PMB has strengthened against other convertibles even as the stock market went bullish with major stocks rallying to unprecedented heights.

Sentimental plays are usually very boring because of its artificiality. People go to the theatre to get excitement and not to live life twice over. The directors and producers of the Buhari drama appear to understand this fact. They heckle from wherever they are seated to stampede the audience to applaud every misstep as a new style. The journey to ‘Western Germany’ where ‘President Michelle’ and other G7 leaders failed to attend to the wish-list that PMB took down was described as a good move that reconnected Nigeria with the comity of nations.

Even sheer improvisations such as 50 per cent cut in salary and the turning down of N400 million worth of official cars which are not part of the original script are taking a new significance in the feverish search for a sustaining plot. PMB’s N14million annual salary has been reduced by half to just N7million and it is a massive indication of the change to come. The point to take home here is that PMB, unlike his greedy and corrupt predecessors, is sacrificing so much to re-inflate the flattened economy. It remains for the rest of Nigerians to send a delegation of all traditional rulers to be led by the Sultan of Sokoto to thank PMB for his patriotism.

For safety, spoilers should be plucked off the audience. They seek to create disbelief instead of working to suspend it. Right now, PMB is in the middle of another serious act that will climax in the US on July 20 when he will land Washington on the invitation of President Barack Obama. As it was when he visited Berlin to meet with the G7 leaders, PMB has been asked by his host to bring along a wish list. In all of Goodluck Jonathan’s six years in Aso Rock Villa, nobody invited him anywhere to bring a wish list.

I can comfortably add that the incessant calls for wish list by Western leaders are injecting an idealism that is taking the Buhari’s performance beyond sentimentalism. It is beginning to look very real and people are willingly suspending their disbelief. I mean in this part, we equate western endorsement of home regimes with good governance and even acceptability. PMB is having that almost in abundance and we should fall behind him before it becomes too late.

The same America and European countries which turned their back against Nigeria at its moments of need under Jonathan are now all too ready to help. It is something to crow about.

I am not saying PMB is riding a Trojan horse into Nigeria, but something in me says no lunch is completely free even in Freetown. Europe and America have been asking for PMB’s wish list without forwarding their own wish list. Our President should just be careful sha so that in exchange for his own wish list, he does not get a tougher and even more comprehensive Western wish list which may include among other things, the devaluation of the naira, free market (as if there is such thing anywhere in the world) and gay rights concession. I am just thinking aloud.

Meanwhile, let the audience keep suspending its disbelief. Even on Boko Haram, there is another creative dimension outside the relocation of the military high command to the frontline that is making the performance more real. Now, the co-actor, Prof. Yemi Osibanjo has added to his official schedule, the prompt visiting of victims of Boko Haram attacks. And he has been very efficient; visiting sometimes less than 24 hours after an attack to commiserate with victims. Neither Jonathan nor Sambo could do that successfully.

This is the way to go. In all, Buhari is an angel on the leadership stage. Only good people are created to see angels and those unable to see his angelic attributes are not good people. It is something close to the mysterious angel in the Arabian Tale who was only visible to good men.