TEETH: Support Group for Satans

About five minutes into Teeth, I heard this line:

“Promise Keeper Girls can’t be about feeling good! I say Promise Keeper Girls have to be about being good!!!”

I thought “Oh, this show is about being GOOD.”

I’m predisposed to the tension between pleasure and righteousness. I am a child of a Marxist household in 1980s small town Georgia. And though I was at some remove from the pervasive Christianity of the area, I was still taught that self-denial was key to goodness. We children of the revolution were meant to be instruments of justice, so what should “feel good” is the engagement with that mission. What should “feel good” is to make a difference. What should “feel good” is to make the world a better place. Maybe that’s why my parents were so dedicated to the practice of activism. It felt good to them. I see activists these days talking about self-care, but in my childhood, I understood that we were meant to lay our bodies down in front of the arms truck. We were meant to risk life and limb for what was right. We had to carry the blood-stained banner. 

On the question of blood-stained banners, my mind wanders to Cuba, my dad’s birthplace, where billboards and coins proclaim the values of patriotism over one’s own bodily sovereignty. “Patria o Muerte.” The propaganda refers to the ongoing process of resisting imperialist power, in spite of whatever physical harm this resistance might bring about. But it’s also about obeying the State, and this is not unlike how I perceive Christians’ talk about Jesus' sacrifice. It struck me that in Teeth's portrayal of abstinence-obsessed Christianity, a familiar kind of forced disembodiment was at play.

At some point in the long march of mixed messages, I decided that being good meant making sure everyone likes you. In order to do that I tried to shapeshift and absorb as much negativity as I could in order to loudly project “okayness.” I thought that if I performed my okayness really well it could make everyone around me okay. I thought, “Maybe that’s justice!” It wasn’t.

And I suspect most of us want to be good, but we have to work with the definition of “good” that's available. If we are “good” by the wrong standard we might stumble right into someone else’s definition of evil. So, to be a sex-positive, queer, nonbinary parent under a Christian fundamentalist lens is tantamount to worshiping Satan. Watching Teeth made me feel Satanic, and I found that to be sort of… well… I enjoyed it.

I suppose every type of fundamentalism has its own special Satan. Satan can be whatever sits farthest away from the pure ideological center. And then people harming no one are embodiments of Satan – while people doing truly awful things, in alignment with doctrine, get to be heroes. I still suspect most everyone is trying in earnest to be good and feel good. Everyone is trying to find the intersection of those two impossibilities. And we learn in Teeth, that when those coordinates are set by ideologies of fear, shame, control, and otherness, we get carnage.

But back to Satan. Or can we say Satans? Because, while we hear a lot about the all-encompassing singular evil of Satan, I perceive a veritable convention center of terrifying, violent, and malevolent energies at play in our world. Call them what you will: Satans, toxic traits, evil tendencies, literal demons. The point is that we are battling possession, the Earth is on fire, and we are swimming in trauma as a result.

Take this morning for example. I was trying to compose a cursed, yet timely, social media post on my phone for my work. I should have posted it last night, to optimize the engagement, but I was too wrecked from a day of parenting and general ineffectiveness. My children were attacking each other, shrieking and resorting to physical violence. The demon emerged in me, it tells me that my children are ruining me, that these kids are purposely and completely destroying my livelihood. I’m flooded with rage that the circumstances of my life don't allow me to perform the basic tasks of being a professional adult. I believe the demon, and I scream at my children. They believe their demons and level-up their own screaming and clawing at each other (and me). It’s an awful (and ineffectual) series of events. The demons are hungry, and while they might occasionally have the facts right, they aren’t giving us good suggestions about how to solve our problems.

So while I was tickled to be cast as Satan by the Promise Keeper Girls in Teeth, it brought up for me the very real question of what to do with the seething demonic rage inside of me and many of us who are awake to this calamitous global moment. What do we do about these demons? 

So, I’ve been dabbling in exorcism. I’ve been trying to reclaim myself from the demons. And in the closing scene of Teeth, it was a jolt to see so many of them singing, writhing and covered in blood. I’m no expert, but I could tell they needed help.

It is my belief that when you encounter a demon you can't just cast it out. You have to meet it on its own terms. If you want to help it along you need to find out what it needs and give it some resources and options. Demons have needs, and that's why they attack. They probably have nowhere else to turn. They are likely hungry, helpless, or filled with shame and self-hatred. 

Our demons need warm soup, community, repair and therapeutic intervention. If you throw them out into the street, I don't suspect they will change their demonic ways. 

Satans need support.

So Teeth, for me, was the initiatory meeting of this support group. It was rife with bloody penises, volcanoes of hellfire, screaming and gnashing of teeth. But that’s the demons’ story. They need to be heard.

We welcome all you Satans. Let's have a chat. You look tired. Welcome, Father God. Take off the beard. It looks itchy. Welcome, Pastor, that knife won't solve your problem. Welcome, Vagina Dentata. Can you relax your jaw yet? If not, that's understandable. We've been bathed in blood, and now our true natures peek out from underneath the torn flesh. Now we emerge.

So thank you to the beloved artists behind Teeth for luring the demons out. It takes a lot of courage to invite them to the stage. To focus the lights on them, and turn up the microphones, to give them choreo and luscious songs to sing. And now that we've been un-numbed, sliced awake, worms pouring out, we get to do the same for our demons. While I've always been a little too sensitive to watch much horror, the work of trying to be good is horrifying, and I'm glad to be reminded of that by a blood-stained musical. I'm happy to be BIT awake. To be given some fresh wounds. It hurts, and feels good, and bad. But that’s good.

César Alvarez (they/them) is a composer, lyricist, playwright, and performance maker. They create big experimental gatherings disguised as musicals in the key of inter-dimensionality, socio-political transformation, kinship and coexistence. César was a Princeton Arts Fellow, a recipient of The Jonathan Larson Award, The Guggenheim Fellowship and the Kleban Prize. César teaches at Dartmouth College. www.cesaralvarez.net