In the mid 1960s, I was in my first play, "Thus Spake McMonkey McBean." This was a production of the Dr. Seuss story, "The Sneetches," adapted by Mrs. Breece, my first grade teacher. I was a Plain-Belly Sneetch.
Let me set the record straight right off: Mrs. Breece was not particularly well-versed in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Although she began accurately enough with Sylvester McMonkey McBean descending the mountain, her concept of the Sneetch and SuperSneetch were totally wrong. Instead of having McBean touting the virtues of a teleologic destiny for the SuperSneetch, she had him diluting the Sneetch bloodlines by integrating them with subsequent, iterative passes through his Star-On / Star-Off machines (an empty washing machine cardboard box). And after all of the Sneetches are melded into one indistinguishable people, McBean drives off, declaring:
-
No longer do Stars
On your bellies declare
To which class you belong,
Since they’re no longer rare.
This Fix-it-Up Chappie’s
Wiped your bank accounts clean;
You can’t teach a Sneetch -
Thus spake McMonkey McBean.
As the final insult to Nietzsche, Mrs. Breece had us play the Sneetches, one and all, happy with their new lot in life.
But Mrs. Breece was quite strict, and as first graders, none of us dared to suggest that she was working off of a flawed paradigm.