Harold Pinter, Fascism, and Outrage: Aesthetic and Moral Implications

This book locates Harold Pinter’s controversial anti-fascism, overtly political plays not as revolutionary works designed to mobilize the masses, but as cries of moral outrage against the authoritarian forces of oppression.

Displaying on stage the plight of political prisoners facing illegal detainment, brutal interrogation, and torture, Pinter employs an aggressive, graphic style seeking to shock spectators out of their apathy and denial, and encourage awareness of such documented realities of fascist rule. Russell argues that Pinter’s political plays are not propagandistic screeds, but rather reflect a level of quasi-journalistic facticity about the global rise of fascism. The author emphasizes that Pinter develops a fictional framework in an effort to reach a level of truth beyond the mere compilation of facts. Pinter seeks to abrasively drill down through the facts of political torture to expose the truth that lies at the rotting core of fascism. Russell interprets Pinter’s fascism plays as artifacts of anti-theatre that abandon conventional theatrical narrative in favor of a sensorial assault on spectators to raise consciousness of the rising threat of fascist rule. He argues that by compelling audiences to witness fascist brutality, Pinter paints spectators into a corner of moral perplexity.

Dennis Eugene Russell is Associate Professor in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.