The American power is further acknowledged, during the same conversation, by Sir David Manning, Tony Blair’s chief foreign policy advisor: ‘Power doesn’t make deals, Prime Minister. Power doesn’t need to do deals. Power does what it wants’ (111). One notices that American power is metonymically referred to as ‘power’ , and this power indeed does what it wants in the relation with the UN and the European powers , as is clear from another dismissive dialogue between the American officials, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney , on the one hand, and Colin Powell, as a voice of reason, on the other . Rumsfeld , who occupies a central position in the play—it may be argued even more than Bush himself, since the title of the play is clipped from his speech and his image is foregrounded on the cover, while President Bush is left in the background—has the most radical lines when it comes to any ‘others’ of the Americans , whether they are enemies or allies. He is convinced that Europeans ‘live their lives under the American umbrella […] and yet they still think that they’re entitled to say ‘hey, you’re not holding that umbrella right’ or, more often, ‘I want a share of that umbrella’ (SH 102), which is the Americans’ way of setting themselves up as the defenders and warrantors of the Western civilisation , who ‘don’t need lectures from Europe on how to hold [their] knives and forks’ (SH 102). This latter remark suggests that, as mighty as they [think] they are, Americans still feel a pinch of inferiority when compared to the older and more refined European civilisations. Yet again, considering the source, the Britishness of the text, it may be just a European belief rooted in the Americans’ past sense of inferiority, most probably long overcome, in fact. It is all about cultural stereotype and identity myths. This impression of inferiority complex is, however, corrected immediately, when the Rumsfeld character continues his tirade against the European allies claiming that they are simply driven by envy: ‘because what they really hate, what’s really bugging them is not the way we do things. It’s that we’re the only people in the world that can do them. It’s not our manner, it’s our power . And all they want, all anyone wants, is to put a brake on that power’ (SH 102–3). At Powell’s remark that Blair —and, by extension, the British—cannot be associated with the French and the Germans since ‘he’s been with [them] all along’ (SH 103), the other two officials reveal their mistrust of the British prime minister, endorsed by a party that calls itself ‘New Labour’, which is ‘reminiscent of a ‘girl band,’ thus implying that New Labour is a frothy, lightweight, ineffectual political entity, worthy of about the same amount of serious consideration as The Spice Girls’ (Carpenter 2008, 148).
The real, documented, statements are added to these imagined conversations in order to consolidate the image of the overconfident hegemonic American administration. A perfect example is the one given by Rumsfeld in March 2003, when he suggested that America had alternatives, should the United Kingdom decide not to join them in the war, which provoked consternation in London and a rapid reaction from Downing Street. United Press International quotes from a briefing in which the secretary of defense said: ‘To the extent that [the British] are able to participate, in the event that the president decides to use force, they would obviously be welcomed. To the extent they’re not, there are workarounds and they would not be involved, at least in that phase of it’ (2003). Retracted within an hour—‘We have every reason to believe that there will be a significant military contribution from the United Kingdom’, Rumsfeld’s arrogant disregard for their main ally translates almost verbatim in the play (SH 110), which can be read either as an attempt at ridiculing the British prime minister, in keeping with the opposition he faced in the British press at that time, or as emphasising the fact that the Americans really do believe that they are that hyperpower that does not need anybody else, which relates to Powell’s assertions of the American power in the fictional conversation with de Villepin.
Hare resists the temptations of satire and portrays the Americans ‘as a dangerous, intelligent group of people with an unstoppable will to follow a premeditated course of action’ (Gipson-King 2010, 156). Relevant in this respect is that even the American president, a target and an inspiration source for many satirists, thanks to his many inappropriate statements, is portrayed as a man of power who sends down his resolutions through the voices of his secretaries. Everything related to the Americans in Stuff Happens actually stresses their power, as it is, ultimately, a play about power , albeit one written from the perspective of the subaltern aware of his position. It is in this sense that the play may be described as anti-American, acquiring some vibes of the voice of lesser otherness . It remains inscribed in the European tradition of anti-Americanism , but it no longer foregrounds that attitude of belittling the superpower based on the American people’s various (mostly cultural) inabilities and inadequacies, acknowledging instead the threat that it represents on the world stage due to its power and determination.
Conclusions
Therefore, just as there are more Easts (the mysterious one, inspired by the Arabian legends in One Thousand and One Nights and, maybe, by Rushdie’s novels, the East of the superhuman Japanese or that of the elevated superiority of the Buddhist monks, the luxurious East made of ‘petrodollars’ and, last but not least, the brutal, terrorist , fundamentalist East ), there are also more Wests. The distinction has been made here between America and the Old Continent, the former being constantly regarded as the Other by Europeans , either from their initial position of power , or from a more recent one, of submission to its hegemony.
The two American novels, Falling Man by DeLillo and The Submission by Waldman , reveal significant differences even at the level of the American mindset. Nevertheless, the contrast made with the British novel Dead Air by Banks and the play Stuff Happens by Hare emphasises the fact that the Americans are, after all, much more affected by the events of 9/11 than the other Westerners, the Europeans , who display instances of indifference and Schadenfreude at the American tragedy . The latter text also allows a more surprising interpretation, that of a tacit and frustrated European acceptance of American hegemony and global power. While Banks remains in the paradigm of the ‘stupid American’ who, though not deserving a tragedy such as the one befallen on 9/11, is still worthy of ridicule for having elected an equally stupid head of state, Hare unhappily acknowledges American power and the Europeans’ submission to it.
What needs to be further mentioned is that this ‘otherness within’, that is to say the self/Other relations established at the level of the Western civilisation, is intended only as a bridge towards the future attempt at demonstrating that, when confronted with a more threatening other, the terrorist East , the boundaries between Wests tend to be erased. To this effect, this chapter will be correlated with a discussion on the ‘Muslim menace’, seen by the Western world as the ultimate Other.
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