An Enemy of the People, adaptation by Arthur Miller

I've forgotten the power of a good play.

With good dialogue, good ideas and good dramatic tension, who needs props and special effects? Heck, who even needs colour?

The Enemy of the People is a play by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Arthur Miller and produced by National Education Television. In an Ibsenian way, it undermines the ideas that democracy is built on such as the idea that the majority must always right. The town meeting mocks the neutrality of chaired democratic meetings, accentuated by a town drunk who slurs and yells, "There's no law that says a man that's drunk can't vote!" Which is true.

When the town drunk is told sternly by the mayor to leave, the drunk threatens to call the mayor, which makes everyone laugh. Yet, it draws attention to the fact that the mayorship is a position that can be filled by anyone in a democratic system (see scene where Thomas tries on Peter's hat), neither sacred nor necessarily enlightened.

Peter the mayor declares, "Without moral authority there can be no government," which is all fine and dandy and what everyone likes to believe, but is that true? Perhaps all is required is the facade of morality, but a keen eye at the dollars and cents behind that facade, so that taxes will be kept low and the city prosper?

Money complicates matters. For example, Singapore researchers did not have a problem of blowing the whistle on Baush and Lomb's Multi-purpose Solution for Contact Lens last year when they found it related to a higher incidence of fungal infections. But what if it involved something close to our wallet, like the billions we are pumping into stem cell research in our quest to be a bio-science capital of the world? Or the money-generating integrated resorts?

Adults always balance. Truth balanced against dollars and cents, then working out a compromise. I am not against the compromise if it is worked out in a just and moral way. Or maybe I'm one of those in the majority with the wool over her eyes.