The Whirlpool Of Progress Generated By Chaos In Tony Kushner'S Angels In America

Numerous political and social commentators have referred to Donald Trump's election campaign and subsequent presidency using the term "chaos", thus rendering the state of affairs in the second decade of the 21st century as both problematic and, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, also potentially productive. This attitude echoes Tony Kushner's two-part drama Angels in America, which reflected on the Reagan administration's cultural mayhem in domestic policy and its parallel international success (ending the Cold War) in the 1980s. Kushner's epic draws on the ideas of scholars of the Frankfurt school, most notably Walter Benjamin, whose comments on Paul Klee's 1920 painting Angelus Novus became the creative catalyst for Angels in America, advocating the idea that chaos generates progress and that individualistic and adventurous attitudes are commonplace in American culture.