Paper 2

In drama masks can conceal characters’ true intentions, and transform them. In Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen and Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire, set design, dialogue, and appearance are employed to create masks for their female protagonists. Hedda masks her fiery nature with a cool feminine exterior which allows her to manipulate others yet still be imprisoned by social expectations. Blanche’s masks her past mistakes and resurrects her past glory to deny reality, representing the southern gothic.

In A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche keeps the lighting in the apartment low to mask her age and to create a romanticized version of herself, to deny her past.

In Hedda Gabler set design is also used to demonstrate a facaade. Hedda keeps the house dark to present a cool exterior to society, while contrastingly keeping a fire showing her the fiery self.

In A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche wears glamorous clothing in an attempt to recover her past glory and hide her past shame, representing the southern gothic.

Hedda dresses in aristocratic clothing like Blanche, to create a power over others, but wears loose clothing to mask the pregnancy that represents a traditional lifestyle that she rejects.

In A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche sings and talks to herself in a manner that contrasts to her situation demonstrating her ability to deny her current state.

Between Hedda and Tesman there is the dialogue motif of “think of that”and “I’m thinking” to demonstrate to her husband that she is a sweet housewife, but Hedda is actually much smarter than he sees.

film vs play

Oleanna film vs. Play

I think watching Oleanna made all of the interruptions more effective. I think the actors were able to handle the script well.  I had mixed feelings about carol, she seemed much more annoying when she followed him around the room, and complained that she was stupid, when you see an actual person just saying “I don’t understand” over and over, she becomes more detestable. However when she called him out on his hypocrisy and told him to let her talk and to stop “encouraging” her, I thought that had its merit and in the movie I had more sympathy for her. But hearing her talk about how all she wanted was “understanding” was much more annoying in the movie. I think facial expressions make her more detestable especially the loosely veiled smugness. I am wondering about the last image of boys throwing a football in the yard. I’m not sure why he included this, it reminded me of the last part of the play version of streetcar, and “the game is seven card stud.” It just zooms away from a severe situation back to a normal college campus, where boys throw footballs. I guess that could relate to the paradise of oleanna, a place that’s fun and joyful.

I found something interesting on Saumyas blog. She said that carol becomes a “highly manipulative strong woman,” and I think this is hard to define because of her group. Does Carol really transform or is she just the delivery system for her group? I think the movie visually highlights this by her change in costume. Nothing seems like she’s gradually reveals her intentions, its very much a before and after, in Act 1 she comes in a whiny, inarticulate, helpless student, then she comes back all business with an agenda. She doesn’t seem as emotional. Adrienne mentioned in class that she didn’t seem to be super self interested, she just did what she was told, followed protocol. I think this is right to a certain extent, she now has the support of a group and she wants to maintain loyalty, but I don’t think she really cares about such feminist issues. Watching the film I found myself getting annoyed with her lack of emotion during this part, her blank facial expression, her “I just want understanding” claim. She was angry with him because of her power over her in the first part, I think she just used her feminist group to gain leverage over him, and shame him in the name of protocol. To me she seemed dumber in the movie. In the book I was sort of impressed by her ability to take something out of context and use it to her advantage, I thought, “oh wow, maybe she’s not as thick as we thought.” But in the movie she seemed like she was regurgitating more, I guess. Her lack of emotion, makes it seem more like regurgitation of stuff the group told her, but lack of emotion makes her complaint justifiable, because its in the name of emotionless politic correctness.

OLeanna Themes and two hateable characters

I think a major theme is the hypocrisy of the major characters and motives. For example John says education is just a “hazing process” of society yet he uses his education to level himself above carol, with big words like “paradigm.” He says that the student and teacher relationship is artificial, saying that the teacher is the one who knows and the student is the one who does not know is a false relationship yet he projects that relationship on to carol. He constantly interrupts her by affirming her, saying good yes the moment she starts speaking, he acts as though he is able to coax her towards the right answer, which he already knows. But when she disagrees with him he denies that it’s true.

Carol is also hypocritical, she comes in for help from her teacher and she ends up accusing him of sexual harassment, when he only tried to help her. He may have been to caught up in his own thoughts to listen to her but he certainly didn’t attempt rape. And she didn’t make herself easy to help. She just had emotional ranting about how she didn’t understand and started whining that she’s stupid. Well obviously she wasn’t going to understand better if she wasted the teachers time complaining of her own stupidity. She wants to pass the class he offers her an A and then she comes in with a sexual harassment charge. He did say that she had to return to his office repeatedly in order to get an A so he holds power over her. She shifted that power clearly with the harassment charge. But because she constantly refers to her group, its unclear whether she’s trying to “protect herself “ or just doing her what her feminist group would do. She’s actually being manipulative because she didn’t have to go to his room to threaten him with his charge if it was real danger she should have just given it to the harassment report collecting people. She doesn’t

Black mail him like a smart manipulative person does, she just goes in to see him and leaves screaming. What motive could she have besides being angry with the teacher and wanting to see him embarrassed and then walking into the room to rub it in his face? Or perhaps she doesn’t have a motive, she’s just the person who follows protocol, she does “all ways do what she’s told.” But the same could be said about Johns motives, why does move her grade up to an A and says he “likes” her? Why does he offer to spend even more time with her? I don’t think its sexual harassment he just wants to be “that teacher.” The kind who sees him in one of his troubled students and inspires them to like his subject, that whole cliché. Yet he fails miserably at it and constantly answers the phone before listening to her, especially when she’s about to tell him something big. He doesn’t listen at all, he just wants to play the encouraging cool teacher role for his own ego, I think. They certainly have this contrast she plays the role of person who enforces rules for the sake of it, seemingly with no practical self-interest but self-righteousness. And he plays the role of a teacher who is engaged and committed to his students, and questions the system, but mostly out of ego. I think the theme is the conflict and deadlock between these two ideas in today’s society.

The allusion of Oleanna

The allusion of Oleanna

I looked into it and I realized that it was a Norwegian folk song. Threes a translation By Theodore C. Blegen which I looked at. It’s mostly about dreaming of a perfect place called Oleanna, where food and liquor are abundant and women work hard to provide for lazy men. It has an exaggerated optimism “I'm off to Oleanna, to lead a life of pleasure, a beggar here, a count out there, with riches in full measure.”

Below are lyrics that convey the subservient nature of women and presents the perfect mans world.

Support your wife and kids? Why, the county pays for that, Sir,
You'd slap officials down and out if they should leave you flat, Sir.

XVII

And if you've any bastards, you're freed of their support, Sir,
as you can guess since I am spinning verses for your sport, Sir.

XVIII

You walk about in velvet, with silver buttons bright, Sir,
You puff away at meerschaum pipes, your women pack them right, Sir.

XIX

The dear old ladies struggle, and sweat for us, and labor,
And if they're cross, they spank themselves, they do it as a favor.

 

In the first stanza it illustrates how men don’t have to be economically tied down to their family, they don’t have to do that work or have that responsibility. The second stanza discusses the less public side of a mans life, affairs and bastard children. The man doesn’t have to support his bastard children this allows him more sexual freedom with out consequences. Also it implies that the society of oleanna would not judge a man for such activities. In the third stanza it presents a man living a lavish lifestyle wearing “velvet” and “silver buttons” in oleanna every man is a king. In this stanza women in a servicing role is introduced, as they pack the pipes that men smoke “just right.” The fourth stanza presents women subordinating themselves to men in the most extreme way. The “dear old ladies,” grandma type characters, “struggle and sweat for” men, and punish themselves when they dislike their role. 

But I also find that this lavish lifestyle that men have that’s provided by women can be negative for them. In this song all men are treated equally superior, regardless of their morality, social status, kindness etc. they are just lumped together with the rest of their gender and soak up their not hard earned rewards. They also don’t really have the power or responsibility that is associated with masculinity. They don’t have to support their family, which is easier, but providing for a family is one of the cornerstones of masculinity in society, and men no longer have this. The women also beat themselves for misbehaving. Here it makes it seem like men no longer have to enforce their rules because they’re already abided. But in reality men don’t abuse women for the women’s injustice, they can beat women out of compulsion or insecurity.  A mans ability to abuse his wife is his way of asserting dominance and feel like a man in a brutish way. And seeing as this poem probably speaks to an immigrating male who is a “beggar in Norway” and could potentially have bastard children, he probably is more acquainted with brutish masculinity, and gives that up as well in Oleanna. The men of this poem remind me of Hedda, they are constantly cared for and live relatively lavishly but have no responsibility. There is a dual way to look at this folk song, which I think relates to the dual way to look at sexual harassment in Oleanna.

Heidi Chronicles and Detachment

I found an article on Heidi Chronicles that didn’t particularly like the play. It discussed how Heidi was always detached from everyone around her and despite the fact that time period is so essential to the setting, the culture of the eras weren’t really examined because of this detachment. I think that is definitely true, she is giving lectures during the play but thinking about the past, and during many of the events in the past such as the dance, the girl-power session, the TV interview, she isn’t entirely engaged. She acknowledges the detachment of feminism when she spoke about women “I thought the point was that we wouldn’t feel stranded. I thought the point was that we were all in this together.” When considering this idea of detachment I think I better understand the ending. The final image portrays Heidi having it all, but we don’t really see exactly how she gets there, it feels just kind of tacked on. It enhances the notion of detachment and lessens the pure satisfaction that the audience would feel at a clear happily ever after.  I think Heidi remains detached as a sort of defense mechanism, she isn’t sure what she wants for a while and if she wants to keep her idealism she cant get too sucked into what her society is doing. Also I think the idea of having it all demands detachment. When you constantly have to juggle a career, a child, maybe husband, all of which you want to feel completely devoted to and fulfilled by, you will often have to prioritize and will feel guilty about giving less to one thing. Because women play so many roles they aren’t really sure who they are and they cant feel fulfilled in entirety. The article also compared Heidi, Scoop and Peter to Vegas comedians, who laugh at their own jokes but aren’t very funny. I must agree I didn’t find the play very funny and they do tend to “perform” to others because of their wit but their not really one of them.

Article:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4383792?&Search=yes&searchText=chronicles&searchText=heidi&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dheidi%2Bchronicles%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=2&ttl=507&returnArticleService=showFullText