Futurism e-visited

If Art should only progress towards its own end, then perhaps the manifestoes of Futurism taken to its extremes may offer an answer in addressing the theatre of the Post-human. In fact, the possibility of a post-human theatre centred on technology is not a new one, according to the Futurists. With their manifestoes celebrating the progressive extinction of the “actor”, Enrico Prampolini stresses that the loss is not one of “theatrical action” or theatricality, but of pre-existing structures involving actors and characters:

“In the total realizable epoch of Futurism, we shall see [that] the luminous dynamic architectures of the stage … will inevitably arouse new sensations and emotional values in the spectator. [… These] authentic actor-gasses of an unknown theatre will have to replace living actors.” (My emphasis)

Fundamental to the manifestoes of Futurism involves what Dixon calls “the centrality of the machine” in defining the position of the human (as opposed to nonhuman histrionic entities) in Art. Marinetti himself identifies this pervading symbolism as the necessary “feeling of the domination of the machine” in Futurist theatre, the acknowledgement that man’s social position in the hierarchy of order must be reassessed in light of his use, dependence and likeness to machines and technologies. This reassessment, as Ivo Pannaggi and Vinici Paladini rightfully points out in the Manifesto of Futurist Mechanical Art (1922) not only redefines man’s social order, but unearths a deeper existential possibility:

“Today it is the MACHINE which distinguishes our epoch … We feel mechanically and we feel made out of steel; we too are machines. […] This is the new necessity and basis of the new aesthetic.”

In addition to the ‘replaceable actor’, Futurism also identifies the ‘machine’ in the self, an actualisation of the audience as a large mechanistic receptor. To this end, the progress theatre towards a post-human aesthetic would probably fulfil the ultimate Futurist fantasy that underlies this technological anxiety: that the post-human theatre would ultimately be one composed of machines for machines, that the performer-spectator cycle would be one that is closed. In other words, the system would resemble the aesthetic of reader-response theory, applied to an unopened book.

While the “death of the spectator” or his mechanical replacement may not seem imminent anytime soon, the traditional roles of the spectator as a theatrical non-participant (in terms of governing the form of performance) have been thrown into subversion through the blurring of performer-spectator boundaries. Prampolini’s answer to Futurism’s attempt to invoke an aesthetic of interconnectivity within their pieces involves active audience involvement in the theatre making process in hope that “the audience will perhaps become the actor as well ”. Likewise, Marinetti’s The Variety Theatre Manifesto (1913) outlines the possibility “in seeking the audience’s collaboration … communicating with the actors .” Marinetti makes it explicit that what is required is not audience participation, but audience collaboration, a process that acknowledges the role of the audience as equals to the performers in the process of Futurist theatre, even though they may not be completely aware of the direct consequences of their involvement.

As such, the focus of Futuristic theatre centres about the mechanisation of itself, the performance. By assembling performers and audience members into equal cogs that drive theatre, the entire work itself takes on a mechanical life-form of its own, unique to its time, space and participants. In order drive this condition of play-participation, Annenkov proposes that traditional roles within the internal social structure of theatre have to be abandoned . In addition to directors conducting technology rather than human beings, Dixon also points out that actors have secured very different roles in theatre:

“These performers were also historically significant as early examples of Live Art since they rejected ‘fourth wall’ conventions and involved non-narrative and often task-based actions by performers being ‘themselves’ rather than representing characters.”

Actors become mere facilitators, helpers that guide participants in turning the Futurist theatrical cog the same way in order to fulfil a meta-mechanistic end. It is here that Kozintsov’s exultation “forget the emotions and celebrate the machine ” rings familiar, bearing the consequences of a celebration of “mechanized movement”, whether it is incited by riotous spectator-involved shouting or performers invoking the aesthetic of the well-oiled machine. In a participatory scenario, the raison de theatre is expressed as the joyous realisation of the machine in theatre, a celebration in the creation of meta-automations driven by the accumulative efforts of lesser automations.

Although the futurists’ ultimate theatrical ideal seems to lead away from a human-centric episteme, Giovanni Lista claims that their innovative theatrical approach is one that seeks to understand the shifting geography of humanity in face of technology. Lista identifies the Futurists’ agenda as primarily an “anthropological project: a new vision of man faced with the world of machines, speed and technology”. Futurist theatre that appears to efface the human stain (perhaps in search of precise mechanistic perfection), in actuality attempts to locate the human stain by its very absence in performance, an inquiry into where man ‘fits in’. By attempting to locate the implied human stain, Futurism also portends to “bring art closer to life” by faithfully representing the man-machine symbiosis “attuned with … [a] vital, sensorial experience”. In other words, the Futurists work less in comprehending the urban dynamics of the Modern human condition than in exploring how this new dynamic opens up the possibilities for invoking Prampolini’s “new sensations and emotional values”.

Through the use of stylistic elements that mimic the dynamics of technology, the Futurists craft a way of seeing, as viewed through “the mechanical eye”. However, the machine-centric point of view does not necessarily displace a human-centric one; it merely reveals the finitude of the human-centric meta-narrative in relation to time and space. Dixon describes how a new mechanical view of the world is able to expand the limits of imagination and provide new paradigms of observation “beyond normal human capabilities”, spawning a “digital transformation” that is “all ‘in there’”. Although the cult of the machine may be celebrated in its application to Futurist art, what is really celebrated is the hand behind the button, an exultation of human achievement and innovation that springs from a certain disbelief in the rapid progress of technology. It is precisely this “progress” that fuels the Futuristic fascination, “a philosophy of becoming” as Lista explains, that contains the violent possibility of chaos, or the “violent psychosis of speed ” as Kroker puts it.

In a time and age beyond what the Futurists would have ever imagined, the cult of technology has been replaced with a technological indifference. The ubiquity of IT and the PC has literally revolutionised the possibilities of theatrical platforms, or “interfaces”. Nearly every middle-class American citizen owns a portable stage that fits in a small backpack; globalisation has further flattened out perceptions of space-time. As anxieties over the mechanical reproduction of art were assuaged, so were the high Futurist hopes in the cult of the machine slowly stifled. Technology has not forgotten the hand that rocks the cradle; rather, the technological cradle has become more accessible and more integrated. The “revolutionary world view / future shock” as posited by techno-enthusiasts and writers such as Huxley culminated in no more than a silent ushering-in of an era. It is perhaps the reason why Futurism is rediscovered as means to recover that lost-excitement and belief in technology and a mechanistic world-view. Futurism now offers a way of imagining how we once were without the looming presence of our present technologies, as much as we once imagined the possibilities of the future, and perhaps to reassess the dynamics of an important symbiosis, a technological revolution that happened in our sleep.

The World of Godot

Little is mentioned about the world of Didi and Gogo in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Beckett keeps his material world explicitly minimal; any clues at all as to the ecology of space are described as such: “A country road. A tree. Evening.” The world in which Didi and Gogo occupy is sparse, and the spatial realm of the play goes no further beyond the threshold of the country road of which they fill. However, the void of Beckett’s seemingly desolate landscape is substantiated by the world in which the four characters in Godot speak of, indicating the possibility of a ‘world outside’ their own. Didi speaks enthusiastically of his existence in “The Macon County” and reminisces about thronging atop “the Eiffel Tower … in those days”. Pozzo encounters Didi and Gogo on his way to the “fair”, suggesting a going-to and coming-from, and even Gogo makes reference to “a ditch” in which he spent the night.

The ultimate totemic indication of ‘the world outside’ manifests itself in the elusive figure Godot. A physical encounter with Godot is never made: his presence is imposed upon Didi and Gogo through a messenger (“a boy”) that arbiters between his world and their world. The very premise of which “Waiting for Godot” assumes suggests the possibility of salvation which Didi faithfully reminds Gogo of, himself exclaiming “We’re saved!” when he mistakes the coming of Pozzo and Lucky for Godot’s arrival. Through this, there are three distinct worlds that occupy the realm of Godot: The Physical World of the characters and the visible landscape, the ‘World Outside’ which is indicated (the fair, Paris, Macon County, Pyrenees) through speech references, and finally, the Imagined World of Godot, a world that is continually being delayed by virtue of Godot’s non-arrival.

Despite the strong assertions of an existence of a ‘world outside’, Beckett gives us indications that the ‘world outside’ is just as ephemeral as a world constructed by the characters themselves. Gogo rebuts Didi’s musings of the “Macon County”, blurting:

Estragon: No I was never in the Macon county! I’ve puked my puke of a life away here, I tell you! Here! In the Crackon county!

However, even Gogo’s revelation is thrown into suspicion; a while later, he contemplates what he had said, admitting that the Macon County incident could “have been possible”, although he “didn’t notice anything”. Statements about the world outside are made, contradicted and restated again, throwing the very possibility of the ‘world outside’ into suspicion as well. The ‘world outside’, as it seems, could very well have been imagined as Godot’s elusive world. After all, is memory not an active form of imagination engineered in the present? Didi contemplates the indeterminate nature of his own memory:

Vladimir: Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? To-morrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of to-day? […] But in all that, what truth will there be?

Because of the indeterminacy of the ‘world outside’, Didi, Gogo and even Pozzo and Lucky seem to be tied to the physical world which they occupy, a physical world which opens up the opportunity for discourse and inter-personal relationships, no matter how fleeting they may be. Furthermore, their need for salvation as imagined through the world of Godot becomes cyclical. For Didi and Gogo to be “saved” from the drudgery of the immediate world they occupy requires the intervention of Godot. However it is the very act of waiting for Godot that paradoxically ties them to their surroundings, to their immediate world. As James L. Calderwood sees Pozzo and Lucky’s journeying an end in itself, waiting for salvation likewise becomes a form of salvation for Didi and Gogo.

Ultimately, the immediate World which Didi and Gogo occupies is one that is devoid of meaning, and hence waiting for Godot itself becomes a meaningful activity: one to pass the time with and an imagined possibility that locates their existence through time. Throughout the play, there is a continual interplay between the “reality” of Didi and Gogo’s meaningless existence and their persistence in fending it off. For Didi and Gogo, their continual engagement in what Richard Gilman calls “the obligation to be two, a pair, a social unit outside society ” allows both of them to track their existence through time. Especially for Didi, he capitalizes on this ‘enforced’ relationship as proof of his existence and persistence through time. Gogo becomes a witness to reiterate Didi’s existentialistic anxieties, an affirmation to the passing of time, and therefore his persistence through change and continuity. In the opening scene of Act 2, Didi shares his memory the previous day, in hope of an assurance:

Vladimir: The tree, look at the tree
Estragon looks at the tree.
Estragon: Was it not there yesterday?
Vladimir: Yes of course it was there. Do you not remember? We nearly hanged ourselves from it. But you wouldn’t. Do you not remember?
Estragon: You dreamt it.
Vladimir: Is it possible you’ve forgotten already?
Estragon: That’s the way I am. Either I forget immediately or I never forget.

Gogo’s tease to Didi that he had “dreamt it” is no light joke; for Didi, proof of his existence must be assured by Gogo, since the dream-reality boundary has been blurred to the extent that he can no longer recognise waking from dreaming. His coping mechanism is one that the tramps exercise as a social unit in order to skirt the unbearable realities of their situation: ignorance. Whenever Gogo awakes from his sleep and finds the unbearable urge to reveal his dreams, Didi’s response is virtually consistent: “Don’t tell me!” as if the very utterance of the dream will put him in a state of mental disarray over a conundrum he cannot bear to contemplate. His reasons are articulated:

Estragon: (gestures towards the universe). This one enough for you? (Silence.) It’s not nice of you, Didi. Who am I to tell my private nightmares to if I can’t tell them to you?
Vladimir: Let them remain private. You know I can’t bear that.

Didi looks for proof, not ambiguity. To Didi, dreams are the very stuff of Freudian free-associations and the slippage of meaning, a means to a world that exists beyond their own, so terrifying because of its inconceivability and therefore its antithetical nature to his search for certainty and truth. Jeffery Nealon picks up on this thread, and interprets the tramps’ anxiety as one that is defined by the realm of the postmodern outside the neat Structuralist word patterns they devise, Modernist values which they are so paranoid to sustain.

Nealon quotes Lyotard in describing the “social bond” that Didi and Gogo are tied to in the context of a “question, […] itself a language game … [that immediately] positions the person who asks, as well as the addressee and the referent asked about it ”. The social bond sustains either tramp, as well as opens up the possibilities for discourse in order to fill the void of waiting, echoing Derrida’s assertion that there is “nothing outside text”. Text is everything meaningful, and therefore text must sustain, even if it is no more than word games and linguistic routines. To this effect, Didi realises he cannot exist long in the void as an independent member of his social pact with Gogo. Discourse (text) fills the silence between them that threatens to eliminate their meaningful existence. When Gogo is rudely awakened from his sleep, Didi admits: “I felt lonely. ” In their social bond, Didi seems the more gratuitous of the two: “Get up till I embrace you”. In the same way it takes two hands to indulge in a clapping routine, Didi acknowledges his attachment to Gogo in order to give them the “impression that … [they] exist. ”

Gogo, contrary to Didi, does not look to markers in time in order to track his existence; his sense of time has withered into a fluid continuum of ambiguity and might-haves. Gogo creates a idea of “self”, of which he exerts upon their social order so as to maintain a kernel of “self” in which he can believe in and act upon. One of the ways by which Gogo constructs self is through the insistence upon taste and preference, refusing to eat the turnips that Didi has to offer in place of carrots, his favoured choice of the two. By establishing individual taste, Gogo is able to exercise choice, and it is through the illusion of choice that Gogo is able to maintain a façade of self-sovereignty and free will.

Amusement through language games, routines and play are the order of the days for Didi and Gogo, mechanisms that makes their act of waiting more bearable from day to day, as well as confers an illusion of control which either tramp can exercise. After all, the slate of their activities is wiped clean each time they transpose to a different routine, a different “diversion” that will keep them occupied. There is no seriousness in their world of play; one moment Didi’s anger at Gogo is outplayed by the comical ridiculousness of hanging and erections. Another moment they are both hurling abuses at each other for sake of amusement. Because there is no fathomable seriousness (all is a performance of sorts), the ‘control’ of meaning they derive from these games are empty in themselves. Didi’s opening lines sum up the worth of their actions: “Nothing to be done.”

Richard Gilman quotes Ionesco’s “I do not teach, I am a witness,” in terms of Beckett’s portrayal of the world of Godot . For Gilman, Beckett’s imagined world “works tirelessly against … that desire for explicit meaning”, drawing a distinction between theatre with a “pedagogic function” and “one with an aesthetic one.” For Gilman, these ends are the ends imposed by the desires of audiences in the tradition of literature and art to be able to explain itself and offer consumable meaning. Beckett neither endorses nor condemns any of the strategies employed by Didi, Gogo, Lucky or Pozzo in order to exist in his world. Beckett presents us with an angle at which to view the human condition in all it’s possibly bleakness, laying bare the illusions employed by man in search for meaning and truth. In many ways, it is like a mirror held up to the audience, but one that is presented as “a Tragicomedy”. Beckett seems to point to the notion that however tragic or bleak a worldview we may be incarcerated in, humour unlocks the chains that we are subjected to, however briefly. It compels us to laugh not only at the absurdity of Didi, Gogo, Pozzo and Lucky, but also at the absurdity of our world and the ways by which we create meaning, truth and existence.

The play ends implying continuity, the guaranteed progression of Didi and Gogo through time, as will the audience. Didi says “Let’s go”, but Beckett indicates “They do not move”. They cannot move, their duty is to persist through time and space with Godot as much as an accidental distraction as their little games and routines. Likewise, there is nowhere for the audience to go except back to their own lives of routines, illusions and imagined truths. The country road in the theatre extends out and into the ‘real’ world of the spectator, such that he or she emerges into what Zizek coined “The Desert of the Real” . That truth is the dirt and rocks beneath one’s feet, and that much alone is assured. However, perhaps Beckett also indicates that it is the only way we know how to cope with our absurd conditions in life, and that beneath the tragedy of our seemingly pathetic existence, there is the possibility of humour, laughter and comedy that is equally as absurd.

Good faith, good hope?

For Calderwood, the existence of a second act appears to accomplish more than a reiteration of a situation whereby "nothing happens, twice." Lucky and Pozzo's reappearance in ACT 2 violently demolishes the fort of hope and the possibility of destination which ACT 1 builds upon. For Calderwood, waiting simultaneously inscibes within itself a sense of erasure, whereby "[it] implies the absence of the waited-for, [which] is in itself mysteriously absent." Likewise, the condition that surrounds Lucky and Pozzo is one of transition, of travelling. Calderwood plays between the physical and temporal realms of waiting: Didi and Gogo occupy the temporal realm of "wait", whereas "wait" employs physical measurements with regards to Lucky and Pozzo's travelling. Both acts are interrelated; they imply a destination, be it Godot for Didi and Gogo or the fair for Lucky and Pozzo. While ACT 1 builds up around the notion of a forseeable 'destination', Lucky and Pozzo's reappearance in ACT 2 dashes all hope of 'reaching' that postulated destination. Calderwood explains that Lucky/Pozzo's reprise gives new shape to their original condition of travel. Within ACT 1, Pozzo derives his purpose from the pillars of assurance of departure and arrival; "Inbetweenness doesn't register with him." Pozzo's jouney of the 'inbetweenness' is therefore one that is devoid of meaning, a phase of transcience that does not afflict the outcome of his destination. In this sense, travel takes the form of the waiting-of a destination. However, Calderwood reads ACT 2 as an affirmation that that destination is never reached. In fact, Calderwood suggests that Pozzo's journey is that of a "return journey" of failure, and travel-in-itself becomes his purpose. With the loss of the pillars of departure and destination comes the loss of function of travel as an "instrumental" activity, one which expedites a destination. Therefore, Lucky and Pozzo's 'return' mirrors Didi and Gogo's positions in the play, at once declaring a death to destination, as well as a death to the faintest possibility of Godot's arrival. As with Lucky and Pozzo, "going or staying, there's no escape from the human plight." Both groups have identified a position of stasis in ACT 2, a condition that condemns Godot's continued deferrence, destroying the last thread of hope in breaking out of the cyclic absurdity of existence that even Lucky and Pozzo fail to do.

Miller's tragic hero & Godot

Miller's tragic hero is defined through his persistence in an environment that threatens to displace his rightful position in the world. Miller explicitly clarifies that this 'rightful position' with reference to the tragic hero is, in actuality, his own "image" or idea of his place in the world. While Willy Loman's insists upon believing and actively 'performing' his idea of himself despite the worldly truth of his circumstances, Beckett's Didi and Gogo 'perform' to sustain a variety of roles in order to accomplish the same end. Both worlds of characters seek to create personal (or inter-personal) meaning that overcomes the 'tragic' of their conditions, however illusory they may seem if taken from an external vantage-point. In that sense, Miller's concept of "dignity" becomes a personal victory that is guaged by one's belief (or fidelity) in his "performance" of his "role", a victory of insistence upon "self" in "environment". Willy Loman's dignity is earned through his adamant belief in his rightful role, as well as his right to personal dignity which should (and therefore will) be attained. In contrast, Didi and Gogo remain fidel to their "performative" functions. Personal dignity (or personal ideas of self) are strengthened through a paradox of role-play. Didi and Gogo's routine mocking Pozzo and Lucky is one that is borne out of good humour, but also of self-aware mockery. Mockery because it defines a position of the absurd (of which Lucky and Pozzo embrace) which they are unable to accept, and self-aware because it is this act of rebellion that reciprocally defines who they are. Didi and Gogo's tragedy lies not in an absence of self-awareness. On the contrary, it could be seen that it is their inability to express or to deal with their self-awareness in any logically reasonable language. Self-awareness is a threshold which they have come to pass, and having breached that stage of meaning, their conundrum is one that asks: "where do we go from here?" and "what meaning is there beyond the search for self-awareness?" This confoundement becomes a recurrent theme of the play, from Lucky's "think" tirade to Pozzo's blind laments. However, Beckett's protagonists nonetheless preserve dignity by a conscious deferrment of their condition much in the way Willy Loman refuses to acknowledge his. Their insistence upon the salvation and Godot reflects a condition that does not necessarily signify hope, but a necessary illusion that allows them to survive the absurdity of life and its increasing meaninglessness, much in the way games, humour and performance serve their purposes.

The salesman's ultimate pitch

Though there are many interpretations on how Willy "selling himself" works as an active metaphor for the play on "Death of a Salesman", arguably the tragedy lies in the heart of the individual Willy attempts to sell himself to. Through the play, Willy seeks assurance from the individuals he reckons to embody success: Uncle Ben, Dave Singleman and Charley. However, his attempts to sell himself to convince them is in faith of convincing himself of his rightful status and place in the world, his world. In essence, the tragedy is that Willy tries to sell himself to himself. As Miller argues, Willy's continual assertion of his actions are employed to verify the genuinity of himself. Willy questions Ben whether he has been teaching his sons the right lessons, and consecutively draws strength from Ben's reassurances. However, Willy's image of himself begins to deteriorate as his earlier certainties are met with furthering uncertainties: his posited promotion never takes place, Biff fails to live up to his imagined standards, etc. His greatest challenge of a sales pitch turns eventually turns towards himself as he begins to question his failures, yet in that act of denial, refuses to accept his condition and finds desperate gestures and means to convince himself that success is lurking around the corner. Towards the end of the play after Biff and Willy's heightened confrontation (and partial reconciliation), Willy completely ignores his earlier statements of Biff's ineptitudes and Biff's vocal revelations about his limited self, blurts "that boy is going to be magnificent!", resonating with echoes of "I was right!" when Willy confides in Ben about his parental insecurities. Willy spirals into ridiculous obsession with his beliefs, belief that he is making the right decisions, belief that his actions will be carried forward by Biff, belief that by one act of sacrifice, he can put all his hopes and dreams into motion. His final sale pitch to himself is therefore not a sale in itself, but a barter. A life in exchange for the riches of eternal hope in the "dark jungle" where delusions and denial are irrelevant concepts.

Text meets Texture Halfway

From the dynamic series of monologues that open Hell Meets Henry Halfway, Maya, played by the vivacious Sarah Stanford closes her opening banter with a statement that seals the fate of an otherwise explosive piece of theatre. Wedged in a claustrophobic train carriage, she lashes through a verbal tirade of her own decaying sexuality that culminates in an exhausted throwaway: “Stupid words.”

As Maya hints, words are both the sustenance and downfall of performance: when are words enough for the audience to marry text and character in the same plane, and when does it fail? Hell Meets Henry Halfway is ambitiously wordy, and as both Quinn Bauriedel (playing Maya’s tennis coach, Walchak) and Stanford admit, it is the first time Pig Iron Theatre Company has embarked on such a text-heavy production. Pig Iron Theatre Company has otherwise been known as proponents of rapturous physical theatre. Most of its members hail from Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq, an institution after Jacques Lecoq famed for his research into mime, clowning and “neutral mask” technique. Strong physical characterisation is expected from a troupe of such repute (Bauriedel was an immediate student of Lecoq), and the company did not disappoint, delivering with self-assured aplomb. Characters were crafted with definite eclecticism, as well as the occasional defects. Dr. Petar Hincz (played by Michael Crane), for example, sported a wasted ankle whilst James Sugg triumphed as the mentally challenged Ballboy, Jon.

Hell Meets Henry can be reinterpreted as an experiment onstage as much as it is offstage. Within the confines of the rehearsal room, Hell Meets Henry represents the company’s attempt to find a new theatrical language through first-time collaboration with writer Adriano Shaplin of The Riot Group. The conversation between physical and textual eloped to an onstage experiment that questions the sufficiency (or insufficiency) of communication, framed through loose associations with Witold Gombrowicz’s 1939 novel, Posessed. The production races through the absurd, revolving about opportunistic secretary Henry (Dito van Reigersberg) in service to Prince (Mary McCool). Henry struggles with his mundane attendance of the Prince in secret hope he will bequeath his castle to him when he passes. Meanwhile, Henry’s denial about his failing marriage to Maya is further exacerbated when she becomes more engaged in Walchak, her tennis coach, than she is with his illusions. The castle’s latest guest, the dubious Dr. Hincz sides with the Prince and threatens to undo his ambitions.

Hell Meets Henry stumbles through the messy substance of words and communication. The theme of miscommunication and the slippery nature of understanding are tirelessly reiterated. Maya rails in exasperation that her body, represented as a textual instrument, has become “a difficult curriculum, […] illegible”. Her boredom is reflected as a double disappointment with her courtiers. Firstly, they are unable to ‘read’ her, and secondly, they fail to charm her with a language she desires and seeks. She admits:

“Lazy, lazy boys with poor vocabularies and poor judgement. … [H]alf-wit amateurs. Illiterate, lop-sided mouth-breathing teenagers. […] Nobody wants to be excellent anymore. Nobody tries hard enough to please me.”

In Maya, misunderstanding arises from a failure from the interpretation of text; her text extends beyond the sexual and into the psychological. However, none is able to grasp or speak her language. She seeks a new method of communication that entails a new form of abstraction. Walchak similarly shares her boredom of corporeal language, decrying the “same predictable, boring […] set of bullshit desires and petty opinions […] invented by retards who live in shit.” Walchak refers to explicit linguistic-mnemonic theory that seems a strangely ‘out-of-character’ experience, drawing attention to “opinions strung together by selective memory” and “chicken-scratch alphabets of unreason”. Both characters seem to slander at the insufficiency of classical linguistic modes of communication, providing a common space for both characters to invent their own narratives with respect to each other.

Likewise, Dr. Hincz contemplates the unstable marriage of belief and truth, himself embodying the dichotomy of science and its fickle truth. While he grants that “Nobody understands” his work, he warns Henry not to “collapse under the strain of scepticism” because “Mystery only learns to knock louder at the gates of a closed mind”. However, Hincz’s statement only serves to throw the apparent transparency of belief into further crisis: how fully are we allowed to believe what we see (or hear)? Hincz’s supposed embodiment of the scientific pillar of truth is further subverted when he misuses the word “avuncular” as an ill-meaning condition. When Henry replies that “Avuncular means ‘friendly’”, Hincz smugly assures: “That is not the way it sounds Mr. Kholavitsy, is it?” Arguably, Hincz offers one form of liberation from the semiotic crisis whereby the signifier is locked up by the signified. What a word means can be bypassed if text is returned to its basic pre-Structuralist elements. However, is it enough to save the characters in the play?

In the case of Maya and Walchak, however, it apparently fails, because both characters consistently try to read and out-read each other’s languages. Because meaning plays such a central role to the core of their competition, neither character can escape the escalating absurdity of which they are bound to. Maya and Walchak’s competition is crystallised in the physical realm through the premise of a tennis match, a competition that is founded upon their common boredoms. Their competition is also fuelled by the ability to make the other ‘feel’ or to disable (de-familiarise) the reality of the other that he or she gives in. Most disturbing is the way the bodies (or physical representations) of the characters try to ‘catch-up’ with the fast-emptying meanings of their discourse. In one of the most intense scenes of the play, Maya and Walchak hurl insults at each other within the confines of a wardrobe as they proceed to taunt each other into the act of sexual intercourse. Here, physical action betrays verbal intention: it appears that the textual context which gave rise to intercourse suddenly became discontinuous with the act altogether. However, the very nature of their competition depends on this ridiculous escalation of the absurd: losing means breaking out of the textual gridlock and acknowledging the physical, of which neither would concede to.

Contrastingly, monologues in Hell Meets Henry serve a different function, a permissible debilitation of meaning. Both Maya and Walchak’s opening monologues become increasingly abstract as they banter on, until they breach a certain threshold whereby word and noise nearly become indistinguishable, text is illegible and indecipherable. Words betray character, and words establish themselves as a source of their own, separable from the mouths of origin: “Everyone talks and talks and talks, spitting words from dry lips…” Perhaps at these thresholds where meaning is insufficient to support text and text is insufficient as a tool of expression, text undergoes a certain artistic objectification, to be viewed, tasted and examined as a work of art rather than a tool of communication. Fascinated by the incomplete structures of the castle, Hincz remarks to Henry:

“As you know, the men who built these dwellings frequently did so in an effort to satisfy artistic rather than architectural ambitions.”

In this, the play examines its own constructed nature, its comprising of text and meaning. In remembering its own functions as a means of theatrical performance, it treads the fine lines between what theatrical text means as a mean in itself versus text as an artistic end. It is where the seams of its own fiction reveal itself, and where the characters are helpless against it.

Plagued by a crisis in signification, Maya and Walchak propel themselves further into a free-play of actions and meaning, each of them daring the other to break the spell of the game that will bring the other back to reality. In a wrenching sequence, both Maya and Walchak engage in a series of verbal contradictions (the state of derision which has affected their discourse) that leads to Walchak tearing apart a tree squirrel. In that crisis, the Lacanian Symbolic (represented by the discourse of killing) collapses into the Real (the act of killing), driving both characters back into reality. Suddenly, the semiotic crisis is resolved, but with devastating circumstances that neither can bring themselves to acknowledge. Competition turns to blame in a heated exchange that picks up on the widening textual-physical divide:

Walchak: Why ask me then? Why ask for that? You’re sick.
Maya: YOU KILLED IT!
Walchak: YOU THOUGHT IT! I never would have thought it.
Maya: You MADE me think it. It’s what YOU would DO.
Walchak: YOU DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE. YOU DON’T DESERVE IT.
Maya: Who are you to judge?
Walchak: Nobody.
Maya: Nobody.

The violent reassertion of the “real event”, however, is short-lived. The inexpressible void left by Walchak’s heartless killing is similarly shared by Maya, both characters are implicated in the scheme of competition such that it would not have mattered who committed the actual killing. Perhaps word takes on a vivid life of its own, forcing characters to become prisoners of their own thoughts. The cruelty of text as an incarcerating device echoes of Jacques Derrida’s own assertions that there is “nothing outside text”. In this system of textual provocation, both Maya and Walchak are powerless to the whims of their texts. However, it is their attempts to reconcile “event” and “text” that leads them almost inevitably towards their own fate fore-crafted by their own texts. In the end, their competition drives them to accept ridiculous ends, each dragging their bodies impaled along a javelin closer together to stop living. Here there is a desperate reversal along the narrative of the absurd. No longer able to transform the event with text, both try to label the event (death) as it occurs, finding fetishism in a new and even more absurd form of competition:

Walchak: Stop breathing.
Maya: Stop moving.
Walchak: Stop trying.
Maya: Stop talking.
(They collapse. Blackout)

Neither can bring themselves to acknowledge death impending, so they fend it off through mock instructions, in hopeful delight that text will produce their desired outcome of the other. For once in the play, communication and interpretation are reconciled, but are reconciled with one catch: the death of text.

Kaprow's "Impurity": a theoretical stain?

Invoking the works of Modernists Mondrain, Stout, Pollock and Newman, Kaprow attempts to classify Modernist agendas through the lens of purity/impurity. As Kaprow reasons, the functional language of Modern art is vast; the purity/impurity binary should suffice to sustain “an adequate critical language” (27), or so he proposes. The fundamental problem of the purity/impurity dichotomy, as Kaprow himself admits, is one that is semantic. Firstly, the purity/impurity complex is one that is not dichotomous. Rather, their relationship is one that is intertwined and inter-informed:

“The two ideas involve one another, one takes its meaning from the implicit denial of the other, and neither can exist in fact without invoking the shades of its opponent.” (28)

Kaprow draws reference to an advent of interest in Eastern philosophy, and it is easy to see how Han dynastic conceptions of yin-yang polar opposites consume and support each other the way the impure/pure paradox is developed. In this essential conceptual paradox, it therefore follows that neither purity nor impurity are pure idea-manifestations of themselves. The proposed “pure” in Modernist art must therefore always be interpreted against the background (or the present-void-of) its binary opposite (and vice versa).

Secondly, the pure/impure complex is one that is epistemological, and therefore almost nearly relativistic. Kaprow’s lengthy discussion of the attributes of the pure and impure is worryingly sensuous, and therefore individual. His allegories of “pure” to related concepts such as “uncontaminated … unweakened … formal … chastity … cleanliness … [etc.]” (28) suggest a very personal episteme of the pure/impure binary; flimsy structures that recall instable concepts of “beauty” and “romanticism”. It is the assumption of the latter that is perhaps most dangerously condemning, and it continues throughout his essay unchecked. Ultimately what surfaces is a very personal reading of a set of works artfully placed together by virtue of the author’s choice in order to enlighten the reader with his set of discoveries through careful rhetoric.

Kaprow attempts to reinforce his assertions through careful selections from an expansive canon of Modernist Art, both “Classical” (if I may permit myself to use the term), and works produced nearer to the time of the article’s print. It seems that Kaprow invites us to use our intuitive devices to fathom works of arts, and apparently come to the same distant conclusions of an eloquent erudite. In the case of Barnett Newman, Kaprow cuts through the thick of Barnett’s critics, persuading us to view his works with “reasoning [that] is more intuitive…” (40) rather than “historical and analytic”. Two further problems arise from that proposition with regard to Newman.
Firstly, Kaprow’s reading of Newman’s Vir Heroicus Sublimis (1950-51) indicates a sense of presentational unity through its alignment to the impure/pure paradox, comprised of “unequal but equivalent forces.” (43) However, the viewer, devoid of the pure/impure paradigm, might just as easily bypass Kaprow’s esoteric interpretation of equivalent artistic tensions. In fact, Kaprow’s own elucidation of the nature of Newman’s work incorporates several interpretive swerve points that deflect from numerous possible interpretive paths a viewer might chose to take. Here Kaprow also makes an assumption regarding the status of his imagined viewer, imagining him as one that is steeped in the traditions of art in order to appreciate the pure/impure complex. Furthermore, one may also propose that Kaprow’s own exposition about the interconnectivity of binary opposites collapses in his own argument at this point, since there is a secondary-order binary opposite: that of the [pure/impure] binary versus the [other established forms of critical reasoning]. Each informs the other, and hence Kaprow’s own evaluations cannot be attained by the lay-spectator without having grasped one polar end of the secondary binary.

This, in turn, points to a second problem: the implicit (hidden) necessity for precisely the “historic and analytic” paradigms of which Kaprow suggests sidestepping. The “historic” and the “intuitive”, therefore, inflect off each other in a process which Kaprow tries to hint at, but fails to acknowledge fully. In outlining the very process of “seeing art”, Kaprow describes the necessary:

“[S]low march of … [the viewer’s] eyes and body before the canvas. The accent is really on our sensations.” (43)

However, the real accent is on the act of our senses encountering Newman’s work. In actuality, Kaprow’s observations are primarily phenomenological in nature without him fully acknowledging it. His insights into ways of looking at a work of art is largely centred about how the limited faculties of human subjects try to accommodate the alien phenomenon of “art” that is present before them, and how their other faculties (memory, knowledge, experience…etc) serve to inform, inflect or manipulate that conjugative experience. The “meaning of the work” (43) of which Kaprow speaks of, is therefore dependent entirely upon the condition of reception.

Once the condition of phenomenology is made central, we can therefore speak of the Modern in Art as an invitation to new ways of “seeing”. Inevitably, one work of art will relate to the next; one’s subconscious faculties search for meaning through repetition, memory, mimesis et al. To Kaprow, simply glancing is not enough to absorb a work. The aesthetic experience involves contemplation that navigates between the pure/impure fissures. In observing “everything that is not immobilized” (31) in Piet Mondrain’s Composition 2 (1922), the fissure yields a “tabula rasa” and an aesthetic experience that serves to further alienate the “pure” through the “impurity” of the viewer (i.e. his limited faculties). In Myron S. Stout’s Untitled (No. 3) (1956), the immediacy of his shapes widen Mondrain’s art-pure, viewer-impure divide. In Jackson Pollock’s compositions, pure/impure rhythms are sustained through visual unity and a sensation of controlled equilibrium between explosive and implosive forces. In Barnett Newman’s Vir Heroicus Sublimis, purity and impurity play off each other to create a homogenous composition.

As a primer, the pure/impure binary system can do no further than highlight material elements in a work. On a phenomenological level, however, it is up to the viewer to construct the levels of meaning on which he is willing to operate and view the art. Without rigorously acknowledging this basic paradox, Kaprow opens himself up to an eternal free-play of interpretation, and his developed insights reveal themselves to be no more than inspired discourse based on cataleptic sensations.

Duchamp, Danto: the object in art

The use of terms to describe Art appears challenged. For one, Danto himself refutes “postmodernism” as a descriptive label, offering the term “post-historical” to describe the aesthetics of Contemporary art after Modernism. His reasons are equally confounding:

“[P]erhaps “postmodernism” was too strong a term, to closely identified with a certain sector of contemporary art.”

Here, we uncover two differing crisis at hand that have been misinterpreted as one. Firstly, we have the crisis of temporality: the crisis that styles or intentional categories of art outlive their labels. For example, “Modern” art has ceased to denote a state of art produced “now”. Secondly, this gives rise to a crisis of semiotics, or the crisis of the functions of the signifier and the signified. The functions of “Modernism” as a label had outlived its original temporal function, and, as Danto reveals, developed to embody “a stylistic meaning and a temporal meaning”.

Such was the crisis similar in the Contemporary in art, a description of an artistic consciousness that transcends “what is happening now”, to a term that “has come to mean an art produced within a certain structure of production”. The Contemporary in art, according to Danto, no longer identifies with modern art created by contemporaries today. Rather, is a state or condition that reflects “a period of information disorder” and of “perfect aesthetic entropy” that eloped from the binds of Modernism. “Contemporary” has come to signify the liberating paroxysmal in Art after Modernism, a “post” situation that has come to signify a lack of artistic unity, a release from its own existential crisis. Likewise, this release has affected the traditional role of the Object of Art as an actual ‘real’ material construct, drawing attention to the conceptual role of the Object rather than the Object-in-itself in a prepared artistic encounter.

In this light, Dadaist Marcel Duchamp’s controversial “Readymades” (works of art derived from al-ready pre-manufactured commodities) places the very idea of the “object of art” in jeopardy. Two of his famous works Fountain and Bicycle Wheel present the viewer with commonplace objects that occupy a space set-aside for artistic display. Fountain presents the viewer with a porcelain urinal, a vulgar gesture made at preexistent notions of artistic beauty signed off by the Duchamp under a pseudonym “R. Mutt”. Bicycle Wheel consists simply of a bicycle fork inverted and screwed upside down onto a white stool. Duchamp seems to slander at preconceived notions of aesthetic objects, perhaps hinting at the evanescent quality and constructed-ness of beauty and aesthetics itself. Interestingly so, Duchamp denies creating Bicycle Wheel with a categorical sense of the Readymade as a stylistic gesture. He acknowledges:

“The Bicycle Wheel is my first Readymade, so much so that at first it wasn’t even called a Readymade. It still had little to do with the idea of the Readymade.”

Duchamp’s own artistic process reveals a central concept of the Contemporary in art and the aesthetic experience: that which Danto points at a “turn from sense experience to thought […] to philosophy”. There is a clear separation between the creation of Art and the contemplation of Art, a separation that both legitimizes all Contemporary art and leaves the experience of Art wholly upon the shoulders of the viewer.

As with Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain is thoroughly indistinguishable from the common urinal, save the artist’s signature. Even so, the gesture of signing that functions to legitimize art and attribute it to a sense of an artistic authorial stamp of approval (a renaissance concept) is sabotaged. “R. Mutt” is but a fictional persona, created to lead the spectator to retrace the act of creation to a bogus source of origin, a source that is of and imagined by the viewer himself. In a certain way, Duchamp “disowns” his work, perhaps even inviting the viewer to take artistic ownership over the commodity. Encounter leads to an establishment for contemplation and discourse. Danto thus describes the functions of the Contemporary artist:

“[Contemporary Art] had delivered itself of a burden it could now hand over to the philosophers to carry. And … [contemporary artists] were free to make art in whatever way they wished, for any purposes at all.”

Objects of Contemporary Art are likewise liberated from the Artists’ hand; any object placed under the conditions of “Art” could pass off as such. The job of the Contemporary artist is therefore not to present, but to set-up the conditions for an Artistic-encounter that is central to the viewer. However, the Contemporary in Art has to tackle with yet another outstanding issue, that of aestheticism, or the “aura” of Art as postulated by Walter Benjamin. Without consistency or standards, how does one judge, criticize, evaluate or appreciate Contemporary art? How does one experience the metaphysical aesthetics central of art? Perhaps it is in the amorphous quality of the imagined (or projected) object of art which is prepared for viewing, or simply the evaluation of an art-viewer encounter. Even more possible is the conferring of the aesthetic quality by virtue of the presentation of an object of Art, such as Duchamp’s Readymades, so the work is, in essence, the event of presentation in itself. Presentational conditions ‘confer’ an artistic aura upon the object (for example, Duchamp’s urinal), opening it up to new platforms of viewing, new angles of contemplation and new ways of interpreting. Bathed in these conditions, Duchamp’s urinal ceases to be a urinal, but a point locality for discourse and interpretation, a point locality set-up for an encounter.

Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel establishes such an encounter. And whilst the artist suggests his ‘reading’ from his personal encounter with his work (making references to the cyclic movement mimicking dancing flames in a fireplace), Contemporary objects of art are open to multiple readings that are mutually exclusive to that of the artist’s. Bicycle Wheel sets out to explore different encounter-pairs: wheel/stool, presentation/interpretation, immobility/mobility and so on and so forth. However, these encounter-pairs are secondary constructs in which the viewer assembles through the fundamental art/viewer encounter.

Once the object of Art is encountered, its material set-up of the encounter loses its purpose. Like the urinal, the wheel and the stool, these materials return to the corporeal non-aesthetic realm. In the minds of the viewer, however, the material undergoes a sea-change through the encounter; the physical transcends into the sensuous into the cognitive and conceptual. Viewer becomes artist, Art becomes idea. In shaping an encounter, Duchamp inevitably surrenders all ownership of artistic aestheticism because the work does not draw towards itself, but draws towards the viewer and his past-histories. The contemporary artist constructs the parameters of the encounter, the viewer steps in to fill that void; the history of art displaces its burden of aesthetic interpretation onto the tools of the history of the viewer

Avro Part: Aliinale

Much of the simplicity immediately apparent in Arvo Pärt’s Aliinale (For Alena) sheds away at the general clutter of music the 21st century listener is already accustomed to receiving. And yet, in the construction of careful tonal parameters for the short work of 14 measures, Pärt seems to be able to unlock new platforms for communication, and even perhaps a jest at the traditions of three-part counterpoint. Moreover, Pärt seems to further assemble a dimension separate from musical time and space; somewhere at their intersections does Aliinale appear to illuminate the poetical imagined space opened by the possibilities of dialogue. This elopes even though the melodic conversation of its separate ‘narratives’ are affixed to its all-too-visceral parameters of regular note increments, tonic components and scale. The idea that thought and concept (of music) is inseparable from the discourse of itself that validates it as such can be examined through the ambiguous intentionality of its title “for Alena” (presumably an association of the composer’s) as a congregating point for discourse and the way which the musical narrative informs (or is informed) by it. Pitch and temporal space are greatly exaggerated between first and second voices, whilst the tonal centre is reiterated subliminally via an opening B sounded in the third voice: a possible ‘voice of reason’ or ‘voice of corporeality’ that sustains about two-thirds through the piece. Though the third voice eventually recedes into the tonal background as a home-key signifier, an important sonic and visual turning point occurs in the 5th beat of measure 11. The sostenuto pedal is released and the home-bound reminder disappears suddenly, leaving the nearly-contrapuntal interlude between the first two voices hanging in mid-air. The held C# - F# perfect fourth scintillates for the first time as if anew, emancipated from its previous measures of condemning harmonic inflexibility. In this moment, the dialogue transforms, their relationship evolves as if bathed under new light as both intertwining organum reach a new state of coexistent independence. Visually, Pärt sketches in a flower, perhaps a tribute to the folly of love taking flight, ascertaining the opened possibilities of new harmonies. The function of the third voice disappears totally for the remaining 4 measures of the piece, although the upper two voices continue to echo it’s presence as a ghost-fundamental, attempting to reach a closure by a progressive diminution of notes in each consecutive measure. However, the dialogue cannot seem to find closure in an absence of conditions that once sustained it. The melodic fragments seem to become simpler, nostalgic, searching for the basic elements that gave rise to its release. Arguably, the event of release reveals itself as jouissance, a bare folly of its constituting elements. In an attempt to find closure, the dominant mathematical progression trumps itself, and the upper voices increase to 3 notes in the last measure, seeking irresolution and the possibility of new unexplored dialogue as a compromise to finality.

Beauty/Beast/Binaries

It can be suggested that the structural binary of beauty/beast is best distilled in The Singing Ringing Tree, which is in itself a melting pot of various folk and fairy tales. Threads of The Winter Rose (248), The Singing Springing Lark (88) (of which the film title bears curious resemblance to) and Snow White and Rose Red (161) are found in the stories, accompanied by dramatic transfigurations of animals or beasts into perfectly charming royal suitors. Initial conflict is necessary, for in the genre of exaggerated fantasy, the ending is all the more extravagantly satisfying.

The Singing Ringing Tree is no exception, and its protagonist is immediately thrown into conflict. The Prince turns to tragic hero, and waits upon the reciprocity of the stubborn Princess as his only salvation back to a human-like form. In the film, his insistence upon laying claim to the princess is therefore easily forgiven by the pity we feel for him. Similarly in The Winter Rose and Beauty and the Beast, the deference of the Prince by his beast-like appearance is temporarily subverted by a “magical device” linked to the Prince that reveals his true inner-beauty. For The Singing Ringing Tree, that device is the tree itself, as is the Rose to The Winter Rose and Beauty and the Beast. Here, inner-beauty/outer-beauty cross pollinates: The beauty (of the Prince’s true form) is deferred within the plant, of which the female protagonist feels strongly attracted to. Hence it is not totally a symbolic reference to beautiful ladies and their affinity to beautiful apparatus, but also a hinting at the female’s intrinsic recognition of the Prince’s true inner beauty through his singular possession. In The Singing Ringing Tree, the role of the “rose” (or the tree) is used as a rhetorical double paradox, a hidden joke, since it is the ugly inward nature of the Princess that desires the plant for its magical (beauteous) properties, properties that are reflected in the prince but betrayed by his ugliness. However, the paradox is never really fully satisfied, because the tree’s magical properties are tied to the Princess’ true love for the Prince.

The beauty/beast binary also functions in the relationship between the Princess and the (transfigured) Prince, and only through the destruction of the paradox can the spell be broken. In other words, the beauty/beast paradigm has to be transcended: either outward beast overcome by inward beauty or outward beauty is overcome, revealed by inward beast. The latter is best personified by the princess who comes to recognise the true nature of inner-beauty when her inner and outer appearance are forced coexist in the same plane due to a nasty magic trick. In order for this visual or verbal play to be fully successful, the polarity of beauty/beast has to be stretched far enough to elicit an unsettling enough response in order to culminate in a satisfying closure.

In the case of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, we find ourselves one step closer to the blurring of beauty/beast boundaries, but not in the same way as The Singing Ringing Tree. Bearing closer resemblance to The Winter Rose and Beaumont’s Beauty and the Beast, Belle, the female protagonist, represents the ideal maiden, flawless and selfless to take the place of her father even in death, not unlike Grimm’s heroine in The Singing Springing Lark. However, aided by colourful cartoon theatrics and hum-along theme songs, the distance that separates notions of Beauty and Beast is diminished. Angst-ridden and thoroughly human, Disney’s careful graphics soften the harsh features of the Beast, making him a rather charming archetype of his own kind instead of a representational antithesis. The humanisation of the Beast inevitable dampens the initial shock the viewer has to endure between such incompatible extremes, thereby “romancing” the idea of diversity and the binary.

Conceptually, Beauty/Beast endures because it embraces the very kernel central to the novelty of the story. However, in contouring the film to make the Beast appeal to younger audiences (or to boost post-premiere sales of action figurines), the Beast fails to live up to its reputations. This casts a very solemn message, that from the start, Beauty and the Beast were meant to be together because they were made (or sketched) to be together. What this consequently affects is the reconciliation of the Beast with his true appearance, where inner-beauty reflects outer-beauty faithfully once more. Something of his new charm is lost in the destruction of the beast because his metamorphosis is not earned aesthetically. In fact, the child may just as well pine for the demise of the Beast in the metamorphosis of him into his human form.

Arguably, Dreamwork’s immensely popular movie Shrek threatens to offer a postmodernist reading of the classic Beauty/Beast binary, by completely doing away with it and embracing the possibilities beyond the established Fairy Tale meta-narratives previously embraced. It shamelessly flaunts its own pastiche, breaking down the page-barrier that divides separate fairy tales into a conjugate space that fills to encompass the wide-spectrum of well-known characters. Within ten minutes of a scene, recognisable characters such as the three blind mice, the three little pigs, the three bears… etc. fills the limits of the audience’s mind with their presence onscreen. Also, Shrek disables the fairy-tale-child boundary with brusque references that are cheekily adult. Phallic symbolism abounds everywhere not just as subtext but as a literal joke skirted about the corners. In one sequence, Shrek jokes that Farquhar’s ridiculously tall building was”compensating for something”. Later, excited by images of Princess Fiona, Lord Farquhar hastily checks beneath his blanket. Even well known anthems and tunes are thrown into this potpourri of a movie that seeks to deconstruct the bastions between popular culture.

The ultimate subversion of the Beauty/Beast binary occurs in a final twist involving Princess Fiona’s transfiguration, apparently into her beautiful self once again. However, upon recovering, Princess Fiona revives to discover her “beautiful self” was actually her form as an ogre. This disrupts the entire system of Beauty and its assumed conditions, whilst remaining faithful to the narrative structure of the fairy tale, one that espouses a “happy ending”. The whole “Beauty” system becomes incorporated into the structures of “Beast”, represented by Shrek and the image of the Ogre. Instead of eliminating the binary, Beauty/Beast’s incorporation into each other forms a third paradigm, one that is composed of both, yet even more satisfying that that of The Singing Ringing Tree. In the latter, the final transfiguration of the prince is anticipated, and is played right into the expectations of the viewer. In Shrek, however, anticipation is fulfilled by pulling the rug from under the viewer’s expectation. There is a reiteration of the initial shock of the Beauty/Beast combination, for now absolute beauty has been displaced by the film’s constructed notions of absolute Beast, but it immediately resolves itself because the original Beauty/Beast binary is not sustained. Rather, both characters are compatible for each other and true love transcends language games that build notions of beauty and ugliness: an ending truly satisfying for the viewer.

DEFA's Rumpelstiltskin; co author: Jeff

It isn’t often that a literary work is afforded the opportunity to observe and review a cinematic translation of one of our most treasured styles of the medium, the Fairy Tale. Whilst the fairy tale as a specific type of short fiction has very direct characteristics which are difficult to modify to the cinematic screen, “Rumpelstiltskin” proved to be no exception. This film proved itself to be a sufferable version of one of the most beloved Grimm classics of the same name, failing mainly in its blunting of the mature, darker style of Grimm, and in its weak production value.

While most may not be familiar with the original tale of “Rumpelstiltskin”, the collective work of Jacob and Willem Grimm (better known as the Brothers Grimm) occupy a sizeable portion of the fairy tale canon; nary a child (or adult) can forget the magical whimsicality of “Little Red Riding Hood” or “Hansel and Gretel”. At the heart of any tale spun by the Brothers Grimm is usually a wry sense of sardonic humour, pomp and over-the-top exaggeration of the absurd: qualities that turn a witty eye upon the nature of man. One may well argue that the very value in the Brothers Grimm’s body of work was precisely this caustic presentation of tales that take no shame in representing the world in all its dirt. It is here where that the filmic version of “Rumpelstiltskin” decided to cut around the corners, trimming off the absurd fat that plagued the original tale with such delicious decadence. In pursuit of the presentable, the film became but a faded image of its former self: the film is safe; but much too safe for comfort. What resulted was a petty moral reminder, a knife without edge, and fable that seemed to drag its feet through the some seventy-minutes of its length, devoid of the wicked imagination it was born out of.

Without its former characteristic Grimm-bite, the production could have made amends in its faithful representation of fantasy. However, expectations fall short where production value is concerned. Grimm’s spacious Kingdom is conveniently compacted to occupy the humble dwellings of a sparsely furnished court and the castle dungeons, devoid of wealth in its cheeks. Hans’ journeys revolve around a claustrophobically small mill house, locking the panoramic angle of the camera to awkward, often disjoint positions. Scene transitions are accomplished by screening the camera lens with a translucent panel that swings annoyingly into view: it would have been better that the camera was submerged into a bowl of water. Overall, the fantastical land of an imagined Kingdom turned up flat, constructed, cold and sterile on screen. Words of black ink would have held grander facades than the film’s meagre attempts at pomp. Cinematography, as a result, is restricted to the basic elements of film-capturing. The vacillation between camera angles were ill-paced to momentum of onscreen narrative, resulting in jarring pacing irregularities that forfeited rather than salvaged any last attempts at slapstick.

Similarly, the characters crafted were lacklustre representatives of stereotypes. While the invention of Hans (the incipient use of his vantage point) and an exploration of Kunz and Marie as characters added another layer to the original tale, none of the characters were fleshed fully enough to trace a visible character-journey. Besides the Prince’s change of heart (a soporific “sea-change” heightened by his apparent onscreen indifference), all other characters adopted an incidental approach to their personalities, personalities dictated neither by motive nor by intention, but by the very audible voices of their scriptwriters.

What the film did achieve, however, was a laudable attempt to breathe life into “Rumpelstiltskin”, the tale’s most enigmatic character. While the Grimm’s tale paints him as a one-sided gnome (unpredictable nonetheless), who tears himself into two in the end, filmic “Rumpelstiltskin” carries the burden of the ‘rejected man’ from a society that fosters strong materialistic undertones. His reasons for rejecting mankind become entwined with pre-materialist notions of values, and this becomes his motivation for wanting Marie’s child: to raise him away from the materialistic derisions of the ‘real world’. Filmic “Rumpelstiltskin” was well played, and possibly saved the show from plunging into drudgery. “Rumpelstiltskin’s” final parting moments with mankind gives rise to the film’s saccharine ending, but leaves a bitter aftertaste in the mouth that longs for something with more zing in flavour.

Otherwise, filmic “Rumpelstiltskin” mostly trips on itself along the fabled journey of storytelling. Mostly lifeless, music-less and convincingly helpless, its cardboard characters and plot fail to truncate the misery of seventy-odd minutes misspent.

The Princess Paradoxes

Of the numerous tales involving female protagonists and heroines, characterised females seem to be an extension of the physiological universe they occupy, as well as objects which personify the folkloric conception of femininity and the female gender. Objects such as the spindles, thimbles, wheels and kerchiefs refer almost immediately to the types of trade Teutonic females were well accustomed to. Also, they represent the precipitation of how men (who were characterised by their heroic functions in text) viewed woman and her personal spaces. Tools, garments and objects, to an extent, are the congealment of a social structure objectified; a unifying metaphor that recurs extensively in such tales.

Tales such as The Goose Girl (89), All Fur (65) and Brier Rose (50) draw reference to such objects, objects that occupy an important role in developing central themes. In The Goose Girl, the loss of her blood-blessed handkerchief severs strong maternal ties between the princess and her mother, allowing her chambermaid to exploit her helplessness. Symbolically and literally, the handkerchief can be read as the fruition of one’s trade. Although the Queen probably did not spin the cloth herself, she inscribes her ‘craftsmanship’ upon the item by staining it with three drops of her own blood, perhaps a casual reference to the spindle-prick central to Brier Rose. Blood and toil (or national undertones of blood and war) are ‘interwoven’ in the symbol of the kerchief in order to remind the princess of her origins. Hence, perhaps the loss of the kerchief opens up the possibility of forgetting, the potential of memory loss which the chamber maid seizes opportunity to ‘erase history’ (memory) and create a fictional destiny for herself.

Similar articles are employed in All Fur, who uses the symbolism of her golden miniatures (Ring, Spinning-Wheel and Reel) to alert to the King of her veiled royalty. Here, object symbolism works on two levels, mimetic object-subject and memory-projection. All Fur hints to the King of her ‘inner-royalty’, one that is characterised by the material gold as a mimetic representation of bloodline origins and roots. Similarly, the objects carry with them a memory of her former Kingdom, at the same time reinforcing her femininity and gender. All Fur chooses to abscond her former life with the objects explicitly referred to as “three of her precious possessions”, objects that imply the female working class of her Kingdom, suggesting All Fur as a higher archetype of the gender-class structure.

Usually when mimetic representation of inwardly beauty or royalty is not enough to support the magnitude of a given metaphor, nature as a living-object is turned to. Heroines that emanate with virtue in adverse circumstances are not uncommon threads in the tales, their inwardly beauty so outwardly affecting that natural elements such as trees, plants, animals and fruit react to their goodly sources. Snow White (53) exhibits such supernatural qualities with the animal kingdom, where “wild beasts darted by her … but did not harm her.” During the process of her funeral, “[s]ome animals came also and wept for Snow White.” Two Eyes from the tale One-Eye, Two-Eyes and Three-Eyes (130) receives help from a little goat. Likewise, her fruit tree only permitted fruits to be plucked by her, whereas the “branches and fruit drew back from [her sisters] … each time they tried to grab hold of them.” Apart from nature’s ‘confrontational’ qualities, nature also doubles up as a barometer for growth. In Brier Rose (50), Rose’s maturation is signalled by the termination of her 100-year slumber; it can be read that the flowers bloomed and the thicket of Brier “opened of their own accord” in response to the Prince’s timely arrival to ‘partake’ of that maturation.

The natural world, especially the animal kingdom can sometimes blur the pre-existent relationship between heroines and their furry friends. The distinction between beauty/beast becomes blurred and the natural world becomes a haven for damsels to adopt concealment and disguise. All Fur articulates this phenomenon, where beauty consciously decides to take the form of a wretched creature in order to hide her true identity. A ‘transfiguration’ takes place, one that is akin to the larger unifying thread concerning animal brides et al. Cinderella’s (21) transfiguration echoes similar in the way that ash dehumanises her the same way All Fur’s coat animalises. Animalistic concealment is also employed in The Goose Girl at the Spring (179), the Goose Girl adopting a wearable ‘skin’ that was “ugly as sin”. Though not strictly animalistic, it could be suggested the Goose Girl fulfils her mother’s belief that she had been eaten by “wild animals”, since she is ‘consumed’ by an appearance of the wild.

For All Fur, The Goose Girl at the Spring, Maid Maleen (198), The White Bride and the Black Bride (135) and Cinderella, much conflict and interest in narrative is worked around the concealment of true identity, and the steps at which the story undertakes leading to disclosure. In The Goose Girl at the Spring, All Fur and Cinderella, true identity is deferred by means of disguise of various degrees. At the most extreme end, All Fur’s disguise revokes human appearance, and is manifested as beast. At the other end, Cinderella’s disguise is as skin deep as the ash she rubs on her face to elude her prince. However, in all accounts, disguise transforms from means to a vice. Each protagonist becomes slave to the means of disguise, and seems to be unable to shed off their false double life in front of their intended suitors. All Fur retreats routinely to her life of slavery, Goose Girl to her pastoral matters and Cinderella to her sisters.

Although one could suggest that these women willingly partake in a game of their own leisure and become intrigued (or amused) by their own acts of deception, one also could read it as an act of salvation, a self-perpetuated invitation for the male protagonist to participate and finish the narrative. For All Fur, her disguise has become such a vice of her former life that she is unable to shirk off her cloak without feeling vulnerable to her father’s advances. All Fur presents a paradox: the single object that links her to the memory of her father’s incestuous tendencies has become her only form of protection, as a child to security blanket. In order to exist independent of the coat, she needs a preceding male figure to occupy the symbolic realm of the phallic which her father once occupied. Thus, she is able to shed of the coat at times in order to communicate with the other King, but has to retreat into her other life once the ball is over. Only by an act of violent force of the other (the King seizes her arm and tears off her coat) can she reconcile both her past and present identities and accept the King as the rightful replacement of her father. Without an action perpetuated by the King, the act of revelation would be meaningless as it fails to address the former symbolic occupant (her father). Gender-bound, All Fur cannot save herself without a male protagonist to complete the act. Similarly, Goose Girl is wound up by the circumstances of her banishment that her skin serves as a shield from the world she was ousted. Only can a male occupant from that symbolic realm re-invite her into her proper place as princess. For Cinderella, the device of her undoing (the shoe) is capitalised by the prince who spreads pitch on the stairs, who then relieves her of a life of filial-bound disenchantment.

Grimm: The Little League

The use of “little people” in Grimm’s fairy tales appears to extend to a wide range of categories. “Little” can be taken to indicate physical size, status or age; “Little” functions more as an umbrella term cast wide enough to embody humans, semi-humans (such as dwarfs or human-like creatures), smaller animals and even tools of one’s trade. In this light, the title “people” refers more to a personification. Even apparently inanimate objects imbibed (or personified) with magical properties fulfill human-like functions to propel the narrative forward.

Because of the evident physical limitations of little people, Grimm’s plots usually cast light upon these smaller protagonists’ disability, usually with the intention of revealing a hidden ability. A common character-driven device evident through Grimm’s body of works is the use of the Little Tailor who appears in a number of mutually exclusive episodes such as “The Brave Little Tailor” and “The Clever Little Tailor”. In both stories, the large-little dichotomies are exaggerated to comical extremes for visual effects that may appeal to younger recipients. For example, “The Brave Little Tailor” battles a group of Giants whilst “The Clever Little Tailor” ultimately overcomes a bear. However, in both tales, the wit of the tailor wins over the aggressor: brain triumphs over brawn and mind overcomes mass. In constructing the protagonist as the underdog, victory appears sweeter.

The virtue of wit and cunning is further explored in stories embodying super-micro beings, usually children, most commonly appearing as the character Thumbling. Thumbling (so named because he is no bigger than the size of an adult’s thumb) embodies all the possible disabilities that being ‘little’ or ‘underprivileged’ brings with it. He is literally the victim of his own environment, as we see in the tales “Thumbling” and “Thumbling’s travels”. Thumbling is a victim of his size, and is swallowed whole by various animals, and battles life-threatening situations with frightening frequency. However, Grimm’s Thumbling is endowed with formidable wit and nimbleness that defies his tiny size and allows him to overcome obstacles that seem “larger than life”. Perhaps Grimm’s employment of Thumbling offers an alternative approach to life’s problems as simply a matter of perspective. Every cloud sports a silver lining.

Likewise with stories such as “The Queen Bee”, “The Gnome” and the “The Little Hamster from the Water”, the victory of the underdog continues to be a dominant structural component. In these stories, however, Grimm does not endow his protagonists with wit. As opposed to the clever tailor, the protagonist in each of the three tales allays with “little” in two ways: first, he is the youngest of a number of siblings, and second, he is usually little-minded, a simpleton. In “The Queen Bee”, the youngest brother, chided for his childish and “naïve” ways was called “Simpleton” (again employing bold strategies of metaphor and word-painting to enliven the visual imagination). The youngest brother in “The Little Hamster from the Water” was bluntly named “Stupid Hans”. In exchange for the virtue of wit, Grimm chooses to illuminate the good natured qualities of the little brothers; the simple “little” qualities of which they possess of which children may easily draw parallels to, and adults may be reminded of the fortitudes of civic-minded sensitivity.

“Little” also extends to “lesser adults” or children themselves, characters which are arguably the easiest for young listeners to identify with. In stories such as “The Three Little Gnomes in the Forest”, “The Old Man and his Grandson”, “The Twelve Brothers” and “Spindle, Shuttle and Needle”, the role of children as underprivileged citizens are used to contrast the social environment they have been part of which exerts this socio-force. In “The Old Man and his Grandson”, the tables are turned between the roles of the (assumedly rational) parents and their (assumedly less-rational) son, who enlightens them of their mistreatment of his grandfather through simple actions and deeds. The tales extol virtues of loyalty, honesty and integrity, concepts simple enough for a young audience, but enduring in its capacity. Similarly, in “The Three Little Gnomes in the Forest” and “The Twelve Brothers”, it is the mistreated and underprivileged daughter who is most blessed because of her innate goodliness.

However, virtues and values are rarely enough to save the day. In the tales of Grimm, the underdogs and the underprivileged are almost always aided by one or more “magical helpers” that are, in themselves, little beings. These magical little helpers fall into several categories in and of themselves: Gnomes and dwarves with magical powers and soothsayer-like abilities, smaller animals such as foxes, hamsters and ducks that are representative of their kind, and objects or instruments imbued with magical abilities. All can be interpreted as rhetorical instruments of inevitable nature: these elements appear to be (in an odd fashion) conveniently available in times of adversity, and always forms the missing-link by which the protagonist fulfills his or her noble goal. Then, the story cycle is complete, the wrongs righted and the villains occasionally put to macabre ends.

Homosexual Heinrich; that's the way of Grimm's world

The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich
The Companionship of the Cat and the Mouse
The Virgin Mary’s Child

Although “Happily ever after” has been attributed ad nauseum to the genre of the fairy tale, much of the structural journey of the Grimm’s fairy tales manipulate the idea of the fantastic to make certain statements evident of life, morals, values, and the way of the world in general without being overly didactic. However, although two of the three tales (The Frog King; The Virgin Mary’s Child) do have satisfactory endings, the notion of happily-ever-after seems a structural device much rather than an implicit part of the story. In the case of The Companionship, there is no “happy ending”. Rather, the dichotomy of oppressor and the oppressed as symbolized by the cat and mouse respectively is played out till the end in full cruelty with the cat devouring the mouse, a statement to emphasize the “way of the world”.

The question that arises is one of function. To what ends do the means of the fairy tales achieve? More precisely, to whose ends? The tale of The Companionship closes with an unembellished harsh reminder of the meaning of the circumstances which unfold: “You see, that’s the way of the world”. The question therefore extends to: the way of whose world? Arguably, the tales point at the ‘real world’, but is it the real world, or simply a projected worldview upon the young receivers of these tales in order to achieve extraneous social aims?

In its own style, each of the three fairy tales appear to conceal a moral or social lesson aimed at either revealing the “way of the world”, or to instill a sense of moral civic-mindedness. The Frog King is a quaint example of how Grimm’s tales bridge these two agendas of revelation and instruction. First of all, the tale is immediately split between two courses thought as indicated by its title: “The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich” (my emphasis). It seems to be unable to make up its mind about its own narrative theme, and, perhaps, never reconciles with its apparent indecision. The story itself follows two narratives that are apparently discontinuous: from whence the narrative of the Frog King and the princess seemingly ends, the narrative of The Frog King and Iron Heinrich picks up. The sudden leap in narrative is disorienting, even irrational, threatening to break away at the traditional unity of narrative structure. However, the authors’ decision to leave both narratives in the structure of the story seems to suggest an implicit binary.

The narrative of The Frog King traverses a moral path not unlike The Virgin Mary’s Child. Allusions to the voices of reason are made to authorial figures of Church and King. In The Virgin Mary’s Child, the child’s redemption from death at the stake is accentuated with overt undertones of the Catholic Doctrine, first through the use of the Virgin Mary as a centre of power and instruction, and second, through her ecclesiastical agitprop: “Those who repent their sins and confess will be forgiven.” Likewise, it is the underwritten authority, wisdom and power of the King in The Frog King that first persuades the princess to stay true to her promise made to the Frog. Both tales set about their moral agendas by through disturbing accounts on how the morally and ethically astray undergo great suffering for their wayward deeds. By intercessions in both narratives, a twist of fate occurs – the Frog turns into a prince; the prodigal daughter is redeemed. Here, the functional narrative of The Virgin Mary’s Daughter draws to a close, ends has served means and children are persuaded to pursue the truth. However, The Frog Prince’s narrative transcends the happy-ending narrative and spills forward into Iron Heinrich, rudely disrupting the linear.

Moral and ethical agenda complete, Iron Heinrich seems to pick up a sense of the tragic evident in The Companionship in contrast to the first half of The Frog Prince. However, the device of tragedy is not explored as an aggravation of the protagonist as literally as The Companionship. Whilst The Companionship may draw parallels between the doomed relationship of abusive husbands and their hapless wives, tragedy in Iron Heinrich is explored as the obliteration of its previous narrative. The Frog Prince, having developed its material between the princess and her newfound prince, sets up a narrative of hope. That same hope that fuels the completeness of the traditional ‘happy-ending’ is subverted when the narrative is discontinued. Instead of expounding upon the post-matrimonial affairs between the princess and her prince, the story leaps into the narrative of the exoneration of Heinrich’s iron-banded heart. Ultimately, the blissful matters of the princess and the prince take no share in the end of the story; all focus is averted upon Heinrich and his unrequited love for his master. In fact, it is as though they have become secondary characters to give Heinrich’s tale perspective, virtually completely neglected by the author himself.

Iron Heinrich when contrasted with The Frog Prince presents a paradox. Although Heinrich usurps the focus of the narrative, robbing the initial narrative of its proper place as the happy-ending, Heinrich is unable to partake in the ‘narrative’, so to speak, of his master and his newfound bride. Worse, their marriage seems to be a marriage of convenience effectuated by a spell; nothing of love or devotion or change of heart is spoken of between the prince and the princess. Their fate is of the tragedy of circumstance, and because of previous mystical witchcraft, two individuals are forcefully match-made. Much, however, is made of Heinrich’s devotion and love for his master, a relationship that was taken to fantastical lengths of expression:

“He had been so distressed when he had learned his master had been turned into a frog that he ordered three iron bands be wrapped around his heart to keep it from bursting from grief and sadness.”

Heinrich’s love for his master can never be reciprocated because of his new occupation. The prince appears to have been transferred from a less preferable bond to a more preferable one, but his incarceration (and that of the princess’) remains beyond their control. The semblance of “happy-ending” is fulfilled with Heinrich’s wistful thoughts of joy at his master’s apparent salvation. The prince, to the end, remains more preoccupied with the sound of iron bands breaking that his newfound wife. Such is the way of life, as natural as cat devouring mouse as to the ills of love and devotion.

When combined with an attempt to illustrate the harsh realities of life, the moral instructions written into the narrative of fairy tales are more readily received. Often, the mirror that reflects these harsh realities also distorts these realities in order to give form and purpose to its moral-instructive couple. The tragedy of The Companionship builds tension by setting up expectations of conflict over the ways of nature. In many ways, if The Companionship had taken the “happy-ending” detour, its didactic functions would probably have suffered. The Companionship draws its strength precisely by stating the obvious, a macabre reminder to individuals who trust too easily, and tragedy serves as a powerful tool for instruction that the mouse should have been more alert to the crooked intentions of the cat. Conversely, The Companionship also wags a finger at those who seek trouble by ignoring the advice and laws of the world; all the cajoling in the world would not have transformed the fundamental relationship between predator and prey. As long as these pillars of power and submission exist, nature abides by these rules and so should we.

In recreating the narrative describing “the way of the world”, all three fairy tales inevitably take certain liberties with their depictions that are not necessarily faithful to the idea of reality. However, by bending the narrative to the will of the instructive, these fairy tales may prove to have the power to incite change, change that may, in fact, literally transform reality as well. So, perhaps the imagined worlds of fairy tales may not be far from our realities. Each world informs the other, and in all good hope, seeks out the happy endings in each other.

Think, Lucky, think!

Lucky’s fantastic tirade in his “think speech” centres about the central paradox of the suffering of man, in spite of a (assumed) personal God. The paradox Lucky outlines questions the necessity of suffering given the a priori that God loves man. Logic follows that if a personal God should love his creation to such an extent as to “[suffer] like the divine Miranda” (45) then the extension of his love should absolve man from unnecessary suffering.

The premise of unnecessary suffering is augmented in the play through the very context upon which it is discussed. Lucky’s rant also highlights that such suffering is not only unnecessary, but meaningless. Recurrent in his speech contains elements of uncertainty, as he appears to contemplate the “reasons unknown” in an impartial science-like voice of reason. What follows in the spiel of meaningless suffering is the issue of man’s many “labours”, and how they are equally devoid of meaning once cast under the light of his logic. Lucky’s equalising factor is that of death, the one event that renders all acts of men equal, and to a certain extent, suggests that all suffering and meaningful labour is meaningless since they befall the same end.

The silencing metaphor of death appears in numerous sections, referred as the destination of which “time will tell” as well as an extensive utilisation of the “skull” imagery towards the tail end of his speech, both figuratively and literally. Lucky approaches the subject with trepidation: the appearance of the skull motif drives his speech into a halting mess, and it plays back over and over like a broken record, as if the very presence of the thought of death affects the life of Lucky’s thought. Themes of labour left “unfinished”, “tennis”, “stones” and the “skull” are resurface randomly in his last frantic verbal assault, peppered with frantic cries of “alas, alas”, as though the subject matter of his discourse had become too much to bear even for the messenger.

Lucky’s speech arguably further draws Estragon and Vladimir’s condition into further adversity by invoking the fundamental paradox of existence and life’s meaning. The routines Estragon and Vladimir conjure are vague parallels to Lucky’s posited “tennis” themes and man’s utilisation of rules and games to create personal meaning that defers attention from his existential crisis. Perhaps little illusions as ends-in-themselves offer refuge from the shadow of nihilism. Humour is their only solace from the drastic circumstances Lucky speaks of: waiting for Godot becomes an excuse that is excusable because it offers hope that deflects both protagonists from the meaningless nature of both their sufferings, and as a way of deflecting the use of the tree to acquire a way out of the paradox through hanging.

Miller and Subversion of form

I'm not sure I quite agree with Miller's sentiments towards subverting the Classical "narrowing cone of intensifying suspense". His arguments for interrupting the linear in the narrative is clear: "[A] single chord ... within which all the strains and melodies would appear to be contained." Miller's main challenge was one that was self-referring; his challenge was more formalistic than it was contextual. He later reveals the impetus for his experiment in form as his earlier play "All My Sons", one that he felt was constructed to roll the red carpet of the narrative. I assume Miller's main structural strategy with "Death of a Salesman" was a presentation that denied the audience the luxury of a narrative 'spelt-out', so to speak, as he had done so with "All My Sons". Therefore, although "Death of a Salesman" composite narrative is primarily linear, Miller would attest that its presentation allows for affecting moments to share a similar theatrical space-time. A concept which the "laid-out" form of "All My Sons" did not allow for.

Having said that, form sometimes backfires: for what Miller constructed out to be a powerful psychological piece, his very alliance to the narrative functions of the Classical "Tragic Hero" creates a deepening well of sympathy and pathos, elements which could easily fill-in for a narrowing-cone of intensity. Because the play also functions with (I hasten to call them) "flashbacks", the narrative operates on different levels that forces viewers to (re)construct them in their own way. This building form of contentual 'hide-and-seek' also intensifies the revelation, which occurs a good two-thirds into the plot. Miller, however, almost immediately does away with the revelation of Willy's unfaithfulness: clearly as a psychological piece, revelation but reflects the building conflict within the Tragic protagonist. It is here that Miller perhaps unknowlingly recedes into the classic structure of tension-resolution: Willy's inner-conflict has reached a state of subversion where the ecoogical conditions and internal conditions apply equal pressures. Miller opts for the classical resolution that resolves inner-condition by reflecting it outwardly by Willly's suicidal coup de theater, the ultimate form of expression that forces pleasure and pain to collapse into each other.

I feel Miller does not stray sufficiently from established forms. What he manages to accomplish, however, is theatre on multiple narrative planes, the "bloc" that constitues "the process of Willy Loman's way of mind" and its impending derision. What Miller possibly failed to apprehend was the dramatic possibility of his 'new form', and how audiences (so used to traditional forms of reader-responses) implicated their own understanding of Tragedy and Tragic form upon his framework. Miller's Salesman narrative, though multi-planar, is still unable to capture fully the nature of simultaniety: multiple incidents rehashed at the same time, informing and transforming each other. Rather, the nature, order and context at which Willy Loman's inner conflicts are revealed to us inevitably shapes our experience of the play rather than presenting it as a cogent piece "ahistorical" in-and-of-itself.

Waiting for godot / Waiting for Godot [?]

What about "Waiting for Godot [ ]"?

Does the absence of a "?" necessarily 'imply' it in the statement? After all, if one were to further stretch the grammatical word-play, you could argue that "Watiting for Godot?" serves as a question, a literary function which, I'm sure Calderwood might admit, is a transcient statment, a means to an end. Like his exposition on "waiting" and "travelling" as the "in-betweens" of pillars of certainty, the grammatic function of "Waiting for Godot?" would therefore necessarily inscribe two implied pillars in its semiotic topography: Action (the act of waiting) versus the self-contemplation of the action (questioning the act of waiting). Although it would make for an interesting analysis (thereby opening up completely new forums of meaning and word-play possibilities), the "?" would also be a damning frame of reference in which the play will be judged. One slight alteration of the play's title, and the very angle at which the audience tackles the play from is washed under an observational lens of a different hue.

A "?" would apply a damning frame upon the work in a number of ways: firstly, by stating what-it-is, or by drawing attention to itself (as the "?" does to the statement), it paradoxically 'leaps ahead' of itself. In other words, the contemplative act of thinking about "waiting for Godot [?]" leaps ahead of the seemingly impartial statement "Waiting for Godot". The audience is therefore robbed of the first-encounter with the statement, and immediately presented with the question. This is akin to the audience being served dessert, then served the appetizer as an afterthought. In this, the audience is denied the option of enjoying the resonant meanings of the appetizer before indulging in the full sweetness of dessert. The order is therefore important. One normally does not run before one walks. Calderwood stresses the importance of its grammatical ambiguity of which "coalesces with its semantic ambiguity ... and reflects the larger tendency of the play toward the spatial arrest of form and the temporal flow of performance."(32) In the larger order of things, he suggests that the play either "waits for its own summarising title ... [which then functions as] a concluding continuation of the play" or that "the title waits for the play".(30) I believe in both respects, Calderwood is right in observing so. Preserving Calderwood's "grammatical ambiguity" opens up the possibilities for the title to enact its role as such; whilst putting a "?" is akin to completing the statement, incarcerating the title by a full-stop; the title is then less free to intermingle with the substance of the play on more equal terms if it was elevated to a "summarising title" status rather than if it were left open to the possibility of being written into the play itself.

Secondly, the "?" transforms the title into a directional statement. Since it is a question, it therefore implies an origin (a thesis, itself being a hypothesis) and the idea of an answer, even if the existence of the answer may be no more than illusory. Illusory or not, the idea of the answer is a necessary Structuralist binary to its mirror-image, the question. It effectively erases Calderwood's proposed notions of grammatical/semantic ambiguity because the "?" points-to something. It is that pointing-at which confers it semiotic "meaning", and sets the structures of grammatical/semantic-meaning in order. If we apply Calderwood's formula of "erasure" (see pg 32 - 36), then the question also becomes victim to its own erasure. The ambiguity is shifted from a grammatical/semantic one to one that is addressor-addressee oriented, and exists in a Pozzo-like "inbetweenness"(36) that deconstructs orgin and destination, i.e. the answer to the question is the question itself much like Pozzo's destination is the process of his travel. In this sense, the title shuts off one path of interpretation in favour of another path, path that leads to "why are they waiting?" or "who is Godot?" or "Do they know why they are waiting?" As one can see, the play itself fills in the "?" for the spectator. Locating the "?" in the title suggests a literary excess, and an excess that is unecessary because the audience will ask all the right questions by virtue of the play itself. By revealing the cards too early in the game, the title loses its synechdotic functions because it fails to be 'part-of-th-whole'. Rather, it takes on an authorial stance sperate from the whole that serves to comment externally upon the work. It offers the spectator a more defined way of looking at the play as if to say: "This is what the play is asking, this is what you should think about." In a broad sense, by forced interpretation by numbers, it is a denial of the audience's exercise of self-determination in experiencing (or 'arriving at') the question.

Thirdly, it is one of aesthetic difficulty. Here, Brecht sheds light on the "Alienation effect" of performance in "A Short Organum for the Theatre", stating that the effect allows for us (spectators) to "recognize its subject, but at the same time makes it seem unfamiliar" or of "altering the familiar" (Brecht, 192). In order to present a condition under these terms, it has to be as far removed from the familiar as possible, resulting in theatre that is recognizable though under a different guise. Consequently, the pathos of the playwright as a voice of authenticity and authority must likewise be removed from the structures of the play. By posing a question, the addressor/addressee binary becomes apparent, and is manifested in the form of playwright (or the institution behind the play) versus audience. The voice of Beckett peirces through the act of 'alienation' which the play formulates (after all, it presents a condition far removed from recognizable reality), and the play now unfolds as a dialogue between the audience and the playwright. Beckett says: "Waiting for Godot?" and the audience is therefore pressured to find the answers to satisfy the presence of the author in the work. However, it is exactly the alienation of the author from the work that is crucially important to the play, that the audience is open to experience and not the continued act of formulating a response to a question. With the one "?", the title and therfore author becomes a recurring motif everytime the audience meets with a conflict of logic onstage: the title therefore is in jeapordy of becoming a recurrent repository of 'answers' by which the play should be defined. In order for the play to stand by itself in its own "created world", it has to refuse the impulse to merge action with author; one should not look for a conversation with Beckett. If this were so, there would be no need for Godot, no need for Didi or Gogo, no need for the stage. "Waiting For Godot?" would be a highly interesting philosophical discourse upon the authenticity of its own statements, but more off face value. Let the audience ask the questions, let the playwright shape the world.

Bibliography:
Calderwood, James L, Ways of Waiting in 'Waiting for Godot', Waiting for Godot and Endgame, Ed. Steven Connar, (New York: St Martin; 1992)
Brecht, Brecht on theatre, Ed. John Willet, Hill and Wang, (New York, 1992)