2003, Vol.16, No.3

Journal of Modern English Drama 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.11

pISSN : 1226-3397
https://journal.kci.go.kr/medak

This paper examines how contemporary drama represents physical disability, focusing on Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man which is considered one of the most successful plays to deal with disability. Reworking the story of John Merrick, a Victorian sideshow “freak” whose deformed and disabled body earned him the name of the Elephant Man, Bernard Pomerance especially concentrates on laying bare the specular economy in which Merrick's disabled body becomes the object of the voyeuristic gaze of Victorian England. Conflated with this gaze are both the medical and the white, middle-class male gazes as represented by Dr. Treves in the play. As a way to critique this gaze, Pomerance puts Merrick in the position of the voyeur in a crucial episode when Mrs. Kendal takes off her clothes to show her body to him and in the following scenes has Merrick question the legitimacy of the gaze of Dr. Treves. Treves in turn expresses skepticism about the medical and civilizing project that, as he ultimately realizes, only kills him rather than normalize him. Pomerance’s play presents a scathing criticism of medical discourse vis-a-vis disability and seems successful in implicating the spectator in the voyeuristic gaze of Treves’ society, but it fails to offer a space in which the disabled character can come up with an authentic disabled identity in his own terms.

This article aims to explore the meaning and structure of Jumpers by analyzing philosophical thinking which presides over the modern philosophical scene. Stoppard’s second full length play, Jumpers is a kind of mosaic which combines a variety of theatrical forms. It may be fairly estimated that the structural characteristic itself is a mode of conveying author's thought. In this play, various non-theatrical elements are integrated into a whole unity. The story line of this play is centered on the murder of a philosopher. In spite of ongoing investigation, the murder case is not solved and this adds more questions. While finding a criminal, philosophical discussion comes to the forefront. With this discussion Stoppard intends to convey and dramatize the faults and shortcomings of relativistic thinking: logical positivism. In writing a play about certain philosophical thought, it is always difficult to convey its whole philosophical stance. But in this play, Stoppard successfully satirizes the relativists who continually ‘jump’ to the other sphere and lose moral sense in the end. He wants to show that all political acts have a moral basis to them and are meaningless without it. Philosophical thought which has lost its ground in the mundane world may become a major obstacle to making the world better.

Arcadia, the best play by Tom Stoppatrd so far, was first staged atthe Lyttelton Theatre, Royal National Theatre in April 1993. Basically itcan best be understod as a literary detective work. As it switches backand forth from the early nineteenth century and the present ime, it showsthe real picture of the arlier time on the one hand, and the literarydetectives’ eforts to reconstruct he past on the other.At a larger level,Arcadia is a grand drama of scientific debates. Thescientific theories featured comprise no les than Newtonian physics,quantum echanics, thermodynamics (entropy), and Chaos Theory. Intothe debates are also woven vast themes like determinism, fre-will, death,love, our quest for truth, and so n. This may sound enormouslydaunting, but o Stoppard's immense credit, granted that some basicunderstanding of the scientific theories is necesary for a full appreciation,Arcadia can even be satisfactorily enjoyed without particularly detailedknowledge of them, due to its extremely dexterously handled comedies onthe one hand, and the moving human drama of love and eath on theother.Though it may not be tenable under igorous scientific scrutiny, wecan postulate the interactions of the scientific theories inArcadia asfollows for the sake of convenience. First, the Newtonian paradigm standsfor a rigorous determinism where the universe runs acording to its trictrules with no room for human participation. At the other end of the116 김 태 우spectrum stands entropy theory with its fearful determinism that theuniverse is irevocably heading for the heat death. Chaos Theory cuts inamid these opposite determinisms to make room for human fre will andchance which make the world as it is.The question of chaos and order lies at he centre ofArcadia against