2011, Vol.24, No.2

Theatre of Cruelty and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

강선자 | 2011, 24(2) | pp.5~26 | number of Cited : 4

Representation of Sexual Violence: Hot 'N' Throbbing by Paula Vogel

박경란 | 2011, 24(2) | pp.27~55 | number of Cited : 3

In Hot ’N’ Throbbing, Vogel explores the seriousness of domestic violence in American society, after witnessing violence in an heterosexual relationship while she was working on it. Through this play, Vogel relates pornography to sexual violence as pornography debases women into sexual objects and injects into men the ideology that men can do whatever they want with women. The number of the victims is on the rise with the development of the media and technology. Pornography propagates the ideology of male power and domination in society further where nearly nothing can stop this status quo. The play revolves around Charlene, a single parent, who supports her children, and her work - writing the scripts for erotica. Even though Charlene insists that erotica is different from pornography, in most cases, they represent the same in terms of nudity, obscenity and heterosexuality. The erotica Charlene writes influences the members of the family. The daughter wears scanty clothes; the son is indulged in voyeurism instead of going out with girls; herself as a sexual object in her erotica; and the ex-husband, a wife-beater and alcoholic, consume pornography and buys prostitutes. Vogel’s play depicts the archetype of a dysfunctional family in contemporary America. The ex-husband, Clyde dares to visit Charlene despite the restraining order by the court. Charlene shoots him for self-defence, but Clyde, angered by her reaction to the firing and jealousy of unspecific men for whom, Clyde assumes, Charlene might have prepared some type of protection - this time, condom, Clyde strangles her with his belt. The dramaturgy alienates the audience from the violent action by incorporating in the play the two characters, Voice-over and Voice, positioned on either margin of the stage. Voice-over represents the Actress of the Foxy Lady, and also narrates Charlene’s script and her inner voice through the microphone. The Voice plays the club proprietor, the bouncer, and the inner voice of Clyde and enacts some lines related to sex from the works of Krafft-Ebing, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and James Joyce with each of their accents respectively. The setting of the stage also represents the reality and fantasy, sometimes mixed up in Charlene's erotica. The dramaturgy reveals the fantasy can become a reality in pornography.

The Ethics of Truths and Bare Life: Badiou and Beckett

Ilhyung Park | 2011, 24(2) | pp.57~78 | number of Cited : 3

This thesis analyzes the framework of Alain Badiou’s criticism on Samuel Beckett and unravels its ethico-political implications. The objective is to go beyond summary and introduction of Badiou’s criticism and to point out its limitations. Furthermore, an attempt is made to expand the discussion of Badiou’s criticism, often heavily concentrated on Beckett’s novels, to theatre. For this purpose, analysis of Catastrophe, a short piece that contains the most direct political homage among Beckett’s entire oeuvre, shall be undertaken. Badiou, known as the last patron of modernity in direct confrontation with postmodernism and a radical leftist, published four critical essays on Beckett in the 90’s. Interest in Badiou stems from the fact that his analysis provides a new potential in ethico-political interpretation of Beckett which was in a deadlock for quite a long time. Badiou reads the project of ethical thinking toward the image of subject and the other as opposed to absurdity and namelessness, and difference and repetition that existentialism or deconstruction focused on. Badiou opposes the critical tradition that links Beckett’s work with the annulment of the subject or a solipsistic world view, and thereby stipulates Beckett as a nonpolitical and apolitical writer. However, his argument reveals its limitation when Beckett’s work such as Catastrophe is read and analyzed more carefully. Because this particular piece shows how human life is manipulated by aesthetic representation and how the public’s ethical presumption and social consciousness are formulated by this process. Beckett appears to reveal the theatricality of politics that sustains and promulgates a political possibility rather than illustrate subjectivation based on a radically new event. What this piece discloses is not the possibility of subjectivation but the bare life that is excluded and silenced by political subjectivation.

Irish Men in New York: Irish Characters, Identity and Memory in The Mulligan Guard Ball

Jungman Park | 2011, 24(2) | pp.79~110 | number of Cited : 1

Reading Bernard Shaw’s Too True to Be Good: Illness and Vision for the Remedy

Yeong-Yoon Seo | 2011, 24(2) | pp.111~138 | number of Cited : 0

In Too True to be Good(1932), Shaw attempts to dramatize the chaos of English society after the World War I. Here the postwar chaos was revealed through three kinds of illness: bodily, spiritual and English ills. At first the Patient epitomizes bodily ills. She thieves her own jewels with Aubrey the burglar and Sweetie the nurse. With them she escapes from the sickroom and goes out into a British outpost. Colonel Tallboys is nominally in charge of the military post as a representative of the British Imperial but Private Meek, an all-round soldier, is an actual leader. Shaw’s satire on the Colonel leads to the satire on the British Imperial. Secondly, Aubrey represents spiritual ills. He suffered from his wartime experiences and was spiritually taken ill. With the morbid self-disgust for bombing civilians, he took up with Sweetie and turned a burglar. Thirdly, Shaw suggests that the outworn Victorian ideals such as religion and love(sexual and familial) are illusions, namely, English ills. In this play Shaw reveals the hopeful vision through the recovered Patient. Her quest for reality begins with her escape from bodily ills. In wild nature she ostensibly becomes well and strong. Due to the disillusionment of romance with Aubrey, she realizes that her past life has been unreal and wants practical work to face reality. So she wishes to be a housekeeper and to put the world in order. To achieve it, she tries to found a sisterhood with the awakened mother. Her mother, Mrs. Mopply, undergoes a forcible regeneration with the Colonel’s sudden strike and realizes the illusory aspects of Victorian ideals. The mother discovers in her liberated daughter a new being and liberates herself. In the end Shaw suggests that Aubrey the speaker, who realizes that the old standards have gone with the postwar chaos, may die but the Patient, the woman of action, starts to find practical work. Ultimately he suggests the action, not the word, as the remedy for the postwar English ills, that is the way of being awakened from the illusion. It, however, is not certain that the Patient will succeed in going into meaningful action through a sisterhood with her mother. Because the play ends with the author’s word instead of the Patient’s action.

Overcoming Father’s Shadow in Fences

왕영균 | 2011, 24(2) | pp.139~165 | number of Cited : 1

This paper aims to investigate African-Americans’ experiences in a White-oriented society and their influences on the construction of black male masculinity for generations. Black male Americans suffer from difficulties in living as family providers and maintaining their own masculinity in a White-oriented hostile society. August Wilson’s Fences is focused on African-Americans’ oppressed masculinity and deprived history in the American society. Like his other plays, this play traces challenges and travails of living both as black males and as fathers. African-American males have burdens of being responsible for bread-winning as a patriarch and maintaining masculinity. In particular, sons succeed to their fathers’ masculinity; they cannot escape from the shadow of their fathers. Literally, “fences” play a role of social barriers that African-Americans cannot overcome. Troy urges Cory to get a good job instead of going to college with a football scholarship because he doesn’t want his son to experience the same frustration as he did when he could not be an athlete. Troy, as a responsible family-provider, gives a priority to supporting a family over maintaining masculinity. In this respect, fathers’ and male characters’ wandering and agony are deeply seated in the problems of masculinity. Keeping track of the thematic concerns, this paper investigates sociological and domestic factors, which have a great influence on the formation of the male characters’ masculinity. Among those factors, the father figures have the greatest influence on their sons’ masculinity. Fathers’ urging their sons to be masculine may lead to the conflict between fathers and sons, but the sons cannot evade from the shadow of their fathers’ masculinity. It means fathers’ masculinity can be repeated or transmitted to their sons. Furthermore, male characters in this play are experiencing some crises and disorientation in establishing their masculinity because their fathers stick to an outdated concept of masculinity which is not suitable to the reality of their times. As a result, they have no confidence in their masculinity, or they are caught in the shadow of the masculinity inherited from their fathers. This play leads us to challenge critical reception of masculinity in American plays and to open new discourses about gender as well as masculinity.

Between True and Simulacre in True West

So Young Yoon | 2011, 24(2) | pp.167~195 | number of Cited : 5

True West(1980), written by Sam Shepard, belongs to his trilogy, including Curse of the Starving Class(1976) and Buried Child(1978). In this play, Lee and Austin are two sons of a father who does not appear on the stage. The relationship between father and two sons is a recurrent theme found in many American plays. The two sons are alter egos of their father. In True West, Lee is a desert rat whereas Austin is a successful writer in Hollywood. Absent father theme is a salient leitmotif among some representative American plays since this theme refers to malfunction and disintegration of a family where fathers left for their family, searching for their oppressed masculinity. Struggle and conflict between a father and two sons shows ambivalent feelings of complaints about and longing for their father. In this respect, bereft two sons search for and trace their father’s path. The producer, Saul Kimmer, chose Lee’s script rather than Austin’s because Lee’s endorses its authenticity. Lee’s authentic story is about the West which is real as told by Lee. Moreover, Kimmer’s decision of degrading Austin as a ghost writer seems to guarantee commercial success in the Hollywood mass culture. The West and his father’s false teeth are of significance in that both of them provide the sons with lack of lack. Their conflict is accelerated when they search for the authenticity of the West, which is written by ghost writer Austin based on the story produced by Lee. More specifically, Austin’s lack of experiencing to live in the West triggers to move towards the West. In particular, the West is an idealistic land where their father exists so that his sons would like to follow their father in order to ensure their masculinity. In so doing, they consume the image of the West since it is the very place where their father left for them and draws their imagination. As an imaginative place for the American Dream, the West is a simulacre for it continues to produce just false images. Also, the signifier, “the West” itself, is shown through the last scene, implying a variety of signifieds without ending. The final scene of confronting each other represents a still and eternal image of coyotes in the desert field, which is not supposed to end.

The Meaning of Escape in Sam Shepard's True West

WonJoo Lee | 2011, 24(2) | pp.197~217 | number of Cited : 1

Sex, Lies, and Education: Oleanna and Doubt

Hyung Shik Lee | 2011, 24(2) | pp.219~244 | number of Cited : 5

Both Oleanna and Doubt aroused controversy by dealing with sexual harrassment occurring in school environment. Produced right after Thomas Clarence-Anital Hill hearing, Oleanna has been interpreted as the conservative political position of the playwright despite his adamant denial. Doubt also triggered controversy because it was written right after the clerical child-abuse scandals that have shaken Catholic Church for the last two decades. Both plays share some similarities that merit our attention; the alleged sexual harrassment or molesting takes place within the school boundary in both plays, which is supposed to be the sanctuary of moral and ethical standard; the incidents provide opportunities for the power struggle between the conservatives and the liberals; both depict the damages of this power struggle on American education and students. In Oleanna, John, who is on the point of being given a tenure, professes himself to be a liberal maverick who attacks the inadequacies of school system. While criticizing the school system, he mocks the efforts of hardworking students like Carol who strive to be initiated into academia. The tool he uses when he is doing this is the power of the language, which Carol has a hard time understanding, and which can be misinterpreted as sexual harrassment. In Act II, Carol comes back empowered by the language of her linguistic community, her feminist “group,” and attacks John for every word he has spoken and every action he has taken. The struggle for power escalates into a climax when John has no alternatives but to rely on physical violence. The tragedy in this play arises out of both parties’ refusal to understand and communicate with each other, entrenched within their own language. Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius are engaged in similar struggle for power in Doubt. Their battle is between the new Church and the old, between priests and nuns, the alleged abuser and the defender. Sister Aloysius suspects that Father Flynn is a gay and molested Donald Muller, the only black student in St. Nicholas. Even though nothing is proven, Sister Aloysius acts on her gut instinct and pushes him into the corner. After the final confrontation in the principal’s office, which becomes the battleground for the showdown between the proponent of the Second Vatican Council and the supporter of orthodox Catholicism, Sister Aloysius succeeds in expelling Father Flynn by telling him a lie, saying that she called his previous parish. However, all of them suffer from the aftermath; Donald Muller is heartbroken and Sister James loses her love of teaching; the certainty of Sister Aloysius is also shaken when she hears the news of Father Flynn’s promotion. Oleanna and Doubt depict the dystopian world of American education which is demolished by those who are absorbed in the power struggle in which nobody wins.

Glaspell’s Aesthetics of Absence: Paradox Beyond the Grave

Yumi Hong | 2011, 24(2) | pp.245~281 | number of Cited : 1

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Susan Glaspell(1876-1948), the representative female playwright in the history of the American theatre, has generated critical debates and drawn critical attention not only as the contemporary writer and colleague of Eugene O’Neill but also as a great female writer. Although she has been drawing feminists’ attention since her first inclusion in literary cannon in the 1980s, Glaspell still remains relatively on the margin of the critical studies and debates. This paper, focusing on Glaspell’s Bernice and Alison’s House, aims to restore the interests in her works and provoke more studies about her and her works by discussing Glaspell’s ‘aesthetics of absence’ and her absent heroines who are already dead. Bernice and Alison’s House both show the whole process of exploring and constructing the identity of each absent heroine, whose ‘absent presence’ overwhelms the other living characters as the center of the stage. Giving more power to absence and silence than to presence and speech, both plays contain Glaspell’s strategy of paradox as her attempt to demolish the established gender-based system and to ‘make’ new orders and new values. Part I explores general characteristics of Glaspell’s ‘aesthetics of absence’ and her device of the absent heroine. Part II discusses the constructing process of Bernice’s identity and the significance of Bernice’s lie in terms of power, and examines how Bernice disrupts the myth of ‘the angel of the house’ by exercising power over her husband with her lie rather than the truth. Part III examines Alison’s problematic unpublished love poems about her forbidden love and how her works provoke debates about the ownership of artistic work. The involvement of male power in editing, publishing, and evaluating female writer’s works is also discussed. With Alison serving as the representative of female writers, and her house and her room serving as “a room of one’s own” for female writers, Glaspell raises questions about the absent female writers and their authorship. Finally, Glaspell achieves the paradox beyond the grave by highlighting how Bernice through her lie and Alison through her unpublished love poetry take presence to the people living, exercising their power beyond their death. Like her absent heroines, Glaspell herself, being absent for a while in the history of the theatre, goes beyond her absence and death, requesting her place in the literary history as a writer who deserves ‘constant and persistent’ critical studies.

Theatereality: Beckett's Strategy of Late Dramaticules

Hwang, Hoon-sung | 2011, 24(2) | pp.283~298 | number of Cited : 0

This paper is a semiotic investigation into the textual phenomenon of “theatereality.” I will discuss two late masterpieces: Play and Not I, where the echoing relationship between the stage fiction and the stage fact prevails. This echoing phenomenon is so dominant that critics can hardly deal with Beckett’s late plays without mentioning it. since it functions as a paradigmatic tool for Beckett’s late dramaturgy. Theatereality refers to a near convergence between the stage fiction and the stage fact; semiotically translated, it parallels “a technique of problematizing the relationship between verbal sign (parole) and visual signs (mimique, geste, mouvement, maquillage, coiffure, costume, accessoire, décor, éclairage)”. In other words, Beckett’s late plays present a playful mirror-game between the protagonist’s fiction and the stage scene; e.g., a playful relationship between the parole/éclairage in Play; a playful mirroring between the parole/ mimique, geste, and mouvement in Not I, Footfalls, and Ohio Impromptu; and a mirroring between the parole/ geste, mouvement, costume; and décor in A Piece of Monologue and Rockaby. In Play, theatereality is interwoven with the topos of theatrum mundi, the light-interrrogator creates a “theatereal” moment, in which the three players are simultaneously real and theatrical. The audience is thus alerted to the similarity between the theatrical condition of the three players and the real condition of its own life, i. e., a limbo-like situation where absolute loneliness and eternal suffering are real. Instead of theatrum mundi topos, theatereality is highlighted in Not I. If theatereality is conceived as the moment when the narrator’s verbal fiction echoes his/her condition of narration on stage, there are five “theatereal moments” in this play. The powerful image of the mouth produces multiple layers of meaning: literal, metaphoric, and symbolic. The latter two levels of signification extend this play in depth. Metaphorically, Mouth’s logorrhea, discharged form a human orifice, stands for the indigestible nature of the heroine’s life. Symbolically, Mouth is no less than an archetypal icon of the threshold between darkness (chaos)/ light (logos), offstage/ stage, thereby laying bare the process of theatrical represenation. In short, theatereality is a methodological awakening: although the audience does not succeed in identifying the referent, they are awakened to their own habitual (thus naturalized) way of receiving a theatrical performance. Semiotically speaking, they are provided with valuable insights about how theatrical communication and signification occur in the course of theatrical reception.

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Journal of Modern English Drama 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.11

2011, Vol.24, No.2