@article{ART003197321},
author={Heebon Park-Finch},
title={Crisis Monologues on the Small Screen: Personal and Social Alienation in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads},
journal={Journal of Modern English Drama},
issn={1226-3397},
year={2025},
volume={38},
number={1},
pages={115-142}
TY - JOUR
AU - Heebon Park-Finch
TI - Crisis Monologues on the Small Screen: Personal and Social Alienation in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads
JO - Journal of Modern English Drama
PY - 2025
VL - 38
IS - 1
PB - 한국현대영미드라마학회
SP - 115
EP - 142
SN - 1226-3397
AB - This paper examines Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads series (1988/1998, and the 2020 remake) televised by the BBC, focusing on the depiction of alienated British citizens in the north of England from the era of Thatcherism to that of COVID lockdown. The nationwide broadcasting of these forty-minute monologues proved an effective and popular media event, addressing the plight of marginalized individuals suffering loss, isolation, marital trauma, or mental health problems. The dramatic monologues generate meaning with a shifting tone that still resonates today, as evidenced in two representative episodes. A Chip in the Sugar (Series One) features a repressed, closeted homosexual bachelor with a history of mental illness, who lives with his senile mother. Nights in the Gardens of Spain (Series Two) addresses the nature and precarity of domestic abuse and hidden violence. The victim is a naive, suburban wife who awakens to her entrapment in a loveless, childless marriage during prison visits to her mariticidal neighbor. Bennett’s insightful observations regarding these self-delusory characters suggest that they are not wholly responsible for their crises and that their situations can be traced back to a lack of institutional care in the UK government. Each unreliable narrator is representative of a community that has been ignored and mistreated by society as a whole. These ironic, witty, and understated monologues draw our attention to the health of the nation through the circumstances of its disadvantaged citizens and confirm Bennett as a master of the televisual monologue.
KW - Alan Bennett; Talking Heads; monologue; A Chip in the Sugar;Nights in the Gardens of Spain;alienation
DO -
UR -
ER -
Heebon Park-Finch. (2025). Crisis Monologues on the Small Screen: Personal and Social Alienation in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads. Journal of Modern English Drama, 38(1), 115-142.
Heebon Park-Finch. 2025, "Crisis Monologues on the Small Screen: Personal and Social Alienation in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads", Journal of Modern English Drama, vol.38, no.1 pp.115-142.
Heebon Park-Finch "Crisis Monologues on the Small Screen: Personal and Social Alienation in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads" Journal of Modern English Drama 38.1 pp.115-142 (2025) : 115.
Heebon Park-Finch. Crisis Monologues on the Small Screen: Personal and Social Alienation in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads. 2025; 38(1), 115-142.
Heebon Park-Finch. "Crisis Monologues on the Small Screen: Personal and Social Alienation in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads" Journal of Modern English Drama 38, no.1 (2025) : 115-142.
Heebon Park-Finch. Crisis Monologues on the Small Screen: Personal and Social Alienation in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads. Journal of Modern English Drama, 38(1), 115-142.
Heebon Park-Finch. Crisis Monologues on the Small Screen: Personal and Social Alienation in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads. Journal of Modern English Drama. 2025; 38(1) 115-142.
Heebon Park-Finch. Crisis Monologues on the Small Screen: Personal and Social Alienation in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads. 2025; 38(1), 115-142.
Heebon Park-Finch. "Crisis Monologues on the Small Screen: Personal and Social Alienation in Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads" Journal of Modern English Drama 38, no.1 (2025) : 115-142.
