Blog Portfolio

Coverage

1. Sexism
2. Somebody to Love
3. Love and other Drugs
4. Rien A Voir
5. Set Design
6. Show Goes On
7. Super Bass
8. 1, 2, 3
9. Complicated

Depth:

For my depth post, I used my blogpost Love and Other Drugs. I went into depth by analyzing the music in A Streetcar Named Desire. I researched the topic and carefully looked through the book.

Interaction:

I discussed an idea that Saumya touched upon in her blogpost Pay no Rent in my blogpost Somebody to Love

Discussion:

Saumya and I had a discussion on my blogpost Super Bass where we debate about Scoop being an antagonist or not and we think together and come to some conclusions for ourselves.

Xenoblogging:

I expressed some criticism on Saumya's blogpost Art in Heidi.

Wildcard

I assessed the importance of communication in my wildcard Let't talk. Do you wanna talk?. 

Let's talk. Do you wanna talk?

Plains are the safest public transports on the planet but when they crash, it tends to be tragic and we have to look for the cause of the accident. Now, most of the times causes like ‘ran out of fuel’ or ‘engines broke’ are listed, even though the real reason is much simpler than that: communication. Reading the chapter ‘The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes’, made me realize how complex our communications are and how they can be a question of life or death. I often think that if we were better at communicating, we would avoid so many problems in our lives: misunderstanding, fights, secrets, hurt feelings. And it goes on and on and on. Until we come to the plane crashes, and we realize that we might have to ameliorate our talking skills. It drives me mad really, to hear that 250 people could die just because the pilot and his first commander didn’t communicate in an efficient matter. Who are we not to speak up when we’re supposed to? How can we keep secrets that lead to misunderstandings which lead to hurt feelings? Leaving the plane crashes aside, communication used to be much simpler a few dozen of years ago. My grandmother often tells me about those times where phones and internet as we know it didn’t exist. Ignoring the fact that boys used to bring a girl home after they went on a date (not sure if communication is the sole reason for that), misleading conversations and false information was avoided by the phenomena called talking. Internet couldn’t show them any upsetting gossip on Facebook, and life in general just seemed to be simpler (excluding the fact that most of the countries were destroyed from the war and had to regain their pride and wealth).  When you don’t give it a thought, talking seems like the simplest thing out there. Talking to someone about something specific on the other hand causes difficulties in some situations. I feel like nowadays we don’t even know how to talk, we feel awkward even though there’s nothing to feel awkward about! The first commander who didn’t speak up to his boss because he didn’t dare question the pilot’s commands: what a waste of awkwardness (and of human lives as we find out reading on). When brought up, knowledge issues confuse my perception of the world as well as me. I do comprehend now, that I can’t judge any pilot for lacking a clear sense of communication because I for myself don’t know what that means. Society might be the questioned factor here, but who are we to blame it on our surroundings when we’re the only ones who can make a difference for ourselves.

Complicated

The article ‘Hedda as “Modern Woman”’ by William Archer is an analysis of Hedda’s character in Hedda Gabler. The review highlights some interesting points about Hedda being a modern woman because she is so indefinable and unpredictable. The author writes that modern women are full of the ‘pettinesses, the peculiarities, the inconsistencies, the contradictions’ that we are today. Hedda is described as weak and strong, capricious and determined, petty and powerful, yet always herself, always real. This writer sees Hedda as someone complicated and yet beautiful. He has a point when he says that the various aspects to her make her a real person that is hard to define in one term like Shakespeare’s heroines.

When I read the book I personally just thought that Hedda was a bad person, a mean person. She strives to manipulate everyone around her and doesn’t care if anyone gets hurt. She sticks to her beliefs, yes, but who in their right mind would actually go so far as to give a gun to someone and tell them to ‘make it beautiful’. She is happy when she hears that Lövborg killed himself and sad when she hears that he didn’t do it intentionally. She clearly has some kind of psychological problem that she doesn’t know how to deal with. She shoots herself, not considering the baby that she carries in her belly. I understand that people would go to extremes to not be dependent of a man, but who willingly kills their baby too? She is someone who is too arrogant and too self-obsessed to compromise and talk about thinks or figure things out before taking action. She doesn’t know what it means to love someone and she doesn’t know what it means to get over something. A minute a woman shows interest in a man that she had long forgotten, she willing goes and destroys her life. She seriously has some issues. I know that she is a complex and interesting character that deserves that she is analyzed and understood and found fascinating but I just cannot relate to her. It seems as though she doesn’t know what she wants either: she fools around and as William Archer says, is sometimes weak, sometimes strong and above all contradictory. If she was so true to her beliefs and motifs, she shouldn’t be so flaky. 

1, 2, 3

Scoop verses Stanley.

        

Scoop is Heidi’s antagonist. He thinks with his hormones and is very overpowering. At the same time he is smart and calculating. He doesn’t just do something irrationally but thinks it through. Stanley is more impulsive in his actions. He likes to just let loose or get drunk and yell at people. He even rapes (or at least overpowers) Blanche, which is something Scoop would not do. He is more the type of guy that tries to seduce a woman verbally. At the beginning of the Heidi Chronicles he provokes Heidi so much that she goes for him even though it clearly looks like she despises him. He has a way of irritating women and challenging them intellectually in order to get their attention. Stanley isn’t characterized as a very smart person. He is there with his polish/southern accent and people focus more on his body than on what he has to say. He isn’t dumb, as he figures out that there is something wrong with Blanche and that she’s lying about her situation, but he tends to repeat the words he thinks sound smart, as for example ‘acquaintance’.

Another characteristic feature of Scoop’s is that he likes to rate things on a scale of A to F, showing that he’s had experience with education and is shaped in a way that he rates a value of each thing while talking. Stanley on the other hand hasn’t gone to university and is said to be very simple and not greatly wealthy or educated.

Something that does make them similar is that they have a way of being involved with at least two women in the story. They seem irresistible and THE man to have disregarding their unfortunate character traits. They are both involved with the protagonist, but they aren’t exactly happy together in the end. Stanley and Scoop are in a way antagonist because they oppose the protagonist’s ideas and lead them to failure.

Two men, two different characters, but they’re still very similar. There’s just something about their rudeness and lack of sensibility towards a woman that makes them look alike. 

Super Bass

Is Scoop our antagonist?

p.168: Scoop is being introduced as someone who opposes Heidi. This is shown by the way he tells her what she is: ‘You’re being very difficult”. He then tells her what he thinks of her, “You really have one hell of an inferiority complex”. He puts her in a very defined spot by repeatedly using the word ‘you’ when addressing her. The first time he is introduced, he is portrayed as someone who has a fix image of her even though they have just met. It seems as though he tries to push her over the edge by insulting her and questioning her actions. The reason why he’s being so pushy might be that he is trying to get a specific reaction out of her, as it looks like he has a goal in mind when talking to her. Scoop uses words such as ‘obviously’ to define himself as someone who knows better than Heidi herself what she is like: “ I mean, you’re obviously a liberal, or you wouldn’t be here”. The way he talks to her is dominant and rude. He makes her feel inferior to him and makes himself stand out as the alpha male.  What is interesting is that whatever he does and says to her only makes her more attracted to him, which contradicts her feminist image. Scoop also commands Heidi around: “That’s bullshit. Be real. You’re neat and clean for Eugene”. After making her feel put on the spot by him, he directly insults her by saying: “I have absolutely no interest in you. You’ve been incredibly obnoxious and your looks are B-“.  Once she actually tries to make some conversation and is interested in what he says she asks him if he works for a paper and he responds: “Did they teach you at Vassar to ask so many inane questions in order to keep a conversation going?”, shutting her down one more time.

The way Scoop is introduced to the play makes him very well look like the antagonist, even though that doesn’t mean that there is certain chemistry between the two characters. Throughout the play he has the role of contradicting Heidi. They’re opposites, even if they might be in love. By making Heidi dependant of him, he ruins her image of a feminist, as she contradicts her own beliefs by being in love with him after he’s married and has kids. Scoop admires Heidi because of all the strength she puts into her beliefs but he would never marry her. He needs a woman that stays at home and takes care of the kids while he brings home the money and food.

What message does Wasserstein use him to convey?

Feels everything is below him as he grades frivolous aspects that he encounters in life (books, bands, people) below himself. He claims Princeton University wasn’t worth him, and didn’t deserve him. He challenges the protagonist’s Heidi’s opinions, and triumphs over her.

Portrayed as the Alpha Male character who has no fears about walking up to a stranger, and bluntly questioning her is she had sexual intercourse. Scoop keeps Heidi on his hook, even long after his married life, using her as an escape goat once in a blue moon. Heidi too describes him as her “Bad habit who she is addicted too.” The interactions between these 2 characters are very limited, and they only meet by chance once in a blue moon through their friends. The contrast between the confident alpha male Scoop, and the reserved Heidi with an inferiority complex highlights the society in the post World War II era. Heidi is described to be a trivial women, while Scoop is a serious man. The scene where Heidi is unable to get a word in edge wise during the live studio interview in New York due to the intervention of Scoop and also Peter in her opinions. In this era female opinions were considered trivial and worthless, thus leading to the emergence of feminist humans led by Heidi (Humanist, as termed by her). Her lecturing of renowned female artists virtually unheard of today, mimics and mirrors her position in her life and society which she strives to change.

What techniques does Wasserstein use to convey this message?

Wasserstein uses Scoop’s language to convey that women after World War Two had no power compared to men. The use of ‘you’ makes him look like he knows a lot about her and women in general. He pushes her so much with insults and swearwords, that she adapts her language to his’ and uses words such as ‘fuck’. The author makes Heidi and Scoop complete opposites, but by letting Scoop support the feminist beliefs in some ways he portrays and yet choose a woman who doesn’t give such demands, he put women in a light where men are more dominant than them. 

Show Goes On

The film version we saw of A Streetcar Named Desire took a few different turns than the written version of the play. For one, it had a less tragic end because Stella left Stanley, together with the baby, which certainly satisfied all the feminists out there. A violent husband isn’t a place for a woman and her newborn baby! One would say. Blanche’s destiny stays similar to the book. Blanche is taken away by a doctor and her last scene ends dramatically with the words along the lines of ‘I’ve always relayed on the kindness of strangers’. What was really interesting to see about Blanche’s story was that the director chose to leave out the part of Blanche’s dead husband being homosexual. There might be many reasons as to why one would make that choice, even though I think that it takes out a whole big chunk of interesting analysis.  As Tennessee Williams was gay himself, I find that taking out that piece of information ruins a whole part of the story. There seems no valid reason anymore as to why her husband shoots himself after she confronts him.

Because it was a movie, the set was a little different than described in the book, as there were multiple perspectives that the actors could be looked at. A thing that they did very well was that they didn’t show the bathroom either, just like in the book. There are only supposed to be two rooms, the living room and the bedroom, but in the movie there is also some sort of small area at the door, which seems like a practical adjustment to the set, as it creates more privacy.

Stella is portrayed much older than she’s described in the book. Blanche doesn’t look old at all and she doesn’t seem old either when Stanley rips off the cover of the lamp. Stella, who is described as a young, vivid and pretty girl, looks old and almost unattractive.

What was also a little irritating were the stairs and Eunice’s balcony. They don’t correspond at all to what was described in the book. It is possible that it was done for practical purposes, but it ruins the whole idea of an old fire escape staircase across the wall that one imagines when reading the italics of the play.

The movie is a great interpretation of the book, even though it left out some important parts of the actual story.

Set Design

This is my drawing of the imaginary stage of 'a streetcar named desire'. I would set the stage so that a white-grey-ish brick wall with a cross ladder is encircling the actual stage, which is reduced to a kitchen with a table and a cupboard (with the rum hidden in it) and a foldable bed for Blanche in the closet, separated from the bedroom by a flowered curtain (Blanche exchanged it with a plain one because she wanted to bring more color into the apartment). The bedroom has a bed only, accompanied by a radio and a night lamp. The lamp is currently hidden by the bed, on the other side of it. The radio was stored in the cupboard by Stella because of her husband's bad temper. The bathroom also has a door to the bathroom with a bathtub in it. The bathroom door can be opened, but won't see much happening there. The main action will always happen in these two rooms. On top of the brick wall you can see the two windows of Eunice's apartment. Whenever people are upstairs, the lights will go on and shadows will be visible at the windows but never clear faces or bodies. The reason why the table is the biggest object in the kitchen, is because whenever something important happens, someone will be either having a drink at the table, playing cards or sitting down. The trick with this awesome stage is that when the action only happens in the kitchen, the whole bedroom can be pushed to the side with the curtain, so that it looks like the view is just on the kitchen, but more focused. This will only happen when Blanche's foldable bed needs to be out, or more people have come over for poker, so that there isn't a space issue.
When the action happens on the streets, an extended brick wall can be let down to hide the rooms and let the audience focus on the street. The streets are drawn on the stage in front of the rooms so that it gives the play a sense of motion even though they live in a very enclosed area.