Summary A level English Literature - Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire context table - eduquas
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Course
Drama
Institution
WJEC
A level English Literature - Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire context table - eduquas - includes social, political, historical, literary, staging, different film interpretations, language politics, gender politics, class, Southern Belle, expressionist theatre
Expressionism and plastic theatre
- Sound - Background music echoes the actions of the play.
- The blues piano, which is heard by all the characters as well as the audience, is the
sound of New Orleans, a cultural and social melting pot. It gives a somewhat
melancholy atmosphere from the beginning of the play, mirroring the events.
- In contrast, Blanche’s internal Varsouviana Polka is the sound of the old-fashioned
world of Belle Reve.
- The Polka symbolises the moment at which her innocence was lost. It both
represents her grief and guilt over his death and her state of mind: becoming
'feverish' during Scene IX, and fading in and out towards the end, as her grip on
reality weakens.
- The musical elements symbolise the mental aspects of the play, which can't easily be
portrayed on stage, but which are so important in explaining Blanche's behaviour.
- Expressionist quality - used to reveal a truth which might not be conveyed in the
more realist elements of the play.
Southern Gothic
- Williams’ work is a late echo of the Southern Gothic tradition which began in the
nineteenth century in response to the South’s loss in the Civil War
- Williams can be seen as part of the ‘Southern Gothic’ movement, characterised by a
rich, even grotesque, imagination, and an awareness of being part of a decaying
culture.
Difference in play vs film
- The film has an inexplicable gap, without a reason for the secret narrative of
Blanche’s husband’s suicide, we are left with an absence.
- Veiled words: Done to avoid the moral and legal problems surrounding the
representation of homosexuality in the media
- In the film, the forbidden sexuality vanishes completely due to institutional pressures,
despite being the root problem of the secret narrative.
- Ending: In the play script, Stella doesn’t admit to what is happening and submits to
Stanley’s embrace. The film ends ambiguously: Stella has either left Stanley for
good, or, as a woman who puts up with and thrives on his violence, will return to him
as she did before.
- Staging of the rape scene - Kazan, in the film, decided to tone down the
expressionistic elements in the scene, replacing the lurid shadows with very real
violence on Stanley’s part: he sweeps the rhinestone tiara off Blanche’s head and
tosses it upstage as she flees from him in terror. Under Kazan’s direction Stanley is
entirely culpable and Blanche is the total victim.
- Stanley’s lines are cut in the film so the fact of rape is momentarily obscured, until
later when Stanley is accused and his defensive lying makes it certain and further
isolates him.
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