While I haven’t read the rest of his screenplays, my school had us do a report on Streetcar a few months ago and I must say that I quite enjoyed reading it. Blanche is such a good character-especially for that time period, and the themes he explores are quite insightful as well!
Don’t mind me, just going to shill more of Heathers in animation form:
I’m a fan too, I suppose. I have read little of his work but I really like the flow of the words. It truly feels like the writing is quite articulate, with all the words ‘set’ in the proper places and everything. What other plays of his have you read?
Streetcar, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Glass Menagerie. I’ve seen the film versions of all of those and Suddenly Last Summer and I’ve seen Streetcar preformed a few time, always well. The first two are def my favorites; Menagerie is a little needlessly sad for me and Suddenly Last Summer is way way out there.
Streetcar and Glass Menagerie both have really good film adaptions, though Streetcar’s tones down some of the themes. I can’t compare the versions of Suddenly Last Summer because I never read the play. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is probably a good film on its own, but it so wildly misses the point of the play that I have to hate it on principle.
Anyway, I’m southern and gay I’m probably required to like this guy’s stuff. Even if it wasn’t fantastic.
Edit: Which ones have you read @Sapphire?
The part where Stella left Stanley in the film adaptation felt pretty weak to me, tbh. I felt like there needed to be a happy end quota, so the director forced it in.
I feel that. I don’t hate it as much as the “happy ending” they gave Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but it is pretty forced. I don’t think it’s as noticeable though, because Stella’s not really the main character, Blanche is, and Blanche’s story isn’t really changed (as horrifying as it is). But yeah, I feel what you’re saying.
Aeschylus is also a great playwright, if a bit less radical in his views than Euripides for his time, though it does not make his plays any less masterful in my opinion. I would recommend just reading it rather than me going on about my opinions on his writing style, after all that kind of thing can vary based on the translator anyway.
As for Moliere that is quite true, though unlike later writers he manages not to sacrifice the story and plot on an altar of ideology, such as writers like Pirandello and Brecht do. However, when it comes to post-Shakespearean playwrights, I would have to say Goethe and his Faust takes the cake. I can’t in good faith say I like anyone post-Shakespeare better than him right now when it comes to plays. Definitely far better than any other modern to say the least. Germans make good stuff, he also was at the battle of Valmy, which is an interesting little historical tidbit. He wrote about the fervor with which the French fought the Austrian forces aswell.
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You’re right, Pirandello does start with another setting then continues on to a more abstract one, though I do enjoy his works, and especially this aspect of it. Like for example, how in ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’, he starts analyzing the making of the story itself and it intertwines that with the story being told at the same time, very fascinating manner of storytelling. As for Brecht, I haven’t read him, so I don’t have much to say, well nothing to say really. As for Goethe, yes, he is very good. He has a mastery over analyzing the feelings of his characters in a very artistic way, such as is the case with Faust. And the fact that he also wrote about the Battle of Valmy and how the French fought the Austrian just goes to show how good his skills in articulating the psychology and feelings of the people are.
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Going more on about Streetcar, this year I had to write two essay’s on Streetcar-the first one was just a basic analysis, while the second one was a 12 page comparison paper between Streetcar and The Great Gatsby through the lens of double-consciousness.
Looking back on my essay now, Blanche’s struggle with to move on with her life vs living in delusions and her view on the truth was really quite interesting and reminded me of a certain Umineko character.
Brecht was a committed and lifelong Marxist, and was dedicated to re-purposing theater to be something more of a way to convey political ideas. Im also just not fond of the postmodernist ideology in general, giving rise to my dislike of a lot of the more recent stuff to come out of Western playwrights and such. It tends to just not be my taste, and even the Modernists were generally not my cup of tea, though a few exceptions like Kafka do exist for me.
I tend to look for character development and plot rather than an ideology being pushed and while I find Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author as having an interesting concept, its just not what I am mainly looking for in a play, I suppose. Hence why I tend to drift towards older works with a heavier focus on the storytelling element in general, I suppose. Do you perhaps have a favorite Shakespeare play? I tend to be partial to Julius Caesar for obvious reasons, since I happen to study Rome a lot.
Isn’t Umineko technically postmodernist too, being a deconstruction of Golden Age mystery and all that?
Ehhh, sort of kinda but its a different perspective imo. It doesn’t carry a lot of the baggage the western postmodernists do from what I can tell.
Would you mind explaining that different perspective? I’m kinda curious tbh.
See, the typical Postmodernist perspective is weighed down a lot more in the western tradition of it, in that it seems rather married to its roots in Nietzsche’s Perspectivalism and Relativism, causing it to tend to reject the notion of a concrete reality whatsoever.
(SPOILERS HOLY SHIT UMINEKO SPOILERS TURN OFF NOW IF YOU HAVENT READ IT TO THE ABSOLUTE END YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED) However while Umineko seems to have that, its more that its lesson is that while there is a concrete, fixed reality in the Book of Single Truth, it more seems to advocate that sometimes other things can be more important than finding that truth, since at times to the common person a pleasant fiction is better than a harsh reality. Thats what Umineko is about, rather than say the denial of such a fixed reality in general. It takes up the trappings of such, but in reality it still seems to acknowledge a fixed reality underneath. This seems to me to be perhaps a product of not being from the Western Tradition, but the Easten Tradition, bringing a different perspective to the table.
I think postmodernism is a very broad term, there are a lot of different stories written in that style some good ones, and some bad ones and it’s elements are used in many works of fiction that might not be entirely postmodernist. So generalizing like that is a bit unfair.
I just tend to be objectivist so I take umbrage a bit with its tending towards relativism and such. Postmodernism is kind of my bugbear so just ignore me a bit on it. I’m talking mostly ‘archetypical’ postmodern works when I talk about that I suppose. Especially ones that tend to be anchored in the more relativist strain than the deconstruction vein.
Fair enough, there are certainly some elements in postmodern works that I have a problem with. And I’m not a relativist myself, although I don’t mind it when it’s presented in an interesting way since I’m usually quite open to different views. I also tend to prefer older works though.
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I’ve always wondered, would Rosencratz and Gildenstern are Dead count as postmodern? It’s certainly very meta, but that’s not the same thing exactly, and I wouldn’t exactly call Waiting for Godot postmodern, and that’s what it most closely resembles, but I’ve heard it described that way several times.
Regarding your earlier question, @Restkastel I don’t know who it was directed toward, but my favorite Shakespeare play would probably be Twelfth Night. I also like Much Ado About Nothing and Othello a whole lot. What’s yours? Other than Julius Ceaser. And what’s your favorite genre? I tend toward his comedies, but I like the tragedies a lot too.
I put it at the end of the post asking the question, but yeah. Marc Anthony is also another good one, I rather like stuff about Rome for obvious reasons. Im the guy who restores Rome in Crusader Kings II in order to make everyone know the true might of the original and only true rulers of Europe.
And if we are discussing plays I, unfortunately, can’t add too much to the discussion. Most of the plays I’ve read and have seen performances of are Russian ones, which are probably of no interest to others, although some of them are quite good. I’ve also read some Shakespeare and I’ve read Faust. My favourite Shakespeare play is probably Macbeth, but I like his other plays as well. And I’m pretty sure I’ve read Sophocles’s and Aeschylus’s plays at some point, I don’t remember them too well though and I’ve read them in Russian. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is pretty good by the way, I’m not sure if it counts entirely as postmodern though, even if it has some elements of that style.
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