En trouvant une hypothèse dramaturgique dans « la pièce écossaise »

À l'Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, pour voir Macbeth—écrit par William Shakespeare et traduit en français par Daniel Loayza et le metteur-en-scène, Stéphane Braunschweig (Les Solitaires Intempestifs, 2018)—personne ne peut éviter les différences claires, inspirées par le privilège socioéconomique, qui sont construites dans le bâtiment-même. Lorsqu’à la corbeille, on peut toujours voir toute la scène, ce n’est pas forcément le cas pour les gens au paradis. La structure du théâtre forme un continuum de privilèges, parallèles aux prix du billet, et par extension, du statut socioéconomique. Trouver une bon perspective, c’est presque un jeu de pouvoir.

Le rideau s’ouvre sur une pièce totalement blanche, ornée de carrelage simple, comme une prison ou un hôpital psychiatrique. Voilà les trois sœurs, chacune assise sur un seau gris. Elles se sont étalées, chaque femme avec son propre tiers de la scène. Les sœurs fatales sont toutes enceintes, et elles caressent leurs ventres en disant leurs mots, interrompus de petits gémissements, tels des chats.

Soudainement, vient le tonnerre, et le mur derrière les femmes se divise en deux, en séparant du centre, pour dévoiler une salle extrêmement élégante, décorée de pièces d’art de la haute-culture, qui montrent des femmes, toutes nues et vulnérables, comme des anges. Tout ce qui est dans cette salle est symétrique et extrêmement ordonné, pour qu’elle puisse toujours séparer sans avertissement. Chaque fois que le tonnerre foudroie, la scène se termine et l’endroit change. Lorsque l’avant-scène blanc reste constant pendant toute la pièce, le thème de la salle derrière les meubles et l’existence-même de cette salle sont toujours variable. Voilà la construction d’une double-scénographie : Le public voit quelquefois plusieurs scènes, dans des endroits différents, en même temps. C’est la raison pour laquelle cette mise-en-scène peut désorienter son spectateur.

Critique de La Cantatrice chauve

Au Théâtre de l'Athénée, pour voir La Cantatrice chauve, d’Eugène Ionesco, dans une mise-en-scène de Jean-Luc Lagarce, reprise à l’identique 26 ans plus tard, on commence par ne voir que le rideau, à l’avant-scène. Par conséquent, il faut que nous regardions le reste du théâtre : un établissement qui montre un peu de l'héritage de l’architecture traditionnelle des théâtres à l’italienne. Pour les places les moins chères, au paradis, du côté paires, on ne peut même pas voir tout le rideau, à cause de la construction du théâtre. En revanche, on voit clairement où serait le roi—s’il y avait toujours un roi de France qui assistait aux spectacles. C’est peut-être la raison pour laquelle les spectateurs au poulailler sacrifiaient un bon point de vue de la scène pour une meilleure perspective de la corbeille. Dans ce sens, les places des étudiants les moins chères composaient probablement un bastion des classes sociales les plus basses.

Au début du spectacle, le rideau se lève, pour que nous puissions voir clairement une maison simple mais élégante—avec une pelouse dans l'arrière-cour. Ce qui sépare la scène des coulisses est une clôture simple, et rien de plus. On peut dire que c’est une scénographie d’une bande-dessinée, mais c’est quelque chose de plus cliché : La maison me rappelle les constructions de l’après-guerre aux États-Unis, quand tous les soldats rentraient chez eux. Cette maison est dans le style de William Levitt, à l’image de la banlieue paradisiaque. La scénographie a aussi un air nostalgique pour les feuilletons américains comme The Brady Bunch. Elle fait un rappel du rêve américain, malgré sa simplicité et son esprit superficiel—et le fait qu’il n’y a pas de vraies pièces dans cette maison.

« La Vallée de l’étrange »

« La Vallée de l’étrange » est un concept de Masahiro Mori qui décrit les objets qui ont un certain resemblance anthropomorphique imparfait, mais qui ne ressemblent guère les autres objets auxquels beaucoup de monde s’est habitué. Cette idée est originellement d'après le terme de Sigmund Freud, « l'inquiétante étrangeté » , pour décrire l’état entre l'être-humain et l’objet. Les personnes trouvent du confort en identifiant exactement tout ce qui est humain et tout ce que n’est qu’un objet. Cependant, les objets dans cette vallée sont plus difficile à distinguer. Alors, ils gênent plusieurs gens, qui ne peuvent immédiatement et sans doute les identifier en tant qu’être-vivant ou pas. C’est la raison pour laquelle Mori utilise aussi le terme « la vallée dérangeante » .

Dans le monde contemporain, il y a plusieurs exemples d’objets qui se trouve dans cette vallée. Les robots avec l’intelligence artificielle qui ressemblent les êtres-humains, par exemple, appartiennent à cette catégorie. Les marionnettes peuvent aussi se trouver dans cette vallée, parce qu’elles ont l’apparence de bouger et de parler comme de vraies êtres-vivants, mais ce n’est qu’une illusion. En revanche, même les êtres-humains peuvent se trouver dans cette espace dérangeante. Les cadavres gênent beaucoup de monde, parce qu’ils sont vraisemblables aux corps des personnes vivantes. Les clowns font aussi partie de cette catégorie, parce qu’ils utilisent du maquillage comme s’ils ne sont même pas des êtres-humains.

Quels liens particuliers la marionnette entretient-elle avec le texte et la voix ?

Pour un genre de théâtre qui rappelle beaucoup de monde de la danse classique—où il n’y a pas de paroles—la marionnette maintient des relations précaires avec le texte et la voix. Ces liens particuliers sont souvent connectés à la relation entre la marionnette et le manipulateur, parce que le manipulateur construit l’illusion de sa vie, en la faisant parler. Pour chaque technique différente la faisant parler ou pas, il y a des ramifications uniques. Elles dépendent en grande partie du texte, aussi, qui dirige les manipulateurs et les marionnettes. Somme toute, les relations entre la marionnette, la voix, et la parole suscitent des rapports dialectiques entre le manipulateur et la marionnette, vis-à-vis la liberté d’agir de façon autonome.


Le manipulateur parle fréquemment pour la marionnette d’une façon transparente, afin que la marionnette bouge comme si elle parlait en vrai. Avec cette technique, le manipulateur contrôle les mouvements et la voix de la poupée. Il lui donne l’illusion de la vie, avec une faculté émotionnelle. Par conséquent, la marionnette subit une transformation d’objet à personnage. Quelques spectacles qui exploitent cette technique sont White dog, Chambre noire, Avenue Q, et Nosferatu. Malgré l’illusion de l’autonomie de la marionnette, c’est toujours le manipulateur qui décide tout ce que la marionnette fait et dit. En fait, s’il décide tout d’un coup d’improviser, il peut donner de nouvelles paroles à la marionnette, sans objection, parce qu’elle n’est pas capable de protester. Alors, le manipulateur contrôle aussi la direction de l’histoire. Ainsi, les inégalités de la capacité à dire ce que l’on veut rend toujours la marionnette subordonnée au manipulateur. C’est la raison pour laquelle le chien dans White dog n’aboie que quand son manipulateur le veut, et les marionnettes dans Avenue Q chante quand leurs manipulateurs décident de chanter. Grâce à cette inégalité, la marionnette est toujours obligée de suivre le manipulateur qui dirige l’histoire.

L’Oracle-prédiction et l’oracle-commandement : Trouvant la responsabilité en Œdipe Roi

“Il tuera son père. Il épousera sa mère” (Cocteau 38). Cette citation parodiant l’oracle d’Œdipe Roi, par Sophocle, montre le problème qui est sans doute au centre de la pièce. Cependant, entre l'édition originale de Sophocle, qui a écrit sa pièce dans le contexte de la Grèce d'antiquité, et celle de Voltaire, qui s’est immergé dans la culture de la France du 18ème siècle, la signification de l’oracle change dramatiquement. Lorsque, chez Sophocle, les oracles sont plus proches de prédictions véritables des dieux, données à la populace par les clairvoyants, comme Tirésias (Stoneman 5), Voltaire les utilise pour transmettre les commandements des dieux. Par extension, l'incidence de parricide pour Œdipe “au croisement de deux chemins” (Sophocle 55), et son long mariage avec Jocaste, sa mère, tout sans le savoir, sont, chez Sophocle, une série d’actes de malchance pour laquelle la responsabilité est à Œdipe. Cependant, chez Voltaire, la question de responsabilité pour un homme qui peut pas désobéir son foi—c’est un peu plus complexe. Dans cette composition, je vais manifester que Voltaire exploite cette tragédie de parricide et d’inceste pour déplacer la responsabilité pour les deux péchés d’Œdipe à la divinité, pour rendre évident au peuple moderne que la prédestination peut normaliser des crimes terribles, et par conséquent, cette croyance n’est pas un code d'éthiques légitime.

La Libération Animale — Critique

Introduction

La Libération Animale, de Peter Singer, a été premièrement écrit en 1975, et une traduction française par Louise Rousselle et David Olivier a été publiée en 2012. Cette édition, publiée par Payot & Rivages, est à 477 pages. Ce livre est sur la justice parmi les animaux, vis-à-vis notre choix d’utiliser les animaux pour la nourriture et comme sujets des expériences scientifiques. Pour mon évaluation, je donne une synopsis du livre et des arguments que Peter Singer présente. Après, j’analyse sa méthode, en décidant si le livre est bien efficace en suivant son objectif.

« Meurt seul, meurt sot » ? Expression and power in Kamel Daoud’s “The Meursault Investigation”

Throughout Kamel Daoub’s “The Mersault Investigation,” the abilities to express oneself and to be understood are critical ingredients in formulating and maintaining an identity. In this narrative so inextricably tied to the atrocities of the Algerian War, language becomes the very root of the central conflict, as the unnamed narrator attempts to create a unique legacy for their murdered brother, Musa.

For the narrator, this short story represents a chance to wholly ensure his brother’s continued remembrance as a unique individual, martyred in the Algerian War. He throws shade on Albert Camus, who so often treated the locals in his story as nameless pieces of decoration. In Camus’ “The Guest,” for example, Daru’s companion is exclusively labeled “the Arab,” without much of an identity at all. However, in Daoud’s piece, the narrator actively strives to differentiate Musa from the rest of “the Arabs” of Algeria, in order to prove his existence (2). Daoud’s work also jabs at Camus, referencing The Stranger, by beginning with the phrase, “Maman’s still alive today” (1). The similarity here is that, while the narrator’s mother is certainly alive, she no longer speaks. Even though she remains alive, she is powerless, unable to even prove that her son was murdered in public. The narrator laments, “How can you tell the world about that when you don’t know how to write books?” (13). This demonstrates the cruel contexts of Camus’ compositions: Camus scribed his novels with the undeniable privilege that people would read, understand, and respect his work, and for so many Algerian natives, that is just not the case.

Looking at Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif”

Throughout Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif,” Maggie represents a very particular reality in Twyla and Roberta’s moral considerations: As kids, because she is deaf and mute, they ridicule her, seeing no immediate negative ramifications for themselves. Later, they exclude her in follow-up conversations about that behavior, and they seek neither justice nor reconciliation. I contend that this empathic failure of ethics on behalf of Twyla and Roberta sheds light on more fundamental issues of who can express themselves within hierarchies based in power and oppression.

Covert Manipulation in “On Monday of Last Week”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story, “On Monday of Last Week,” presents a somber image of power struggles between an anxious husband, Neil, his largely absent wife, Tracy, and their emotionally vulnerable babysitter, Kamara. In Kamara’s long adjustment to American life, she falls victim to her sexual and unpredictable employer’s manipulation, and must grapple with the consequences.

The missing ingredient in Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author”

In “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes attempts to shift the responsibility for the construction of meaning within literary works from the author to the reader herself. This should be rather clear from the title of the piece, and it’s justified by his elegant contention, “The true locus of writing is reading” (5). This is because of the reader’s need to synthesize the various cultural spaces and contexts in which the given texts are based, as well as the prerogative of the reader to unify the “multiplicity” of the given texts (6). Such an argument makes clear that the meaning of a piece comes from those who soak it in. It’s not just inherent in the piece itself, as something toward which every reader may strive; it’s in the actual reading itself.

Adherence to virtue within the bourgeoisie of “The Christmas Tree and a Wedding”

In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx makes clear a particular argument regarding the status of the bourgeoisie: “The modern bourgeois society” has further stratified social classes in the contemporary world (34), and it must continue to modernize “the instruments of production,” so as to maintain control over the rest of the world—namely, the proletariat, the working people (38). This contention places at its core the reality of modern production, and advancements in industry. However, even at its core, the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is rather simple. Whereas the proletariat creates capital, in the process of production, it is composed of wage-labourers, whom the bourgeoisie, their bosses, pay the bare minimum to survive and remain at their job (54-5). Thus, the bourgeoisie class maintains its power from the capital produced by those subservient to them (55).

On Language as a closed system and its relevance in “The Bascombe Valley Mystery”

Given my native proficiency in English, the language in which Arthur Conan Doyle originally scribed his short story, “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” it would appear that this supposed mastery of English would lend to me, as Saussure may have argued, an automatic and irrevocable access to the closed system of English. Thus, many of the sound-images—or, images-acoustiques—would be immediately transmitted, without hesitancy, from the paper to my own thinking. And yet, that same hybris ultimately betrays a reading of the story, lending false cues toward nonexistent images and turning away from ones that may, from another perspective, seem obvious. It is clear here that—much to Saussure’s dismay, in his own focus on words with single definitions—lingual ambiguity plays such a critical role.

Art and Activism: A Purpose, A Medium, and a Hope for Change

Many believe that art, merely by its existence and its aesthetic value, inherently portrays a specific ideology. However, it may be most realistic to contend that art, throughout time, has served as a medium for expression, rather than manifesting within itself a belief system standardized among all elements of the discipline. Indeed, art exists as an opportunity for the artist to portray her own ideologies and her own opinions, and, provided she attracts an actively engaged audience, potentially provide the informational or emotional importance in effecting positive change to the problems the art addresses. <1> Moreover, art can encompass both wishes for pacifism and the like for militaristic engagement, among other ideas—the ideology it may portray cannot be limited in direction by the medium itself. Rather, art preaches empathy to those who grapple with it, fostering the beginnings of emotional understanding across boundaries that differ from portrait to portrait but nonetheless exist among all artistic works, while simultaneously pushing its viewers to yearn and to search for a greater solution to the problems it addresses. If the power of empathy for those struggling with new, different, and unique challenges may direct an audience to ameliorate the hardships of the other, brought to the viewer’s eyes via the art itself, however, the intent of the author effectively suffers from the strain of mortality, as the only aspect of the artistic piece that lives beyond its own production is the viewer’s actions after engaging with the work. The activist ideology of any work is ultimately the stream of meaning stringing across the audience’s forthcoming actions, the light streaming from the portrait, penetrating the viewers’ eyes, that encourages the diligent spectators to witness the weeping women of another world and care for them, fight their oppressors, or stand idly by the interpersonal torture. Ultimately, a reading of Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas, combined with contemporaneous visual art, suggests that art’s usage, the historical contexts of its societal impact and its post-production employment in pushing for positive change to the problems it addresses—rather than merely its existence—encapsulates its power for activism in whichever direction its audience, after grappling with the work, decides.

Die Fotografien: Omitting the Face of Total War to Ignite Pacifism

In her testament to positive peace, pragmatic empathy, and practical distributions of power, Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf captures the essence of the Spanish Civil War and positive, all-inclusive pacifism, all while failing to publish in her text any photograph remotely depicting the violence. In great irony, Woolf fails to include a single photograph of the contemporaneous Spanish terror. Instead, leveraging the inherent power of visuality within her text, she injects, in the midst of her words, five photographs of British men prominent in the international spheres of military and academia, which ultimately serve to expose and highlight amid her argument for peace the traumatic gender-based hierarchy rampaging throughout Great Britain. Thus, in maintaining her firm credence that articulating atrocity through words, rather than strictly visual media, intellectually, instead of animalistically, Woolf charges the world to fight war with peace, injustice with thoughtful care, by scribing her letters with a charred pen, allowing her words to be her only weapons against tyranny, in Western Europe and beyond.

Whose Responsibility is a Collegiate Overthrow?

In Virginia Woolf’s manifesto for gender-based equality, Three Guineas, she challenges contemporary universities—age-old institutions of higher learning, competition, and economic viability—because of their exclusion of all women, deconstructing their very foundations and scribing new blueprints of a more just, more powerful educational sub-society, one that would train all of its students in the arts of both intellectual curiosity and ethical behavior. However, in proposing her ideations of an “experimental college,” she fails to enumerate communal ramifications for straying from her individual didactic stipulations, thus eliminating the possibility for any future positive collegiate universalism (Woolf 43).

Allocating War’s Advantages to a Future of Cross-Cultural Activism

In Paul Saint-Amour’s introduction to Tense Future, he depicts a disheartening view of what many imagine to be peacetime prosperity by imposing on it the terrible ramifications of war: a communal, never-ending fear of death and destruction, thus asserting that the mere existence of past war-related trauma inevitably refutes any future public declaration that peace—an impossible “refuge from anxiety and history”—will ever arrive (Saint-Amour 10). Indeed, relying on Lewis Mumford, he insists that anticipating future violence is comparable to dying “a thousand deaths” (qtd. in Saint-Amour 7). Furthermore, Saint-Amour expands upon his conclusions of peacetime’s ultimate bane: “The warning is the war; the drill and the raid are one” (Saint-Amour 13).

Giving the Self to the World Beyond

If we elect, we may become the culmination of all that has come before us. Gleaning from the examples of previous generations, we explore expression in an attempt to precisely define our thoughts and emotions in all the complexity they deserve. We struggle to see through the clouds of our consciousness, finding hints of the faraway stars of our thought in our use of techniques passed down to us.

In William Shakespeare’s sonnets; Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos; Jack Kerouac’s Book of Haikus; and Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker’s cutting-edge exploration of the Bebop solo, each artist utilized contemporary techniques, improved by preceding generations’ lengthy experimentation, to relinquish themselves to their audience, leaving nothing behind but the space in which they used to reside. Despite the variances in each of these artists’ methods, their work allowed their souls to transcend the vessel of their lives, to become part of humanity. We, as passive onlookers in times far past their own, must only ask how they attained artistic immortality and how we may follow their lead.

The Grave Repercussions of Traditional and Untraditional Love

In the contemporary era of heightened social connectivity, yet widespread seclusion, we scour our lives for an interpersonal bond that would quench our thirst for emotional growth within positive relationships. However, as domestic violence rampages like a hurricane, the prospects of our dogmatic attempt at relational fulfillment, marriage, may be bleaker than we had once suspected. Rather, we may need to strive for alternative social constructs, in order to glean the benefits we had once imagined marriage to provide: emotional and physical interdependence and growth. By exploring the catastrophic repercussions of Stanley’s abuse of Stella in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, juxtaposing their tragic relationship with the emotional support and familial ambience of Tim’s platoon in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, readers may discover that the potential prosperity of marriage may often be found in alternative relationships, and likewise, it may even be absent in matrimony altogether.

Arboreous Misconceptions

A reflection on a passage from Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved:

Not even trying, he had become the kind of man who could walk into a house and make the women cry. Because with him, in his presence, they could. There was something blessed in his manner. Women saw him and wanted to weep—to tell him that their chest hurt and their knees did too. Strong women and wise saw him and told him things that they only told each other: that way past the Change of Life, desire in them had suddenly become enormous, greedy, more savage than when they were fifteen, and that it embarrassed them and made them sad; that secretly they longed to die—to be quit of it—that sleep was more precious to them than any waking day. Young girls sidled up to him to confess or describe how well-dressed the visitations were that had followed them straight for their dreams. Therefore, although he did not understand why this was so, he was not surprised when Denver dripped tears into the stovefire. Nor, fifteen minutes later, after telling him about her stolen milk, her mother wept as well. Behind her, bending down, his body an arc of kindness, he held her breasts in the palms of his hands. He rubbed his cheek on her back and learned that way her sorrow, the roots of it; its wide trunk and intricate branches. Raising his fingers to the hooks of her dress, he knew without seeing them or hearing any sign that the tears were coming fast. And when the top of her dress was around her hips and he saw the sculpture her back had become, like the decorative work of an ironsmith too passionate for display, he could think but not say, “Aw, Lord, girl.” And he would tolerate no peace until he had touched every ridge and leaf of it with his mouth, none of which Sethe could feel because her back skin had been dead for years. What she knew was that the responsibility of her breasts, at last, was in somebody else’s hands.

Art and Exploration: Discovering the Weeping Women Within Our Very Own Soldiers

Art is one of few entities possessing the utter capability of pulling us from the problems and fortunes of our lives, tying our hands in order to let us grapple with the alternative perspectives of a diverse people and charging us to actively exert ourselves to mend the misfortunes that we detect within our immediate communities and beyond. Transcending boundaries of geopolitics, socioeconomics, and time, it allows us to connect to the dilemmas and strives of one another, preaching empathy for human beings we’d otherwise never genuinely understand.

Take Jonathan Teplitzky’s The Railway Man, for instance. In this film, Eric Lomax, decades after his service in the British Military during World War II spent primarily incarcerated in a prisoner of war camp in Singapore, realizes that in order to finally commence his overcoming of a lifelong buildup of hatred and begrudgery, he must leave his wife, Patti, behind as he ventures on a personal journey to the location of his torture, in which his captor, Takashi, maintained him in excruciating pain, chastising him for constructing a radio from spare parts—the only device he owned that bore him hope from the outside world.