I read Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass
Menagerie” in 10th grade English class. Ever
since then, I’ve been a fan of his work. In
particular, I love his concept of a “memory play,”
the idea of a play taking place entirely in the
mind of a character and thus being warped by
the distortions, diminutions and exaggerations
we all experience in our memories. Williams
himself states at the beginning of the play that
“the scene is memory and is therefore non-
realistic … It omits some details; others are
exaggerated, according to the emotional value
of the articles it touches, for memory is seated
predominantly in the heart.”
“The Glass Menagerie” takes place in the
mind of the main character, Tom, as he tries
to find a suitor for his introverted sister,
Laura, at the urging of his mother, Amanda.
Tom eventually
invites
his
friend, Jim, to
come to their
home to meet
Laura. After Jim
meets
Laura,
he claims that
he
is
already
engaged.
Amanda
angrily blames
Tom
for
not
having already
known this. In
the end, Tom
leaves his sister
and
mother,
determined
to
never
return.
As his memories
of the two of
them end, Tom
says
goodbye
to his mother
and sister and
asks his sister
to blow out the
candle on the
memory play.
Given
how
essential
the
memory-
induced distortion of narrative is to this
play, I’ve always assumed this concept would
carry through Williams’s other works. I’d
assumed this, along with many other staples
of Modernist theater, would carry through any
Williams play being performed today.
So this past weekend, when I had the
privilege of seeing the Roundabout Theatre’s
new production of Tenessee Williams’s “The
Rose Tattoo,” I assumed I would see the same
narrative-distorting concepts come into play.
Williams wrote “The Rose Tattoo” in 1951,
after all, shortly after the success of “The
Glass Menagerie” in 1944. How could he not be
influenced by the ground-breaking success of
this memory play concept while he worked on
“The Rose Tattoo”?
But to my great surprise, “The Rose Tattoo”
is a simple, if quirky, romantic comedy. It
follows main character Serafina Delle Rosa as
her husband passes away, her daughter grows
up, and she learns to love again. It’s almost a
dark comedy: Right when Serafina is ready to
love again, she meets a man with the body of
her husband but the head of “a clown.” As she
grows to love him, the audience cannot help
but note his many faults.
My
predisposition
towards
unreliable
narrative in this play proved to be entirely
unfounded. If anything, the narrator/point
of view of this play is so loosely defined as
to be entirely negligible. But because of my
experience with “The Glass Menagerie,” I
found myself assuming throughout the show
that the narrative I was witnessing was not
accurate. At one point, as Serafina’s daughter
cuts her wrist right before she goes on a date
with her new love, I all but assumed that
she was about to pass away — that Serafina’s
love for her daughter had blinded her (as
the narrator of the play) to the reality of her
daughter’s feelings.
As the play began to conclude, I couldn’t
help but allow the tragic ending of “The Glass
Menagerie” to keep me constantly on edge —
just as Tom’s relationships to his family fall
apart, I all but assumed that Serafina’s would
fall apart as well. Serafina’s withdrawal from
the world, after all, is eerily similar to both
Laura and Amanda’s withdrawal. I couldn’t
see how this play could end with such a simple,
happy conclusion given the incredibly somber
ending of “The Glass Menagerie.”
Oddly enough, this wasn’t the first time
that my knowledge of an artist tainted my
perception of their work. As a young composer
back in high school, I’d been obsessed with
Beethoven’s
“Große
Fuge,”
his
thorny,
dissonant, (seemingly) über-avant-garde late
work. For those unfamiliar with the piece, it’s a
blistering 15-minute trek through Schoenberg-
esque atonality and rhythmic, harmonic and
melodic dissonances.
As
a
high
school
composer,
and as I began
branching
out
to
other
Beethoven
string quartets,
I
remember
being constantly
affected
by
the
rhythmic
and
harmonic
dissonances
that I’d learned
to expect in the
“Große
Fuge”
—
I’d
study
early Beethoven
works that were
quite dissonant
for the classical
era
he
lived
in at the time,
but
would
barely
notice
the
structural
dissonances.
I’d
been
preconditioned,
almost,
to
expect
all
of
Beethoven’s
music to reach the height of his quasi-Serialist
masterpiece, and I was unphased by anything
less dissonant.
While Beethoven’s incredible artistic output
allows for many separate interpretations
and listening mindsets — notice that my
obsession with the “Große Fuge” merely
tainted my perception of his string quartets,
not his greater catalogue of compositions —
Williams’s comparably slim output leaves little
room for this. “The Rose Tattoo” is a perfectly
good play, after all, but given Williams’s other
famous plays, it’s frequently neglected.
Perhaps minor, less successful artists are
frequently affected by the fame and success
of their magnum opuses. Perhaps the “one hit
wonder” concept in popular music transfers to
other genres of the performing arts.
Almost as soon as I posited this, I saw the
inherent flaws. Unlike popular music, which
has only recently become a topic of historical
study, other performing artforms have years
of scholarly study preventing this hierarchical
abandonment from taking place — I wouldn’t
be surprised if a scholar or two have founded
their entire careers on the study of Williams’s
entire catalogue, from “The Glass Menagerie”
to “The Rose Tattoo.”
What I have learned, however, is that it can
sometimes be just as interesting to study an
artist’s minor works as it is to study their major
works. In the case of Williams, for example,
I learned far more from the discrepancies
between this work and his other more
popular works than I did from any of these
successful works themselves. Perhaps our
interests should lie not in an artist’s success
but in their other attempts at reaching such
success. Perhaps it is not the masterpiece but
the almost-masterpiece, the near-masterpiece,
that is most deserving of our critical thought.
The almost-masterpiece
that is ‘The Rose Tattoo’
SAMMY SUSSMAN
Daily Community Culture Columnist
HBO
In the third episode of the second season of HBO’s
hit suburban drama “Big Little Lies,” a second grade
teacher is shown giving facts to his students about
climate change. “How many gallons of water does it
take to make a single sausage?” he asks. His obedient
congregation responds: “A thousand.” “That’s right,”
he continues, “and how many showers does that
add up to?” Again, the children respond: “Fifty.”
Following this chorus, a young girl is shown fainting,
her frilled shoes flying up into the air.
For those who watch the show, you will recognize
this as the moment Amabella (Ivy George, “Girl
Meets World”), the daughter of the vivacious,
headstrong Renata (Laura Dern, “F is for Family”)
passes out from a panic attack — a panic attack
induced by her teacher’s lessons on climate change.
Renata, of course, is never one to take things lightly,
and goes strutting down to the principal’s office with
an aura of royalty only a blazer-clad Laura Dern can
convey. After unloading on the forlorn principal, she
leaves us with pure poetry: “I will be rich again. I
will rise up. I will buy a … polar bear for every kid in
this school. Then I’ll squish you like the bug you are.”
Besides this being an excellent representation of the
wealthy’s response to the threat of climate change,
this scene also opened up discussion for a topic that is
becoming more and more relevant: climate anxiety.
As the peril to our world at the hands of our
changing climate increases and our government
officials look the other way, anxiety about the end
of the world is rampant. It’s gotten so bad that the
American Psychological Association released a
69-page guide for mental health care providers on
how to help patients cope with “eco-anxiety.” There
are support networks dedicated to helping people
deal with their climate anxiety, and many people
have sworn off having children due to concern for
how life will be for coming generations.
And why shouldn’t people be worried? Every day
the new headlines pop up: “Air pollution is linked to
miscarriages,” “250,000 deaths from climate change
is a ‘conservative estimate,’” “Trump Administration
weakens Endangered Species Act.” The future of our
world is getting bleaker and bleaker, and anxiety isn’t
just coming from this fact. The changing climate is
leading to wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes and
other repeated natural disasters that threaten the
lives and stability of people across the globe. If the
afflicted individuals weren’t already suffering from
some sort of climate-induced anxiety, the trauma
and loss they endure as a result of climate change
may lead to PTSD, depression and anxiety about an
impending natural disaster.
Yeah, this is all really depressing. If I was a
second grader learning about this I probably would
have fainted, too. Because truly, what can we do?
Speaking as someone who struggles with anxiety,
I understand that this distress stems from a lack of
control. The climate is changing — and? Even with
all of the recycling, veganism and plastic bans in
the world, nothing will truly be done about climate
change until the government and corporations
change the way they fundamentally run. We have
less than 50 years until our world is sure to become
inhabitable, and our elected officials are spending
their time making fun of a 16-year-old girl doing her
best to save the planet.
The sad truth about climate change is that it’s here
and it’s getting worse. No matter how many painted
signs or sustainable t-shirts you wear, nothing will
stop it except systemic change. Not even Laura Dern,
with all of her power, might and enormous wealth
can stop it. The only thing we can do is take all of
the anger and anxiety and channel it into something
productive. Call your representatives, show up to
the polls, boycott polluting companies, try to cut
down on meat consumption, stop buying single-use
plastics. If the older generations won’t care for a
world they won’t be around for, shut them down and
vote them out. And in 20 or 30 years — polar bears
for everyone.
Nervous about the end?
SAMANTHA DELLA FERA
Senior Arts Editor
B-SIDE: TV NOTEBOOK
FACEBOOK
COMMUNITY CULTURE COLUMN
Will God forgive us? It’s a question that’s asked
time and time again throughout Paul Schrader’s film
“First Reformed.” It’s a question I find myself asking
whenever I read yet another headline announcing the
death of a species, the melting of a glacier or the failure
of another climate agreement. Like most humans,
especially young humans with (hopefully) many
more years on this planet, I am afraid for my future.
I am afraid of rising temperatures and everything
they are expected to bring with them: crop failures,
climate refugees, more extreme weather, more pain,
more suffering. My fear grows stronger every day, and
I still don’t quite know how to deal with it.
The characters in “First Reformed” are afraid, too.
The entire film is drenched in a despair that many of
us feel to the core — guilt about what we have done,
anxiety about what is going to happen next. Two
men in particular feel it most acutely: Ethan Hawke
(“Before Midnight”) as Reverend Toller, a well-
meaning but tormented pastor and Philip Ettinger
(“Indignation”) as Michael, a soon-to-be father
obsessed with the coming end of the world.
Toller lets his despair about both climate change
and the death of his son eat him alive, partaking in
binge drinking he knows might just kill him. He is
a dying man on a dying planet and he hardly cares
enough to save himself. Michael, though physically
healthy compared to Toller, is grieved by the new life
carried by his wife Mary (Amanda Seyfried, “Mamma
Mia!”). At one point he asks Toller, “But how can you
sanction bringing a girl … a child full of hope and
naive belief into a world … when that little girl grows
to be a young woman and looks you in the eyes and
says, ‘You knew all along, didn’t you?’”
Both Toller and Michael are overwhelmed by this
despair — it’s so easy to let it overwhelm you. In the
face of the megacorporations and billionaires who
run our world, it’s natural to feel small, to feel helpless
in saving the earth. The power of these feelings is
only amplified when we convince ourselves that these
feelings are ours alone, something we must confront
on our own.
For most of “First Reformed,” characters appear
detached from each other, physically and emotionally
tethered to their own bodies. A profound sense
of loneliness pervades the film’s cold, biting New
England winter. But there are brief, striking moments
of intimacy too, and this intimacy is precisely
what brings characters out of their despair. Every
interaction between Toller and Mary is electric, and
just a touch of their hands inspires a transcendent,
psychedelic dream sequence. In this sequence, we see
the two soaring over beautiful natural landscapes.
This scenery, though, is soon swapped out for images
showing heaps upon heaps of trash, air-polluting
factories and other man-made ecological nightmares.
Once these images come to the forefront, Toller and
Mary are removed from the picture entirely. Their
love and their connection simply cannot exist in that
world. We cannot exist in that world, at least not for
much longer.
Maybe saving the planet in order to save our lives
and the lives of the people we love is selfish. After all,
we alone are responsible for climate change and we
alone are obligated to fix it; we should feel compelled
to do whatever we can to reverse the course the planet
is heading toward out of sheer humanity and decency.
But if selfishness is the thing that can ultimately save
us from ourselves, I can’t imagine a better, more
worthy motivator than love.
Climate change is real and it’s happening right
now. More than 97 percent of scientists agree. And
we’re running out of time before our descendants no
longer have a healthy and habitable earth to live and
love on. And that — love — matters. Of course it does.
It matters more than anything.
Saved by ‘First Reformed’
ELISE GODFRYD
Daily Arts Writer
B-SIDE: FILM NOTEBOOK
YOUTUBE / A24
I couldn’t see how this
play could end with
such a simple, happy
conclusion given the
incredibly somber
ending of “The Glass
Menagerie.”
4B —Thursday, October 17, 2019
b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com