In "The World on Stage," States broadly argues for
a phenomenology of semiotics when analyzing theatrical performances, contending
that all "objects" on the stage are "images" or
"signs"--i.e. referents or signifiers--of objects in the "real”
world. A chair on stage
“pretends” to be—or is mimetic of, or subsumes the position of—another chair
outside the theatre (20). For the
audience, the “theatre illusion” is maintained so long as the objects on stage
remain images of the external world (34).
However, as States further explains, this object/referent relationship
is complicated when animals are used in performances since an animal cannot
follow a script the way an actor (or even a chair) can.
The relationship of States’s essay to our
prompt’s clip should now be obvious.
Accordingly, as we see in this performance of Annie, the theatre illusion is broken when the dog fails to follow
“the script,” that is, the dog fails to come to Annie when she calls. This break from the illusion of theatre
equally issues a break between the object-referent correlation. No longer is the dog merely an illusory image
of another dog—that dog is a
dog. And still, States argues that such
ruptures between the theatre and the real, the object and the referent are not irrevocable
since the audience operates on two levels of consciousness, allowing for the
dog to switch back and forth between referent and object in the audience’s
mind. In terms of semiotic excess, the
dog on stage is both signifier and signified, occupying both the Real and the
Symbolic—an aporia, which, for States, signals the theatre’s ability “to
sustain its own ever-dying signs and images,” therefore transcending these two
metaphysically disparate realms of semiotics (36).
2 comments:
As i think more about what I've written as well as about States's essay, I take issue slightly with this idea of a rupture between object and image-referent, which States highlights with this scenario of animals "performing" on stage. First, the idea that the audience views, on the one hand, the "objects" (i.e. actors, animals, props, etc.) as merely images/referents of some "real" world flees, like Artaud's theories of theatrical aesthetics, from the Real to the Imaginary, which has various ethical implications. Second, States mentioning of the audience's dual consciousness to view animals (and, even the actors) as both objects and image-referents proffers that the viewer of a performance (unconsciously) switches back and forth between these dual modalities of phenomenological perception. In other words, this notion proposes that these moments are finite and discrete--that I, to use States's terminology, switch "gears" and that I view the dog as "image-referent" (signifier) during one juncture and, then, as "real object" (signified) during another juncture. But, as poststructuralism has taught us, the image-referent and object, the signifier and the signifier cannot be divided this simply. Rather, the two are always in contact--they are two sides of the same piece of paper. The dog on stage is simultaneously both dog-image and dog, and the audience's phenomenological perception of this duality is equally simultaneous. Even further, this dual consciousness of object-referent would seem to exist equally outside of the theatre by virtue of associative thought processes--i.e., I see a door (the real image of the door) but concurrently see the door as image, a sign or referent of "other" doors (real or imagined, from my past, etc.). Thus, I ask, does the theatre “sustain its own ever-dying signs and images" or, rather, is the latter merely a faculty of human consciousness and associative thought processes? Put a different way, does theatre solely posses the performative agency to revive (or rupture, or transform) this never-ending chain of signification or do we, as audience and conscious beings, possess this agency?
Perhaps what I've just said is States's point, and I just didn't properly connect the dots while reading his essay.
I think that in your self-critique and commentary concerning States, you get to the matter of his main point. As he remarks on pg. 29, "stage images (including actors) do not always or entirely surrender their object nature to the sign/image function. They retain, in words, a high degree of en soi." It is the awareness of the animal as a "being-in-itself" that States works to describe, paralleling what you term the dual consciousness of the animal's role as both image and object-referent. I think he would take issue with your assertions of simultanaiety in this consciousness, however, because that argument would preclude the humorous reaction the the misbehaving dog in the Annie clip. While States acknowledges the heightened awareness of both animals and children on stage, he makes a distinction between their behavior as actors following a set of theatrical conventions and their inevitable and spontaneous shift in footing to "show themselves" en soi, as beings unto themselves. Herein lies the tension and the potential for humor. This was perhaps heightened in the Annie clip as the child made every effort to maintain the illusion in spite of the dog's break in character and thus the image frame. Had their been no attempt at this illusion, however, much of the resultant tension and thus humor would have been lost due to the conscious awareness of the reality of dog and child. I belabor this point because awareness of it is exactly what makes Handke's piece possible. Even while his performers deny their adherence to theatrical convention, in the course of their performance, the virtue of the venue or theatrical frame forces them into that role--actor and sign, object and image referent. Despite their frequent attempts to break the illusion of theatricality, societal and institutional conventions re-inscribe those roles and re-inforce Handke's critique. I was quite interested to learn that Handke had originally thought to publish his rules for the actor in a pamphlet, however he felt this to be an ineffecient way to reach the theatre-going public, thus he used the inherent theatrical tension between actor and character object and referent to give birth to anti-theatre, a genre of which we couldn't conceive without the danger that States describes, saying that in the theatre, after all, always exists the "possibility that an act of sexual congress between the two so-called signs will produce a real pregnancy." (20)
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