Jenna to Jess (Blog 12)

Jess,

I'm intrigued by your question set on Cavell, perhaps less so as an approach to photographs and more so as a way to look at props.

4) "The Avoidance of Love" - Henry Cavell

When "reading" a photograph, like Bernstein does in "Dances with Things", is there a Cavellian notion of separateness going on that we can interrogate further? Is there a "Desdemona" and a "Mrs. Siddons"? Is there this "monument" of the photograph, in opposition to (or conversation with) the reality of the subject? (inspired by Cavell's discussion of yokels, identifying oneself with onstage characters, and Othello - pg. 145)

In terms of your question about separateness and photographs, I think you have something. I could think of some photographs that prompt the desire to interfere in the way that the yokel might want to interfere to save Desdemona, but I’m not really sure whether or not that interference is the same type of interference that Cavell discusses. For me, I think it is just a question of presence/present. It is true that a photograph can be in our presence, but its subject is not. (Unless you happen to be Christopher Reeve’s character from the movie Somewhere in Time and form such a bond with an image that you create a method of mentally tricking yourself to travel back in time to the moment of its inception. Then you can be in the subject’s present.) In terms of a shared present, Cavell writes, “It is not that my time is different than theirs but that I have no present apart from theirs. The time in which that hint is laid, in which that knowledge is fixed, in which those fingers grip that throat is all the time I have. There is no time in which to stop it” (154). I suppose I have difficulty imagining that, when gazing upon a photograph, I have no present apart from that shown to me on paper, which prevents me from fully connecting Cavell’s separateness in the theatre to the separateness of photographs. But I do think there is an argument for connecting Cavell and Bernstein, I’d just need to use a different means of forming separateness. 

Now, here is why I’m interested in your question- it seems to me that Sofer’s observations about props suggest a method through which to interfere in the theatre, or rather, a way to use the theatre to interfere. Cavell and Sofer are not a perfect couple either. Props may be a way to interfere with a playwright’s meaning but, as Cavell notes, it is impossible to interfere in the moment of a character’s present. The prop does not exist that could prevent Desdemona’s strangling. However, the two are nice inverses of each other. Cavell’s piece suggests that through our frustrations of not being able to interfere during moments of tragedy in the theatre, we might purge that frustration in “real life” situations in which we do have the ability to interfere. Sofer’s suggests that theatrical objects, like props, could provide a way to interfere in the “real life” situations in which we are unable to interfere. 

Through the concept of ghosting, Sofer presents a means through which props insert themselves into conversations occurring outside of the playhouse. He writes, “One concrete example of such ghosting was the Elizabethan player’s use of actual church vestments and properties for satiric ends. In one familiar example, Marlowe’s Mephistopheles wears the robes of a Fransciscan friar (and thus confirms the audience’s presumed suspicion that all friars are devilish)” (64). Similarly, Sofer’s project is “to argue that Kyd’s appropriation of the handkerchief was not didactic, as has been argued by recent scholars of Reformation drama, but an opportunistic bid to recast the late medieval ‘contract of transformation’ embodied by the bloody cloth as an addictive ‘contract of sensation’” (64). As Sofer later suggests, this transgressive use of prop during the play’s perversion of Mass, “no doubt played into Kyd’s spectators’ fear and loathing of Catholic Spain” (85). In both cases, props have the ability to comment on problematic issues like the corruption of the Church or a fear of war with Spain that might be dangerous to discuss freely in public.Through ghosting, these topics are quite approachable. 

I wonder if we might consider the “real life” scenarios in which Cavell hopes that theatre might encourage us to engage as the ghosts of Desdemona’s death. Paired together, Cavell and Sofer present a lovely connection between world and theatre in that one may provide the catharsis that is denied in the other. Yet, such work can only be accomplished by recognizing one as the other’s ghost.

Course Blog 8: Don Giovanni (Jennifer)

I'm sorry - I spaced on the fact that this was a full-class blog and just posted some quick thoughts on my private blog instead. I'll keep this short. I'm going to view the opera from the ideas of Auslander and Cavell, in an effort to explain what I thought was a "glamorously tragic" moment in the opera and why it worked.

 Auslander's consideration of the spectacle of glam rock is clearly relevant to the spectacle of Don Giovanni. As previous writers (Whitney, Kelly, et. al.) have mentioned,  "the set was obviously expensive, the costumes were lush, the special effects were insane" (Kelly). This recalls some of Auslander's descriptions of, for example, John's Children, who "dressed in dazzling white outfits, bounced hyperactively around the stage, became famous for destroying their instruments and equipment, but assaulted each other and ran through the audience" (47).  These performances are intended to amaze and, by amazing, engage the audience. Therefore, it is sensible that a scene's transporting power can be (although there are, of course, other methods) directly proportional to its spectacularity: the most characters, greatest plot tension, most beautiful scenery, most extravagant music, and liveliest action will lead to the greatest transport. (Simplistic, I know, but Auslander cares a great deal about excess.)

Let me give a precise example of the moment I believe meets these qualifications and underlines Auslander's point. During Scene 3 of the first act, the entire cast is on stage during the ballroom scene. There is a veritable orgy on stage among the peasants, the three maskers are dancing mechanically in a corner, and the tension between all of them is clear. Only Don Giovanni seems not to care about the violence nearly all his guests intend to inflict on him. As an audience member, I was waiting for someone to do something. This was engagement. Then Don Giovanni runs off with Zerlina, apparently to have (consensual? nonconsensual? See Iris' post about the difficulty to distinguish which.) sex with her. The Elmer Fudd Masetto was being kept in a corner by dancing girls. How do we save her? What to do? As Cavell points out, the fact that I was held back from running down four flights of stairs, up the aisle and into the wing to save her myself is relevant in itself and shows that I'm in a moment of catharsis: "what is revealed is my separateness from what is happening to them; that I am I, and here" (153-154). By being separate, I am joined with the rest of the audience, also separate. By feeling the desire to save her, I am involved.

P.S. To read the reverse, then, the scenes with the least spectacularity should be the least transporting. This is where my argument falls apart here, since some of the other strong scenes were far simpler (Donna Elvira's self-struggle on the balcony when she leaves with Leporello; the song between Zerlina and Masetto when she's asking for forgiveness). However, I only offer the Cavell+Auslander discussion as one effective way to create transport, not the only way. It seems to be particularly effective for opera, though, which is so "unsettled" that extravagance can somewhat mask its schizophrenic form.

Blog 8 - Don Giovanni - Derek

My understanding of the Cavell reading is that the spectator does nothing because “there is nothing and we know there is nothing we can do” (147) in the sense that “I have given over the time and space in which action is mine” (154). Cavell seems to be saying that this knowledge or understanding is what makes someone “an ideal auditor of serious drama” (154), unlike the yokel who stands up and tries to save Desdemona from Othello. The spectator must “acknowledge totally the fact and the true cause of … the suffering of others” (153). Cavell seems to say that the proper response is for the spectator to be “in awe before the fact that I cannot do and suffer what it is another’s to do and suffer” (154). And in feeling this sense of awe, the spectator is able to perceive and confirm their separateness, which in turn “is the unity of our condition” (154). Cavell seems to be suggesting that this process is important because it is allows spectators “a respite within which to prepare for [the] necessity” of acknowledging the pain of others outside the theater, i.e. in actuality, and by implication that one would take action to help others (149). Cavell explicitly warns that a failure to achieve this sense of awe increases the risk that “I continue my sponsorship of evil in the world, its sway waiting upon these forms of inaction” (154). The spectator, if properly experiencing the play, will leave with an increased ability to take positive action in the real world when faced with the pain and suffering of others.

I felt that the experience Cavell hopes all spectators would have when attending theater failed to occur for me at Don Giovanni in part because of the plot and in part because of the artifice of the mise-en-scène, which for me combine in the moment when the statue speaks in Act 2, Scene 3. Up to that point, I was willing to accept the highly stylized staging and acting, and to deal with the story itself, trying to extract the message, while also thinking about how I might react in the situations (thus approving or disapproving of certain characters’ decisions). As for the mise-en-scène, I was highly aware of the staging. I think the main reason for this was the opening scene in which a lace screen impacted direct visual access to the bedroom, while giant mirrors gave clear views from alternative angles. The actor playing Don Giovanni also engaged in highly stylized (unrealistic) movements as he walked around the bed. Moreover, the dialogue was almost always repeated three times, as well as offered in translation on the wall above the curtain over the stage. As a result of these factors, I did not get lost in the trance, did not fully sympathize with the characters. But I accepted them. I was willing to accept all the strange bits of theater, staging, and acting (which was stylized and kind of dreadfully bad if compared to what we expect from regular theater) which were part of the performance. I say I was willing to accept them because I thought they were supposed to be that way, as part of the conventions of opera (which I have no accurate sense of).

But the moment the statue spoke, I felt differently toward the opera. I suddenly found myself thinking about how much this opera resembled a morality play, and that it seemed to be instructing the audience in how to be good aristocrats and good people, and that its final message is that ultimately punishment should/will come not from outraged members of one's own social class or the lower classes, but from god. This is my main criticism of the story: Mozart brings in god to punish Don Giovanni, instead of making a political argument for the aristocracy to do a better job of policing their own -- or for the peasantry to follow through with their threats of violence against the aristocracy. Therefore, in Don Giovanni, it seems that ultimately the spectator is being discouraged from taking action in the real world. This feeling was unexpected, since I felt that through Act 2 Scene 2, the opera seems to be encouraging action. The story to that point explores the roles of the aristocracy and the peasantry in policing immoral behavior, first with the notion of the aristocracy being responsible for punishing one of its own, and next with the notion of the peasantry justifiably rising up when the aristocracy fails to enact that punishment. But as soon as the statue speaks in Act II.iii, the story removes all responsibility for action from humans and places it in the hands of god/the devil/the supernatural, and thus the spectator is excused from feeling the need to take action in real life, and really is encouraged to remain inactive in real life. Because of this, I question whether this production of Don Giovanni could effectively create the sense of awe that Cavell seems to feel is necessary for theater to have a positive effect on the spectator (in terms of encouraging action in the real world).

Course blog 8 [Jenna] Don Giovanni

Before I begin this blog post, I must admit that I have struggled to find an angle from which to write. Like some of my fellow classmates, I failed to find many, if any, moments of transport during the opera. After reading Levin last week, I can safely say that I did find the opera to be deeply unsettling. The singing was at odds with the staging, which was at odds with the subtitling, which was at odds with the auditorium. (I don’t think the surtitles could have been placed much higher…thankfully I had a seat in the rear of the opera house.) Some characters, like Donna Anna, were presentational while others, like Zerlina, attempted to be representational. In a mob scene, one man possessed two pitchforks while the performer next to him prowled the stage holding only a fan. The set was one in which garden benches appeared in bedrooms and servants could circumvent walls but ghosts could not.  In a world in which the characters sang gorgeous classical music, the performers portraying them utilized extremely contemporary gesture, like in the moment in which Leporello flashed Don Giovanni the bird.  I suppose that all of these elements may have been “unsettling” and aesthetically worthwhile, but I, unpracticed operagoer as I am, only found them to be sloppy.

As I watched Don Giovanni, I was particularly irked by the fact that while the stage had a vast number and variety of entrances, characters inevitably struggled to locate its exits. I lost track of the number of times in which a character seemingly forgot that she had entered a garden through a door two feet to her left while groping about the stage in an attempt to find the same door through which to leave the same garden. I am specifically referring to the scene in which Don Ottavio was singing downstage while Leporello, in an attempt to escape his notice, wandered about upstage with arms cast wide while trying to “feel” his way to a door and Donna Elvira, believing him to be Don Giovanni, stumbled along behind him performing the same gesture. During that moment I, like the man desiring to save Desdemona, wanted nothing more than to leap onstage, give those two some lanterns, and point them toward the nearest wing.

On pages 153-4, Cavell writes, 

“My immobility, my transfixing, rightly attained, is expressed by that sense of awe, always recognized as the response to tragedy. In another word, what is revealed is my separateness from what is happening to them [the characters]; that I am I, and here. It is only in this perception of them as separate from me that I make them present. That I make them other, and face them.”

While its been removed from its context and placed in my argument, which may not fit its sentiment perfectly well, this quote gave me pause. I don’t believe I have ever felt as separate from the characters onstage as when I longed to intervene in their world and usher them through the garden gate. I was not in awe as Cavell claims we must always be, but I was immobile, transfixed by my inability to correct the problem onstage. Through my perception of them, they were never more present and never more foreign. I may have been frustrated rather than transported, but in my emotional state, I did find unity with the characters through our separateness.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that my preoccupation with my inability to intervene in the opera did not stem from the intense pathos Cavell associates with the disconnection between character and audience. It was partly a selfish desire to prevent the actors from continuing to mime their insufferable game of blind man’s bluff. However, I am captivated by the idea of forging connections through distance rather than empathy. What does it mean to face the character by making them other?