A Streetcar Named Desire
Perspectives of Streetcar
Streetcar is a play with many interpretations as John Bak’s survey of the critics illustrates ‘A play about post war F.D.R. America’ and Savran p.89 describes the 1940-50 American South with civilization in collapse with profound economic ,social, and political reorientation. Another view is ‘A psychological study of a fragile mind‘s struggle to negotiate nostalgia with reality’.
Kazan’s note book views Stanley as representing ‘the crude forces of violence, insensibility and vulgarity which were developing in the South’
Critics see the clash between Stanley and Blanche not as human against human but rather species against species in a Darwinian sense or a Nietzschean Appolonian/Dionysian dichotomy and those comparisons are in the handout
Scott Griffies 118 mentions a report that Williams said that the meaning of Streetcar is ‘You had better watch out as the Apes will take over’. This relates to Blanche in scene 4—‘thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is –Stanley Kowalski –survivor of the stone age! Bearing the raw meat home from the killing in the jungle!’ indicating the hegemony (head jem oh knee ) of the race ist attitude of the south as Scott depicted in Chicago Blanche seeing Stanley as an ape like primitive. If as Crandell suggests that Stanley is the role model of the stereotypical race ist view of the primitive sexually attractive negro; Then the revulsion /attraction binary Blanche exhibits towards Stanley could be both sexual and racist attitude of Lindner
Bigsby p.49 sees Blanche as representative of ‘The southern racist who insists that the world conform to his will ,accommodate itself to a model and whose authority lies in its history : Blanche… insists that society respond to her need for a life carefully shaped into art’.
I think that this positions Blanche in perhaps a more elevated situation than the racism expressed in Lindner’s obsequy
Blanche
Streetcar is a play with many interpretations as John Bak’s survey of the critics illustrates ‘A play about post war F.D.R. America’ and Savran p.89 describes the 1940-50 American South with civilization in collapse with profound economic ,social, and political reorientation. Another view is ‘A psychological study of a fragile mind‘s struggle to negotiate nostalgia with reality’.
Kazan’s note book views Stanley as representing ‘the crude forces of violence, insensibility and vulgarity which were developing in the South’
Critics see the clash between Stanley and Blanche not as human against human but rather species against species in a Darwinian sense or a Nietzschean Appolonian/Dionysian dichotomy and those comparisons are in the handout
Scott Griffies 118 mentions a report that Williams said that the meaning of Streetcar is ‘You had better watch out as the Apes will take over’. This relates to Blanche in scene 4—‘thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is –Stanley Kowalski –survivor of the stone age! Bearing the raw meat home from the killing in the jungle!’ indicating the hegemony (head jem oh knee ) of the race ist attitude of the south as Scott depicted in Chicago Blanche seeing Stanley as an ape like primitive. If as Crandell suggests that Stanley is the role model of the stereotypical race ist view of the primitive sexually attractive negro; Then the revulsion /attraction binary Blanche exhibits towards Stanley could be both sexual and racist attitude of Lindner
Bigsby p.49 sees Blanche as representative of ‘The southern racist who insists that the world conform to his will ,accommodate itself to a model and whose authority lies in its history : Blanche… insists that society respond to her need for a life carefully shaped into art’.
I think that this positions Blanche in perhaps a more elevated situation than the racism expressed in Lindner’s obsequy
Blanche