Michael Zimmerle Teaches English & Drama to Brilliant Misfits |
Popularity and Excusing Abuse:
The Problem with A
Streetcar Named Desire
Guest Post By Michael Zimmerle
Okay, so I've gotten kind of embroiled in this whole
“Streetcar” business. I wasn't really
looking to spend time writing essays on the nature of gender relations and how
particular works of art affect gender equality.
I didn't really want to sink my intellectual teeth into the finer points
of how various interpretations of a work enforce outmoded and potentially
destructive social conventions. I have
enough to deal with trying to get a group of recalcitrant teenagers to invest a
little time in learning how to actually read, write, and speak the English
language. But my wife had some
investment in the issue, so I had a look at the pertinent topics and
interviews. If I had been looking for a
way to disengage from the situation, this was a mistake.
Here's the situation in a nutshell. An actor my wife and I both admire is
starring in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. I wondered why anyone would be producing this
play, even if I could understand why an actor would choose to act in it. I have come to think of “Streetcar” and the
rest of the author's work as “Tennessee Williams Sweat Plays” (thanks to my
friend Tim for the term). Most of the
works are set in the Deep South, with high temperature and humidity, and deal almost exclusively with some sort of dysfunction. They give me a slimy feeling, like I need to
shower with copious amounts of soap and all the hot water. In general, they go nowhere, no one learns
anything, no one changes, no one decides to make any effort to become a better person. There are a few exceptions, but the
predominant feeling is one of falling into a cesspool and deciding it is just
too much effort to wade out. Besides,
all our friends are here. Sure we hate
each other, but what the hell? There's
bourbon. Williams did write some interesting characters who, while being
largely despicable, do offer challenges to actors. I understand the desire to look for difficult
or challenging aspects in a chosen field. It is a chance to push one's self
professionally. And it can be very
rewarding if successful. Bully. I was ready to just chalk this up to the kind
of notch-in-the-belt choice an actor might make. Challenging, resume building, diverting.
Then I started reading some of the interviews that the
aforementioned actor gave, and found myself baffled by by what I was reading. I was reminded of the tendency of some
academics to generate theses that seem
to have relevance only in the Bizzaro world.
“WHAT? Where do you get that? How
can you possibly find that?” or “Are you really that clueless? Do you have NO IDEA what the abusive pattern
is? Have you never heard of the cycle of
violence?” I even found myself saying,
“Oh, you poor stupid fuck.” I really
meant that last one, as I do have some sympathy for someone who doesn't
recognize that he is saying things that support a social pattern of abuse,
which I am fairly confident that, if asked directly, he would vehemently
oppose.
As I see it, the difficulties I have with this situation come
down to two things. The first is really
an artist's right to defend a work of art.
In some ways, this is an unassailable issue, as it comes down to
personal aesthetic and interpretation. I
happen to hate Moby Dick, while other English majors find it a
fascinating and captivating work. To me
it is only a classic because someone else said so, not because it's a
particularly good piece of writing.
“Streetcar” fits into this category for me. As I stated earlier, I find almost nothing
redeeming in most Williams plays past the historical significance. Williams did something groundbreaking in
putting ugly issues on the stage. I
understand that this was happening at a time when society was working very hard
at denying that there were any ugly issues.
This trend has continued to the present in theater and film where there
is an admission that life doesn't always have happy endings. Sometimes that makes for good story
telling. Sometimes we can take a good
lesson from a disturbing, even repulsive tale.
However, I personally find it important that the characters show at
least some sign of learning that lesson themselves. I don't find this to be the case in most of
these “Sweat Plays.” A more contemporary
example is the 1995 film Leaving Las Vegas. It won numerous awards, garnered critical
acclaim, was a great way for the actors to stretch themselves, and was to my
mind, two hours that I will never get back.
No lessons learned, no hope generated, no character development arc. This is not my kind of story. If an artist wants to defend this type of
art, I suppose it is his right. If he
finds something worthy in a static morass of fucked up individuals, so be
it. I've seen enough of that in my
actual life. I'll pass.
The second issue is a good deal more difficult to recognize and
explain, and it is far more important.
It is the societal and individual tendency to excuse abuse or find ways
to sympathize with the abuser. It is the
attempt to justify abusive behavior by focusing on the abuser's deep internal
state or external charm. Time and time
again, I have seen abusers excused by claiming that they are good at heart, or
suffering from internal trauma, or that they just love so deeply that they act
out, or they just act the way they have been taught, blah, blah, blah. More energy goes into justifying why they
can't change than goes into demanding that they must. Oh, there is some token comment that perhaps
an abuser should change his ways, but there is no insistence that they do
so. It is as if we think that beaten,
bloody, or dead “loved ones” are preferable to making an abuser responsible for
his behavior.
In a recent interview on Playbill.com the actor in question
said: “It's him protecting what he
loves and he loves his wife, he just has these severe handicaps in dealing with
other people.” This is exactly the kind of thinking I mean. This is a blatant justification of Stanley's
abuse by calling it love and a kind of social awkwardness. Oh, well if that's all it is, then Stella
should feel sorry for Stanley when he beats the shit out of her. The truly horrifying thing is that for
generations women have been told just that.
When I read the above quote, I could only shake my head. Here was a man that I have grown to respect
as an actor and as an intelligent human being, spouting an attitude that has
damaged both men and women for ages. The
really sad thing is that finding sympathy for an abuser may point to a
genuinely caring heart. It indicates
that the speaker believes that there is good in the abuser. That's not a bad thing if you are a therapist
dealing with someone who is actually willing to correct his behavior. It's also vital to an actor trying to
legitimately portray a character. But
for anyone else, it just enables the abuser.
It provides an excuse. “It's not
my fault I hit you, baby. It's 'cause I
love you too much.” Love is the thing
that makes an abuser realize that he is hurting the beloved and STOP DOING IT!
The comments that this actor has made make me think that he
really doesn't have much awareness of the mindset of most abusers or how the
typical cycle of violence works. Abuse,
like rape, is not about love or sex.
It's about control and power.
Regardless of the capacity for actual love that an abuser might have (a
dubious supposition in most cases), the behavior and the feelings leading up to
an abusive incident stem from a desire to control or exercise power over
another person or a situation. The
motivation is rarely, if ever, actually love. Stanley is not protecting his
love; he is protecting his familiar situation, a situation that he has control
over, the woman he has control over, the group of friends he has control
over. He is even exercising control over
and protecting his own bitterness and dysfunction. When Blanche comes in, he finds himself with
a variable that he needs to find a way to control. Blanche threatens his dreams of money, his
relationship with Stella (not by questioning his love, but by questioning his
behavior), she even threatens his friendship with his buddy, Mitch. She has to be taken down. Stanley can't control Blanche, so he destroys
her. Mercilessly. Utterly.
I'm beginning to hear reviews for preview performances of
“Streetcar,” and I'm slightly horrified.
Apparently, the director has taken a tender approach to the
relationships, and the cast has done a wonderful job of portraying the
characters and the director's vision.
From the same interview:
But, at the same time, I think there are moments that I have found, especially this time around, where he has this little boy in him still that is incredibly lovable as well. There are moments with Stella where he just doesn't want her to leave. It's a fascinating play.
People are coming away thinking that they have just witnessed
a love story. They seem bent on making
excuses for Stanley's behavior, using ambiguity of staging to suggest that
there was no rape, lauding Stella's dedication to her man regardless of her
bruises, and otherwise getting caught up in the passion, while totally missing
that this is a play about an abusive lout (narrowly) avoiding being brought to
task for his abusive behavior.
Herein lies the crux of the abuse issue: Behavior. It doesn't matter what the core issues are,
it doesn't matter how charming, how wounded, or how potentially lovable a
person is. The abusive behavior has
to stop before any of the rest can even be addressed. In this same interview, the actor does say:
I think what's interesting is that he wrote this play in 1947, and now here we are 40 odd years into the post-feminist era, and I think playing a man of that archetype is very interesting now. Because there are parts of it where you can see how men without therapy, men without support groups, men without any sort of spirituality, got a very bad name for men. There is this interesting merging of this sort of animal attraction with him and Stella. With the perspective that I have from stuff that I've gone through, you read it and you cringe. You know what he's doing and it's so brilliantly written – and even with it being written years ago – you still know these people. I know Stella and I know Stanley.
Yes, we know them. We
know them and we weep that they are still suffering from the same
dysfunction. But I weep for a society
that hasn't learned a damn thing in 40 years.
We are still making excuses for men who beat their wives, who destroy
lives because they are given every excuse not to get the kind of therapy the
actor mentions. The fact that many
people have developed sympathy for such and abuser and his doormat wife only
reinforces how important this issue still is.
After decades of feminism and other activism on the part of women and
men, we are still finding ways to try and gloss over the horror that Williams
put on the stage in 1947. People, the
abuse has to stop before any healing can even begin!
There are countless stories and fairy tales where a man
learns his lesson at the hand of his wife.
Some gentle, some violent. The
fairy who becomes a mortal's wife on condition he never raise a hand to
her. He does and she disappears with all
her wealth and the children. The woman
who is beaten by her drunk husband and then breaks his arm with a frying pan
when he passes out. The woman who tells
her new husband that if he ever strikes her she will leave him and then does so
after 65 years of marriage. Where are these
stories? The last one I remember is the
1984 made for T.V. The Burning Bed, starring Farrah Fawcett, about a
woman who, after years of abuse and marital rape, kills her husband by setting
his bed on fire. One reviewer on The
Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) credits this movie with giving her the
strength to leave her abusive husband.
And yet, after all this time and hard work, we are still producing plays
and movies that ask us to sympathize with abusers, excuse their behaviors and
claim that sex and passion excuse everything.
Simply stated: To portray an abuser as a sympathetic
character, and to portray an abusive relationship as at all romantic, is to
excuse and encourage abuse and dysfunction.
Hey, artistic community, wrong message.
I have only one last parting shot. I'm afraid I can't claim that this is
anything other than a dig, thinly veiled as a life lesson. Two last quotes from the actor. The first from the Playbill.com interview and
the second from a different interview on New Haven Register (nhregister.com).
This is really very personal for you.
(Actor): Yeah. It's my play. And I belong to it. So you know, I don't really want to see somebody else having sex with my wife. [Laughs.]
(The actor's) most recent “play” was a benefit staged reading with William H. Macy in Santa Monica in July of Williams’ last play “Small Craft Warnings,” playing a character he calls “a ashed-up Stanley.”
“It’s weird and interesting that this character keeps following me every few years,” he smiles.
It has been my personal experience that if an issue keeps
coming up in my life, it usually means I haven't learned an important
lesson. It would be frankly unfair and
belabor the point to make suppositions about what these statements might mean
for the actor, but perhaps we, as a culture can take the lesson. If we are having this discussion about
the portrayal of abuse and dysfunction in the twenty-first century, we still have a long way to go.
Time For Brownies and Milk.