Steetcar Critical Interpretations Flashcards
Elia Kansan on Blanche being destructive to Stanley
“Blanche is dangerous. She is destructive. She would soon have Stanley and Stella fighting. He doesn’t want things upset by a phony, corrupt, sick, destructive woman. This makes Stanley right!”
- director of 1951 film
Harold Clurman on Blanche being victim of a male dominated world
“Blanche is a delicate and sensitive woman pushed to insanity by a brutish environment presided over by chief ape-man Stanley Kowalski”
Marxist reading
Could view Stanley as the working class hero defending his home
Born to fulfil his desire to take over as working class
Freudian lense
Characters driven toward sex/death
Beyond the pleasure principle
New historicist reading
Context of 1940s America
Audience didn’t feel sorry for Blanche as she was being raped
Audience felt more sorry for Stanley
Early reception of the play
The play was ground breaking because of the use of plastic theatre and the combination of realism and lyricism - social class and poetry
Gore Vidal The effect of Marlon Brando playing Stanley
Stanley Kowalski changed the concept of sex in America, before him no male was presented as erotic. A man wasn’t a body he was a suit.
What is Williams say about the film industry attempting to remove the rape scene
“The rape of Blanche by Stanley is a pivotal, integral truth in the play, without which the play loses its meaning which is the ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate by the savage and brutal forces in society.”
Bloom H on Stella’s relationship with Stanley
“Like many battered women, Stella is genuinely in love with her husband. She puts up with his abuse because she feels helpless to change the way he treats her.”
