streetcar: critics views! Flashcards
What did Jac Thorpe say about Streetcar?
It is a ‘Christian tragedy (…) the impetus of Blanche’s destruction (…) coming from her husband’s suicide’
Feminist lens of Blanche’s rape scene
Stanley asserts his masculinity over Blanche - she becomes a victim of patriarchy and its norms which has made her a victim of it
What was Susan Spector’s interpretation of Streetcar productions?
‘Hagen’s Blanche under Clurman’s direction (…) a delicate woman driven insane by a brutish environment’
‘Tandy’s Blanche under Kazan’s (…) madwoman had entered an alien world and had been successfully exercised’ from it
Welsch (Death and desire)
‘Both psychologically and symbolically, Blanche’s sexual experiences led her on a journey to death’
JM McGlinn (fantasy and delulu)
‘Stella ignores the needs of others and eventually adopts her own illusion (…) commitment to self-preservation’
Gillian Anderson (delulu)
‘Blanche is an architect of her own destruction’
Harold Clurman (female entrapment)
‘Blanche is a delicate and sensitive woman pushed into insanity by a brutish environment presided over by chief ape-man Stanley Kowalski’
Finish the quote: ‘Stella is a refined girl who…’
…have found a kind of salvation or realisation but at a terrible price’ (Elia Kazan)
Clum says that Blanche is…
‘A wild card in the seven card stud game that is the sex/gender system’
Nancy Tischler describes Streetcar as a…
‘reversal of Darwin’s vision - back to the apes’
What does George Hovis call the role of the Southern Belle?
‘a mask and a prison (…) demanding respect whilst exuding a reassuring passivity and purity’
