Darwin’s Doll House
Nora’s home figures large in Ibsen’s drama as it represents the promise of luxury and the bondage of her servile condition. It also has at its core the modern idea that the environment conditions the individual and shapes their being much like Darwin saw evolution among disperate ecologies in the Galapagos. The presumption is forcibly brought home at the end of the play when Torvald rejects Nora because she is implicated in the loan forgery. It is then that Torvald expresses his concern that such an unscrupulous mother might be a terrible influence upon their children; that her mere presence in the house would taint their morality. This seems extreem especially since we have moved much further along in the “Nature vs. Nurture” debate. Today people are less inclined to assume the environment would be so absolutely critical without some genetic disposition or more obvious social conditions. But Nora does not argue with Torvald’s logic at this point and accepts her banishment. It is only after Torvald learns that the threat of being exposed is over that he accepts Nora back. At this point Nora sees his hypocrasy and refuses his offer of reconciliation. Torvald revealed the hypocracy of his argument because it was not about the objective truth of the mater, that Nora was potentially a bad influence, but that she was a bad influence only because others may see her has being a bad influence.
In Praise of Shadows
Junichiro Tanizaki’s argument for the beauty of shadows seems to hinge on the a notion of beauty that defers to conditions as they are and accept any given state of things as beautiful. Thus, he writes, “If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty.” Expanding on this idea, Tanizaki essentializes the differences between Oriental and Occidental and comes to the conclusion that the Oriental is to accepting of given conditions, whereas the Occidental will always seek out newer and better solutions. Several of you pointed out that this observation is contrary to the history of Japan that has repeatedly undergone dramatic changes in culture, technology, and social order. Indeed, the very reason that Tanizaki wrote this book, In Praise of Shadows, in the first place is to speak against the rapid loss of Japanese culture to the chrome Art Deco polish of the 1930s. How can he then say that it is in his Oriental nature to resist change?
Zeami on Appearances
We often say appearances can be deceptive, and that is in part why Zeami once said, “The truth and what it looks like are two different things.” This idea is based on the Buddhist notion that appearances, what we see everyday, are reflections not of the truth, but rather illusions clouded by our own desires, fears, and ambitions. This is why some Buddhists meditate on a mandala, so they can envision what the world would look like if they were able to strip away those deceptive illusions. Zeami is reminding us that truth has an appearance; it looks a certain way, but that we should not confuse it with everyday appearances. Instead, the truth we should look for is beyond the appearances of the objects on stage and the actors portraying the characters. This is why the props in the noh theatre are wrapped in white cloth, suspended in simple box frames, or reveal the simplest outline of their form; it is because these things do not represent the truth. We should not be satisfied with these flimsy apparitions, but look deeper to what they say about the true nature of our human condition. The objects are deliberately made to look fabricated so that we do not take them at face value. Its as if they had quotation marks about them. It allows the object to stand in for a while for some more permanent and enduring truth.
Garrick’s Flattery
Yesterday in Intro to Theatre class we reviewed the quote by David Garrick that too few were able to decipher last Monday. Garrick was a middle-class man who knew how to flatter his audience, So when he wrote, “we who live to please must please to live,” there was no small amount of self deprecation, but also a certain repositioning of the audience to see itself as the moral authority able to dictate taste. The middle-class at this time were filling up the ever growing theatre buildings and it was a sober realization by Garrick in his entertainment economy that he needed to position the audience as central to his theatre of taste and refinement.
Garrick’s view is in contrast to Jeremy Collier’s tract a century earlier where he lambasted the theatre for not achieving the lofty goals of Neoclassicsm set down by Horace and Aristotle. Garrick did not end Neoclassicism with his celebration of the middle-class taste. His position was that the audience had already internalized the Neoclassical ideas and that they already were civil and good people who did not need to be taught how to “recommend virtue [and] discountenance vice.” It is an opening in the changes that would slowly introduce the idea that ordinary people were the arbiters of taste. By doing this he also introduced the idea that the Neoclassical ideals were not immutable rules set down for all posterity and that they were possibly open to change. These were the very ideas that would eventually support the rebellion called Romaticism, which would bring an end to the Neoclassical traditions.
