Monday, November 26, 2007

Baraka & Theatre of Cruelty

Baraka's work is often said to extend concepts from the French playwright and theorist, Antonin Artaud, specifically the concept of cruelty:

Theatre of Cruelty is a concept in Antonin Artaud's book Theatre and its Double. “Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle, the theater is not possible. In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds” (Artaud, Theatre and its Double). By cruelty, he meant not sadism or causing pain, but rather a violent, physical determination to shatter the false reality which, he said, lies like a shroud over our perceptions. To put it another way, it's not cruelty in the sense of being violent, but the cruelty it takes for the actor to completely strip away their masks and the cruelty of showing an audience a truth that they don't want to see. He believed that text had been a tyrant over meaning, and advocated, instead, for a theatre made up of a unique language halfway-between thought and gesture. Antonin Artaud described the spiritual in physical terms, and believed that all expression is physical expression in space.


You might notice above some concepts central to our discussion of the primitive/modern: "our present state of degeneration," the merging of the material/spiritual, also the "shattering of false reality" that literature can often abet.

In Dutchman, pay special attention to signs of these concerns--specifically, the notion of a language that is between thought and gesture--a new kind of realism that is designed to shock audiences in a primal, Neitzschean way.

Of course, others have stated: "the Theatre of Cruelty has often been called an impossible theatre--vital for the purity of inspiration which it generated, but hopelessly vague and metaphorical in its concrete detail." Is there a vagueness in detail or "message" in Dutchman, or does Baraka update his work to make it politically relevant?

14 comments:

m said...

In The Dutchman, I see a pretty clear and politically relevant message that ties into the theater of cruelty. Baraka has updated his text to center around the politically relevant issue of racism in America, specifically the image of the Negro in America in the 1960s when Civil Rights movements abounded. Clay summarizes the message when he exclaims “If I’m a middle-class fake white man…let me be.” He continues that, “You don’t know anything except what’s there for you to see.” (34) And explains that when finally the white man believes he can accept the black man into his fold, the black man will murder the white man.

What message does all this convey? The black man in modern America is forced to conform and become like the white man. If the black man wants to be something or get somewhere in this world, he must wear a suit and tie and talk with a white-man’s diction. Thus, the black man is in what you could call a “state of degeneration,” slowly wasting away - getting away from his true identity and his root as he attempts to conform. At the same time, the black man is creating a “false reality” – the perception that the black man wants to be like the middle-class white-man. Baraka “shatters” this false reality through Clay’s monologue which explains that the perception is not the reality. The black man does NOT want to be like a middle-class white-man, it is solely an act, and he would prefer to murder the white man who he despises.

Thus Baraka establishes the fundamental identity of the black man trapped in the modern 1960s world ruled by whites. The black man is stuck conforming to the white’s model of man externally, but internally holds a hate for the white man that he is only waiting to unleash.

--Matt Stevens

m said...

In Dutchman, irrational is rational, ugly is beautiful, and insanity is safe. While using cryptic language, Baraka sends a clear message about racism, identity, and inner conflict; he twists up the “norm,” the conventions, just to relay the complexity of an individual. He chooses Lula to talk with Clay, to satirize how, in the 1960s, the only white person who would associate with a black is a prostitute and lunatic, a “nobody.” These two “anonymous beauties smashing along through the city’s entrails” hide behind unique facades to repress their rational desire to murder (21). While Clay wears a rigid suit, Lula embraces insanity; this allows them to escape their pain and shame.

Furthermore, Clay declares that all art is an escape from relieving one’s rage on people. It is a substitution for murder: “just let me bleed you, and one poem vanished” (35). With murder, there would be “no metaphors. No grunts. No wiggles in the dark of her soul. Just straight two and two are four. Money. Power. Luxury. Like that” (35). Thus, metaphors and figures of speech are the product of repression. Money, power, and luxury give order to white people’s lives; Luxury is something blacks don’t have.

Clay warns that if whites preach “rationalism” and “cold logic” to blacks, they will become “sober, pious and sane, and…they’ll murder you and have very rational explanations” (36). Sure enough, after Lula murders Clay, she adopts a “different, more businesslike quality,” “straightening her things,” and “getting everything in order” (37). To Baraka, murder is the rational, rightful response of oppressed people, especially blacks.

Baraka speaks for blacks through Lula; when Clay refuses to dance with her, she says, “You ain’t no nigger, you’re just a dirty white man," meaning whites are worse than blacks (31). Baraka scorns blacks' passivity and incites revolt: “Don’t sit there dying the way they want you to die. Get up” (31). Lula's and Clay's discourse represents the battle between the Dionysian and the Apollonian within blacks.

At the end, Lula stares, afraid, at the conductor’s happy singing; song has a new meaning now to both Lula and the audience, who have knowledge of what “blues” really is.

-Stephanie Cho

Unknown said...

As Lula dances, sings and turns around wildly, she resembles reminds one of the stereotypical religious scene of black Southern Baptists rolling in the aisles, shouting and channeling God’s spirit. She crosses the line between spirituality and material experience, unable to contain her inner experience. The fact that she reminds the reader of a stereotypical black religious experience is paramount to the central theme of the play: as it becomes “hip” to be black and the culture becomes mainstream, young white Americans may incorrectly feel that they, too, know what it means to be “black” and to experience the history and prejudice that accompanies it. IN consideration of this theme, one begins to question Lula’s “spiritual” experience- was it for show? Perhaps, as she pretends to be a part of black culture, she also pretends to be moved and affected.

-Jenna Sopfe

Carol said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Carol said...

Baraka’s work proves that the Theatre of Cruelty is possible, for Dutchman is saturated with politically relevant arguments. Dutchman, set in the racially charged dynamics of the 1960s, confronts the injustice African Americans suffer. Interestingly, Baraka asserts that art is the release through which African Americans vent their pent up indignation and rage at social injustice as Clay states, “If Bessie Smith had killed some white people she wouldn’t have needed that music” (35). According to Baraka, music and poetry are the best forms of rebellion for blacks. While murder would be the most straightforward, “Western” (36) way to express the rage resulting from centuries of persecution, art is the only way for African Americans to really win in the end. The fury within black artists is the fuel that spurs them to greatness. Yet, interestingly, Baraka calls this harnessing of anger insanity.

Meghan said...

The new kind of realism represented in “The Dutchman” is expressed through shocking language and character development. Just like Artaud’s assertion that the violence in theater is violent in the sense that it disrupts the reality of the audience by exposing them to unsolicited material, so, too, Baraka’s material is violent because it is shocking. Lula never seems violent, nor is the murder particularly violent (relatively speaking). It is only violent because it is shocking; though tension and conflict build between the two characters throughout the entire play, the murder is still surprising. It is also shocking how the other passengers help her move Clay off the train and the conductor remains oblivious. The audience’s reality would otherwise compel the passengers to protest the murder, not participate in its covering up.

Language also shocks the audience and contributes to the violent undertone. The most shocking aspect of the language is the reversal of speaker stereotypes. Lula adopts a black identity to an extent. She makes up a ridiculous “song that becomes quickly hysterical” (30) and an accompanying equally ridiculous dance to explain the origins of the blues. She harasses Clay to dance “the nasty,” claims to know his “well-known type” (12), and guesses his name to be Lloyd, Normam, Leonard, Warrern, or Everett and his surname to be Jackson, Johnson or Williams (15). Her stereotyping of Clay and of the black culture of the 1960’s suggests her self-perceived authority on the nature of all black people. Clay obviously does not fit many of her stereotypes but she forces them on him anyway (such as her dancing, name-calling, etc.). This continues in today’s culture where individuals construct the identity of a population via rhetoric. The shocking, vulgar language of rap and hip hop songs, for example, has constructed an African American identity. Though many may not share in this identity and argue the identity is strictly fabricated, it persists nonetheless and establishes a stereotype. It also enables non-black individuals to participate in a “black culture” as defined by the media. However, an adoption of a black cultural identity does not mean that “right away you’re an expert on black people” (34). Rather, according to Clay, “you don’t even know how” (34).

Meghan Casey

m said...

The Dutchman certainly has a "violent, physical determination to shatter the false reality which lies like a shroud over our perceptions." It is easy to assume basic, time-relevant facts about each character in the begining. Lula seems to be the embodiment of the hip movement in the 60s when, for left-wing white college students, "black" became synonymous with "real." The blues revival was central to this scene, and Clay even mentions Bessie Smith and Charlie Parker: "Charlie Parker? Charlie parker. All the hip white boys scream for Bird. And Bird saying, "Up your ass, feebe minded ofay! And they sit there talking about the tortured genius of Charlie Parker." This was a time when most blues artists played to crowds of white kids who romanticized the history of black music. The blues artists like Leroy Carr and Lonnie Johnson, who'd made the largest impacts on the blues scenes, were ignored and scoffed at, since they made their scene in the urban blues towns of Los Angeles and Chicago. Instead, the nobodies of the 1930s, Robert Johnson, Skip James and Son House, were called out of their resting places in the rural south, placed on a stage to gawked at by hoardes of white intellectuals who valued their talent because it came from rough roots.(That's not to say their music wasn't exceptional or wasn't appreciated, but the motivations were like so.)

So it seems that Lula, with her jive talking, irreverent, self-involved ways represents the confused form of racism of the 1960s. She seems to be seducing Clay simply for the controversy it represents, then calls him "an escaped nigger" as if her choice to socialize wth a black man gives her a right to say it. Clay seems the relatable protagonist victim of Lula's social distortions. The audience has become a Lula of sorts, sympathizing immediatly with Clay, the victimized race in the face of Lula's antics. But then, the theater of cruelty takes over, and Lula herself embodies the black man she was describing, the race of people with the capacity to kill. She predicted that Clay had the inner ability to kill, and his outburst proves her right. The half-coherent spectacle that is Lula is suddenly, perhaps, the saner of the two.

suzannah powell

m said...

The Theatre of Cruelty in Dutchman reveals itself through the unexpected climax of Clay's murder. Baraka’s characters seem to be a comment on interracial relationships in the dynamic 1960’s. Clay is a respectable looking black man in a white man’s suit and tie. He is an intellectual, carrying books and reading a newspaper on the subway. Clay’s appearance gives the impression of a black man who has accepted, or at least is content with, his place in society. On the other hand, Lula is an expressive white woman who is unafraid of racial interaction. She gives the impression of a leftist white student, perhaps a member of SNCC, who defies racial segregation. The two characters’ first encounter is a friendly one. Lula is bold and direct, while Clay responds to her greeting without hesitation. The two then flirt back and forth without discretion and by the beginning of scene two, have fooled the audience into believing that they have established a good relationship.

However, this romantic illusion is soon shattered. Lula’s nonsensical song and rant begins to reveal her racial prejudices, climaxing to her act of murder. She becomes cold and indifferent, while the spectators accept this crime and do nothing. With this, Baraka implies the futility of the black movement in a white man’s world as the black man is ultimately still oppressed and seen as a mere object that can be disposed.

Michelle Cheng

scott said...

In Dutchman, Amir Baraka uses a quotidian event as a microcosm of race relations. The act of riding the subway immediately conjures images of the diversity and scope of our society. Typically on the subway, people keep to themselves save the occasional small talk. However, as in any public arena, there is nothing to stop interaction and even confrontation. Casting the antagonist of the play as a sexual white woman against a young black protagonist harks upon preconcieved notions of the white woman as a black ideal. The cultural stereotype of the black man seeking out his innocent white "prey," as alluded to in such cinematic gems as "White Chicks," is reversed in this play. This allows Baraka to speak through Clay, his young black victim, about the indecencies of the white race and its vain attempts to properly respect african american culture. The end result is a cruel statement that the black race is at the mercy of the white "civilizers," despite the latter's attempts to erase such indignities.

scott s.

Kyle Curson said...

In The Dutchman, Baraka uses plot to shatter the audience's false perceptions of society. The play was written in the 1960's, a time where blacks were fighting for political, social, and economic equality. At that time, the idea of assimilation was popular among many whites. This idea is predicated on the belief that if blacks simply integrated themselves into 'white' American culture, they would eventually climb the social ladder and become successful as a group. Baraka gives off the impression that integration is possible at the beginning of the play when Lula approaches and flirts with Clay, who is an educated, scholarly black. However, Baraka later shatters this false perception in scene two, where Lula makes fun of "how the blues was born" (30) and goes berserk, wildly dancing and throwing other racist remarks at Clay. She then makes crude remarks about how Clay is pretending to be someone he is not: a "dirty white man" (31), whose image he is "afraid of" (33). Baraka even takes it a step further; when Clay verbally defends himself, Lula ends up killing him.

The play's contrast between its beginning and end exists for a very important purpose. The Dutchman's beginning conveyed what many in society believed in the 1960's: if blacks work hard and aspire to live the American Dream, like Clay, they will ultimately become successful and get along with white folk. The ending's hostile and violent environment shows the reality of the situation: no matter how much people like Clay attempt to assimilate, racism and prejudices ingrained in the minds of many whites prevent blacks from ever doing so successfully. In this sense, blacks are caught in a bind. If they retain their identity, they will continue to be isolated. If they attempt to involve themselves in 'white' American culture, not only will many whites push them away, but even blacks will criticize them for giving up on 'their people'. It is important to note that when Lula, after killing Clay, exclaims to the train passengers, "Get this man off me!" (37) both blacks and whites comply with her demand, showing that people of both colors are in opposition to the image of a scholarly, 'white-washed' black man.

m said...

Baraka is successful in encompassing the ideals of the Theatre of Cruelty in that Dutchman shows the raw reality through its insane dialogue and actions. His representation of reality is politically relevant and updated. Lula portrays the madness of a society while Clay’s actions in the end show the anger of his oppressed race. Dutchman encompasses all of the feelings that people have to hide in order to mix into the society through all of the lunacy and absurdness in the dialogue. Aspects of the culture that he is in are also relevant in Baraka’s work; for example, Lula’s breaking out into song, which can represent the African-American ways of venting their frustrations to a society that is indifferent to what they say. All of these features of the play embody and signify reality, though they do it from a more raw perspective that can be said to be the “Theatre of Cruelty” way.

-Stephanie Uriarte

m said...

In Amir Baraka's play, the Dutchman, the theatre of cruelty is prevalent in scene II when Lula narrates the story of Clay's manhood and how the two end up together. In the story that Lula creates, every detail from the moment when they arrive at the party and end up at her house, Clay seems to have fallen for her every word since Lula seems like someone who knows him well enough for him to be comfortable with. This "false reality" that Lula develops shatters when she begins to act like a lunatic and Clay becomes uncomfortable and violent, no longer knowing the person that she seemed to be. At these turn of events, this shocking factor created by Baraka of how these two strangers meet in a subway, exchange stories, and then end up in a brutal killing, sums up the concept of the theatre of cruelty and our perceptions of the reading. What was perceived from the beginning of the play to the end, changed from a positive to negative view throughout because the outcome of the play was meant to shock our minds and to re-analyze the black man's role in society in the 1960s. In the false reality created, it shows that a young black man like Clay can only end up with a white woman like Lula in his dreams because in spite of what was going on at the time, interracial relationships were unlikley and the black man couldn't get a break; in the end, his dreams are still shattered.

- Monica Chum

Unknown said...

It seems an interesting paradox to have a text that could be connected to this theater of cruelty with its emphasis on presenting and enlightening with a vision of true reality, and yet also so closely resembles an urban legend. It seems to me that urban legends are in some way, part of this "shroud over our perceptions." They toy with our unconscious mind from the time they're first planted in it. Perhaps in some sense, the author is suggesting that urban legend-like stories are what's real. The story already seems not to be terribly interested in rationality or logical behavior. It portrays and challenges from its audience a sort of fully emotional, angry, in many people's minds, a "black" approach to life.

This idea seems to fit in with what I imagine to be a slightly Baraka view of art. If art is something pure, basic, natural, instinctive (and I believe it is), and murder helps to keep one sane even more than art does, then urban legends, hatred, and anger appear to be even more primitive and "true" than art. And if this is the case, then it seems Baraka upholds that paradox. To me, it seems that although Lula kills Clay and whatnot, this angry, base approach to life is actually advocated. I don't think Kant is considered much here. The ultimate goal is true reality, and it should be strived for at any cost.

If that falls into the realm of the theater of cruelty, then Dutchman certainly falls into that realm as well.

-Steve Shaffer

Unknown said...

I think that Baraka's play can still be considered relevant to contemporary issues. The setting of the play in a subway is symbolic of the underground, implicit racial tensions between whites and blacks in America during his time. This idea is still applicable to today because there are many injustices that society refuses to directly address, hoping that to ignore the problem would make it as if it never existed. Baraka's portrayal of the other passengers on the subway is representative of the rest of society, who silently approves Clay's murder by not standing up against it. Clay also partakes in his own destruction through his blind trust and submission to Lula, saying what she tells him to say and agreeing with her obviously absurd comments. Thus, inaction and the refusal to question ultimately perpetuates the unjust cycles in social behavior, allowing the murderous "Lula" to continue on her destructive path.