CARACTERISTICAS Y OBJETIVOS DEL TPM

Pinter is not particularly well known for providing explanations for his plays, as demonstrated by the exchange between the playwright and an anonymous audience member quoted by Patterson, in which Pinter exposes the absurdity of providing full explanations for his characters by asking the letter writer for her own full biographical details before issuing a reply or explanation. Indeed, the idea that there is an explanation to give undermines the tone of his work, which, as I have argued, frequently resists the tendency to seek interpretation or offer narrative closure. However, it seems wrong to suggest that Pinter had no intention behind his work, and, in some cases, we know he certainly did provide political contextualisation for his work.

For example, Pinter’s conversations with Mel Gussow, which span several decades, provide pointers as to his personal concerns and interests. He is particularly vocal about human rights abuses, often talking at length about his work with Amnesty International and PEN in, amongst other places, Turkey and Nicaragua.⁸ His experiences in Turkey are directly related to One for the Road (1984) and Mountain Language (1988), both set in unnamed police states, in which prisoners are either forced to communicate in a language not their own or terrorized and tortured by an interrogator who uses language to assert his greater power. They are, as Gussow states, “brief works about political persecution and incarceration” (65). Pinter himself is

also direct about the extent to which these plays are grounded within specific contexts; “It [Mountain Language] was inspired by my visit to Turkey” (68). Pinter further confirms his earlier play The Birthday Party (1958), often aligned with the theater of the absurd tradition, as Esslin claims, is also in fact politically influenced. When Gussow suggests, “It could be said that you’ve always written political plays, starting with The Birthday Party” Pinter replies, “I think that’s true”

(69). He later confirms, “Between you and me, the play showed how the bastards… how religious forces ruin our lives” (71).

While The Dumb Waiter does not make reference in the text to any particular political context, nevertheless, Pinter has indicated that he saw it as a “political play” more broadly. When Gussow suggests he has always written political plays, starting with The Birthday Party, Pinter replies, “I think that’s true. The Dumb Waiter too” (69). Later, in 1993, he confirms that “I knew perfectly well that […] The Dumb Waiter [was] to do with states of affairs which could certainly be termed political, without any question” (113). Although Pinter’s politics are not specifically stated in this play, it has been widely accepted that the dumb waiter, or Wilson’s supposed or possible operation of it, represents a malevolent social or political organization. Ben makes specific reference to “this organization”

(131), referring to his and Gus’s position within an assumed network operating beyond the world of the play. Charles Grimes indicates that The Dumb Waiter is not political per se, but rather that it is “political in the sense that [it] might be called meta-political -- that is, [it]

concern[s] the conditions under which what is called political perception and (perhaps) action come about” (20). Thus, although The Dumb Waiter does not draw on specific political oppression in the way that Mountain Language or One for the Road do, it is nevertheless involved in expressing some political dimension by suggesting that the characters within the play are subjected to the dominance of the unnamed organization and into behaving as though they were under surveillance.

Pinter’s apparent happiness to confirm specific political contexts and motivations for his plays is again underscored in his 2005 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, in which he highlights the difference between truth in life and truth in art. Quoting himself, he begins the speech by asking:

In 1958 I wrote the following:There are no hard distinctions

between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false. I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality

through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

That Pinter has used specific political contexts is without doubt, as demonstrated by his conversations with Gussow, but also through the comparisons between Mountain Language and Abu Ghraib that he draws in the Nobel speech:

Mountain Language […] remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after

hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.

Pinter’s suggestion that what he can accept as an artist and what he cannot accept as a citizen is particularly interesting for this study. His assertion that he cannot provide definite answers to metaphysical questions in the context of playwrighting is, by his own admission, complicated by the comparisons he draws between his plays and their “real” political others. Once Pinter expresses the relationship between the world of the play and the reality of a political context, be it Abu Ghraib, the Kurds in Turkey or the more ambiguous

“religious forces” he claims The Birthday Party makes reference to, we can no longer see the plays in a postmodern context which rejects narrative interpretation, contextualization or suggestion of explanation and understanding. If the postmodern hints at “the unpresentable in presentation” (Lyotard 1992, 15), we cannot reconcile postmodern discourses with political theater.

Conclusions

The question of whether or not The Dumb Waiter truly bridges a gap between “high” and “low” art, or indeed is truly postmodern, remains a difficult one to answer. As Patterson rightly points out, it would be difficult to conclude that theater ever really can be classed as popular

culture, especially a relatively unknown play such as The Dumb Waiter. Had it been widely televised ⁹ it may be a different matter, as the critics discussing reality television at the beginning of this paper make clear, but theater, even plays that include working class characters and references to crisps and biscuits, are not truly part of popular culture, as they will never truly be viewed by enough people to infiltrate or influence their lives in any meaningful way.

Furthermore, “popular” culture can not reliably be read as “low”

culture, as this issue is certainly controversial and challenging; who is to decide what is “low” and what is “high?” Surely any such divisions are highly ambivalent and at risk of being underpinned by essentialist judgements of class and background. Postmodern discourse has frequently attempted to suggest that these distinctions are meaningless and unhelpful and that we should consider “low” and “high” art as one and the same and mutually dependent. However, as Malpas points out,

“finding […] a simple, uncontroversial meaning for the term

‘postmodern’ is all but impossible. In fact… clear and concise process[es] of identification and definition [are] one of the key elements of rationality that the postmodern sets out to challenge”

(2005, 4). Indeed, whilst Huyssen argues that postmodernism enjoys an engagement with ‘low’ art and popular culture, Lyotard focuses on

‘high’ and avant-garde art, problematizing categorization itself yet further.

In summary, Begley’s suggestion that Pinter’s plays reject the principles of high modernist art is indeed interesting, and Pinter’s use of everyday characters and recognisable situations certainly is not reminiscent of, for example, Beckett’s unconventional setting and characterization. Indeed, we may be able to point to Pinter’s refusal to provide narrative closure and to resist conventional representation and conclude that his work displays elements of the postmodern.

However, to conclude that just because a play is not modernist it must be postmodernist is certainly misleading, as Pinter’s commitment to plays that have political messages suggests. Furthermore, even if a play is postmodern, it is not necessarily part of popular culture, as postmodern plays cannot truly be classified as popular or “low” art as their appeal is simply not widespread enough. Ultimately, it becomes impossible to argue that The Dumb Waiter is either postmodern or a reflection of popular culture because these categories are so indefinite and incomplete; as Malpas has pointed out, postmodernity rejects the

process of categorization and identification itself. Perhaps the impossibility of categorization in the case of The Dumb Waiter, with its references to popular culture and the crisis of representation, as well as external “realities” implicated in political theater, is the most postmodern aspect of all.

Catherine Rees, Loughborough University

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Michael Patterson for his interesting and enlightening views on this topic and to Alison Forsyth, University of Aberystwyth, for her pointers and suggestions about trauma.

Notes

1 See Charles A. Carpenter writing in 1973; Austin E. Quigley in 1975 and Thomas F. Van Laan’s 1981 discussion of The Dumb Waiter in Modern Drama.

2 The reference here is to Andreas Huyssen’s After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture and Postmodernism (1986).

3 Big Brother, a conscious reference to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, has been a hit on British television since its introduction in 2000. The TV show involves about a dozen housemates living together whilst under constant surveillance by hidden cameras. The contestants compete to win a cash prize by surviving public eviction votes, and to help prevent too much boredom, an unseen “Big Brother” voice sets them regular tasks that they are rewarded for passing. Big Brother is now a famous concept through out the globe, and has been successful, although controversial, in America, where there have been violent incidents and accusations of racism.

4 That said, it is not impossible that The Dumb Waiter could have been influenced by the origin of the “Big Brother” concept. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four was published in 1949, and The Dumb Waiter was first performed in 1960.

5“Différance” is a term coined by Jacques Derrida which makes use of two words:

“differer” meaning to postpone and “different,” suggesting that words can only seek to be defined through reference to other words, even though they are not the same. It is an ambiguous term, used to suggest that meaning is constantly deferred within a web of words, each denying any final signification.

6 In this context, I am referring to the Modernist view that human subjectivity and consciousness was a complex experience, resistant to formed and complete characterization. In the theater, playwrights such as Samuel Beckett often rejected traditional or realistic methods of structuring characters, preferring to leave them open-ended or contradictory and absurd.

7 Baudrillard’s concept of postmodernity involves the idea that images become “more real than the real” (Woods 26), leading to a disintegration of difference between reality and simulation. Baudrillard tends to focus on brash, excessive and mass culture aspects of postmodernity, such as the constant replication of images within the mass media.

8For details of PEN, see http://www.englishpen.org/aboutenglishpen/.

9The Dumb Waiter was televised on 10 August 1961 as part of the ITV Television Playhouse series and by ABC in 1987 (featuring John Travolta and Tom Conti);

however, I think it is fair to conclude that this is not widely known or viewed, and certainly does not constitute a contribution to “popular culture.”

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between “high” and “low” culture