MEJORA CONTINUA (KAIZEN)

described as “low art” or as products of popular culture. Indeed, his work seems to reject easy interpretation and discussion, deliberately forestalling hermeneutic urges and deferring action and resolution.

The Dumb Waiter displays this problem quite overtly, refusing a conclusion or explanation to the action when “a long silence” (149) gives way to inaction and the curtain falls on Ben failing to either shoot Gus or to lower his gun. This ending (or non-ending) denies the audience any closure of action and narrative and refuses to imply or suggest any conclusion of plot or storyline. Indeed, any attempt to ascribe “story” onto The Dumb Waiter seems doomed to failure, as critics seem incapable of agreeing the correct way to read this play -- do we attempt to seek “meaning” in the roles of the two gunmen, or do we accept the seeming absurdity on its own terms, and enjoy the inconclusive action? ¹

Despite the difficulty in providing adequate explanations for this play, Varun Begley has argued that Pinter’s work can be seen to

“traverse the Great Divide² […] between modernism and its historical

“others:” popular entertainment, politically committed art, technological mass culture” (4). Furthermore, Begley asserts that The Dumb Waiter is “his lightest play” (22) and that it is largely constructed of stereotypical, mass culture figures, such as that of the gangster or private detective, popular in Hollywood iconography. He goes on to suggest that the ending of the play is reminiscent of the

“cliff-hanger” endings of popular culture, mass entertainment films and television serials: “compulsory deferral designed to stimulate

further consumption…. In this sense, The Dumb Waiter works as a distorted mirror image, reflecting in its final tableau a basic premise of Hollywood entertainment” (96). This chapter will address these claims, and explore those elements of the play that can be seen as postmodern, both in style and content. It will ask whether Pinter and The Dumb Waiter can usefully or realistically be described in these terms. Additionally, it will address questions of popular culture and ask whether Pinter’s theater reflects or is a product of “high” or “low”

art.

As Michael Patterson points out in “Negotiating the boundary between high and low culture,” it is easy to see at least the premise of The Dumb Waiter reflected in contemporary popular culture. The example of the BBC’s The Apprentice is mirrored in Channel 4’s long running “reality” TV show Big Brother,³ in which contestants are constantly watched, recorded and given bizarre and unusual challenges, often without knowing why they are being ask to perform certain tasks and without any idea when the challenge will end.

Clearly, questions of power are implicit in this show; the contestants willingly surrender autonomy and submit to the faceless “Big Brother,” who directs when they may eat, sleep or perform basic human activities, such as washing or cleaning. Furthermore, “Big Brother” communicates with the housemates through a diary room, where they are spoken to and frequently given orders, but they do not see an image of the personality behind the camera, only a disembodied voice who demands obedience from the individuals in the house.

Comparisons with The Dumb Waiter seem too numerous to list: the disembodied voice, the helpless contestants/hit men, the impotence and total surrender of power to an unseen voice. Moreover, the behavior of the contestants/hit men is served up for the viewing pleasure of the television audience or the theater audience, who witness and presumably are supposed to enjoy, the efforts of the protagonists.

It would, of course, be an historical impossibility to suggest that The Dumb Waiter resembles Big Brother in any deliberate way. It would also be fairly unlikely to suppose that the television show takes any influence from the play;⁴ however, both share certain postmodern elements that make them interesting for this study. Jonathan Bignell describes how “reality” TV could be interpreted as “represent[ing] a new kind of access to, and interest in, ordinary people on television

that can air important issues about identity and community” (4).

Pinter’s concern with the “ordinary-ness” of the characters in The Dumb Waiter is also evident; the gunmen are examples of everyday men, interested in food, newspapers and football. Furthermore, the potential for global success in reality television (see Bignell 2005) implies a mass audience appeal suggested by many critics as a characteristic of postmodernity. For example, “the most significant trends within postmodernity have challenged modernism’s relentless hostility to mass culture” (Huyssen 16), and Tim Woods argues that a

“constant blur[ring of] the boundaries of high and low art […]

emphasizes the postmodern contention that there is no unmediated access to the real, and that it is only through representations that we know the world” (145-6). The question is now whether or not The Dumb Waiter incorporates some elements of postmodernity, including the tendency to blur distinctions between high and low art, as a critical aspect of the play.

Firstly, Pinter’s refusal to offer narrative closure at the end of The Dumb Waiter, or to give any explanation throughout the play that might account for the reason the hit men are being bombarded with unusual and exotic requests, suggests a deferral of meaning -- a différance constantly forestalling explanation or signification.⁵ The deconstruction of meaning in this play suggests a frustration with traditional realism and naturalism and its emphasis on explanation, psychologically realistic characters and deterministic action. Such deferral of meaning is often associated with a postmodern rejection or problematization of narrative closure, but absurdist theater also foregrounds the same problems. Esslin’s categorization of Pinter as an absurdist in The Theater of the Absurd (1962) is presumably based on such a refusal of traditional characterization and plot. Furthermore, denial of such elements is broadly in keeping with high Modernist art,⁶ and so can hardly be considered postmodern, low art or popular culture. While focus on the fracturing of meaning is frequently discussed in postmodern discourse, we must not mistake this for true popular appeal; it would be somewhat implausible to suggest that Derrida and Lyotard et al are widely discussed and enjoyed in contemporary popular culture.