Metadrama and Metacinema

Insofar as a play is metadramatic, it is a commentary on social conditions. By commenting on its own status--as play, as entertainment--it comments also on the status of the play as philosophy, i.e. it comments on its own performance in society. Metadrama might be called a commentary of the plays performative aspect: what does the play do to its audience as a performance? Any single performance which comments on its own artifice, calls into the mind the artifice of performance in general, and so casts the audience's gaze back on itself, in search of final meaning. In this regard, metadramatic performance is a true mirror held up to nature.

It might be that all performance is metadramatic in some sense. Does performance, which places in front of us an imitation of human action--be it "realistic" or stylized, do we not still understand it as imitated--naturally encourage its audience to reflect on human action in general, to wonder about its status as reality? The reflection that the metadramatic performance induces is political only in a sense: The play encourages its audience members to analyze the broader systems of performed action in which they are embedded.

With regards to films it seems that, as with most art in the mechanical age, this metadramatic quality becomes strictly more political. Certainly we also recognize the actions in a film as being imitations, but the spacial and temporal, as well as social, mediation that the film medium represents perhaps obscures for us the same capacity to recognize the imitated action as being human. That is not to say that plays are unmediated (I have explored the notion previously), but in performance, generally those responsible for all mediation and artistic interpretation are at hand, vis-a-vis the performers themselves (and, at the Globe theater and elsewhere, even often the playwright). Perhaps it is because in film we recognize the anonymity of these mediators (their anonymity glares in the metacinematic quality of the film itself) that film, rather than calling into question the audience's role as performer, instead calls into question its own status as qualified performer.

When an actor portrays a character on stage, or a musician plays and sings his song, or a politician comes before us to speak, we are aware to some extent of an ultimately accountable individual for this individual performance. In a film, such accountability is not immediately apparent. Indeed, it is part of the artifice of the film that any concrete accountability is continually obscured. Benjamin points out:

“The shooting of a film...presents a process in which it is impossible to assign to the spectator a single viewpoint which would exclude from his or her field of vision the equipment...unless the alighment of the spectator’s pupil coincided with that of the camera.” ("The Work of Art," Second Version, published in The Work of Art... (2008). Harvard UP, pp. 34-35)

The film, with its single point of view, its multiple cuts, its artificial lighting, its shifts in time and space, does not allow us to identify with any element of the human agency that is so crucial to live performance. We understand in the film that the actor is not performing the actions portrayed; these actions are performed rather in the lighting lab and the editing room. Just as we understand that is not, indeed, we who are watching the actor, but the camera itself. We are consigned to watch the machine. Our anxiety over this fact often makes us suspicious that the machine watches us in return (cf. Orwell, Clark & Kubrik, the Wachowskis).

The play reflects the audience only in its nature as a live performance. This immediate human interaction cannot be underestimated. By putting before us a human like us, the play participates in a reenactment of the Hegelian struggle for identity. If we leave the theater questioning the motives behind the performances of others, it is only because we have first reflected on the motives of our own performances. This is a philosophical reflection.

Because the film can reflect on itself without in doing so reflecting its audience as individuals, it does not tend immediately toward matters of philosophy. Rather, if the film calls for reflection at all, it calls for social and political reflection, in that it calls into mind man's relationship to the machine. It is likely, however, that film doesn't immediately call for reflection of any kind; its capacity for a distracted reception, as outlined by Benjamin, suggests that any natural tendency toward reflection that film inherits is is refracted by the immediacy of the film medium itself. Any attempt to interpret a film as metadramatic performance, to read its interaction with the audience, tends either to feel pressed and somewhat hollow, or else endlessly complicated by matters of Marxist materialism.

Dialectical Intentionality

It might be productive to pursue a dialectical approach to the impasse we have reached in our discussions of Shakespearean intentionality in performance: a desire to know the author's intentions, an unconscious assumption that we do, exists along with a thriving self-consciousness that we really have no idea of the author's intentions, and the (mysterious?) drive to interpret the plays at any rate.

This is the same impasse which is reached and "overcome" by Hegel, a resolution of the relationship between humans and their environment. In the study of Shakespeare's plays, this deadlock manifests itself in the self-conceptualization of an other both in Shakespeare himself and in the culture he inhabited. (Re)Extending our understanding of Shakespeare into the realm of pure performance serves to highlight this basic antagonism because in performance we reflect our exploration of otherness backward on ourselves. The question of how one goes about recreating a performance of Shakespeare seems to make clear in its implications that anyone interacting with Shakespeare, regardless of the medium, is really doing just that. Thus, the performance suggests a great deal about our own culture -- our immediate, rather than historical, relationship to our environment -- that might otherwise go unnoticed. It is an awakening in a Benjaminian sense, a realization of our own implication in the world.

Shakespeare himself occupied a space in relation to print and performance --both professionally and culturally -- very near the one that any self-respecting director or actor (or critic!) must occupy in his or her attempt to put on a Shakespearean performance. For Shakespeare, it was the proximal nature of text, it's sudden pervasiveness and cultural import that transformed his ideas about performance. He operated for much of his career both as performer, in that the "primary audience" of his plays continued to be a live one, and as author, increasingly aware of the role his works played as literature. In a wider sense, Shakespeare's culture was embroiled in a political and economic transformation which had as its center, it's organizing force, the printed word (Essential McLuhan, 1995, p. 97, 108-109). Shakespeare's plays, more or less consciously, embody this dialectical moment and act as a synthesis for the opposing forces of print and oral traditions.

For the director or critic acting today, this dialectic works in reverse, and Shakespeare's social struggle becomes an artistic one; the struggle with text as a medium takes shape as an object in the playscript itself, and the oral tradition to which Shakespeare and Shakespearean performance hearken back is projected forward in the current performance and impels us to reflect on our own cultural manifestations.

In order to pursue such a theoretical analysis, many other equally valid and important interpretations of Shakespeare's works must be either marginalized or ignored completely. However, examining Shakespeare in this way seems especially useful; Shakespeare's commentary on performance as such, and on textual materials related to performance, may well give new insight into the ways that other approaches (theoretical, thematic, or pragmatic) might best proceed.

Shakespeare himself explores through his plays the experience of waking up to one's position in history. In his mythological themes he reminds his audience of a past that never was, a relationship with an ideal that he places in history, while insisting through his structure and dialogue that his audience place it in their minds. The mythological elements his plays are the most direct and unambiguous references to the recent oral past that can be found in Shakespeare. Additionally, through the metadramatic and metatextual structures that pervade his plays, he continually calls attention to his plays as plays, as cultural artifacts both in their nature as performance, and in their ever-increasing nature as print. By doing so he not only challenges his audience members to recognize the role that performance plays in their own lives and cultural histories; he also outlines the role that performance will play in the burgeoning age of print.

This is the effect achieved by the Chorus in Henry V, as well as by its self-conscious placement at the end of a series of historical plays based on historical books. The Chorus's invocation of the muse in the first line of the play, when paired with the subject matter that the title suggests, serves to begin the play in precisely the ambiguous position between the oral and written traditions that Shakespeare and his audiences were experiencing in the world all around them. And the Chorus of Henry V is pervasive, entering the story line over and over ostensibly in order to "set the scene." The very frequency of these interruptions, however, serves automatically to draw the audience away from the story, away from the illusion, and remind them of their role as interpreters not of reality, not of history per se, but of a creative construct.

Likewise, Henry V seems repeatedly to make direct and indirect reference both to the plays which preceded it. The most obvious reference to 1 and 2 Henry IV is in the structure of the scenes involving Falstaff. Falstaff, of course, does not appear on stage in the play, but to understand his role at all, Shakespeare's reason for even mentioning him, requires a knowledge of his historical existence within the Henriad. This knowledge may well have been cultivated in the audience by the mere existence in performance-past of the preceding plays, but it seems more likely that Shakespeare found he could rely somewhat on the printed dispersal of his plays to fill in the gaps for potential late-comers. (My Oxford Shakespeare gives the date that Henry V was written as Spring 1599, with a first printed edition available by August of the next year. One year to print, even by today's standards, is exceedingly fast.) This is not to say that the actual reading of Shakespeare was necessarily widespread (although it may have been), but only to suggest that quickly printed editions of Shakespeare's plays allowed for a wider familiarity with their characters, stories and themes. An appropriate analogy might be found in the "Last-time-on" segments which begin many television shows, or the Seasonal "recap" episodes of shows like Lost. It's not necessarily important that you know every detail, but that what is important you can glean quickly and so be prepared. Falstaff's death, and Harry's role in Bardolph's execution, not to mention the numerous passing references to Harry's delinquent past, only take on their full meaning if you know what happened in the first three episodes.

The dialogue of the play is also stricken through with references to the previous plays, as well as to their historical source material. In the first scene of the play, while Canterbury expounds Harry's qualifications, he says "list his discourse of war, and you shall hear/A fearful battle rendered you in music" (1.1.44-45), which would seem to be a reminder, right at the outset, that a lot of this story has already been told. And both Canterbury and Fluellen mention history as received by a "chronicle," the former in reference to history yet created (1.2.16), the latter to discuss a history long since past (4.7.92). In both instances the audience is being reminded of the material, the literal Chronicles (according to Wells and Taylor, this includes both those of Hall and Holinshed), with which they are certainly familiar and from which the story of the play is drawn. King Harry himself calls attention to his own position as the character in someone else's creative construct:

Either our history shall with full mouth
Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave,
Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,
Not worshipped with a waxen epitaph (1.2.230-33).

That Harry refuses the possibility that it is his death that will be immortalized speaks to his role as a mythological hero. However, by recognizing "history" --that is, written history, in the form of "chronicles" and of plays -- as the immortalizing medium, Shakespeare again calls attention to the increasing importance of print to contemporary society.

A Midsummer Nights Dream seems built entirely around bringing about a conscious understanding in the audience of the interaction between theme and dramatic structure. In its obsession with the idea of Dreams that stretches all the way to the title, it almost demands that an awakening is necessary. He equates dream reality both to dramatic reality, but through some very clever and complicated structural choices, he succeeds in extending the idea of dream-world out into the world itself, in to the world of the audience. His utilization of mythological themes and characters reminds the audience of its oral history, but he implements these characters in such a way that oral (that is to say, episodic) history ends up muddying and being muddied by written (linear, narrative, reason-bound) history. It cannot be coincidence, for example, that Shakespeare locates his dream-world naysayer, his unremitting voice of reason, in the character of Theseus. Theseus, whose own history is entirely mythic, has been tamed by reason and refuses to allow the realm of the myth into his kingdom. Theseus's very decision to marry, to "settle down", the even which frames the entire play, suggests just the sort of transition that Elizabethan culture was experiencing with the growth of print-culture.

Perhaps Shakespeare recognized his cultural and historical position and meant to exploit it. More likely, much of his seeming preoccupation is a result simply of his unconscious position in history. Either way, performance as intention becomes a salient element of any attempt at analysis, and especially analysis with the intention of performance.

The Role of Performance, The Roll of Print

Marshall McLuhan saw a certain affinity between Shakespeare's time and our own. Both times, argued McLuhan, represented periods of transition in the status of print media. Of course, Shakespeare and we stand on opposite ends of the spectrum. What for his time was a growing acquaintance with print must be for ours a mounting estrangement. Which transition will prove more bitter? And for whom?

For McLuhan, our alignment with print media meant a transition into linear thinking patterns. Patterns which favor logical order, cause and effect, and individual attention. It shifted the function of words, too. Literate culture shifted "from the notion of words as resonant, live, active natural forces to the notion of words as ‘meaning’ or ‘significance’ for minds” (McLuhan, from his book The Gutenberg Galaxy, excerpted in The Essential McLuhan, 1995, Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, eds., p. 114). It was probably with this mental and cultural realignment that Shakespeare was actively participating. McLuhan sees many of his plays as direct interaction with the themes of a new lifestyle influenced by print. (See his brief discussion of King Lear on pp. 108-109).

McLuhan continues: “Aquinas considered that neither Socrates nor Our Lord committed there teaching to writing because the kind of interplay of minds that is in teaching is not possible by means of writing” (p. 119). It seems to be this resonant and active character of language and interaction that performance to this day attempts to recapture.

Performance is, by definition, ephemeral. A video recording of a theatrical production does not constitute a performance. It is only in the immediate and fleeting interaction of artist and audience that we experience performance. It is an art form which cannot be captured and retain its status as Art. The oral tradition, in which performance plays a key role, demands the acceptance of a passing beauty. The tradition of visual media, including print, makes no such concession. Indeed, it is partially its physical permanence, its capability to speak to our own time and the next, which qualifies visual art as Art.

What role does performance play in what McLuhan considers our postliterate society? Some people go to plays, still, I suppose. More likely, they go to rock shows. Rock shows are almost entirely nonliterate. I don't see written music as playing a large part in the creative process of most rock and roll bands. Even lyrics fail to gain any real status in print. They are entirely aural within the context of performance, and in CD distribution appear only occasionally in tiny print in the liner notes. In fact, the pervasiveness of the (authentic or faked) photo reprint of the "original" handwritten lyrics of rock artists suggests, often written on napkins, scraps of paper, the back of a receipt, suggest their negligible status as written material, even for the artists themselves. With the rise of online music distribution, written lyrics are available online in several places, but have lost almost entirely any official status.

Knowing the lyrics is a different story. And of course written lyrics help with that, on a mass scale. However, most people learn lyrics to songs by listening to them often, and rarely by studying the written lyrics. (Consider the humorous stereotype: a person finds that they have been singing the lyrics wrong all these years. They shout, "Oh, is that what they're saying?") Personally, I find that reading the lyrics, especially while listening to the music, detracts significantly from the beauty of the experience. It can make the lyrics more difficult to internalize. It feels false, like I'm trying to hard to gain information from something that has it's home in emotion.

I like to characterize Performance as an especially tactile artform. In a performance, there is a limit to our concept of mediation. That is, mediation seems limited, though it may not actually be. What mediates a modern performance of Hamlet? The sound system, which is perhaps the most technologically advanced medium of modern theater, projects the performers' voices and is a very literal and limited mechanical extension of their capacity to speak. Make up and electric lighting play a similar role for their capacity to be seen, which in itself is an interesting necessity that is absent from almost all other art. It might be said that in performance, makeup and light play the same role in mediation that for television and film requires an entire technological apparatus.

And architecture plays a key role in the mediation of Performance. Benjamin, in the Artwork Essay, considers our reception of architecture to be especially tactile. In Performance, it is largely architecture which provides the boundary line (such as there is one) between Artist and audience. David Byrne gives a TED Talk regarding live music's relationship to architecture. He discusses the ways in which changes in architecture, essentially changes in potential venues and the accompanying shifts in acoustics, influence the choices that musicians make about how to create. The same could be said for any performance, which must inevitably be fit to the space in which it will be experienced. Architecture also plays a part in the auditory reception of the audience. It can even help to determine their expectations of the performance. One does not expect the same sort of performance at The 40 Watt as one might expect at Hodgson Concert Hall. For the philharmonic and the rock band to arbitrarily switch venues would create quite a stir. We as audience interact with the architectural environment of the performance in very specific ways. The same can be said for the performers.

I feel like in the case of live performances even those things we see in front of us (that is, those things we experience primarily visually) must be considered differently in that they are stricken through with the tactile. Performers, with their wigs, their make up, their costumes, are all a jumble of texture; the sets are simply architectural elements; the electrical lighting only serves to heighten this effect. The voices we hear are real human voices (we recognize them as such, even when amplified electronically, because of their immediate relationship to the performer we see in front of us); when Claudius storms offstage, we can feel his footsteps reverberate into our seats. This might be the reason that the experience of 'watching' a performance and watching a video of a performance differ so drastically. The video has been stripped of the tactile.

What relationship exists between rock lyrics and playtexts?