Comedy Genre - Jerusalem

Jez Butterworth

Theories of laughter

•Why do we laugh?

Blake’s poem

explore it through group discussion and presentation

Bacchanalia – subversive activities or necessary steam valves?

• The bacchanalia were rites originally held in ancient Greece as the Dionysia.• The most famous of the Greek Dionysia were in Attica and included ... a festal

procession ... a drinking feast [and] dramatic performances in the theatre of Dionysus.[1]

• The rites spread to Rome from the Greek colonies in Southern Italy; here they were secret and only attended by women. The festivals occurred in the grove of Simila near the Aventine Hill on March 16 and March 17. Later, admission to the rites was extended to men, and celebrations took place five times a month. Livy, reporting the evidence given by a woman who had been involved in the rites to a Roman investigative consul, writes:

• there was no crime, no deed of shame, wanting. More uncleanness was committed by men with men than with women. Whoever would not submit to defilement, or shrank from violating others, was sacrificed as a victim. To regard nothing as impious or criminal was the sum total of their religion. The men, as though seized with madness and with frenzied distortions of their bodies, shrieked out prophecies;

• The term bacchanalia has since been extended to refer to any drunken revelry.

Picking up the clues....

• Bacchanalian rituals – subversive, exciting counter-establishment

• Juxtaposition of two worlds• Ironic contrasts – youth and age• Role-playing and disguise• Lord of Misrule• Chaos and anarchy

Monday 23rd Padstow May song http://mainlynorfolk.info/steeleye.span/songs/padstow.html

• When the town clock of Padstow strikes midnight on April 30th, there begins a ceremony which is one of the most remarkable pagan survivals in England. Between 12 and 2 a.m. the hobby horse committee walk through streets and gardens singing the May Day Song. Then, next day, the hobby horse dancer appears. He wears a six-foot hoop skirt, painted shiny black and reaching to the ground. This hoop rests on his shoulders, and his head is covered in a conical black mask on which a sinister face is painted in black and white.

• At about 11 a.m. this rather terrifying creature emerges from the Golden Lion Inn, accompanied by the “Old 'Oss Committee,” generally in sailor costume, an orchestra of drums and accordions, a man with a box for voluntary collections, and the teaser, who dances nimbly in front of the horse, directing his movements with the manipulation of a phallic club. All day this strange procession roves through Padstow, singing:

• Unite and unite, and let us all uniteFor summer is a-comin' today.And whither we are going we all will uniteIn the merry morning of May.

• The hoss visits the sick. Children come shyly to touch the skirt for luck. Young married women, caught up under the hoss's shirt, will, according to old Padstonians, give birth within the year. And then, every so often, the surging dance rhythm ceases with a sudden bang of the drum. The hoss bows down motionless to the ground, and, while the teaser makes caressing movements with his symbolic club, the crowd sings a solemn dirge, in which some scholars have found a garbled reference to the Norse goddess, Freya, and her long ship.

Lyrics

•What might be the significance of the Padstow May song’s lyrics?

Tuesday 24th September

Green World• Green world is a dramatic term

for a particular setting – sylvan wooded rural pastoral – idyllic – far from the pressures and corruption of city. A place for comedic resolution….

How does Butterworth present Byron’s crew?

• Ginger • Johnny – anarchic, anti-social – evil?

uncomfortable? dangerous? Truthful? Evasive? Self-destructive? Crisis point

• Professor – lost soul• Lee – lost boy passing through• Tanya – fancies Lee• Pea – hanger on

Comic conventions evident so far...

• Use of green space setting• Role-playing• Subversion• Rebellion• politics• Topsy-turvy world• Slapstick/farce/visual comedy• Verbal wit• Obscenity and low-life antics

Mad professor

• The health and democracy of a society may be measured by the visibility and freedom of its loyal dissenters.

• But unto any pious motion • There’s little coin and less devotion

• English eccentric

Ginger

• A forlorn gangling loser• A parasitic acolyte• Touchingly sad failure• Creepy hanger-on

Lee Piper

• Another innocent acolyte• A sweetly gormless teen• A boy who may be the one who gets away

Monday 30th September

• How does Butterworth present Johnny’s relationship with Wesley?

Is Byron...• Charming, charismatic lord of Misrule?• A sinister, drug-dealing villain?• Full of seductive charm, mischievous?• A belligerent drunk with a cruel streak?• A mixture of Pied Piper and Puff the Magic dragon?• A protector of wayward youth?• A liberator?• A glamorous yarn-spinning outlaw?• A lonely solitary with a deep tenderness?• A devious, lying, swaggering ogre/troll• Someone who knows the game is up?

Read pages 35 -45

• We need to read between the lines and imagine the scene…

• How does Wesley differ from the other characters on stage?

• How does Butterworth alter the interaction between this character and Byron so that we can sense a different relationship emerging?

Thursday October 3rd

• Pair work• Examine the pages you have been given…• In what sense might this play be termed

irreverent ?• What emotional tensions or emotional strands

can you track across this small section of a scene?

Monday October 7th

• Our objective

• To discuss the beginning of Act 2 and consider its generic features

• Homework back• One way of answering the question• Feedback sheet• Go on show my homework to find some

important documents to download on play.

Topic sentences – build up your essay

• Jez Butterworth uses stage setting to emphasise…

• Jez Butterworth uses dialogue to• Butterworth antagonises the audience by …• Butterworth employs other characters to…

Responding to critical quotations

• ‘A wonderful dark rollicking comedy about contemporary life in rural England’

• If so, what is the state of rural England? What kind of place is it, who lives in it and what is wrong with it?

Use hand- out Group work - marketplace

• Can this scene be considered in the light of five key comedic concepts?

• Clowns and fools• Green Worlds• Inversion and subversion• The Lord of Misrule• Stereotypes and stock characters

Tuesday 8th October

• ‘A Dionysian force of nature, a kind of poet of the primal, whose revelry is pitched not just against authority but against the tedium of convention, Rooster is one of the most sensational creations in English drama of the past twenty years.’

Critic comments

• Rooster inhabits a seedy immobile home to which all kinds of drifters, disaffected teens and clueless yokels keep flocking. In search of what? Illicit late-night raves? Drugs? These things, for sure – but also something more intangible – a sense of belonging. With his intoxicating tall tales, this rogue represents a spirit of native wildness that stands in defiant opposition to the forces of law, order and “progress”.

Pages 50 - 56

• a lord of Misrule?• An attack upon authority?• A sense of belonging?

Monday October 14th

• Homework writing task due in…..• Re-read page 58• 60 -62For all his disreputability, the “Rooster” is an indigenous force – his roots are nourished by ancient blood…..

Marky and Dawn – 63 -71

• How does the entrance of Marky and Dawn affect the audience view of Johnny and response towards him?

• Marky Dawn Johnny

Monday 21st October

•How does Butterworth use Troy Whitworth?

St George• n the year AD 302, Diocletian (influenced by Galerius) issued an edict that

every Christian soldier in the army should be arrested and every other soldier should offer a sacrifice to the Roman gods of the time. However George objected and with the courage of his faith approached the Emperor and ruler. Diocletian was upset, not wanting to lose his best tribune and the son of his best official, Gerontius. George loudly renounced the Emperor's edict, and in front of his fellow soldiers and Tribunes he claimed himself to be a Christian and declared his worship of Jesus Christ. Diocletian attempted to convert George, even offering gifts of land, money and slaves if he made a sacrifice to the Roman gods. The Emperor made many offers, but George never accepted.[16]

• . After various torture sessions, including laceration on a wheel of swords in which he was resuscitated three times, George was executed by decapitation before Nicomedia's city wall, on April 23, 303.

St George

• Eastern Orthodox depictions of Saint George slaying a dragon often include the image of the young maiden who looks on from a distance. The standard iconographic interpretation of the image icon is that the dragon represents both Satan (Rev. 12:9) and the monster from his life story. The young maiden is the wife of Diocletian, Alexandra. Thus, the image as interpreted through the language of Byzantine iconography, is an image of the martyrdom of the saint.

Connections

• To what extent can we identify Johnny with the legend of St George?

27.2.13. The ending of the play• The play moves further away from comic conventions towards the

ending – do you agree? Black comedy is defined by dark humour that makes light of so-called dark or evil elements in human nature

• Comic conventions:• Complications reach a climax• Disguises are thrown off• Love triangles are resolved /marriages take place• Mysteries are unravelled in open view• Order is restored in a grand denouement• There is a sense that much has been learned during the

brief reign of chaos and confusion – society will be invigorated as a result.

Tragic conventions in Elizbethan and Jacobean drama

• Flexibility -Jacobean dramatists felt free to use whichever conventions they liked and adapted them for the context of the particular play

• E.g.• Dark Scene• Graphic mutilation• Complicating a romantic plot with the possibility of incest

( tragic convention used for comic effect in some extant plays)

• Much comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetitiveness, and the effect of opposite expectations

• Beyond the point" of the comedy (the "funny") lies the scary territory that threatens one's very existence (Billington 92), which Wardle and others commonly have "labeled" or "pigeonholed" (depending on one's perspective) as "menace" (Merritt 9–10).

Monday November 4th• Inversion and subversion in comic drama• To what extent does Jerusalem challenge the status quo

(the current culture in society)?• Invert accepted hierarchies?• Mock those in authority?• Transgress what is normally accepted including social and

sexual taboos?• Do women take power?• Do children flout their parents’ authority?• Does Fantasy rule over reason?

Essay titles

• To what extent does Butterworth subvert comic structure through the ending of his play ‘Jerusalem’?

• How far does the ending of Jerusalem support the view that comedy is ‘ a conservative genre’?

• To what extent does the ending of the play ‘Jerusalem’ challenge audience expectation?

Does the end of this comedy restore order? (structure)

• Pages 94-98 – Fawcett and Parsons return - they are the faces and representatives of the social norm, social hierarchies, the status quo…

• How far does this section celebrate rule-breaking?

The Professor –p99

• Is the professor restored to any kind of ‘order’?• Is there any sense of

harmony in his final appearance?

Phaedra• 100-104• To what extent are misunderstandings

resolved here?• Does Jez Butterworth play with or challenge

audience expectations through this scene?• Is Phaedra’s unhappiness at all likely to be

resolved?

The savage retribution

• 104• Johnny as the Christ figure?• Ginger as the faithless disciple?• How valid is this interpretation? • Why might Butterworth have included such

inter-textual references and explicit analogies?

Marky

• How would you describe the language of Johnny’s monologue to Marky?

• Does Johnny save Marky in any sense?• Does Johnny’s philosophy represent a return to

the status quo or a celebration of rule-breaking?• Is Johnny still a Lord of Misrule?• Has Butterworth ignored or played against

comic convention here?

Last Scene – denouement - the drumming....

• Language – how many different types of speech does Butterworth employ in his dialogue?

• What is the purpose of this final dramatic scene?• What impact does this have upon the audience?

How do you think we feel and respond to the sound and intensity of this climax?

• How does it transform our view of Johnny? Of the ending ? Of the message of the play?

Dark threads

• Lost children who cannot be united with loving parents• Confessions which reveal sad inadequacies beneath the

mask of civilization• Sexual desires unappeased (Tanya /Lee)• Friendship is revealed as treacherous betrayal• Enemies are more numerous (and serious) than Rooster

had thought• The destruction of Rooster’s Wood seems inevitable..

Can his Green world withstand the power of man-made civilization?

Bright threads?

• Moments of clarity• Johnny’s son is temporarily reunited with him and held

in a tender philosophical moment• Johnny is not giving up – but leaves us with a powerful

vision of the ancient British culture fighting back against the demons of modernity.....

• Some spirit of England – epitomised by the wild garlic and May traditional songs – is alive and well – who will now take up the bow of burning gold?

• Has imagination and the spirit of individualism survived?

6.3.13. Drama – live performance

• Audience – play renewed afresh each night because the drama is created through the interaction between stage and audience – a living organic process of creation

• The playwright in a satiric comedy is directing darts of energy at us – jabbing away at our complacency, security and sense of identity..... Undermining us...

• Laughter – what a powerful response – it can function as release, as healing, as complicity, as approval, as endorsement, as mockery .....

Dare-devil/spirit of the wood

• How does Butterworth use the immediate past, the distant past, the ancient past?• Is it for comic effect or for

some deeper purpose?

Friday 8th March

• Ending – comic structure• AOs applied – making it relevant

13.3.13 Aspects of dramatic comedy

• Language – how many different types of speech does Butterworth employ in his dialogue?

• Pastoral/Arcadia /idyllic – classical idea of the purity and perfection of the rural world – a place of retreat from the corruption of the city

• (how does Butterworth mock this notion?)• Subversion of the society portrayed and reflected

in the world of the play – does Butterworth subvert the world of Flintock?

• Comedy is radical anti- authoritarian form – less feel-good than feel uneasy.• To what extent does the ending of

Jerusalem challenge accepted norms and provoke feelings of unease within the audience at the end of the play.

Carnival - subversion

• Outrageous costumes, extravagant displays, loud music, release from conventional rules, a spirit of excess and license to indulge – these are the hallmarks of carnival – a spirit of wildness ( perhaps seen as a necessary pressure valve in society – an emotional and cathartic release from time to time)

• Where and how does Butterworth use this spirit of Carnival in Jerusalem?

Two versions of Carnival

• The Flintock Fair – the traditional day of boisterous fun remembered fondly by many of the gang....

• Links to pagan festivals to celebrate the rituals of Spring and new life (fertility rites – jumping over bonfires to assure fertility of crops and people )

• Medieval Feast of fools – power, dignity and impunity is briefly conferred upon those in a subordinate position in a small social revolution (topsy-turvy) . Lord of Misrule temporarily adopts power in a festival of fun.

Flintock Fair

• This festival has been transformed through the interventions of Health and Safety, ruling councils, the intervention of big business and the adulteration of British culture by appalling influences from the world of Media.

• Pages 34 - 37

Johnny’s band of fools 50 -54

• Johnny presents a vision of rebellion and revolt against the forces which are destroying imagination and individualism. His energy, verbal wit and own powers of fantasy paint a vision of colourful and exciting chaos and subversion which he might unleash – if he were able.....

• Symbolic power through voice and speech? The unleashing of images and ideas?

Is Johnny a hero, anti-hero or a comic villain?

• The spirit of non-conforming rebellion against the death of self as we all become units in the great cog of society?

• Notorious, filthy troublemaker – drug-peddler and foul-mouthed corrupter of local youth?

• A feckless and idle sponger, who pays no rates and pollutes the countryside with his gypsy campsite?

• A useless father?• A faithless lover?

Or from a different perspective...

• A force of nature?• A myth-weaver?• A spirit of mischief • A challenge to faceless, mindless bureaucracy

and its soulless obedience to rules and regulations?

• A counterbalance to materialism