scholarly journals Trans-Mediation of Gender in Elia Kazan’s Adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 63-77
Author(s):  
Zahra Nazermi ◽  
Hossein Aliakbari Harehdasht ◽  
Abdolmohammad Movahhed
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Original Manuscript ◽  
Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
The Media ◽  
A Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
Elia Kazan

Elia Kazan is among the first directors who adapted Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) for the cinema. Kazan’s film adaptation was almost faithful to the original manuscript by sticking to Williams’s words and sentences. However, even if one ignores the cultural and historical contexts, the alterations that take place in the process of trans-mediation cannot be disregarded, since the telling mode in the text changes to the showing mode in the media. With this hypothetical basis, the present study aims to detect the possible alterations in the adaptation of the play to examine gender roles in both texts. Using the ideas of Linda Hutcheon in A Theory of Adaptation (2013), the authors have studied the verbal signs in the play together with the verbal and visual codes in the movie to assess how the film adaptation has incorporated the ideas of femininity, which are the main concerns of the play, too. The results of the study suggest that the alterations from the literary text to film have contributed to the development of female identity.

Kazan, Elia (1909–2003)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fouad Oveisy
Keyword(s):  
Great Influence ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Arthur Miller ◽  
Method Acting ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
The Us ◽  
Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
Traumatic Effect ◽  
A Streetcar Named Desire

Elia Kazan is arguably one of the most influential directors of mid-century mainstream America. Kazan is renowned for his introduction of the Moscow Art Theatre’s method acting into American film and theatre, his semi-documentary style of shooting on location, and a thematic variance that ‘reflects changes and tensions in the national culture’ (Neve 2) of the US. His 19-film oeuvre continues to exert great influence in its pioneering of cinematic realism. Kazan’s career can be divided into two parts: the socially conscious films he produced before his testimony in front of HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee), and those produced afterward, which reflect on the traumatic effect this event had on his life. Nevertheless, an unforgiving dedication to contemporary social and political dilemmas resonates throughout his films: Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) deals with anti-Semitism, his masterpiece On the Waterfront (1954) concerns workers’ rights, and his adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden (1955) focuses on the modern American familial crisis. After the successful staging of plays by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, Kazan’s film adaptation of Williams’ play in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) further cemented his reputation as a dramaturge and actors’ director. Kazan’s long-take style of shooting, corroborated by an acute attention to mise en scène, grants a suspenseful yet clear atmosphere to the rather simple diegeses in all his films.

scholarly journals A Feminist Study of Otherness in A Streetcar Named Desire and its Iranian Film Adaptation, The Stranger

2016 ◽  
pp. 65-84
Author(s):  
Zahra Nazemi ◽  
Hossein Aliakbari Harehdasht ◽  
Abdolmohammad Movahhed
Keyword(s):  
Female Gender ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Dramatic Works ◽  
Feminist Study ◽  
Women's Identity ◽  
Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
And Gender ◽  
A Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
The Stranger

Movie adaptations of dramatic works have always been very popular. Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) has been adapted several times and in different ways. Feminist and gender studies have examined the important role of Otherness in the construction of female identity. Using their findings, we compare the ways in which the theme of Otherness has been employed in representing female gender identity in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire and in its Iranian film adaptation, The Stranger (Bigāneh) (2014). The results of the study show that while in both works the female characters' traditional female roles have been highlighted, in the Iranian movie the main female character economically enjoys a relatively higher independence and can have a voice of her own to act against the patriarchal traditions. Besides, whereas in the source text women’s identity is solely associated with their being the Other of men, women in The Stranger stand on a par with their male companions, if not higher than them. The study also reveals that a main reason for these differences originates in the sociopolitical, cultural and historical discrepancies between the contexts in which the film and the play were created.

scholarly journals An Analysis on Ambivalence in Cinema: “The Last Tycoon” Elia Kazan

Etkileşim ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 220-235
Author(s):  
Besna Ağın
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Research Field ◽  
American Film ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
A Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
American Film Industry ◽  
Elia Kazan

Involved in filmmaking more than four decades, Elia Kazan had been a witness and an influence for significant change in the American film industry. His final phase includes four films, respectively, America America, The Arrangement, The Visitors and The Last Tycoon which are his most neglected films in film studies, compared to his previous successful films such as On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden and Splendor in the Grass. This study has focused on one of his late films for mainly two reasons; to fill the gap in the literature and present an analyses of Kazan’s most structurally different film regarding its narrative complexities with the concept of realism. Realism is one of the key concepts to study Kazan in the research field, but distinctively, I have tried to find the realism within the mise-en-scène and ambivalence in the narrative.

The Actor as Author of the Text he Acts

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-111
Author(s):  
Marta Nogueira
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Tennessee Williams ◽  
Emotional Factors ◽  
Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
Acting Technique ◽  
A Streetcar Named Desire

We aim to demonstrate how the acting technique and skills of an actor may influence the intentions of a text’s author, showing him new paths through the human and emotional factors. We also aim to demonstrate that what is usually considered a “text” may not always be a fixed entity produced by a single isolated individual. The analysis of the staging and film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire and the development of the character Stanley Kowalski by Marlon Brando, shows how he changed the written version of the play, shifting its core, interfering with the balance between the two main characters and helping to shape the cultural and historical attributes which rendered its particular place in art history. The text produced by the actor may, thus, assume an identical value to that of the dramatic script from which it developed, or even produce a higher impact.

TRAPPED BETWEEN TRADITIONAL AND MODERN: GENDER ROLES IN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’ PLAYS A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE AND CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (7) ◽  
pp. 275
Author(s):  
Ivana R. Kolaković
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Tennessee Williams ◽  
Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
A Streetcar Named Desire

Drame Tenesija Vilijamsa odražavaju specifičan vremenski period kada su u pitanju razumevanje i razvoj rodnih uloga. Ipak, njegovi likovi povremeno uspevaju da prevaziđu granice tradicionalnog, čime Vilijams preispituje položaj žena u Americi sredinom 20. veka. Ovaj rad se bavi dvema od njegovih najpoznatijih drama, Tramvaj zvani želja (1947), i Mačka na usijanom limenom krovu (1955), odnosno glavnim ženskim likovima ovih drama – Blanš Diboa i Megi Polit, iliti Megi „Mačka“. Postupci ta dva lika ističu performativnu prirodu roda i preispituju tradicionalne rodne uloge tipične za Ameriku pedesetih godina XX veka. Pojam performativnosti roda uvela je u feminističku teoriju filozofkinja i teoretičarka roda, Džudit Batler. U njenoj teoriji, rod je shvaćen kao društveni konstrukt, kao tvorevina koju proizvodimo našim akcijama. Stoga, rodne uloge nisu biološki zadate, već društveno i istorijski uslovljene, i kao takve su podložne promenama. Blanš Diboa, i Megi „Mačka“poigravaju se zadatim rodnim ulogama na način koji je donekle subverzivan. One stoga prevazilaze granice tradicionalnog shvatanja roda, ali, usled društveno-istorijske situacije, ne uspevaju da dosegnu modernost, što ih čini rastrzanim i zarobljenim između dva sveta.

Dreaming New Orleans

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-39
Author(s):  
Joseph Roach
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
A Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
The City

Having passed the tercentenary of the “Mississippi Bubble” of 1720, the financial fiasco that accompanied the founding of New Orleans, the city continues to risk everything by gambling on the collateral of its dreams. Like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, “The City that Care Forgot” is playing out a mortgage melodrama under constant threat of dispossession, dreading the last stop on an itinerary that begins with Desire, changes at Cemeteries, and dead ends in Elysian Fields.

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