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УДК 378
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Л.Г.Садыхова
THEATRE METAPHORS IN CULTURAL STRUCTURES Театральные метафоры в культуральных структурах
В преподавании культурологии важно не только донести суть многочисленных теории культуры, но и научить применять соответствующие концепты к конкретным историко-культурным феноменам. В данной работе рассматривается возможность применения культуральной социологии Дж. Александера к анализу конкретной - викторианской - культуры посредством обращения к характерным для нее театральным тропам и метафорам.
Ключевые слова:
преподавание культурологии; культуральные структуры; театр и конструирование культурной реальности; театральные тропы и метафоры.
L.G. Sadykhova. Theatre metaphors in cultural structures
In doing cultural studies as an academic discipline it is essential, apart from rendering the core of diverse theories of culture, to teach to apply relevant concepts to some concrete historic cultural phenomena. In this paper the cultural sociology of
J.Alexander is considered as applied to the analysis of the Victorian culture through its characteristic theatrical tropes and metaphors
Key words:
teaching cultural studies; cultural structures; theatre and creating cultural reality; theatre tropes and metaphors.
While teaching cultural studies it is essential to show the historic and cultural context of their notions, as well as to substantiate, flesh out the theories. My aim here is to apply a concept of cultural structures, elaborated by J.Alexander [4], to the Victorian culture which was rich in theatrical tropes and metaphors. In fact, theatre as a space and form of mass communication has always been a frame of certain cultural ideas, and as a cultural institution it has certainly contributed to creating and reinforcing opinions; thus theatre of a particular period can be seen as a model to study this period’s culture [1; 2]. At the same time, in cultural studies, as well as in sociology of culture, theatrical metaphors - actors, roles, performance, etc. are often used to conceptualise social structures, activities, relations.
Садыхова Лала Гуламовна - кандидат культурологии, доцент кафедры социологии и культурологии Московского государственного технического университета им. Н.Э.Баумана. Тел: 8 985 2916923; e-mail: [email protected]
As for theories of culture, some authors, such as M.Foucault or A.Gramsci, would stress the impact made on it by institutional structures, others, such as M.Bakhtin or
J.Alexander, emphasize the role of social actors in creating cultural reality. To Alexander, in particular, culture as text influences both actors and institutions; cultural structures contribute to social order and the formation of lasting opinions (mass consciousness). By cultural structures Alexander means those internal, mainly unconscious mechanisms of social activities, which are formed within the frame of relatively permanent meanings of social life. Popular images, in particular, can be viewed as an example of cultural structures: whether in arts or in politics, they would be spread by some media. Though mainly focused himself on politics, Alexander uses theatrical metaphors such as performance efficiency while describing the results of such media coverage.
To better explore the paradigm, one can apply it to such a culture which itself is thoroughly imbued with theatrical tropes and metaphors, e.g. the Victorian culture. The 19th century Britain experienced the truly Industrial Age, with mass production, and popular entertainments promoted on an unprecedented scale, theatre being the most prominent and available for the masses. Melodrama which was the domineering dramatic form, with its schematic, polarizing the good and the evil, and thus popularly understandable worldview and moral, was the pivot of popular culture, and such institutions as family, the press, government often borrowed theatrical images and metaphors to express their views and concerns.
Thus, for instance, technology achievements were widely demonstrated at exhibitions, with a climax in the form of the first World’s Exhibition, in London, at a specially designed and built pavilion, which was opened and demonstrated in a very theatrical way [5]. Scientific concepts, such as the evolutionary theory, were debated in public, with lots of listeners present, speakers’ conflicts while delivering their ideas transcending the nature of scientific dispute, and press willingly covering all these as if a scandalous performance [3]. Political leaders, such as B.Disraeli, posed as melodramatic stage heroes, over-emphatically speaking of the country’s polarization into the rich and the poor as of ‘the two nations’, etc. Social critics, e.g., Th.Carlyle, wrote essays in the form of speeches, or monologues, meant to be read aloud, which was, in fact, those days’ practice while reading fiction as well as nonfiction literature. The Queen whose name the epoch would be named after made quite a popular image of herself as a personification of family values, sitting, with many members of her family, for lots of photographs to be sold everywhere, and having published her melodramatic ‘holidays diary’ to gain the public’s hearts.
Opinion leaders - for instance, such a famous writer as Dickens - would engage in public reading, including lecturing tours which were quite counterparts to professional theatre performances in terms of both stage as a space to develop cultural ideas, and public whose interest was equally aroused by those from the stage and those from the pulpit.
Victorians themselves often compared public events with stage performance, implying both positive and negative connotations of the theatre stuff. As a “London Times” critic put it: “There are so many persons in this country who run after everything theatrical, save a theatre itself” [6, P.59]. The usage of theatre tropes and metaphors was even extrapolated to public executions, supposed to contribute to moral purification of their spectators. Dickens, for instance, with all his moral
authority, strongly argued against public executions, describing what he witnessed in their public’s behaviour as horrid “entertainment”.
Professional theatre, on the other hand, could, as Victorians believed, contribute to a moral improvement: Dickens, for instance, testified to the change in the character of the East End theatres’ audiences ensuing from the change of their repertory, “from the lowest to the highest”, meaning by the former popular criminal drama, etc. and by the latter some productions of Shakespeare (even if melodramatic adaptations) which were the mid-century innovation of minor theatres’ actors-managers aiming at more bourgeois public as their potential patrons.
Socially approvable conduct, charitable activities and the like, was demonstrated and described in newspapers in much the same terms as peripetia of melodramatic plots. As for communicative codes of the culture, the domineering social language was verbal (comparing, e.g., with 18th century’s social postures and sophisticated costumes as prevailing over verbals in establishing or determining one’s rank etc.). Ranging from sociological survey, in which provincial colliers’s voices were described [6], to realistic novels, invariably paying attention to the way personages’ voices sounded, verbal, particularly vocal components were crucial in Victorian cultural structures. On that period’s stage, in turn, vocal elements, such as a right pitch, plausibility of intonation and the like, were getting the upper hand.
To sum up, Victorian cultural thought was so intrinsically interwoven with stage tropes and metaphors, particularly those of the melodramatic theatre, that the latter can be seen as providing as well as embodying the mainstream cultural structures in terms of Alexander’s cultural sociology concept.
REFERENCES:
1. Садыхова Л.Г. Concerning Methodology of Cultural Studies: Theatre as a Model Object// Надежность и качество: Труды Международного научно-практического симпозиума (Пенза, 27 мая-1 июня 2008). -Пенза, 2008. - С.174-176.
2. Садыхова Л.Г.. On Methods of Cultural Studies: Theatre in terms of Culture// Надежность и качество: Труды Международного научнопрактического симпозиума (25-31 мая 2009). - Пенза, 2009. - С. 122123.
3. Садыхова Л.Г. Victorian Essays, Poetry and Criticism: учебное пособие для вузов. - M.: StPrint, 2008. 70 C.
4. Alexander, J. The Meanings of Social Life. A Cultural Sociology. -Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 325 p.
5. Cambridge Companion to Victorian Culture/ Ed. O’Gorman, Fr. -Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 310 p.
6. Deborah Vlock. Dickens, Novel Reading, and the Victorian Popular Theatre. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 228 p.
