the kindness of strangers

I've always been mesmerized by anything Tennessee Williams ever wrote. So when a friend told me that they were going to stream A Streetcar Named Desire and that Gillian Anderson was going to be Blanche Dubois, I got my popcorn ready. And I also could kick myself, because this streaming may go beyond a paywall after the 28th May. Darn. I should have posted about it last week.

In any case, I love me some Tennessee Williams and the way he wrote from the point of view of a gay man and managed to infuse each one of his plays, short stories and even poetry with a vibrant queer sensibility. And of course that was needed; remember this was the forties and fifties and homosexuality was stigmatized, penalized and pathologized. The Code, remember. But there is something bout A Streetcar that always makes me stop and pay attention. And pay attention you must, because it's a long play with a short intermission. But it's also one of William's most compelling works, IMHO.

Even though it's on the surface a thoroughly heterosexual drama, I can see that Blanche is indeed a gay man (even though in the play she WAS married to one) and she is treated like one: she falls on hard times because she seduces younger men and is treated as 'the other' throughout the play. She has secrets and is desperate to hide them, she's also obsessed with her fading looks and tries by all means to stick to her glamorous past but ends up losing her mind. Stanley, on the other hand, is the personification of lust and sexual energy, something that gay men in that time tried to subdue at all costs but that ended up overcoming them. Some still do. But you cannot tame sex. I also think that Blanche is an avatar for a drag queen (her artifice, her reticence so be seen in plain daylight, her theatricality, the booze...). Blanche is pure, undiluted camp. But it's also no surprise to see her being institutionalized, a fate many women and gay men would find to be terribly familiar at that time. Remember homosexuality was considered a mental illness until 1973.

If you have time and if it's still streaming I'd recommend this version of ASND. Gillian Anderson is luminous and tragic and Ben Foster is yummy and menacing as Stanley. Because we cannot accuse Tennessee Williams of not giving us fantastic male protagonists, virtual wet dreams concocted by a feverish gay mind.

Take Brando, in the original movie for A Streetcar Named Desire:

Or is there a more beautiful man on screen than Paul Newman on Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof?

Or Monty on Suddenly, Last Summer?

Oh, and if the streaming by the Vic is over by the time you get to this post, or two hours is way too much for you, try Gillian Anderson's The Departure, a sort of prequel to her part on A Streetcar Named Desire, as a treat.




Happy viewing!

XOXO