TH2 Midterm
Week 2 - "Age of Enlightenment," the Rise of European Racism, and Bourgeois Theater
One of the major transnational (transnational = "extending across national boundaries") Western intellectual developments of the eighteenth century was what historians, writers, and cultural commentators refer to as "The Enlightenment" (or sometimes, "Age of Reason"). In broad terms, this refers to the movement towards rational thought and progressive social values and away from blind acceptance of traditional institutions, ideas, and morals. Think about the word enlighten -- to impart greater knowledge or wisdom -- and its root, light. They are both connected to the idea of illuminating something that's hidden, as in the expression, "Ah, now I see the light!" The idea here, at least for those who use the term "Enlightenment" to describe the era, is that eighteenth century Western culture was becoming more knowledgable and thus more recognizably "modern." The Enlightenment, with its emphasis on logical discourse and analysis, is also associated with rise of scientific inquiry, that is, testing theories, with the help of new technologies, to see if they are valid rather than just accepting them as true because a traditional authority -- for example, the church -- says it is so.
There is often a tension between rhetoric and reality, between how a society claims to operate and how it actually operates. In that sense, Enlightenment ideals were to a significant degree just that: ideals. For many, the reality of everyday life remained as unenlightened as ever. Violence, poverty, exploitation, intolerance, inequality; these didn't magically disappear because Diderot put out an encyclopedia or because Rousseau wrote treatises on sacrificing for the general good.
But the most glaring contradiction between Enlightenment rhetoric and reality was the contradiction between "All men are created equal" -- the iconic line from the Declaration of Independence -- and rise of white supremacism in Europe and the lands it conquered and colonized. This contradiction was not only striking, but would have catastrophic consequences on generations of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC). Indeed, the Declaration's soaring language cannot hide the fact that the United States was founded on the twin pillars of settler-colonial extermination of "merciless Indian Savages" (to take the land) and enslavement of Black Africans (to get the labor to work the land). Or as scholar Michelle Alexander explains, "But for slavery, genocide and colonization, we would not be the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world — in fact, our nation would not even exist."1
Moreover, the racism that undergirded the slavery, genocide, and colonization was the product of Enlightenment attempts to resolve these very contradictions.2 In this analysis, Europeans needed to justify the enslavement of Africans, and the notion of separate "races," arranged in a fixed and, in European fantasies, scientifically verified hierarchy -- with the newly conjured "White Race" on top -- arose to fill that need. In other words, precisely at that time when Europe echoed with the call for "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" ("Liberty, equality, brotherhood," the rallying cry of the French Revolution), Western intellectuals and political and religious leaders were spreading anti-Black propaganda, rooted in earlier anti-Black attitudes but now tucked under the umbrella of pseudoscientific "race theory," to explain why these supposedly universal Enlightenment principles didn't, in fact, apply universally, that is, why some people had inalienable rights while others could be enslaved. Indeed, Diderot, Kant, and Voltaire -- philosophers celebrated by mainstream Western culture for their contributions to Enlightenment thought -- all left behind them a paper trail of such propaganda (Voltaire, for example, wrote that Africans were "animals" with a “flat black nose with little or no intelligence!”). And they were not exceptions to the rule. They were the rule. Viewed from this perspective, and the existence of white-supported abolition movements notwithstanding, textbooks might well refer to the "Age of Enlightenment" as "The Age of White Supremacism" or "The Age of Racist Settler-Colonialism."
We should also note that the issue here isn't just race, but class. White supremacy wasn't a set of beliefs that sprung up uniformly among all segments of white society through some sort of natural kinship. Rather, it was an ideological tool employed by the elites of emerging white society to both justify economic exploitation and divide the exploited, white and Black, from each other. "Generally we think of white supremacist views as having their origins with the unlettered, underprivileged, poorer class whites," wrote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967). "But the social obstetricians who presided at the birth of racist views in our country were from the aristocracy: rich merchants, influential clergymen, men of medical science, historians and political scientists from some of the leading universities of the nation." He went on to say, "With such a distinguished company of the elite working so assiduously to disseminate racist views, what was there to inspire poor, illiterate, unskilled white farmers to think otherwise?" In other words, racism didn't arise from mere ignorance. On the contrary, it served a clear, rational purpose for those in power.
The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) -- the first successful rebellion by enslaved people in the "New World" -- further exemplified the distance between glorious ideals and harsh reality. Although the revolt in Haiti was supported by white anti-slavery Enlightenment intellectuals, the French ruling class, who operated this immensely profitable slave colony prior to the revolution (then called Saint-Domingue) sent armies to crush the Black uprising and reestablish the enslaver regime.
When the rebellion, under the eventual leadership of Toussaint Louverture (a former enslaved person), finally triumphed, and Haiti achieved independence from France, the French responded not by congratulating the ex-colony for embodying the liberal aspirations of the Enlightenment -- Haiti's state motto is "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" -- but by forcing the new republic to pay compensation for the revenue the French would lose through the abolition of slavery. It would take Haiti 143 years to repay this debt to France. It is in significant part due to the crippling economic effects of this debt that Haiti is today the poorest country in Western hemisphere.
You, of course, must come to your own judgement on the Enlightenment, based on a deeper investigation of the era than this course can provide. Perhaps for the moment it is enough to note that Western Enlightenment ideals have animated a range of social justice struggles despite the era's inconsistencies, contradictions, and the horrors it visited on wide swaths of humanity. And the heroes from that era still resonate today. One memorable section from Ntozake Shange's 1974 theater piece For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf concerns a Black woman remembering how as a young girl she became enamored with a revolutionary visionary from the past "who refused to be a slave." That Enlightenment era revolutionary? Toussaint Louverture.
Week 3 - Industrialism Vs. the Romantic Hero
Ira Aldridge was regarded by many who saw him as one of the finest nineteenth century Shakespearean actors. Educated in York York City, he began acting with the African Grove Theatre, the first institutional Black theater company in the United States. By the time he was 17 years old, however, he concluded that systemic white supremacism in this country would make it next to impossible for him to have a successful theater career. So he headed for Europe.
For forty years he toured Britain and the European continent to great acclaim from audiences, dignitaries, and celebrities. He is thought to be one of the first Black men to play Shakespeare's Othello, and certainly the first to be identified with the role. Philip Kolin quotes French poet Théophile Gauitier, who, seeing the Aldridge perform in St. Petersburg, Russia, declared that the actor was "Othello himself, as Shakespeare has created him…quiet, reserved, classic and majestic."1 Others were not so enamored. In London, he was subjected to racist attacks in the press.2 He died while touring Poland in 1867, and is buried there. 33 actors are honored with bronze plaques at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford, England; he is one. In 1979, after decades of being ignored by the city of his youth, he was inducted into the New York Theater Hall of Fame.
Note the reference above to Aldridge's performance having been "quiet, reserved, classic and majestic." Those are not the words typically associated with the passionate Romantic style of acting. In fact, those adjectives are much more commonly connected to Neoclassicism, the very style from whom the Romantics were so consciously and strenuously attempting to distance themselves.
This classical presentation of self may not simply have been a question of Aldridge's artistic preferences or innate personality traits. A Black person who embodied the passionate, uncompromising, and at times violent rebelliousness associated with the Romantic hero, especially in front of white spectators, would not have been tolerated by white supremacist Western culture. This would have been particularly true in nineteenth century United States, where, North or South, enslaved or "free," Black people were expected to "know their place" in the racialized hierarchy. Those who challenged this system -- on or off stage -- could find themselves in serious danger very quickly. Aldridge's "quiet, reserved, classic and majestic" demeanor, then, may have been as much a response to how white supremacy circumscribed Black public behavior as it was an expression of his temperament. Byron could thrive being "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." For Aldridge, depending on the time and place, such a reputation might have had very serious, even fatal, consequences.
The historical risks of Black rebelliousness in the face of white supremacy were amply illustrated a century later in the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night, which you may remember from Theater History I. To jog your memory, the film stars Sidney Poitier as a Black Philadelphia police officer named Virgil Tibbs who is -- very reluctantly -- drawn into a murder case investigation while visiting his mother in small Mississippi town, where he is subjected to racist abuse by almost every white person he encounters. In one of the film's most memorable scenes, Tibbs and the town's police chief visit a wealthy white local businessman to question him about the murder. Notice what the businessman says after Tibbs slaps him.
Summary of the Romantic Vision
As I mentioned earlier, romanticism, unlike the other models we’ve discussed, is not a structure. Rather, it is a value system and a set of assumptions about the world that place the characters in extreme situations, all the while motivating them to strive for things they can never have. In the following summary, therefore, I have deviated from the approach that has served us so far. Rather than a list of structural guidelines that bring this particular vision to life—for it can actually appear within any structure—here you'll find summarized the key principles that define the world of the romantic and drive the characters forward.
1. The world of the romantic is one of dire extremes. Either the hero is pursuing something against staggering odds, or the couple who yearn to be together come from such different worlds that any hope of success defies reason.
2. The hero is passionate, driven by extreme feelings that he or she cannot effectively put into words.
3. The hero believes in absolute ideals and cannot compromise on any of them.
4. This causes great personal anguish, but the hero cannot help him- or herself. The hero is driven to seek these things by his or her inner nature, something that cannot be changed or reasoned with.
5. The hero is opposed by characters who are swept up in the worst human weaknesses. Often these weaknesses take the form of our lowest appetites—greed, ambition, lust—but they can also be psychological weaknesses, such as vanity, despair, and self-loathing.
6. The villains either openly revel in indulging their appetites or wallow in their weaknesses.
7. In the romantic world, good people lead simple lives. Either they are close to nature or they live in poverty.
8. Villains in the romantic world are often wealthy and lead lives of sophisticated decadence.
9. In the most extreme stories, romantic heroes will risk everything, defying all reason and logic, in order to achieve that which is clearly impossible. They scorn death and failure.
10. The romantic world is a place where all emotions are important, but love has the greatest power of all. It is the one thing most worth striving for. It cancels out every other claim on the hero. It is a form of insanity.
Week 4 - Melodrama, Cultural Hegemony, and Stereotype
Briefly summarized, these are the essential nineteenth century melodramatic conventions:
Dramatic reversals of fortune: Each act of a melodrama often ended with a shocking plot development that swung the fortunes of the main characters in either or markedly better or worse direction. For sure, melodrama isn't the only genre to use this technique, but the obviousness of the melodramatic reversal is one its defining characteristics.
Background music to cue heightened emotions - Melodrama used background music, or what Hollywood now calls "underscoring," to stimulate extreme emotional responses (fear, anxiety, shock, rage, etc.) in the audience. Note there's a difference between melodramatic underscoring and the way a traditional musical uses actual songs with lyrics to promote character development and advance the plot of the story.
Serious and comic - Melodramas were typically built around a very serious central plot, leavened with "comic relief" subplots This represented a break with earlier neoclassical dramatic conventions which held that serious and comic should not mix in the same play. You will see both plots employed in Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Spectacle/"Sensation Scene" - To help animate the desired audience emotional responses, melodrama employed lots of exciting spectacle that put characters in heightened danger (the high point of danger — e.g., Eliza escaping to freedom across the frozen Ohio River in Uncle Tom's Cabin — was called the "sensation scene"). This extreme danger produces the bread and butter of traditional melodrama: suspense, a combination of curiosity ("What’s going to happen next?!)" and concern ("OMG! I hope she makes it across the river!")
Stock characters - The emphasis on simple emotions and spectacle means there is no room to explore the depth of character; in fact, complex characters may only end up distracting the audience. Melodrama instead relies on easily recognizable stock characters who behave in more or less predictable -- some might say, pleasingly familiar -- ways (sympathetic best friend, overbearing parent, wise old man, impetuous youngster, tough guy who doesn't talk much, etc.) Note: See section on stereotype below.
Clear heroes and villains - Two of the most popular melodramatic characters are the hero and the villain; the hero representing virtue and the villain, evil, e.g., Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Moreover, in nineteenth century melodrama, it was patently clear which was which. In other words, melodrama didn’t embrace character ambiguity. It was also clear who was supposed to win at the end. Hint: it wasn’t the bad guy!
External conflict - unlike in tragedy and comedy, the characters’ problems have little or nothing to do with their own flaws (tragedy) or obsessive foibles (comedy). The problem in melodrama almost always comes from some outside constellation of forces (although in modern melodrama, one finds more inner conflict than was the case in its nineteenth century incarnation). This means that in melodrama, characters tend to be less dimensionalized than in other dramatic genres (see Stock Characters above).
Poor treated with dignity - Melodrama, although largely geared to a middle class audience in the nineteenth century, was the first popular form that didn't ignore or ridicule the lower classes; indeed, it often expressed sympathy for their plight (Dion Boucicault wrote a play called The Poor of New York). Remember, even an artist as sensitive and empathetic as Shakespeare used such characters largely for comic effect (think: gravediggers in Hamlet, who are referred to in the text as "clowns," or the craftsmen in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who are listed as "rude mechanicals").
Dramatizes bourgeois social morality - One of the main cultural functions of nineteenth century melodrama was to reaffirm the prevailing bourgeois ideology. In this scheme of things, the poor may have deserved sympathy for their situation, but for the most part everyone was expected to accept his or her place in the capitalist hierarchy. In short, and with some important exceptions, there was nothing Marxist or insurrectionary about mainstream nineteenth century melodrama. Note that attitudes have changed to some degree in the intervening decades. A film like Avatar, for example, which employs many melodramatic techniques, doesn't just empathize with the oppressed, it encourages them to fight back against the corporate/military -- i.e., bourgeois -- "system"!
Intended for a popular audience - As you will see in your reading this week, melodrama as a genre seems to have started in the working class "boulevard theaters" of Paris towards the end of the nineteenth century. Often times, it consisted of pantomimed scenarios or even frozen tableaux set to music, designed in part to help the audience understand the action. Not exactly where you'd expect to find to sophisticated elites contemplating the beauty of elevated poetry. Indeed, René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt, a French playwright called the "Father of Melodrama," is alleged to have said, "I write for those who cannot read." Whether he said it or not, it speaks to the kind of audience towards which melodrama was initially directed.
Looking at the list above, one can see both why melodrama appealed to audiences back then and why it is often mocked today. It provided tons of excitement, easily recognizable "types," and the clear-cut morality many found comforting, but those very characteristics makes it seem contrived today, sometimes laughably so. Indeed, when used today, the word "melodrama" has an almost exclusively negative connotation, shorthand for "phony," "manipulative, or "over-the-top."
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Stereotypes crop up in theater going back to antiquity. A stereotype is "A generalization, usually exaggerated or oversimplified and often offensive, that is used to describe or distinguish a group." The group can be defined by ethnicity ("All Black people . . ."), gender ("All women . . ."), sexual orientation ("All queer people . . ."), religion ("All Muslims . . ."), age ("All teenagers . . ."), nationality ("All Chinese . . ."), and so on. Note the "often offensive" reference in the definition. But what makes a stereotype offensive, as opposed to innocuous fun? I would offer the following thesis: Stereotypes offend when they reflect and seek to justify -- directly or indirectly, intentionally or unconsciously -- political, economic, and social inequality and oppression. Where the stereotype does not reinforce systemic inequality, it is less likely to offend (or offend to the same degree), and more likely to be taken as humorous. Stand-up comedian Aamer Rahman explores this distinction in the following routine on so-called "reverse racism":
Week 5 - Modernity, Realism, and Naturalism
There are three closely related yet distinct words we’re going to be dealing with over the next couple of lectures: Modern, modernity, and modernism. Modern means "of or relating to the present or recent times as opposed to the remote past." By this definition, any time period can theoretically be modern if it sees itself as embodying different values and practices than earlier periods. For example, it's possible that a Roman living under the empire in 200 CE may have thought of herself as living in "modern" times compared to, say, the early days of the republic seven hundred years earlier.
The word "modernity," however, doesn’t just mean the present as compared to the past, but refers to a particular epoch in Western history, often dated in its earliest form from the Renaissance and hitting full stride in the nineteenth century industrial revolution we examined in week 3, characterized by a specific set of beliefs, attitudes, technologies, and social, political, and economic relationships. In other words, our notional Roman from 200 C.E. might well have been "modern" compared to earlier Roman eras, but was not part of "modernity."
Modernity produced a number of artistic reactions (Romanticism can be seen as one of the earliest), all of which sought to find novel ways of representing this new and rapidly transforming reality. The theatrical styles we will examine this week -- Realism and Naturalism -- were two such responses.
As the nineteenth century moved on, however, the tensions inherent in modernity became more pronounced, producing what has been called the "crisis of modernity." In response to this crisis, artists began to move beyond Realism, which by that time had found a certain measure of general acceptance, and search for even more provocative and nontraditional responses to the changes they saw occurring around them. This flagrant challenge to accepted artistic methods and points of view are often bunched together under the term "Modernism" (sometimes known by its most provocative wing, the "avant-garde"). We will discuss Modernism and the avant-garde next week.
So, in brief: we have Modern (new as opposed to traditional); Modernity (a specific historical set of cultural circumstances); and Modernism (an artistic response to modernity that explored radically new ways of perceiving the new reality). All are related, but all represent discrete ideas.
The idea of modernity can be difficult to get our heads around. Here is a definition of the term given by scholar Günther Berghaus:
A historical and social condition that emerged in the sixteenth century and reached a peak with the Industrial Revolution and the establishment of capitalism as the determining force in society. The formation of modernity brought about radical changes that affected all spheres of social life: mass-migration, urban growth, new means of transport and communication, break-up of social ties, secularization, commodification, and so on. The rapid transformation of society and everyday life in nineteenth-century Europe produced a historical consciousness of a new epoch and gave rise to a cultural attitude that valorized present over past. It rejected traditions and customary conventions as anachronistic remnants of the past and took a positive stance toward narratives of technological progress, prosperity, individualism, and universal liberation.1
In the week 3 lecture, we touched on the significance of the changes brought about by the so-called Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, particularly with regards technology and its impact on everyday life. This impact only accelerated as Western society careened into the twentieth century. Indeed, rapid change is one of the most important aspect of modernity. In his 1970 book Future Shock, author Alvin Toffler vividly framed this phenomenon:
If the last 50,000 years of man's existence were divided into lifetimes of approximately sixty-two years each, there have been about 800 such lifetimes. Of these 800, fully 650 were spent in caves. Only during the last seventy lifetimes has it been possible to communicate effectively from one lifetime to another – as writing made it possible to do. Only during the last six lifetimes did masses of men ever see a printed word. Only during the last four has it been possible to measure time with any precision. Only in the last two has anyone anywhere used an electric motor. And the overwhelming majority of all the material goods we use in daily life today have been developed within the present, the 800th, lifetime.
This description is not without its problems -- can't cultures with oral rather than written traditions effectively communicate from one lifetime to another? -- but it nevertheless captures the speed with which modernity was transforming human existence.
Berghaus' definition of modernity highlights the word "individualism," and this concept illuminates another important distinction between modernity and earlier societies based on traditional values. Broadly speaking, for most of human history the group has been stressed over the individual. That is, the individual was seen as a part of a larger collective whose survival superseded the needs or desires of any particular person. This has been particularly true of classless tribal cultures, where the privileging of group over individual need served to ensure collective survival in environments of relative scarcity or precarity. It also tends to be true of cultures that stress spiritual well-being and harmony over materialism and accumulation of possessions.
In capitalist societies, however, much more emphasis is put on individual success, recognition, and advancement. The United States, in particular, is often characterized as a culture that celebrates individualism and self-reliance over collectivist values. The "Marlboro Man" cigarette advertising campaign, one of the most famous ad campaigns in U.S history, played on this idea of rugged individualism (as well as normative conceptions of masculinity).
The campaign ran for decades, and though the performer portraying the Man changed, one thing stayed the same: The Man is always portrayed on alone -- if you don't count his horse -- totally at peace in his solitude and self-sufficiency. It is not, to put it mildly, a view of humanity that stresses interlocking, or community, relationships. That said, it is interesting to note while the campaign celebrates the kind of mass-produced, consumer product emblematic of capitalism, it does so in the "wild" natural world, not in the factory, office, the apartment, or others urban spaces we connect to modernity.
Although there was no anti-capitalist revolution in the United States during this era, modernity's "positive stance towards universal liberation" (as Berghaus puts it) nevertheless unleashed powerful movements demanding social and political change. Two such movements were the campaign for women's suffrage (suffrage = right to vote) and the anti-lynching campaign organized by the National Association for the Advance of Colored People (NAACP). Note that for Black women, these two struggles intersected. Even after the passage in 1920 of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote, Black women (and men) were still denied that right in many states, particularly in the South (where lynchings were most common).
Finally, the Western imperialism we touched on earlier -- remember the cartoon in lecture of Britain and France literally carving up the world as if it were a piece of meat? -- continued unabated throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and should be added to the list of modernity's foundational characteristics (and it's legitimate to ask why Berghaus omitted it). Indeed, the violence connected to white supremacist colonialism reached levels that would rival the Holocaust of the Second World War. In just one example, between 1885 and 1908 Belgian colonists, in pursuit of resource extraction (in this case, rubber), killed millions of indigenous inhabitants of the "Congo Free State," then a Belgian colony, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The exact number of dead is not known, but historian Adam Hochschild has referred to the campaign of depopulation under King Leopold II of Belgium as "one of the most appalling slaughters known to have been brought about by human agency."2 That slaughter has left a legacy of poverty and underdevelopment to this day. The country where those children now labor to extract cobalt for multinational tech companies? The Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Week 6 - The Crisis of Modernity: Modernism and the Avant-Garde
The word "modernism," then, can best be understood as a collection of artistic and intellectual reactions to the phenomenon and perceived crisis of modernity, reactions that challenged earlier modes of thinking. Romantics reacted by embracing individual passion and the natural world, which, consciously or not, put them on a collision course with the capitalist industrial revolution; Realists and Naturalists responded in their way by using psychology and sociology, as well as new photographic technology, to examine scientifically the human condition with a mind to solving the problems plaguing society.
As the nineteenth century progressed, however, some artists began moving away from these earlier responses in the search of radically new -- "modernist" -- modes of representing reality which rejected both classical idealization and realistic representation. Here, Günther Berghaus elaborates on the idea, defining modernism as
An artistic response to the crisis of modernity around 1900 and an attempt to break away from Realist methods of representing the modern age. The Modernists made use of the changed forms of communication in advanced industrial societies, incorporated the break-up of the conventional time-space nexus in their works, and sought to express the spirit of modernity and the novel experiences in the contemporary world by entirely new and experimental methods. As a generic term, Modernism includes a multitude of distinct, yet closely related schools and movements, such as Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and so on. Many of these artists and writers not only loved and admired the exhilarating aspects of modernity, but they also expressed their disquiet about the alienating aspects of mass society and technological civilization.2
In Berghaus' view, then, modernism is both the pioneering of new, non-traditional, non-realistic forms of artistic representation, as well as a set of ambivalent responses to urban, capitalist culture with its hustle and bustle and dirt and noise and stress and excitement and materialist wealth (and whatever other aspects of "mass society" you can add to the list).
In the arts, the modernist attack on tradition meant moving away from the idea that art should idealize human existence according to age-old and static values (artistic, religious, social, moral) that had dominated cultural life for so long. The realists and naturalists were in their own way "modern" in that they focused on the undisguised, and often "unseemly," aspects of contemporary life without moralistically condemning them with a "tsk, tsk" and a melodramatic wag of the finger. They took the new discipline of science and applied it to human existence as no artists had done before. As we discussed last week, that new focus was so revolutionary it caused an uproar among the critics and public alike.
But a new wave of artists arose beginning in the last quarter of the nineteenth century (joined by others in first decades in the twentieth) who went far beyond that. For these artists, realism and naturalism, no matter how modern, failed to capture the true essence of human existence, which, according to them, could not be apprehended through science and logic. These "anti-realists" exploded onto the the art scene leaving effects that would resonate up until our own time.
Berghaus enumerates several key conventions of this modernist temperament in the arts. Note: my additions in [brackets]:
Focus on contemporary subject matter [i.e., as opposed to the heroic or idealized past]
Break with the aesthetics of preceding generations [i.e., in favor of new ways of representing reality]
Skepticism toward the traditional forms of representation and emancipation from the dictates of mimeticism [imitating observable life] and narrativity [logical storytelling]
Fragmented representation of the object of artistic observation rather than pretending to reflect reality as an organic, easy-to-grasp whole
Exploration of the subjective element in apprehending reality [i.e., the non-objective point of view of the individual] and transposing it into art
A loss of faith in the ability of language to signify meaning [i.e., seeing language itself as subjective and conditional]
The wing of modernism that was most willing to confront -- maybe "attack" is a better word -- mainstream traditions and conventions was called the "Avant-Garde." Here's Berghaus again:
Originally a military term, it came to be applied to political and aesthetic domains, where it denotes a practice of assaulting traditional authorities and cultural institutions. The avant-garde in the arts propagates a radical break with preceding formulae of artistic production and promotes creativity as part of a wider cultural-political revolution. This transgressive, subversive stance separates avant-garde artists from other Modernists, with whom they share an interest in experimentation with new artistic forms and techniques. Avant-garde artists oppose conventional concepts, values, and standards, and instead aim at absolute originality in their creations. They operate in uncharted terrain with genuinely novel means of expression, creating works of art that are substantially and significantly different from the average production of their time, and are initially appreciated by only a small number of connoisseurs.
So, while a movement like Realism represented an early and provocative reaction to the facts of modernity, and may be considered a more "modern" style than what came before it, it is not regarded as modernist or avant-garde. Why? Because many of Realism's conventions, shocking though they might have been when they first appeared, became absorbed relatively quickly into the mainstream. In other words, over time Realism became the "garde" the avant-garde was out to attack! Furthermore, Realism did not generally situate itself as a politically revolutionary, "transgressive and subversive" force out to overturn the culture. The avant-garde, on the other hand, saw itself in more radical opposition to the status quo and the class it saw as the root cause of modernity's problems: the bourgeoisie, in all its smug and materialist complacency.
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For a while after the turn of the century, almost any modernist art that departed from realism was called "Expressionism." But the term was originally used to distinguish it from the "Impressionist" painting style. This style -- as the name suggests -- sought to represent impressions of external reality. Expressionism, on the hand, was after something much different: the mysterious, interior, emotional experience of life.
A comparison of two famous paintings from each school helps illustrate this distinction. The impressionist painting on the left is Claude Monet's "Lady with a Parasol." It presents a fairly objective view of external reality; that is, while the thick brush strokes might not give the painting a photorealistic look, it is nevertheless attempting to convey an impression of what the subject might objectively look like in "real life" (with a particular emphasis on the effects of light).
Edvard Munch's "The Scream," on the other hand -- a classic example of an expressionist work of art -- is attempting to portray what despair subjectively feels like to the person experiencing it, not how it appears to an objective observer. In other words, to the despairing person in the foreground, the sky may feel like it’s swirling madly, but it probably doesn't look that way to the background couple walking towards the screamer.
Influenced by expressionist painting, expressionist theater took off in Germany just after the turn of the century, and, as a distinct movement, lasted for about 15 years.
For theater artists interested in the expressionist vision, the interior experience of life could not be communicated through rational "Well Made" plot development, naturalistic language, and logical stage pictures. It could only be conveyed by distorting reality (distort = pull or twist out of shape) to channel the internal truth of human existence. Although it's important to keep in mind that expressionist theater didn’t follow a set of hard-and-fast rules, here are some of its key characteristics:
Expressionists didn't write sentimental love stories or domestic comedies. That was too trivial for them. Like most avant-garde artists, they were after what they saw as the big problems tormenting humankind: war, capitalism, organized religion, oppressive bourgeois society and so on.
The story is often told through the eyes of the protagonist, so the audience sees and hears what the protagonist is seeing and hearing -- and feeling.
External reality is distorted to convey the depth of the protagonist's anguish and suffering.
The protagonist is usually at odds with either family or societal institutions.
The protagonist is often on an episodic journey that frames the story and makes its mysterious interiority comprehensible to the audience.
This journey is often compared to the biblical stations of the cross (the events from Pilate's condemnation of Christ to his crucifixion and burial). Indeed, some plays present the hero as a Christ-like figure suffering for the sins of the modern world.
Since the plays are interested in the larger patterns of existence rather than anecdotal naturalism, the characters are archetypal rather than individual, and the dialogue ranges from short telegraphic lines to longer poetic speeches.