Why Jack and the Beanstalk is NOT like the others

I've spent so long on my blog talking about cultures from around the world, what a delight it is to sit down and write about something very British.  Jack and the Beanstalk.  It's got beans and a chicken - what could be more British than that?

"I thought chickens are domesticated jungle fowl originating from South East Asia."

Alright smart Alec, maybe they are - but it's still got gold and a giant, and I saw a guy who was 6'5" drop a bag of pound coins in Tesco yesterday - so what are you saying?

In fact, Jack and the Beanstalk is so British, that during the UKPA symposium on diversity earlier this year, it was held up by one panellist as an example of the type of story that white people should be allowed to put on if they only employ white actors.  I am paraphrasing here (because 10 months ago I had no idea that 500 people would be reading my blog every fortnight... otherwise I would have carried around a dictaphone) but I recall the admonishing going something like this "there are plenty of British stories you can use for pantomimes without going round the world and stealing other people's (AKA Aladdin)."

Well, Jack and the Beanstalk is particularly British... perhaps mores than you think.

The Greeks Invented Gayness

God, I loved Father Ted

Gayness aside, the ancient Greek's invented lots of things.  One of those, arguably, was a formalised dramaturgy.  Certainly, Aristotle's lecture notes on how to produce a successful tragedy are the earliest known surviving thoughts on the structure of the dramatic art form.

FUN FACT #1: Scholars know that Aristotle lectured on how to produce a successful comedy/satyr play, but his notes for these lectures are lost to the mists of time.

FUN FACT #2: The Athenians used to perform plays once a year during the (several-day-long) festival of Dionysus. The 32 Ancient Greek plays that have survived (think Agamemnon, Antigone, Electra, etc.)  have survived because they were performed at this festival.

What does any of this have to do with pantomime?  Rather a lot as it turns out.  

Aristotle's codification of how a (tragic) plot should be laid out, became (for a very long time) THE accepted understanding of narrative structure in Western theatre.

Nobody fell for Aristotle's pull-my-finger gag twice 

So what did Aristotle say?

• Characters"must be either of a higher or a lower type (for moral character mainly answers to these divisions, goodness and badness being the distinguishing marks of moral difference)" (Poetics, Part II)
• "Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type - not, however in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly.  It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive." (Poetics, Part V)
• A perfect tragedy should [...] excite pity and fear.  [...] A well-constructed plot should, therefore be single in its issue, rather than double as some maintain.  The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad.  It should come about as the result not of vice, but of some great error or frailty..." (Poetics, part XIII)

Why am I quoting some dead Greek guy from thousands of years ago?  Is it because I spent £10k on am MA that focussed of Aristotle and I'm desperately trying to justify my purchasing decision?  Partially yes. Is it because the history of art is conversational and you can't understand theatre today without understanding where it has come from?  Ooh - that sounds clever... I wish I had thought of that.

The reason that Aristotle's waffling about theatre is important to us is because it is THE best example of how political and social culture drives narrative structure... and this, it turns out is super relevant to panto today.  Let me explain.

Waxing lyrical about the Brazilian

If you haven't heard the name Augusto Boal, you are missing out.  He is without a doubt one of the most insightful, innovative and influential thinkers about theatre of the twentieth (and 9 years of the twenty-first) century.  One of his great insights that has always stuck with me comes from his seminal work: Theatre of the Oppressed.  In the chapter "Aristotle's coercive system of tragedy," he argues that the narrative structure of Aristotle is a necessary tool of the slave-owning Athenian state.

In other words: if you want to assure the enslaved 90% of your population that they should be obedient and morally noble on penalty of divine judgement, you make them watch tragedy.  If the gods judge the noble Agamemnon, how much more-so wilt thou be judged?  

"Finally, so that the spectator will keep in mind the terrible consequences of committing the error not just vicariously but in actuality, Aristotle demands that tragedy have a terrible end, which he calls catastrophe."

Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed (1973) 

Brazilian gymnast Arthur Mariano's opinions on Aristotle are undocumented

Also, from Boal's point of view, tragedy brings with it the added bonus that you get to see someone much posher than you get their comeuppance.  What blissful catharsis! OK, so you might be a little bit enslaved, and the Athenian slave-owner that owns you may be lazy, or jealous or prideful - but you can rest assured he will get his just deserts... after all that is what always happens in a tragedy.  

Of course, the paradigm that tragedy is a coercive political tool puts Boal at loggerheads with Aristotle who claims that that this "hero's journey" is an inevitable and universal story structure (an idea I ended pinching for my TEDx talk on how to teach maths, which I delivered in my younger, slimmer days shortly after Aristotle's death).  

"Aristotle's coercive system of tragedy survives to this day, thanks to its great efficacy. It is, in effect, a powerful system of intimidation. The structure of the system may vary in a thousand ways, making it difficult at times to find all the elements of its structure, but the system will nevertheless be there, working to carry out its basic task: the purgation of all antisocial elements." 

ibid.

"For example: the stories of "Western" movies are Aristotelian (at least, all the ones I have seen)."

ii bids.  

If you are a wicked step-sister who bullies Cinderella, you will get your comeuppance.

If you are vain and betray your friends, you will end up in court like Mother Goose.

BUT if you are good and follow the rules and see the best in people then you will be able to turn the most angry, beastly man into a gentle and considerate Prince, just like Belle.  (Yeah right, Belle... because that always works!)

According to Boal - just like the slave owning societies of ancient Athens, our hugely unequal capitalist societies are stabilised through the oppression of the masses by the promulgation of coercive narrative structures.

*If all this has whet your appetite for learning a bit about Boal, here's a good blog about Theatre of the Oppressed.

Different cultures, different stories

This week I went to see the much hyped sci-fi film: The Creator.

My one word review: Risible.  

Perhaps I am being unfair.  After all, it is difficult to sum up an entire 2.5hr piece of work in a single word.

My full review: Utterly risible.

I won't spoil the plot by giving away the minutiae, suffice to say: if you sent a group of GCSE kids on a weekend dramaturgy course and asked them to come up with a plot to show what they had learned it would be this film.

Everything that could happen at the last minute happened at the last minute “to build tension”.  Everything that could have a countdown had a countdown

The twists and turns of the “plot” (of which there were so many as to limit any time for character development to zero) were so telegraphed  that you would have to be a moron not to see them several scenes in advance. This leaves the whole film being a tedious unwrapping of a present that you already know what it is and didn’t want in the first place.

The film is clearly the product of a society that is promoting multicultural harmony. Which is no bad thing in its self. However, it has nothing interesting to say about AI. 

Essentially, what we have in this film is a reworked slave redemption narrative. It is Django unchained, but instead of white people owning black people, we all own AI, and humans are the slave masters. However, this doesn’t in any way talk about what AI actually is. The danger of AI, is not that it is a Tibetan monk, because it isn’t, the danger of AI is that it is self replicating and can move throughout bodies.  e.g. one of the premises of this film is that AI has become a small child, and has to learn. But that’s not how AI learns... if it took an AI the same time as a human being to learn things, it would be no threat, in fact, I’m not sure why people would build it.  It would obviate all of the benefits of being an AI. In its attempts to say something profound about humanity  (the film says nothing profound -in fact, as far as messages go, it’s nothing that terminator two didn’t say 30 years ago) the film sacrifices its ability to say anything meaningful about AI.

Pardon?

For a start, it doesn’t make sense. How of the Chinese ended up with advanced AI, humanlike, robotics, and they still carry spears live in corrugated iron sheds. Can’t we think of anything better?  

FUCK MISS SAIGON

The main thing this film made me think about was Kim Lee’s Untitled: Fuck Miss Saigon Play.  

The Creator is a story about an American who goes to somewhere in the Far East where people have spears and live in corrugated iron sheds, has a baby (or does he?) then comes back six years later to claim the child. Kim Lee's play points out that this is also the story of Madame Butterfly, South Pacific, Miss Saigon etc. and asks the question: do we have to perpetuate these hackneyed and tired narrative structures?

I did not enjoy this play...

...for about a hundred reasons that I will rant about to anybody who buys me a beer.  But you haven't bought me a beer, and it's not about panto... so... back to the point.

However, just as Boal highlighted in his OG takedown of Aristotle, Kim Lee's play articulates the truth on display in The Creator: that cultures generate narrative structures in order to protect themselves.

The Athenians needed to control a population of slaves - they developed tragedy.

The USA need to hold together an ethnically diverse population, they develop a "redeemed slave narrative"of Django Unchained and The Creator.  They want to justify the use of arms to spread democracy, they develop the "white saviour" narrative of Miss Saigon.

There's nothing wrong with these narratives per se, I like Miss Saigon!  But it is important to understand that they serve a political as well as an artistic function.

FINALLY... PANTO!

So what does this mean for panto?  Where have these stories come from?  What are the political functions that they serve?

Contemporary panto has roots in melodrama, which is fundamentally a Zoroastrianesque good vs evil cage match.  There's a villain (boo!) and a hero (hooray!).  Consequently, most of the plots that fit the form well are hero's journeys - an Aristotelian hero who is noble but unfulfilled, goes on a journey, there are twists and turns, they learn something about themselves (anagnorisis), and in the end they overcome evil, gets the girl (or Prince), and everyone lives happily ever after.

Aristotelian panto titles

Cinderella

Robin Hood

Beauty and the Beast

Mother Goose

Dick Whittington

Sleeping Beauty

Snow White

These are the types of stories that Victorians would approve of.  The types of narratives that a state who wanted to proselytise morality and subservience to a very rigid and stratified class-system would develop.

But (as advertised)

Jack and the Beanstalk is NOT like the others.

It actually draws from an earlier tradition of Celtic heroes who are morally ambiguous.  In the Celtic narrative tradition heroism is born not out of nobility, but out of quick wits and cunning.  Jack is a thief, who plunders gold from the lord... but he is a thief who get away with it.

This is the type of story that commoners tell their children.  You can't be Prince Charming unless you're a prince.  But anyone can be Jack if they're bold, bare-faced and lucky.

You can see it in the casting profiles.  Get called for a Prince Charming audition, and you might get cast as Dick Whittington.  But a Jack is a Jack is a Jack.

Super interesting aside: scholars think the Hansel and Gretel narrative developed during the little Ice Age (around the 1300s) during a period in which wide spread famine caused some families to abondon their children in the woods, and there were reports of ne'erdowells resorting to cannibalism.

Of course, the society we live in today is NOT the society that these narratives were developed for.  Our political needs have changed.

The class system of the Victorian age is fading.  The sexes are much more equal.  Heterosexuality is no longer assumed of everybody.  Our demographics are becoming ever more diverse.  The need for international cooperation has taken the place of British nationalism.  We need stories that bring together lots of different people; that inspire; that include; that empower.

You can see the effects of these shift in these political needs in the way these stories are staged today.  Aladdin is set, not in China, but in Hackney.  The villain wasn't evil, they were misunderstood.  The ol' Maid Marion-rescues-Robin/Jill-rescues-Jack switcheroo is now so common in pantos, it too is in danger of becoming hackneyed.  

DOING SOMETHING BETTER

The panto canon is popular.   I see no reason for abandoning it completely.  Of course you can be clever and creative - you could retool Aladdin as a narrative to highlight poverty and internationalism by setting it in a Beijing favella (tickets available here) .  Or if you don't lie that, you could scout around for another narrative.  There ARE other stories out there... and less well known stories provide more wiggle room.

OK, so you can't bugger about with Cinderella - there's too much plot.  No-one will be happy if Prince Charming loses a shoe and the wicked step mother is really good all along.  But you could probably do something interesting with Rumpelstiltskin... I mean - who can remember the actual story anyway?  Something to do with spinning thread into gold?  With a bit of creativity maybe you could retool it to say something profound about love and otherisation... (tickets available here).

And if you're a producer reading this thinking "that sounds like a risk" - my sales for Rumpelstiltskin are up 35% in the same venue on the same point last year when we produced Aladdin in the same venue.  And what's the one thing I've heard from ticket buyers over and over again? 

"Ooh, Rumpelstiltskin.  We've not seen that one before?"

Early photograph of a young Aristotle
trying to remember the plot of Rumpelstiltskin