MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO Violence and Gender in the Plays Of
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MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature Violence and Gender in the Plays of Mark Ravenhill and Sarah Kane Diploma Thesis Brno 2015 Supervisor: Author: Mgr. Jaroslav Izavčuk Bc. Magdaléna Filáková Bibliografický záznam Filáková, Magdaléna. Violence and Gender in the Plays of Mark Ravenhill and Sarah Kane: diplomová práce. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, Fakulta pedagogická, Katedra anglického jazyka a literatury, 2015. 74 s. Vedoucí diplomové práce Mgr. Jaroslav Izavčuk Bibliography Filáková, Magdaléna. Violence and Gender in the Plays of Mark Ravenhill and Sarah Kane: diploma thesis. Brno: Masaryk University, Faculty of Education, Department of English Language and Literature, 2015. 74 pages. The supervisor of the diploma thesis Mgr. Jaroslav Izavčuk Anotace Diplomová práce „Násilí a gender ve hrách Marka Ravenhilla a Sarah Kane― se zabývá problematikou násilí, jeho příčinami a pozicí mužů a žen ve vztahu k násilí. Práce bude analyzovat vybrané in-yer-face hry, konktrétně Shopping and Fucking, Handbag, a Some Explicit Polaroids od Marka Ravenhilla, Blasted a 4.48 Psychosis od Sarah Kane a zjišťovat, z jakého důvodu jejich postavy jednají násilně, jestli je jejich pohlaví řídícím faktorem a jaké typy násilí můžeme přisoudit k danému pohlaví. Práce se také zaměřuje na porovnání psychického a fyzického násilí. Práce je rozdělena na dvě hlavní části. První z nich, část teoretická, nastiňuje koncepty In-Yer-Face divadla, definuje pojmy, jako je násilí, pohlaví, gender v jejich obecném významu. Druhá část, analytická, je členěna do tří podkapitol. První je zaměřena na fyzické násilí, v druhé kapitole je rozebráno násilí psychické. Poslední podkapitola se zaměřuje na sumarizaci výsledků z předchozích kapitol a snaží se potvrdit či vyvrátit stanovené hypotézy. Klíčová slova In-Yer-Face divadlo, Coolness drama, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, násilí, gender, muži, ženy, vztek, znásilnění, zneužití, stalking, sebepoškozování, verbální násilí, kriminalita Abstract Diploma thesis called ―Violence and Gender in the Plays of Mark Ravenhill and Sarah Kane‖ deals with the topic of violence, its causes as well as with the position of men and women in terms of violence. The thesis thus aspires to find possible causes of propensity for violent and aggressive behaviour by analysing selected in-yer-face plays. Chosen passages from the plays are consequently confronted with appropriate secondary literature in order to analyse violent conduct of the main characters as well as to find out which type of violence can be attributed to each sex. The main body of the thesis consists of two chapters. The first one provides a theoretical background, in which the crucial features of In-Yer-Face Theatre along with the concepts of gender roles and violence are described. The second chapter, the practical part, is divided into three main sub-chapters from which the first, provides the reader with information concerning physical violence. The second unit is dedicated to psychological violence and the last sub-chapter serves as a summarization of the conclusions from previous chapters. Consequently, it attempts to confirm or disprove set hypotheses. Key words In-Yer-Face Theatre, Coolness drama, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, violence, gender, men, women, anger, rape, abuse, stalking, self-harm, verbal abuse, criminality Prohlášení Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou diplomovou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů. Souhlasím, aby práce byla uložena na Masarykově univerzitě v Brně v knihovně Pedagogické fakulty a zpřístupněna ke studijním účelům. Declaration I hereby declare that I worked on the following thesis on my own and that I used only the sources listed in the bibliography. I agree that this thesis can be filed at Masaryk University in Brno, in the Library of Faculty of Education, and made available for academic purposes. ……………………………………... V Brně, 29. března 2015 Magdaléna Filáková Acknowledgement I would like to express my thanks to Mgr. Jaroslav Izavčuk, for his support, patience, constructive criticism and valuable advice that he gave me as the supervisor of my diploma thesis. Table of contents Introduction to the thesis ................................................................................................... 8 1 In-Yer-Face Theatre, violence and gender ............................................................. 10 1.1 Violence as a phenomenon of In-Yer-Face Theatre ........................................ 10 1.1.1 Crucial themes of In-Yer-Face Theatre .................................................... 12 1.1.2 ―Fucking and Chopping – The New Brutalists‖: Major playwrights of In- Yer-Face Theatre .................................................................................................... 14 1.2 Gender, sex and violence ................................................................................. 19 1.3 Hypotheses ....................................................................................................... 25 2 ―Disgusting feast of filth‖: Violence and gender in in-yer-face plays .................... 26 2.1 Physical violence which ―grabs the audience by the scruff of the neck‖ ......... 28 2.1.1 Rape and sexual assault ............................................................................ 29 2.1.2 Nature of intimate partner violence .......................................................... 35 2.1.3 Violence against children .......................................................................... 41 2.2 ―The capture, the rapture, the rupture of a soul‖: Psychological violence ....... 45 2.2.1 Self-psychological torment and self-directed violence ............................. 47 2.2.2 Verbalisation of pain and anger ................................................................ 52 2.2.3 Stalking and emotional abuse ................................................................... 57 2.3 Male and female violence, its causes and consequences ................................. 60 2.3.1 Is psychological violence worse than the physical one? ........................... 61 2.3.2 Which types of violence can be attributed to each sex? ........................... 62 2.3.3 Is serious physical violence almost exclusively male? ............................. 62 2.3.4 Do men employ more swear words in their oral expression than do women? .................................................................................................................. 63 2.3.5 Which causes and triggers contribute to one‘s violent behaviour? .......... 63 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 65 Works cited and consulted .............................................................................................. 68 7 Introduction to the thesis The main aim of this thesis is to explore violence and gender in chosen in-yer-face plays because they deal with very actual topic of violence in the world. The work primarily analyses why individuals act violently, whether their cruel intentions are rooted in dysfunctional families, early sexual experience, previous abuse, or whether they are not motivated at all. The thesis thus aspires to find possible causes of propensity for violent and aggressive behaviour by analysing Mark Ravenhill‘s Shopping and Fucking, Handbag, Some Explicit Polaroids, and Sarah Kane‘s Blasted and 4.48 Psychosis. Chosen passages from the plays are consequently confronted with appropriate secondary literature, such as researches on violence and gender, in order to analyse violent conduct of the main characters. It is considered that generation of authors, such as Ravenhill and Kane want to shock and outrage the audience by using violent and sometimes even disgusting topics. The plays are generally viewed as social criticism, warning against the vices of our ―amoral times‖. Hence, I will support this claim by arguing that both Ravenhill‘s and Kane‘s plays can be labelled as criticism of contemporary society with the focus on serious social phenomena, such as domestic violence, violence against children, rape or self-harm. Therefore, violence serves as a tool to criticize and point out the deplorable state of contemporary society. Equally, sexual violence is shown explicitly, which was not depicted in the past, for example Shakespeare‘s plays were bloody but not sexual as this aspect was highly tabooed. In these days, sex is considered as a part of individual‘s life, not something that we should be ashamed of or what should be closed behind doors and never discussed. Again, sexual practices, such as masturbation, fellatio or rimming are depicted and performed without any hesitation or shame in order to attract attention, shock the spectators, and disturb them from their indifference. Next specific type of sexual violence is rape in war, another blatant and peculiar topic penetrating Kane‘s Blasted. Similarly, Shopping and Fucking proposes the issue of war and fighting, the characters mention all the suffering of the world, which is one of their common points. 8 Since the topic of violence was discussed and defined repeatedly, it is generally known that the plays in question