This Article Examines Two Different Scenes from August
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Nordic Theatre Studies 76 Vol. 28, No. 1, 2016, 76-86. An increasing interest in popular culture, entertainment, and leisure studies has resulted in a more thorough discussion of entertainment and its function in everyday life. That entertainment needs to be studied on its own terms, and not just in relation to some other area, is important. Instead of viewing entertainment as merely something connected with enjoyment and pleasure, the article looks at how entertainment renegotiates vital questions and topics from everyday life through its performance practice. Entertainment is used as an enhanced awareness, a de-familiarization, illustrating the function of different norms. The article examines two different scenes from two different productions of August Strindberg’s novel The People of Hemsö. The first analyses the arrival of an outsider, coming from the mainland to the archipelago. The second underlines the seriousness of gender inequality. Both examples stress the importance of studying how entertainment functions as a specific performance style/practice that re-negotiates the content being communicated. Keywords: entertainment, communication, Strindberg, Hemsöborna This article examines two different scenes from familiarization, showing the ordinary in a different August Strindberg’s Hemsöborna (The People of way. Hemsö) and aims at showing how entertainment, seen as a specific performance style or performance practice, can renegotiate the content A variety of academic areas, from theatre and film being communicated. Instead of seeing studies to sociology, philosophy and medicine entertainment as only being about enjoyment and have recently taken an interest in entertainment. pleasure the article looks at how entertainment Important factors behind the growing interest are can emphasize important questions and topics areas such as popular culture studies and the from everyday life through its performance growing field of leisure studies. One research area practice. Rather than dismissing entertainment as that specifically focuses on entertainment is media a way of escaping our everyday life this article sees and communication. Peter Vorderer, professor of it as an enhanced awareness, a process of de- media and communication studies, believes the . 77 Entertainment as a complex form of communication reason behind this is that entertainment has unify and advance the field of entertainment become central to society at large. The basis for studies.”5 They argue that a solid research area his description is a society built on should rest on a clear conceptual framework and communication and information.1 Entertainment therefore advocate a scientific definition as for Vorderer is light-hearted fun, something opposed to a more causal definition built on ideas relaxing: the opposite of a strenuous life at work.2 of what is entertaining. Their definition rests on To better understand entertainment, Vorderer an extensive study of academic descriptions. proposes a set of sub-questions in relation to how Their starting point in media and communication entertainment is described and explained. He is studies is, however, an important guiding principle interested in the effects of different kinds of for their definition: “entertainment must be entertainment and why people seek these effects. defined largely in objective terms /.../[it] involves The relevance of communication studies for communication featuring external stimuli; it performance studies is not in itself given. provides pleasure to some people, though not of However, the emphasis on communication offers course to everyone; and it reaches a generally a relevant and interesting connection to theatre passive audience.”6 The central part of the studies. As I see it, performance studies can offer definition is about the function entertainment has media studies a more nuanced and detailed for a spectator (pleasure) and how that function is interpretation of how communication functions, maintained (through communication). which can enrich the study of entertainment. If I agree that entertainment can be about one is to believe Richard Dyer, who has written communication. I object, however, to the view of extensively on entertainment, an in-depth the audience as being primarily passive. In this discussion of what it is, is lacking. The problem in article, I want to illustrate how entertainment Dyer's eyes is that entertainment is often regarded works towards stimulating, confronting, and as part of something else; he claims that the study activating the spectator. This is done through the of entertainment through other areas causes more combination of pleasure and a distancing effect problems than it resolves. A common view where fun and laughter can direct attention to regarding entertainment is to see it in contrast to important cultural and political topics. I aim at or in opposition to something that is not showing the relevance of the way something is entertainment. The comedy/tragedy distinction is communicated and how entertainment is not only one such example. Another is the dichotomy about a stage transmitting joy to a passive between leisure and work.3 Dyer argues that audience.7 research on entertainment needs to focus more on the specific aspects within entertainment instead of using it as a border or contrast to other August Strindberg visited the island Kymmendö, fields, such as fine art. According to Dyer, in in the southern part of the Stockholm order to be able to study the significance of archipelago, for the first time in 1871 and was entertainment and its function we need to direct mesmerized by the beautiful surroundings and attention to what it is.4 friendly people. He called it a paradise on earth Both Vorderer and Dyer seek some kind of and spent a number of summers writing and definition of entertainment, which includes its relaxing there. The island and its inhabitants function. They both see communication as a key would, several years later, be used as a model for aspect, but differ as to the main function of the fictive island, Hemsö. The use of the entertainment as either enjoyment and/or countryside and its local inhabitants is a common escapism. A comprehensive effort to create a feature in many popular Swedish novels and plays definition comes from Stephen Bates and from the years around the start of the twentieth Anthony J. Ferri. Their aim is the “development century. These folklustspel (roughly translated as of a more objective definition [which] can help comic folk play) were very popular among a large Nordic Theatre Studies 78 part of the population. A typical folklustspel new way of perceiving ‘everyday life’. Humour, depicts strong characters in farce-like situations, according to Critchley, works by creating an where the plot revolves around everyday chores, asymmetry that allows us to look at the ordinary love, lust, and money issues among farmers or the in a different way.10 A joke lets us see the familiar working classes. It was mainly the financial aspect in a new light, turns the ordinary into something that compelled Strindberg to write The People of extraordinary, and makes the real surreal.11 Hemsö (Hemsöborna) in 1887 during his exile in Humour should, according to Critchley, not be Lindau, Switzerland. He later described the novel, seen as a way to escape from reality, but rather as however, as a disgrace and 'pure' rubbish. something that inexorably brings us back to our Meanwhile, the critics and the Swedish people own world. “The extraordinary thing about loved the novel and it is still very popular today – humour is that it returns us to common sense; by primarily due to the 1966 TV-version and several distancing us from it, humour familiarizes us with theatre productions. The story is a tragicomedy a common world through its miniature strategies on lust, love and death, revolving around a of de-familiarization.”12 This kind of distancing farmhand who comes to a small island with the effect is both important for the function of purpose of bringing order to a run-down farm. entertainment as well as humour in general, and is The humorous portrayal of the main characters is something I will address in my performance often seen as a key feature of its immediate analysis. Noël Carroll has a similar approach to success. Two years after the novel was published, Critchley’s. He argues that a joke allows people to Strindberg wrote a play in four acts based on the take a step back and look at the different same plot, where he added more characters. The categories used in society and how they work. The play was not received in the same positive way as space introduced by humour functions as an the novel, therefore when Hemsöborna is staged opportunity to re-examine and change the today it is usually a dramatization of the novel categories that influence and govern human and not the play, which is performed.8 lives.13 The study of entertainment offers us the Discussing entertainment without discussing possibility to examine how the fine-tuning of humour is problematic since laughter, and what norms is negotiated within different cultures and triggers laughter, is a key part of entertainment – subcultures. which is clearly indicated above by the recurring “He arrived like a snow-squall one April stress on the joyous aspects of entertainment. I evening, with an earthenware bottle on a leather do not see humour and entertainment as the same strap round his neck.”14 The novel's opening thing. I see humour studies as an overlapping sentence is one of the most famous in Swedish discipline to entertainment studies; an area from literature. Through its opening several themes which certain ways of analysing and discussing discussed throughout the novel are established. It entertainment can be developed, especially ideas is about someone arriving in a new place. The about the function of entertainment. In this arrival is not calm, but described as a squall.15 article, I focus on the pleasurable, fun aspects of Perhaps the wind referred to is the wind of entertainment even though lots of different change and something new and life altering is things can be seen as entertaining.9 The role about to happen.