The Community of the American South in New Southern Gothic Drama J

Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2004 Southernness, Not Otherness: The Community of the American South in New Southern Gothic Drama J. Caleb Boyd Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THEATRE SOUTHERNNESS, NOT OTHERNESS: THE COMMUNITY OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH IN NEW SOUTHERN GOTHIC DRAMA By J. CALEB BOYD A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2004 Copyright © 2004 J. Caleb Boyd All Rights Reserved The members of the Committee approve the Dissertation of J. Caleb Boyd defended on March 26, 2004. ____________________________________ Carrie Sandahl Professor Directing Dissertation ____________________________________ Jean Graham-Jones Outside Committee Member ____________________________________ Anita Gonzalez Committee Member The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project is the culmination of over eight years of personal development, mental anguish, and theoretical struggles. It would not have been completed without the assistance of many individuals who impacted, encouraged, challenged, and molded my ideas. I offer thanks to all those who contributed, but there are several individuals I would like to mention by name. Dr. Pauline Gagnon, thanks for setting me on this path. Dr. Catherine Cole for teaching me to walk it. Dr. Carrie Sandahl for helping me complete the journey. Jeff and Lisa Adler for providing the road map in the form of a venue where I encountered many of these wonderful plays. Dr. Leah Lowe and Ben Gunter for pointing out some valuable detours along the way. And a heartfelt thanks to the other half of my cyborg identity, Dr. Kyle Bostian, for showing me it could be done and helping me stay sane in the face of complexity. On a personal level, I also have to thank all those who contributed to the development of my ideas and my passions. To my father, thanks for leading the way and showing me a passion for teaching as a means of reaching out to the community. To my mother, for encouraging me and showing me that living the simple life has a complex beauty all its own. To all my family and friends, who made up my support network and taught me the meaning of community. To John Schultz for demonstrating an unrivaled commitment to students and for keeping me distracted when I needed it most. I must also sincerely thank my partner, my co-conspirator, my wife, Melanie. For putting up with my lows, my distracted states, and the hours, days, weeks, and years that this dissertation has taken me away from you, I thank you. This work is yours as well as mine, and its completion means that I can begin to repay the debt of support I have surely drawn from you. I love you, and I look forward to our continuing adventures. And, finally, thanks to all the playwrights who contributed plays to this text. I thank you for restoring my optimism and my belief in communities, Southern or otherwise. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables v Abstract vi INTRODUCTION AND RATIONALE 1 I. NSG HISTORY: GONE WITH THE WIND BUT NOT FORGOTTEN, OR WHAT HAPPENS WHEN DIXIE WHISTLES BACK? 47 Chapter One: Historical Simultaneity in A Hole in the Dark, or When History Knocks on Your Door 58 Chapter Two: Historical Contextualization in Square Blues, or Family History 88 Chapter Three: Historical Re-appropriation in Re-membering Aunt Jemima and Uncle Bends, or Stealing the Past to Make a New Present 97 II. NSG IDENTITY: THE CORNBREAD CYBORG 115 Chapter Four: Direct Confrontation in Cupid’s Bones, or Looking Yourself in Your Own Black Eye 122 Chapter Five: Centering the Monstrous in This Passion Thing, or Letting the Skeletons out of the Closet to March Down Main Street 140 III. NSG PERSPECTIVES: REDNECK MYSTICS, TECHNO-AGRARIANS, AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY SOUTHERNERS 159 Chapter Six: Spirit/Science in Four Joans and a Fire-Eater, or Mardi Gras Meets Joan of Arc 167 Chapter Seven: Freedom/Responsibility in Talking Bones, or When the Bones Talk, Will You Listen? 182 CONCLUSION 192 REFERENCES 202 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 210 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1:1 Theatrical Productions of the Olympic Arts Festival ........................ Page 31 Table 1:2 Traditional Southern Gothic Qualities/New Southern Gothic Revisions.................................................................................. Page 41 Table 1:3 New Southern Gothic Strategies by Section and Chapter.................. Page 45 v ABSTRACT The South is a region of mystery, of tradition, of shifting identity. As a cultural region within the United States, the South has always defined (and redefined) itself in such a way that it remains distinctive from, even oppositional to, mainstream American culture. All too often, however, this identity redefinition casts the South as an outsider culture, a comic extreme, or a tradition-bound cultural backwater. In recent years, this process has stagnated within Southern culture and the theatrical arts that simultaneously shape and reflect Southern identity. This dissertation reinvigorates the South’s historical process of redefinition in the face of the postmodern complexity facing the region. As dramatic representations of the region are limited to a select historical canon, the first element of this reinvigoration is the need for contemporary representations of Southernness in the theatre and festivals of the region. Thus, this dissertation identifies several new Southern playwrights (including Hilly Hicks, Steve Murray, Shay Youngblood, Elizabeth Dewberry, Bob Devon-Jones, Glenda Dickerson, and Breena Clarke) and their plays’ construction and reconstruction of Southern culture. These plays are then examined through framework of the New Southern Gothic (NSG) mode, a model of community representation that places seemingly contradictory or oppositional elements in a flexible structure of community and potential for social, cultural, and political development The characteristics of this NSG genre are then looked at in the larger cultural context of Southern history and the issues facing the region today. They are used to evaluate the limited potential of existing Southern representations (such as that put forth by the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival.) Then, newer, more flexible models of Southernness are drawn from NSG plays. These NSG models provide the basis for envisioning a future cultural identity for the South that preserves its distinctiveness while avoiding the trap of homogenization, fetishization, and historicization that characterize traditional representations of the region. These new models also provide a communal basis for vi Southerners to join forces while acknowledging their differences. From the stage to regional festivals to the public arena, these models can then be used to enact social and cultural change within the region. vii INTRODUCTION AND RATIONALE For many Americans, the mention of the American “South”1 evokes certain definite responses. For some, images of hoop skirts and wide-brimmed hats spring to mind, generally accompanied by figures resembling Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, Colonel Sanders, and other plantation-era aristocrats. Others recall the darker side of this antebellum Southern mythos, picturing horrific treatment of slaves recalled in history tests, plays like George Atkins’ Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon, and movies depicting the nineteenth-century South like Cold Mountain, Glory, or Roots. Still other perceptions of the South stem from the post-Reconstruction and early twentieth-century Southern struggles with its agrarian roots. These Southern figures, such as Andy Griffith of Mayberry (who is both wise and comically “simple” when contrasted with urban or Northern counterparts), Gomer Pyle, or the Dukes of Hazzard are typically represented as “rednecks” or “hillbillies” who may possess a vast knowledge of the land and its resources, but they are cast as outsiders or pushed to the comic fringe in a modern, technological world. Even Americans with more contemporary images of the South may characterize it as a backward region, lagging behind the rest of the United States in education, economy, and progressive social policy. For them, images of Confederate flags, Civil War re-enactments, “good-old-boy” politics, and monster pick-up trucks may evoke a distinctive Southernness. In all of those cases, the prominent marks of Southern 1 Clearly defining the “South” is no easy task. It has been attempted and debated since before there was a national identity of America. Certainly, defining the region as the eleven states that attempted to secede from the Union and fought on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War is a good starting point, but the cultural South and its influences extend far beyond any geographical or political boundaries. In the South, racial identity is also often conflated with regional identity, fixing many representations of Southernness within a black/white binary. Although this ignores the increasingly diverse ethnic and racial composition of the South, such historically dominant binaries must be confronted before they can be expanded. I will attempt to more closely define the region and the role that racial diversity has in redefining the region later in the Introduction, but what I am truly grappling with

Load more