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Streetcar Named Desire Music

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Music is a universal language among humans in that it is used to communicate or evoke various sentiments. Depending on the context, music creates meaning and provides a more in-depth view of a situation. Nowadays, music is crucial in moviemaking as producers use it as a way to manipulate the viewer’s emotions and add complexity to the settings. Similarly, Tennessee Williams employs different kinds of music- that of the “blue piano”, Varsouviana polka, and “Paper Moon”- in A Streetcar Named Desire to expose the character’s innermost thoughts and emotions and to describe how the deception and decay that pervades through the play affects the characters’ perspectives of the outside world and the actions that they take. A Streetcar Named Desire …show more content…

The sinister Varsouviana restricts Blanche from escaping her traumatic past and she becomes progressively fragile and vulnerable. Lacking a lover and her former beauty, she cannot find security in reality and completely loses her sanity. The polka “cues demonstrate more clearly the disintegration of Blanche’s mental state” and those around her decide to put her in an insane asylum. The final stage direction returns to the use of the blue piano and ultimately shows Stanley’s triumph over Blanche: “The luxurious sobbing, the sensual murmur fade away under the swelling music of the blue piano and the muted trumpet” (Williams 179). The use of the blue piano reinforces the conflict between the working class and aristocracy, truth and reality, and Stanley and Stella. Furthermore, the blue piano connects the ending to the beginning as the play opens and closes with the jazzy tune. The return to the play’s opening “[asserts] that Blanche’s visit changed little for the Kowalski’s” in that their relationship stayed the same despite Stanley’s raping of Blanche (Davison 412). Blanche, in this final stage direction, is portrayed as the muted trumpet as her voice and presence are dwindling out of society and there is little to no hope for her to return to reality. Blanche’s desires- for a sexual relationship, high social standing, and strong bond with her sister- got ahead of her, causing her to lose control and end in

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The play A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the most notable plays of the late 1940s to early 1950s and is still prevalent in the theater community today. It originally opened on Broadway in a 1947 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, today more commonly known as the Barrymore Theatre, preforming for a little over a thousand patrons. The original Stanley was played by Marlon Brando, who would reprise this role in the movie adaptation. At the Barrymore Theatre, the set was quite complex with a full stairway and banister, a pallor with a 4-chair dinning set and all the dressings of a then modern, but lower-class apartment.

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Settling into a routine can bring peace and comfort, but it can be easily disrupted when events outside an individual’s control lead to uncertainty. The drama written by Tenesse Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, follows the protagonist, Blanche Dubois, who moves to live with her sister after tragic family deaths and losing her estate. The effects of Blanche’s presence in the Kowalski household lead

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History - Article - A Streetcar Named Desire." Infobase Learning, 2005, online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Details/20288?q=a%20streetcar%20named%20desire. Accessed 24 Apr. 2018. The authors in this context describe the original author of the book as a poet who understands the human heart. Besides the author describes the original author William as the Laureate of the Outcast.

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1946 Words | 8 Pages

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE Tennessee Williams most famous play set on a street in New Orleans, which is named Elysian Fields. New Orleans is a cosmopolitan city. The city is the music of the piano can be heard anytime in this street. In this play, ‘a woman’s pathetic fantasies of primness and respectability are stripped down and violently exposed in New Orleans’. Williams like the poet is concerned with the reality of the broken world.

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Tennessee Williams is one of the most recognized playwrights that lived during the mid-twentieth-century (“Tennessee Williams”). After finishing college, Williams decides to move to New Orleans, where he writes A Streetcar Named Desire. His career starts to take off as he begins to write more plays (“Tennessee Williams”). A Streetcar Named Desire talks about the life of a woman, Blanche DuBois, who is very secretive about her past and does not expose her true intentions of coming to live with her younger sister Stella. As the play goes on Stanley, Stella’s husband, starts to dig into the dark past that terrorizes Blanche when they begin to have a conflict with each other.

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413 Words | 2 Pages

After having been performed at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in 1946, A Streetcar Named Desire brought about much controversy. At first it seemed that much of the controversy stemmed from the unpleasantness with which the subject was presented, such as the vulgar, unprecedented topics acted out on stage. George Jean Nathan, an original critic of the play, touched upon the vulgar manner of the drama, calling it “The Glands Menagerie.” (Bak, “Criticism on a Streetcar Named Desire”) Perhaps the more pressing reason as to why this play was received controversially, however, is a result of its cynical nature.

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778 Words | 4 Pages

It is Blanche’s obsessive desire for a clean slate that ultimately drives her streetcar into destruction. With each lie she tells, the last lie becomes a reality to her, and once her delusional reality begins to fade, Blanche recedes into a dark hole where neither she or anyone else could ever truly see herself

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1697 Words | 7 Pages

A Streetcar Named Desire Literary Analysis The late 1940’s were characterized by the emergence out of World War II that led to a dependence on the idea of The American Dream, which meant men were working harder to achieve a more comforting lifestyle and opportunity while women were still fighting the oppression of caused by unequal representation. This idealistic dream is illustrated throughout Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”, which has a rigid dichotomy between illusion and reality revealed throughout multiple characters and their dysfunctional lives that are a direct result between fantasy and actuality. Illusion is taken advantage of as an alternative to the unfair circumstances that the characters in “A Streetcar Named

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967 Words | 4 Pages

Before the war, society was one which valued aristocracy and high morals, however, the war brought much reform. Now, these values and morals were not as important as they once were. Williams was against the conservative way of life because he did not agree with its beliefs and practices, and instead wanted to live an alternative lifestyle. Because of this, he wrote, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” to show how the old society was dead and a new one was emerging which brought new views towards once disgraceful ways of life. He does this through the use of characters, places, and music embedded in stage directions.

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The themes of violence and power in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ hold an important role in the criticism of 1940s American society. Conflicts perpetuated by violence and power, such as abusive relationships and violent oppression are projected through the characters within the play.  Williams uses these conflicts to highlight his criticisms of faltering values and social norms, from the perspective of an individual constrained by the expectations of a strict, Southern society. To begin with, there is an indefinite violence between men and women within ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. Stanley Kowalski, a focal character, is the epitome of male dominance and primitive aggression.

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698 Words | 3 Pages

The Fight for Dominance In today’s society, gender norms convince men that unless they are able to control women, they are weak. Considered the inferior gender, women must find new ways to prove their own strength, whether it be through manipulation or their sexuality. The battle between the two continues as men strive to remain dominant, often by immoral means, and women attempt to gain the upper hand. In the screenplay, “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams, the sexual tension and struggle for dominion between Blanche and Stanley is evident, and as the play continues, Blanche's promiscuity and Stanley's predatory nature foreshadow an inevitable confrontation.

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1547 Words | 7 Pages

Tennessee Williams wrote “A Streetcar Named Desire” (Williams, 1947) It is based in New Orleans a new cosmopolitan city which is poor but has raffish charm. The past is representing old south in America 1900’s and present is representing new America post world war 2 in 1940’s. Past and present are intertwined throughout the play in the characters Stanley, Blanche, Stella and mitch. Gender roles show that males are the dominant and rule the house which Stanley is prime example as he brings home food and we learn of one time when he got cross and he smashed the light bulbs.

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545 Words | 3 Pages

Tennessee Williams’ symbolism of Blanche’s name and the use of light in A Streetcar Named Desire are considered to be some of the greatest symbols in the play. The play's title refers to a real streetcar in New Orleans. It connects the controlling force of desire behind the characters’ actions, which leads to the true meaning of Blanche and the ironies that come along with

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847 Words | 4 Pages

“A Streetcar Named Desire” is a very elegant film in which the Southern gothic culture is demonstrated profoundly. Tennessee Williams uses the characters in the play to bring about a sense of how corrupt society truly was in the 1940’s in the South. The 1940’s was marked by an immense amount of violence, alcoholism, and poverty. Women at the time were treated as objects rather than people. Throughout the play Tennessee Williams relates the aspects of Southern society to the characters in the play.

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1160 Words | 5 Pages

In a play, sound is used to help illustrate its emotional content as a result of a play being limited in its point of views. Therefore, sound in a Streetcar Named Desire is significant in its dramatic effect in reinforcing the protagonist, Blanche’s, inner conflict to the audience. By garnering this significance of sound, its effect is additionally contributed to the theme of the play due to it highlighting details of the play's scenes for the audience to ultimately recognize specifics that, in succession, applies to the construction of the theme. Therefore, Tennessee Williams emphasizes through the employment of sound, the deterioration of the protagonist, Blanche, through featuring diegetic and non-diegetic sound that illustrate Blanche's

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