Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 2 Number 3, December 2001
_______________________________________________________________
Madness and Signification in A Mouthful of Birds
by
Through
madness, a work that seems to drown in the world, to reveal there its
non-sense, and to transfigure itself with the features of pathology alone,
actually engages within itself the world's time, masters it, and leads it; by
the madness which interrupts it, a work of art opens a void, a moment of
silence, a question without answer, provokes a breach without reconciliation
where the world is forced to question itself.
-
Michel Foucault, Madness and
Civilization
A
Mouthful of Birds, written by
Caryl Churchill and David Lan, is, to quote Helene Keyssar, "an elaborate
theatrical representation of violence" (140), particularly violence
enacted by women. A "pathology" of our postmodern world, violence is
routinely considered a sort of contemporary "madness." However, as
suggested by Foucault, such madness in art rarely functions as a simple
mimesis of the world within which that art is created; rather, it serves
notice to the world that it must "acknowledge responsibility" for
its history and ultimately its future (Keyssar 146). A Mouthful of Birds is no exception: Churchill and Lan use drama to
construct a "dangerous history" of gender and gender roles (Keyssar
136), employing madness both to unsettle normative categories of identity and
to explore the risks involved in playing within subversive space.
Madness,
as Francios Boissier de Sauvages suggested in 1772, is 'a blind surrender to
our desires' or 'an incapacity to control or to moderate our passions"
(cited in Foucault 85). Madness, in short, is an altered state of
consciousness, wherein the individual becomes more mindful of his/her
carnality and less attentive to restrictive social mores. As such, Foucault
argues, madness threatens the Cartesian notions of reason and rationality and
is the embodiment of "absolute freedom" (84).
Conversely, however, madness can also be the epitome of imprisonment,
for the reality of madness, as James Glass points out, is often one of 'immense suffering, alienation, and
distortion' (xv). Madness, then, is a
paradox: on the one hand, it allows for a freer agency, often subverting
normative cultural forces and discourse systems. On the other hand, when too 'disruptive' or
'dangerous,' madness can also mean the loss of agency, for
normative cultural forces often fall back upon the mad, incarcerating it and
alienating it from society.
Equally
paradoxical in terms of agency is the notion of the postmodern subject.
Postmodernism incessantly questions the existence of "an ahistorical
transcendent self" or autonomous being (Allen 278), arguing instead for,
in Derrida=s words, a subject which is an "effect of forces" outside
itself (17). Some critics have adopted this postmodern position in an attempt
to understand how identity is constructed by cultural practices. Monique
Wittig, for example, argues that feminism should begin with the deconstruction
of the "myth of woman" as submissive, sensitive, and nurturing, a
myth constructed by the patriarchy and sustained by modern psychology.
Moreover, for such a deconstruction to be an effective means of protest, one
must make the opposition of man and woman and the construction of that myth
"brutally apparent" (31), otherwise the conflict will go unnoticed
and no transformation will be possible.
One
effective means of making such gender myths conspicuous is through
performance. As Judith Butler notes, "we see sex and gender denaturalized
by means of a performance which avows their distinctness and dramatizes the
cultural mechanism of their fabricated unity" (138). Like madness, the
postmodern idea of subjectivity, especially when considered as part of a 'performance' of identities, allows for subversive play because it denies the
solidity of identity and disrupts institutionally imposed boundary conditions.
The potential for change lies in our ability to act new parts within the
rubric of constructed identity, or, in Butler=s words, 'to locate strategies
of subversive repetition enabled by those constructions, [and] to affirm the
local possibilities of intervention through participating in precisely those
practices of repetition that constitute identity' (147). Thus, by acting in
the world, by incessantly repeating behaviors within the normative constructs
which act to challenge those constructs, we can affect change.
The
concept of an altogether constructed identity, however, like madness, has a
debilitating contingency as well, and A
Mouthful of Birds seems to explore an underlying anxiety about the
implications of performativity and theatricality when teased out to their
extremes. The play dramatizes Butler’s idea of the
"fabricated unity" of gender and is, therefore, a double
performance: the performance of the performativity of gender. As such, it
offers up the “truth” behind gender identity (that it is socially
constructed); however, the play does not blindly accept the revolutionary
potential of this apparent truth. Rather, as Herbert Blau suggests of theatre
in general, “its reflexive mirror doubles the inadequacy of any truth . . .
refusing it as a lie and endowing it with falsehood at once” (432). In other
words, though on the one hand the play establishes as “truth” the socially
constructed nature of gender, it also questions the possibility of escaping
the prison of postmodern subjectivity, wherein the self is always already an
"effect of forces" outside itself (Derrida 17). The play questions,
in other words, whether altering one’s consciousness (e.g. changing one’s
performance) truly is freedom.
Discussing
Churchill’s work in general, Kritzer has suggested that the multidimensional
nature of theatre allows Churchill to explore “both the surface of social
structures and the mental territory beneath that surface” (203). Kritzer’s
observation provides a useful framework for exploring Churchill and Lan’s
work in A Mouthful of Birds, as
well. In A Mouthful of Birds,
the staging of the play is mimetic of the mental breakdowns that the
character’s experience. In the original production, for example, “the play
was set on two levels of a dilapidated house” (Churchill and Lan,
“notes” 18). The house is open in the front, allowing us to see into the
characters’ broken down living space, much like we see into their broken
down mental space as the characters experience their respective possessions.
In addition, the structure of the play is symbolic of the functioning
of the mind. Kritzer points out that “the form of the play frustrates
audience expectations for a unified and coherent narrative . . . the
performance involves the audience in a disconnected sequence of scenes and
images associated with dream and madness” (Kritzer 214). For example, Part
One consists of eight short scenes entitled “Skinning a rabbit,”
“Telephone,” Weightlifting,” “Sleep,” “Profit,” “Angels,”
“Home,” and “Excuses” (19-23). In the first scene, Lena and Roy are
examining a dead white rabbit and discussing how to prepare it for a meal.
Scene two pictures Marcia working a switchboard and juggling four
conversations at once: one with the audience, in which she tells us she’s
desperate; one with a client, whom she seems to brush off; a third with her
inappropriately forward boss, “Colin,” who comments on the snug fit of her
trousers; and a forth with an unnamed caller, to whom she speaks in a “West
Indian Accent.” Scene three shows Derek lifting weights with another man
while they discuss Derek’s difficulties in finding a job. In scene four,
Yvonne performs acupuncture on a tense client who slips into baby talk as she
works on him. Paul and his mother-in-law are playing chess and discussing
profit and loss in scene five. In scene six, Dan and a woman discuss the
ordination of women in the church and the possibility that God may not be a
male. Scene seven shows conflict in Doreen and Ed’s relationship, as Doreen
has sneaked away from Ed to find a little “peace and quite,” much to
Ed’s chagrin. And finally, scene eight pulls all the characters together in
three sub-scenes which juxtapose a series of unrelated excuses that each
character gives for having to neglect his or her responsibilities and
commitments, the excuses getting more absurd with each sub-scene. Though these
scenes give the audience some useful insight into the social status of each of
the main characters, structurally, they also suggest an exploration of
“mental territories.” The scenes are all self contained, there is no
traditional plot, and the character’s and their predicaments are all
unrelated to each other. In short, the sequence of scenes seems to mirror a
stream of consciousness, full of disconnected ideas and free associations.
The
dimension of characterization also serves the exploration of social structures
and their psychological underpinnings. In Part One, the main characters, on
the whole, occupy fairly conventional social positions: Marcia is a
switchboard operator, Yvonne an acupuncturist; Paul is a businessman, Dan a
Vicar; Doreen is a secretary, and Lena a housewife and mother. The one
exception is Derek who being unemployed is well removed from the historically
powerful, white male position he would otherwise occupy. Nevertheless, all the
characters in Part One are essentially "normal," by which I mean
they occupy fairly mainstream positions in society and are non-subversive or
threatening to the status quo.
As
the play moves into Part Two, a shift in consciousness for these characters is
evident as each experiences an “undefended day,” a period of time “in
which there is nothing to protect you from forces inside and outside
yourself” (Churchill, “Author’s Notes” 5). The characters become
"possessed" by various spirits and "bacchants" and go mad;
that is, they "surrender" to their desires and are unable "to
control or to moderate [their] passions" (Foucault 85). Lena, for
example, drowns her baby girl after the SPIRIT tells her that only through the
baby's death can she (Lena) "get born" (27). And Dan, the vicar,
having changed into a woman, quietly "dances" three people with whom
"s/he" shares a jail cell to death (41). Paul's possession is a bit
less dramatic, but no less out of character for the profit-hungry businessman
we met in Part One, who manipulates the meat industry for personal financial
gain: he falls in love with a pig. And though he is unable to rescue it from
the slaughter house, he does bring the "dead meat" home where it is
joyfully reborn (46). The bacchant that takes domination over Yvonne is a bit
more symbolic; she is possessed by her addiction to alcohol (a bacchanal
reveler’s favorite). Her mother observes that Yvonne is "losing control
of [her]self again" and insists that Yvonne is "cutting me [her
mother] up bit by bit like a pig,” and though, aside from taking a drink and
donning her gold party shoes (signifying her intention to carouse with WOMAN A
and WOMAN B) (57), the audience never actually sees Yvonne do anything
blatantly irrational, the potential impact of alcoholism on society can not be
ignored.
Janelle
Reinelt suggests that "one way to explode the old hegemony is constantly
and vigilantly to practice disruptive or law-expanding behaviors" (52),
and the “mad" behavior of the aforementioned characters, most notably
Lena, Paul, and Dan, is clearly disruptive. These characters break not only
the laws of gender (Lena, because women are "supposed" to protect
their children and abstain from violence, Paul because he has a homosexual
relationship with a pig, and Dan because he crosses gender boundaries by
becoming a woman), but also the laws of the state (both Lena and Dan commit
murder and Paul engages in bestiality). Indeed, as Kritzer observes, “the
non-rational experience of possession frees each of the characters from her or
his artificially constructed self and allows for the possibility of creating
new selves” (214). All the characters, then, are transformed in some way,
but it is through Derek and Doreen’s possessions that Churchill and Lan most
openly challenge traditional gender roles and explore the limitations of
madness as a means of liberation.
Though
their possessions bear a striking resemblance to those of Dan and Lena earlier
in the play, the transformations we see in Derek and Doreen most closely
parallel Euripides' Bacchae. In
Euripides' play, Dionysus takes possession of all the women of Thebes who have
denied his godly descent from Zeus, including Agave, Pentheus’ mother. He
"dresse[s] them up as bacchanals, in [his] own orgiastic uniform,"
and sends them into the mountains to learn "the rites of Bacchus"
and to engage in "mad ecstatic rapture" (80 102). Pentheus, having
heard of the scandal, returns from abroad only to find that all the women have
indeed "left their homes" for the mountains, where they are said to
"sneak off one by one to various nooks to lie down—with men"
(86). It is clearly the prospect of an expressed female sexuality that
infuriates Pentheus, for he refers to the spreading eroticism as "squalid
rites" and vows to destroy Dionysus, that "foreign effeminate...who
infects our women with a new disease [and] befouls our beds" (87 90). He
is never given the chance, however, for Dionysus handily escapes from prison,
takes possession of Pentheus himself, dresses him as a woman (on the premise
that Pentheus will be able to join the women in their rituals and monitor
their behavior), and leads him to the women's encampment where he is
subsequently torn limb from limb by the impassioned group, Agave herself
severing his head. Finally, after a brief celebration during which she
lionizes her "prize," Agave recovers from her "madness,"
and comprehending her "wicked" deed, repents, begging to "make
amends" to her son Pentheus (118-123).
In
A Mouthful of Birds, Doreen and
Derek are possessed by Agave and Pentheus respectively, and their behaviors
closely parallel those of Euripides' characters. Derek, for example, "is
dressed as a woman by DIONYSOS 1 and
DIONYSOS 2" (58), goes to the mountain to see the women (54), and is
ultimately torn to pieces by Agave and the others. Similarly, Doreen and the
other women, "possessed by
AGAVE and the spirits of three
BACCHANTS," perform the dance of "Extreme happiness," during
which they experience a "moment of
severe physical pleasure" (49). And it is while performing a similar
dance of "Extreme Happiness and
violence" that they kill Pentheus, Doreen/Agave announcing: "I
broke open his ribs. I tore off his head" (69-70).
In
spite of these similarities, however, there are significant differences
between the two plays. Derek, for example, is not only possessed by Pentheus
and dressed as a woman, but further, under the auspices of Dionysos, merges
with Herculine Barbin, a nineteenth century hermaphrodite, echoing his/her
lines and ultimately assuming his/her role (51-54). Notably Derek's
transformation follows the line: "He thought he wasn't a man without a
job" (51), suggesting that the rigid gender codes imposed by society have
somehow emasculated him. Further, in a seemingly related transformation, after
Pentheus' brutal demise, Derek is reborn a woman, and his final lines are
vital enough to warrant quoting at length:
My
breasts aren't big but I like them. My waist isn't small but is makes me
smile. My shoulders are still strong . . . My skin used to wrap me up, now it
lets the world in. Was I this all the time? I've almost forgotten the man who
possessed this body. I can't remember what he used to be frightened of . . .
Every day when I wake up, I'm comfortable. (71).
The
ease with which Derek assumes this new role suggests that the male persona
acted in Part One is in no way "essential" to his being, a
suggestion supported by his rhetorical question, "Was I this all the
time?" Further, though Derek becomes a transsexual, it is notable that he
has not adopted the stereotypical qualities of the womanly ideal (e.g. read Baywatch)
which western culture has constructed: his breasts are small, his waist rather
square, and most significantly he is strong. In short, he resembles a
hermaphrodite, embodying qualities of both genders, thereby questioning the
supposedly essential differences between them.
Janelle
Reinelt suggests that "exploding the straight jacket of gender through
doing the 'work' of self-inscription on stage, before an audience, is both
theoretically and practically a vital, imaginative, political act" (52),
and Derek's intimation that s/he is no longer "frightened" suggests
that escape from historically rigid gender codes is an emancipatory act as
well. Certainly Lena's final lines: "It's nice to make someone alive and
it's nice to make someone dead. Either way. That power is what I like best in
the world," and her declaration, "I'm not frightened" echo a
similar sense of freedom (70). Further, David Lan reminds us that
"possession may be an act of resistance," and Derek's and Lena's
possession or "madness" has indeed functioned as a protest against
fixed gender identities, both having emerged reconstructed outside such
conventions.
Yet
it is important to note that the characters' transformation is the result of
their possession, not any deliberate
action on the part of the characters themselves. In fact, throughout most of
the play the characters have been powerless to resist the changes that have
occurred within them and/or to them. Although Kritzer suggests that the play
“reverses the meaning of powerlessness” and that “powerlessness gives
the seven characters the capacity to relinquish their old selves, and in the
process to change themselves” (215), Susan Bordo argues that such
"pathology, as embodied protest...[is a] counterproductive protest
without an effective language, voice, or politics" (20). Indeed, tracing
Doreen through her pathology and its eventual outcome betrays the
unpredictable nature of such “powerless” rebellion. As noted, Doreen is
possessed by Agave and, following Euripides' plot line, dismembers her son
Pentheus. As with Lena's act of infanticide, Agave's actions subvert
traditional gender stereotypes, for she not only kills her own child but acts
in an unconventionally violent manner. Furthermore, rather than retreating
from her act of passion with despair and returning to the "real"
world to repent as Agave does in the original play, Doreen chooses to remain
in this peripheral space, elsewhere to convention, announcing: "There's
nothing for me there. There never was. I'm staying here," and all the
women "turn back and stay"
as well (70).
As
Churchill herself states, "all the characters change...into new lives
that develop from what happened to them while they were possessed" (5),
and Reinelt suggests that such a "capacity to choose and shape a variety
of subject positions reintroduces agency to the stage . . . demonstrat[ing]
how novelty emerges from 'practicing' resistance in performance" (54).
This very potential for change, however, also signifies the potential for
limitless chaos and/or danger, and paradoxically challenges the concept of
revolution by madness at the same time it seems to affirm it. Indeed, not all
of the characters find themselves in more desirable positions than those in
which they began, Doreen in particular. Consider her initial reaction to
possession:
I
don't know which bit of me it's in . . . Anywhere you touched me would hurt.
And that's not even the worst. It's not so much as if I'm going to vomit but
every bit of me is nauseated, my left foot wants to vomit, my blood—I'm
completely full of this awful sickness. (58)
Clearly
Doreen is not feeling emancipated or free from constraint, but rather
miserable and diseased. And though it could be argued that such discomfort is
simply the price one must pay for transformation and revolution, Doreen's
position at the end of the play suggests she has made no progress whatsoever:
I
can find no rest. My head is filled with horrible images. I can't say I
actually see them, its more that I feel them. It seems that my mouth is full
of birds which I crunch between my teeth. Their feathers, their blood and
broken bones are choking me. I carry on my work as a secretary. (71)
Not
only has Doreen re-assumed her old job, but she feels suffocated, stifled.
Significantly birds, common symbols of flight and liberty, are what smother
her, intimating that signs of freedom (including madness) may not always be
what they seem.
In
fact, in Doreen's case possession dispels agency rather than bestows it.
Doreen's opening dialog with Ed in Part One, for example, indicates that she
coveted "peace and quiet," had "found it" by disappearing
and leaving Ed alone on the beach, and "was happy" (22). Thus, she
had established agency all on her own. And though there seems to be some
threat from Ed as to the consequences of her actions: "I warned you what
would happen if you ran off again," the strength and authority manifest
in Doreen's lines in the following exchange suggest that Ed will be powerless
to make her suffer any consequences at all: "DOREEN: What? What will
happen? What? ED: Well, you had your day out all right. DOREEN: Oh I did"
(22). That Doreen directly challenges Ed and
ends the dialog with a bold declarative (giving her the last word), coupled
with her willingness and ability to leave Ed, clearly establishes Doreen as a
speaking, acting subject.
However,
after her possession Doreen is acted upon,
first by the mysterious illness noted above that seems to permeate her very
being (58), and second by Mrs. Blair who aggravates both Doreen's illness and
her need for peace and quiet by blasting her radio, leading Doreen to erupt
into a fit of violence (62). And though Doreen reacts
to Mrs. Blair and, as Agave, acts violently against Pentheus, she does so only
as one possessed, rather than of her own volition. Doreen is, then, the
classic postmodern subject, an effect of forces outside herself. There is no
ahistorical, transcendent self here, which places in doubt not only Doreen’s
apparent agency observed in Part One, but particularly the potential for any
true agency for any of the characters.
Doreen’s
tragedy seems to suggest that madness, though it allows for change and
is a means of freedom for some, is not a universal solution to oppression; in
fact, psychic discourse is shown to be inherently unstable, as it is just as
apt to lead to disaster (as it does for Doreen) as it is to liberation.
Further, the ease with which some of the characters slide into new subject
positions, particularly Derek and Lena as noted above, illustrates the
inherent instability of social discourse (in the form of prescribed gender
roles) as well. Consequently, no monolithic discourse will be able to undermine the status quo,
for such discourse fails to account for individual dynamics (be those
differences of race, class, gender, or sexuality). Thus, to return to the
quote from Foucault with which I opened the paper, A Mouthful of Birds has clearly "provoke[d] a breach without
reconciliation where the world is forced to question itself" (288), and
the questions posed are: what now? If a monolithic struggle is not effective,
then what is? Is there any hope for the postmodern subject?
A
Mouthful of Birds does not offer an explicit answer to these questions;
however, as Paul maintains in his final lines: "You can't tell what it's
going to be . . . So I stay ready" (71), emphasizing the need to live in
uncertainty and to be prepared to act when the opportunity arises. That such
opportunities for reform will arise
is clearly implied by the play, for all of the characters are transformed in
some way, and as Butler argues, such "reconceptualization of identity
as an effect...opens up possibilities of 'agency' that are insidiously
foreclosed by positions that take identity categories as foundational and
fixed" (147). What one should do with those possibilities, however, is
left ambiguous at the close of the play; indeed, to prescribe a
solution would be to imply the possibility of a singular, universal means of
reform, and would therefore undermine the effectiveness of the play. Rather, A
Mouthful of Birds closes with the image of Dionysos dancing, an ambiguous
image of freedom (for the dancing reminds us of the passionate, liberating
dancing we=ve seen throughout the play) and bondage (Dionysos and the other
Bacchants signify bondage to the degree that they have psychically enslaved
the characters in the play). In
short, A Mouthful of Birds opens a
question without a clear answer, forcing the audience, like Paul, to accept
the uncertainty inherent in the play of subversion.
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