Masculinity in Richard Bean's "Pub Quiz Is Life"


Term Paper (Advanced seminar), 2014

12 Pages, Grade: 1,3


Excerpt


1. Introduction

Richard Bean is a British playwright. He was born in 1956 in East Hull. He studied Social Psychology at Loughborough University and worked as an occupational psychologist after passing university. In the end of the 1980ies he started his career as a stand-up comedian. With the publishing of his first play “Toast” in 1999, he started his career as a playwright. He has won several prices with his work since then. Eckart Voigts-Virchow describes the work of Bean in a splendid way: “Bean’s upbringing was lower-middle-class and his Hull-based plays reflect the experience of tattooed north-eastern working-class masculinity”. (Voigts-Virchow 2011). There are several topics in “Pub Quiz Is Life”, which correspondent to social problems of his home town Hull, like drug consumption, criminality or unemployment, and emotional problems like love and betray.

In this paper, I want to work out how Bean uses different literary style elements for bringing up metaphors of masculinity and mankind in “Pub Quiz Is Life” to the audience. The impulse for concentrating on this topic is constituted by my researches belonging to Richard Bean and his work by the following quotation: “He (Bean) has admitted that his plays focus very much on male camaraderie” (Voigts-Virchow 2011). For this, I want to refer to three different points of view on the play.

Primarily, I want to illustrate masculinity by the stage directions of the play to show that the different settings transport virile moods. In a second step, I want to put focus on the three male characters of the play. Lee, Bunny and Woody have different versions in expressing manful behavior. In this part, I want to present several text passages which will be undergirded with the representation theory of the Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman. For sure, the ideas of Goffman will go beyond the constraints of this paper. So they will be presented only in an introductive way. The last part puts focus on the chosen music of the play. There are several songs, bands, and musicians presented in the play in different ways. Music is a very powerful medium to transport moods and feelings to the audience, regardless of whether they are given in stage directions or text passages in a book or if they are played on stage as background music or sung by some actor. Thus, this paper is a written work on a written play, which is not hearable in consequence. In this last part, I will work with text passages of the play, with lyrics of several given songs, and with the images and historical backgrounds of the bands and musicians.

2. Masculinity In the Play “Pub Quiz Is Life”

In the next steps, I will reveal on three different approaches he uses to support masculinity in “Pub Quiz Is Life”: The approaches are: the given settings or stage directions of the play, the way of acting of the male characters in the play, and the moods which are transported by music.

The main part of my paper will deal with different ways of using symbols, metaphors which Richard Bean uses to carry certain feelings to the audience. Being a studied psychologist, he expressed in an interview with Eckart Voigts-Virchow: “My life has been a blokey life. I went to a boys’ school, I played a lot of sports, all very blokey” (Voigts-Virchow 2011).

2.1. The Settings

The set of the play on page 7 describes how Bean wants the directors to embellish the theatrical stage. Even in this basic part of a written play, he creates specific moods which reach the audience. Following the statements of Jones, stage directions and settings are means to transport sentiments in a very subtle way:

These stage directions (for that is what they are; they direct us) evoke the locale and the mood of the particular drama in question with great ease and with great economy of means. How simple they are, and how telling, and how right! A few words, and the life-giving dramatic imagination answering the summons, fresh, innocent, immensely powerful, eagerly obedient (Jones 2004).

2.1.1. The Pub

Mainly, the play takes place in a modern pub. A pub is connoted with masculinity in general. Steven Earnshaw gives a very good introduction into what a pub really is, namely an important institution at least: “The pub is an oasis. It offers warmth, friendship, jokes, gossip, food, pint-pot philosophy and a pleasant release from the daily grind” (Earnshaw 2001). A pub is a place where people could meet and drink in a warm and cozy atmosphere. Furthermore, it is place to create identity, especially for men: “Some New Zealand commentators have tried to describe the pub as a ‘last bastion’ of male camaraderie, a museum exhibit recalling an admirable and less complicated world” (McLauchlan 1994). Hugh Campbell who is an anthropologist vividly describes why mankind considers a pub as a sanctuary for masculinity. Even though the author refers to pubs in New Zealand, it is comparable to the predominating pub culture of the North of England: “Further, rural pubs can actually operate as a key site where hegemonic forms of masculinity are constructed, reproduced, and successfully defended“ (Campbell 2000).

In the play the pub we get to know in the play has no name. Usually, pubs in England are named by some real-life figures or old-fashioned sayings, for example Ye Olde Fighting Cocks (picture by: Balfour Evans). This might be an evidence for that this pub could be transferable to every other pub located in England.

2.1.2. The Range Rover

Cars, especially if they are bigger than usual, are connoted gender-specifically. Never mind, that the following quotation is taken out of an article written by a women, it critically describes the connection between men and their cars:

Eine so umfangreiche wie bekannte psychologische Autokritik verweist uns hier an die Person des Autofahrers als regrediertem Raser, der sein Gefährt als ,Ich-Prothese’, ,Fetisch’, ,Waffe’, ,Potenzverstärker’, ,Herrschaftsinstrument’ nutze: ein Paradigma, das selbstredend auf das männliche Subjekt abzielt - weitgehend ohne daß dieser Geschlechtsspezifik explizit und systematisch nachgeforscht würde (Eisch 1999).

Bean intends a Range Rover for Woody, because this kind of car brims over with masculinity. The fact, that Bean specifies in the stage direction that the car must be a Range Rover strengthens this metaphor.

2.1.3. The Street

In the play the street is used for the characters taking a smoke or talk separated from the others. Although a street is always connected with publicity, here in the play it is used as a place for intimacy. Woody and Lee are talking about male topics like drug business on the street (Bean 2009, p. 43 f.). Furthermore, a street in front of a pub at night is not necessarily a place for women to stay or walk through. In general, a street is a metaphor for say farewell. Lee was often in the situation of saying goodbye. His mother hung herself, he was leaving to Afghanistan for two times, and in the end of the play, Melissa broke up the adulterous relationship with him.

[...]

Excerpt out of 12 pages

Details

Title
Masculinity in Richard Bean's "Pub Quiz Is Life"
College
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz  (Department of English and Linguistics)
Course
British Literature I – Contemporary Drama
Grade
1,3
Author
Year
2014
Pages
12
Catalog Number
V281813
ISBN (eBook)
9783656764878
ISBN (Book)
9783656764885
File size
644 KB
Language
English
Keywords
Contemporary Drama, Masculinity, Richard Bean, Theatre, City of Hull, Hull, Afghanistan War, Music, Goffman, Stage Settings, Behavior, Stage Directions, Pub Quiz
Quote paper
Patrick Pfannschmidt (Author), 2014, Masculinity in Richard Bean's "Pub Quiz Is Life", Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/281813

Comments

  • No comments yet.
Look inside the ebook
Title: Masculinity in Richard Bean's "Pub Quiz Is Life"



Upload papers

Your term paper / thesis:

- Publication as eBook and book
- High royalties for the sales
- Completely free - with ISBN
- It only takes five minutes
- Every paper finds readers

Publish now - it's free