DRAMA AS COMMUNICATION^[1]

(or drama versus narrative)

MARTIN ESSLIN

Editor's Introduction:

          "The appeal of television is, at the most basic level, an erotic appeal," according to Martin Esslin. This is so, he argues, because television is essentially a dramatic medium and "drama is basically erotic." How does he justify this assertion?

          First, he suggests that television feeds upon our interest in other people, and that there is an erotic aspect to this interest. He writes, "Actors give the spectators who watch them a great deal of pleasure by being interesting, memorable, or beautiful specimens of humanity." There is, then, a sexual element to our television viewing, especially because television is a close-up medium, and thus, the most intimate of our media. [This is because, in part, the close-up most nearly approximates direct contact with others.]

          Another consideration involves the fact that television is a "daydream" machine that brings an endless number of collective daydreams and fantasies to us. This leads to a "blurring of the distinction between fact and fiction, the real world and fantasy, on the screen," and thus facilitates our often unconscious erotic feelings about the people whose images we see on the television screen.

          What television transmits, Esslin tells us, is essentially personality and this is a significant insight because people have an insatiable curiosity about others. This is the heart of our craving for stories. Fiction is, in the final analysis, gossip that is given dramatic form for use on television.

          There is a term in psychoanalytic literature that deals with people who derive an unusual amount of sexual satisfaction from looking at others - scopophilia. "Scopo" means looking (as in periscope, telescope) and "philia" means "love of" as in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. We often use the term "voyeur" for such people. Television viewers are not scopophiliacs, but there is an erotic aspect to watching television that we must recognize.

          And the fact that we watch so many dramas on television in a typical week must have some impact upon our sense of reality. It is widely held by critics that when we watch drama there is a willing "suspension of disbelief" that occurs; we accept characters as real and identify with them. Because we spend so much time with the alternate realities of television dramas we may end up with a permanently suspended attitude of disbelief which has important social

implications.

          Drama can be discussed from a number of different viewpoints: literary, artistic, or technological. It can also be examined simply as a technique of communication, different - in some respects more efficient, in some less so - from other ways in which human beings convey messages to one another. There may be messages drama can convey better than any other form of communication, others that it may not be able to handle well at all. What then are the main characteristics of drama, its strengths and weaknesses as a method of communication?

NARRATION VS. DRAMA

 
          Let us begin with a concrete example, by comparing the way a novelist and a director of a dramatic performance communicate the equivalent content to their respective audiences. The novelist might, for instance, introduce a new character into his story in the following manner:

And then a young woman of remarkable beauty entered the room. She was tall, had honey-colored hair, a round face, deep blue eyes, a firm, full mouth above a well-rounded yet energetic chin. She wore a dress of pale blue velvet, elegantly cut in a slightly old-fashioned style, with white lace trimmings. The expression on her face was serious, not to say melancholy, and yet, at times, the shadow of a mischievous smile seemed to hover around the comers of her mouth ....

          And so on at some length. What the novelist has to communicate over a considerable period of time through the accumulation of a number of distinct items of information, the director of the dramatic performance can convey in a single moment, simply by having an actress of the desired appearance and dress enter upon the stage. Whereas the reader of the novel has to keep each item of information in his mind while the others are added one by one, line by line, to build up the complete picture, the spectator at a dramatic performance receives them as one image and with a correspondingly more immediate emotional impact. The information conveyed by the linear, discursive method of the novelist has to pass through the reader's consciousness before it can coalesce into a picture in his mind. By contrast, the spectator of a dramatic performance will get the picture at the outset, though most of the components of the impression will remain below the threshold of full consciousness.

          The novelist can control the features he includes in his description and he will select them carefully. The director of the dramatic performance will try to do the same: he will select an actress whose appearance corresponds to the author's description; he will choose a dress intended to convey the qualities required by the character and the situation in which she finds herself in the scene; he will rehearse the expression with which she is to enter the room. But the actress will possess an almost infinite number of other features and characteristics that the director cannot control. Which of these features the spectator will consciously become aware of will depend on his or her own personal reaction, talent for observation, mood, and any number of other factors that are equally beyond the director's control. One spectator may detect a resemblance between the actress and his own sister; another might notice her costume and recognize the designer who created it - an item of information perhaps unknown to the director himself and one that he may never have intended to convey!

          The novelist's description may also evoke subconscious associations in the reader's mind. But in the dramatic performance there are an infinite number of items of concrete information conveyed to the spectator at every moment. In this respect drama - which can best be defined as a mimetic reproduction of the world - mirrors the situation in our "real" lives: we are constantly confronted with people and situations we have to view, recognize, and interpret; we are compelled to select the information we need by concentrating on a few significant features and rejecting the bulk of data that continuously bombard our senses. Nevertheless there is an essential difference between a dramatic performance and the world of "reality": reality occurs spontaneously and unrepeatably, whereas the dramatic performance has been deliberately engineered to produce in us an intended emotional and intellectual response. Although drama necessarily shares many of the features of reality, it is of course only a simulation of reality and is, above all, simplified, compressed, reordered, manipulated, reversible, and repeatable.

          There is a commonplace of dramatic production that in the course of rehearsals, during the endless discussions between the director, designer, writer, and cast concerning the psychology of the characters and their appearance and environment, someone invariably will interject that such discussion is futile because the audience will not notice these fine points of detail. To which, equally invariably, the director will respond that though the audience may not notice such details consciously, subliminally they will take them in and their responses will be affected. And this is undoubtedly true. What is also true, however, is that many things that were not discussed and not intended will affect as strongly the conscious or unconscious reaction of individuals in the audience, each of whom will have to come to terms with what he or she has seen and heard.

DECODING DRAMA

          Because the communication in drama occurs not in a linear sequence but in tightly bundled clusters of data that bombard the senses, the spectator's task of decoding a dramatic performance is very different from the reader's task of decoding a novel. To return to our initial example: the entrance of the beautiful woman on the stage will produce an immediate emotional effect (provided, that is, that the director has skillfully focused the attention of the audience upon that entrance. But few members of the audience will be able to say subsequently why they found the woman beautiful: whether it was the shadow of the mischievous smile that played upon her otherwise melancholy countenance or the lace trimmings on her well-cut dress or her deep blue eyes - if indeed they did find her beautiful, which some may not have. Those who did may merely remember a sense of mystery and elegance. Some may, either during the performance or afterward, try to analyze the beauty of the woman as they remember particular features in detail. But almost certainly the features they call to mind will be different from those the novelist used to build his picture. And most of the audience will remain unaware of all these distinct details and their interaction.

          But, it may be objected, our example concerns a purely visual image, the appearance of a character on stage before that character has uttered a single word. Is not drama, like the novel, primarily made up of words and therefore subject to the same mechanisms of expression and understanding as any other verbal form of communication, whether it be a novel, a newspaper dispatch, or a scientific treatise?

          Drama does contain an element of the linear and abstract, but everything that is said on the stage emerges from human beings who are perceived primarily as images and, accordingly, what they say is merely a secondary function of those images. The verbal element will of necessity either reinforce or contradict the primary message of the image to which it is subordinate. If, say, Iago assures Othello of his affection, but has an ex­pression of burning hatred in his eyes, the verbal element will clearly be devalued. It is what the characters do, not what they say, that matters in drama. In the famous final scene of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot one of the two weary men says "Let's go" but the stage direction - and the action of the two characters - is what matters: "They do not move." In either case the primacy of the visual, situational, concrete element - the image - over the abstract content of the verbal element is inescapable.

          It is a cliché of the theater that a good director could fascinate an audience by staging a reading of the telephone directory: such a director would invent intriguing images that would make the audience forget that the words they hear are only a list of names. But no one who needed a number from the phone book would find it expedient to seek it in a dramatic performance. There follows from this a very simple but critical insight: drama is not the most effective way to communicate abstract or purely verbal content or information. If the content is primarily abstract or verbal, it can better be conveyed by silent reading or by recitation, without the full spectrum of means available to stage or screen.

          In a dramatic performance on a stage or on a television or movie screen the number of sign systems [i.e., systems of significance] involved is extraordinary. The full range of verbal language [on which the novelist must rely] and the full gamut of voice expression [which so powerfully augments whatever is read on the radio] are enhanced by a vast array of other sign systems. Not only does the appearance of the actor's face and body convey an immense amount of information, but his gestures and movements are signs as well in a complex system of body language. Costumes form another complete sign system, that of dress and its meanings. To this is added the visual sign system of the setting - whether painted or three-dimensional, as on the stage, or photographically conveyed, as on the screen - as well as the elaborate system of significances contained in props: the furniture of a room or the architecture of a building. There is also the system of signs in the lighting plot and that in the musical background that underlies most movies and many television shows. Still another sign system in both movies and television is the variation of shots (long, medium, close] and their montage - the juxtaposition of long-shots to closeups and the cutting from one scene or shot to another. It is impossible to assign each of these sign systems a rigidly maintained rank on a ladder of rising priorities, but one point should be evident: in drama the complex, multilayered image predominates over the spoken word.

ASPECTS OF PERSONALITY

          Drama is about people in social interaction; the primary interest of the spectator of drama is attached to the personalities involved, their appearance and character, their effects on each other. The linguistic element, insofar as it is concerned with the transmission of abstract ideas, may often come very far down our ladder, after gesture and movement, after costume, even after the impact of the setting.

          In drama, at any given moment, the spectator receives a complex of information that coalesces into a general impression, an image with an emotional impact, which consists of numerous elements that will remain below the threshold of consciousness but will always be focused upon a human personality, a character. The brightness of the sunshine, the airiness of the lovely buildings on the square, the lively rhythm of the background music, the vivid colors of the costume the actor wears, the springiness of his steps all contribute to the spectator's impression that the young lover he sees in front of him is supremely happy, but few in the audience will be aware of the many elements of information that come together to produce this impression. Drama is always action; its action is always that of human beings. In drama we experience the world through personality.

          When we are presented with abstract ideas on the printed page, we may overlook or forget that they are the product of the thought of the individual who has written the text; we may thus receive these ideas as abstract truths. But in drama what we hear is always spoken by a specific individual and has value only as his or her own pronouncement. When we see Hamlet, we may accept the words of Hamlet himself or Polonius or Horatio as containing abstract moral or philosophical truths or insights, or we may not. Nothing in the play constrains us to believe the words spoken represent more than the thoughts of the characters - thoughts influenced by their personalities and motives. We are merely informed what this or that character is saying, not necessarily even whether he himself believes what he is saying or whether he is trying to deceive his interlocutor.

          Whenever attempts have been made to introduce abstraction into drama - as in morality plays of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance in which virtues and vices appeared as emblematic figures: Faith, Good Works, Gluttony, Lechery - the figures of these abstractions inevitably turned into individualized characters. And, paradoxically, the vices, by appearing more human, usually more effectively captured the sympathy of their audiences. In the abstract, Faith or Chastity may have been preferable characteristics; on the stage, individualized and humanized, Avarice or Lechery were easier to identify with, more amusing, and therefore more attractive. Allegorical characters have by no means disappeared. They thrive in our time in television commercials, as exemplified, say, by the demons of din and grime infesting clogged drains.

          The element of personality in drama appears in a highly complex form. When we see Olivier or Gielgud as Hamlet we are interested and involved not only in the fictitious character of Hamlet, but also in the real personality of Laurence Olivier or John Gielgud. The two, character and actor, are fused almost inextricably, so that it is difficult to say which it is that mainly attracts or interests us. Yet it is possible to say that we like Olivier's Hamlet better than Gielgud's, or even that we were fascinated by Gielgud's but utterly bored by X's portrayal.

LITERATURE AND DRAMA

          At the same time, we know that the character of Hamlet himself as he exists in Shakespeare's play is one that will always be intriguing. This consideration highlights another essential point about the nature of drama as a method of communication: plays that are merely read are literature, and they adhere to the same principles of perception as the novel. If we read Hamlet the process of communication we experience is the same as that when we read War and Peace. The difference is merely that the descriptive passages in the play - the stage directions - are shorter and the dialogue passages more numerous than in the novel. But in reading Hamlet we are, as in reading War and Peace, transforming the signs on the page, word by word, line by line, into mental images that coalesce into something like the equivalent of a performance. Seeing a play performed reverses that process and is - with respect to the act of communication that is taking place - ­totally different.

          Those exceptional dramatic texts that have achieved over time the status of literature provide powerful evidence of the essential difference between literature and drama as methods of communication. In performance a dramatic text can convey very different meanings each time it is presented. A performance of Hamlet, to stick with our example, is totally different today from a performance of the same text a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred years ago. Not only have the words themselves been uttered in different styles of pronunciation and expressiveness from century to century, not only have costumes and the spatial and visual configuration of the stage changed but, because of the many additional sign systems superimposed in performance upon the basic blueprint of the written text, different sorts of communication are taking place at each performance and very different meanings are being conveyed.

          There is of course an essential core to such a play: the basic structure of its plot, the interaction of its characters, and the imagery contained in the language. But apart from the obvious differences in acting style, stage technology, and directing, there are also fundamental differences between a performance, say, for Elizabethans who believed in the physical existence of ghosts and one for an audience today that will regard the play's ghost as, at best, a metaphor for Hamlet's subconscious fears or suspicions. The fundamental characteristic of a play-text that remains performable over a period of centuries is that it lends itself - thanks to the durability of the language and depth of the attitudes intrinsic to it - to the production of an almost infinite number of different styles, evoking as many different meanings. A look at the repertoire of theaters throughout the world shows how relatively rare texts of this kind actually are.

          Applying these considerations from the history of classical stage drama to the proliferation of drama today in the mass media, we can immediately sense their force. How much of the fictionalized drama seen every day on commercial television could bear translation into written texts and come to be regarded as literature by generations hence? Indeed, how many scripts of even highly successful movie "classics" could be considered literature? Of course, in movies the dramatic performance and the text have been inextricably fused by the process of mechanical recording. Thus we can now look back on some eighty years of such recorded performances. Even after so relatively short a lapse of time, however, it is clear that few of even the most outstanding movies [such as the greatest Garbo, Dietrich, D.W. Griffith, Chaplin, or Marx Brothers films] survive the passage of the years without a profound modification of their impact and meaning. When we view an old movie today, for example, elements such as the fashions of the period, commonplace and hardly noticed at the time, become valuable items of historical interest and may overshadow either the plot or the performance of the principal actors, which were, originally, major features of the film. The meaning of the text itself may also change over time: it can become a period piece as language evolves and as the concepts and conditions it describes change.

          What all these considerations highlight once again is that a performance, whether live [and thus subject to variation in each presentation] or mechanically recorded (and thus fixed once and for all), will carry a richer, more complex package of meaning-producing systems than will the written word alone. This multilayered dramatic package will produce an emotional impact the elements of which remain largely subliminal. And the abstract, purely intellectual content of a performed dramatic work will tend to be subordinate to its emotional impact, which is principally the outcome of the interaction of characters and human personalities.

          Like the stage and the cinema screen, television deals primarily in images - not only the explicitly dramatic programs broadcast but all of television. It is impossible merely to transmit a text on TV unless it is being shown as a silent caption [in which case it is really a means of distributing the printed word). The moment an announcement is read by a speaker on camera a multitude of dramatic sign systems are unleashed. The intention may be only to let us know that "today is Wednesday the twenty-third of May," but we are being informed as well that these words are spoken by a good-looking male of about thirty-five years of age with a blond moustache, that the studio in which he is sitting has a window with a view of midtown Manhattan, that the young man is wearing a tie with blue stripes, that he has a wedding band on his left hand and a wart on his right cheek. We are getting one line of information from the text he is speaking, but at the same time a flood of data is being released about him and his environment. Whether he intends it or not, he has become a character in the primary dramatic sense.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

          The frame of the television screen turns everything that happens on it into a stage and everything that is seen or heard upon it into a sign. What is more important, everything that takes place upon that stage has an emotional impact. For instance, we probably respond to the young man announcing the date either favorably or unfavorably. The emotional charge that powers our response in this case may be mild or even subconscious. But in the long run our attitude toward him or one of his rivals may determine which station we select when we watch the news. An awareness of this fact will lie behind the decision of the network's or station's management when it chooses its anchors. It will also shape the anchors' decisions about how to dress and how to conduct themselves, in other words, about what kind of character they will try to present to the viewers.

          In a television game show the contestant's answer to a question is less important than his reaction to his success or failure in finding the proper answer - his visible distress if he has failed, his jumping for joy if he has succeeded. In the political interview, however important the personality being questioned may be, however momentous the topics upon which he is speaking, our real interest springs from watching his or her reaction to the sharp searching and provocative questioning to which he or she is being subjected. We are not primarily getting facts; we are getting drama, which is to say we are getting information about the character we are watching rather than about the subject under discussion.

          As a method of communication, therefore, drama is highly effective in conveying human character, and much less effective in communicating ideas or abstract thought, simply because in drama every abstract idea has to be incarnated as the utterance of an individual and that individual tends to occupy the foreground and to overpower, at least to some degree, the impact of the ideas he or she is voicing. Moreover, as our reactions to individuals are differentiated by our tastes, memories, and fantasies, ideas commu­nicated via television tend to be judged in the light of our reaction to the personalities conveying them. Whether we respond favorably or unfavorably to the multitude of subliminal signals that make up the total impact of such personalities will largely determine whether we accept or reject the ideas they purvey - insofar as we take these ideas in at all.

          Since actors are the pivotal point, the central and sole essential ingredient of drama, the effectiveness of television performers of all kinds will derive from their ability to project personality, in other words, from their talent as actors. In this respect it is interesting to note how miserably most inexperienced speakers appear on television, speakers such as one occasion­ally sees in the spots the stations provide for reply to their own editorial opinions. The expressionless faces of the people on these spots as they tonelessly read a prepared text points up the demands on the usual television performer, to be not only a professional but a professional with acting talent. What these untrained speakers have to say rarely has any impact on the viewers. On television a message delivered by a person without acting talent is hardly noticed at all.

          The situation is entirely different when television catches actual parti­cipants in news events at moments of high emotion: the relatives of a murder victim, hostages who have been released, eyewitnesses to an accident, and so on. The emotional intensity of the situation - its drama - ­turns such neophytes into effective performers able to project an intense state of mind and genuine passion. The participants in game shows are in a similarly excited emotional state, which tends to transform them too into effective actors (though they have, in addition, been carefully pretested for their natural acting ability, attractiveness, or quirkiness of character).

          The ability of TV to transmit personality is, undoubtedly, the secret of its immense power. For human beings are insatiable in their interest about other human beings. Once, when traveling through a remote region of then­-colonial East Africa and seeing the villages of grass huts without shops or electricity or roads or any other amenities, I asked an African friend what the local people did during the long dark hours after nightfall, which at the equator comes early the whole year round. Without hesitation my friend replied, "They gossip. They tell each other about the love affairs and sicknesses of their neighbors." Indeed this seems to me one of the basic human drives. Next to the satisfaction of the drives for food, shelter, and procreation, the satisfaction of the drive to gossip about the experiences of others must be one of the central concerns of all human existence. It is the source of all fiction and storytelling, and the source too of drama. Hearing about what has happened to other people, how they have coped with crises in their lives, is of the utmost importance to the survival of the individual and of the species; it is part of an endless learning process.

          Herein lies the source of humanity's insatiable craving for stories: all fiction is ultimately gossip. Television, with its unending stream of characters conveyed dramatically [whether fictional or "real"), is the most perfect mechanized conveyor of that gossip. Being essentially dramatic rather than discursive in nature, moreover, television satisfies this craving in a uniquely effective manner; it not only retells stories about other people, it actually transports these other people into our own living rooms. The attraction of gossip, of course, contains at its root one of the most powerful human impulses. Our interest in other people contains of necessity a strong erotic element. It is this which constitutes one of the basic characteristics and magnetic powers of drama: drama is basically erotic. Actors give the spectators who watch them a great deal of pleasure simply by being interesting, memorable, or beautiful physical specimens of humanity. Quite apart from their artistic and intellectual accomplishments, actors are people who, for money, exhibit their physical presence to the public. We all know that great stars derive their special magnetism from sex appeal. But what applies to the big stars contributes as well to the attractiveness and success of the lesser lights. In a sense all actors are exhibitionists: they enjoy being seen, being found appealing and worth looking at. Conversely audiences of drama are also, in a certain sense, voyeurs.

          Though this is true of all drama, it is especially true of television. Television is the most voyeuristic of all communication media, not only because it provides more material in an unending stream of images and in the form most universally accessible to the totality of the population, but also because it is the most intimate of the dramatic media. In the theater the actors are relatively remote from the audience and the dramatic occasion is public. In the cinema, also a public occasion gathering a large audience into a single room, the actors are nearer to the spectators than in the theater, but in close-ups they are larger than life. Television is seen at a close range and in a more private context. The close-up of the television performer is on a scale that most nearly approximates direct human contact.

THE DAYDREAM MACHINE

          The appeal of television is, at the most basic level, an erotic appeal. TV brings other human beings into close proximity for detailed inspection. The people we view in close-ups on the television screen appear to be as near to us as our sexual partners during an embrace. And yet they are glimpsed behind a glass screen, through a window that cannot be opened. The tele­vision screen is a stage, a frame for the display of images, but though so near, the world it brings to us is also beyond our reach, a world of inaccessible phantoms. The world it shows us on its stage, behind that window through which we can see but cannot grasp or touch, is essentially a world of fantasy.

          Thus television is closely akin to the daydream. The essential feature of daydreams is that they are outside our conscious control. Their charm lies precisely in the spontaneous images they flash before our mind's eye, to which we surrender passively and with pleasure. Television images are received in this same way. Hollywood earned for the movie industry the tag "dream factory" in its early years of mass-entertainment production; in a similar way the television industry has engineered a product that can be called the "daydream machine," for TV brings an uninterrupted procession of collective daydreams, collective fantasies, into our homes. It is this essential characteristic of television that accounts for the blurring of the distinction between fact and fiction, the real world and fantasy, on the screen.

          Our daydreams, after all, also concern themselves with the real world; through them we may even reach important decisions, evolve plans, and devise strategies for future conduct. Daydreams nevertheless remain fan­tasies; they are experienced as intuitions to which we surrender passively rather than as processes of consciously directed, inductive reasoning. Even the most "real" features of television, such as the news, contain the element of fantasy, and of erotic fantasy at that. There is the appeal of the anchorman or anchorwoman and of the reporters, the appeal of the political personalities and other subjects of news broadcasts - hostages, beauty queens, criminals, and victims of crime. And there is the sensationalistic, even sadomasochis­tic, appeal of the scenes of violence, war, and disaster that make up so much of the material presented on TV news: demonstrators being beaten by police; prisoners being executed in a war or revolution; the smoldering debris left in the aftermath of a plane crash. The undoubted element of "reality" contained in the news is thus, by being broadcast on television, automatically transmuted into the stuff of fantasy and daydream - drama - into a story told in images laden with emotional overtones and sometimes hardly distinguishable from fiction.

          All drama depends on that "suspension of disbelief" that will make us, for a brief time, accept the characters we see on the stage as real human beings so that we can identify with them to experience their joys and their sorrows, the whole range of their emotions. Television protracts the suspension of disbelief. What distinguishes TV from the theater and the cinema is sheer quantity of material: the continuousness of TV and the vast amount of material it spews forth enlarge and intensify the traditional characteristics of the other dramatic media so immensely that the increased quantity of material broadcast on TV becomes a new qualitative charac­teristic. We may have believed, for the span of three hours, that Hamlet was a real person, but then we are left to reflect on his character with detachment and analytical insight. The character in the soap opera, on the other hand, is with us almost every day over a period of years and becomes so familiar that detached reflection is inhibited or never occurs at all. Disbelief may become permanently suspended.

          It is the constant presence of this alternative world that is both real and fictional - a fantasy yet an immensely real factor in the lives of whole populations - that makes the explosion of the dramatic form of communi­cation on television such a revolutionary development.