Video Clip: A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire:  movie clips 

 

A Streetcar Named Desire - Trailer 

A Streetcar Named Desire - You Must Be Stanley

 

A Streetcar Named Desire - Hey Stella!

A Streetcar Named Desire - Kindness of Strangers

A Streetcar Named Desire - Stanley Kowalski and Blanche DuBois

 

A Streetcar Named Desire - What's a Rhinestone

Sources from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilW32IKJoM0">Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1A0p0F_iH8">Hey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_lToyPAUyE">You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaS3kbWdGBc">What's
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsVxmk9pq2Y">Stanley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxGN29njs3Q">Kindness

A Streetcar Named Desire: How the Work Responds to Southern Literature

  

A Streetcar Named Desire: How the Work 

Responds to Southern Literature

The Old South and the New South

The story of the DuBois and Kowalski families depicts the evolving society of the South over the first half of the twentieth century.

DuBois family is the Southern plantation owners, southern noble in 19 century. In the play, the degeneration of Southern aristocracy leaves Blanche and Stella, the remnants, nothing except the manners and pretensions. Stella accepts the reality and then marries to a working class man, while Blanche is difficult to accept such truth so she imagines a fantasy world with manners and lives in her illusion. Honestly, Blanche represents the old, elegant, but dead society of South.

As for Kowalski family, it is the new blood Southerners because they are foreign immigrants. Stanley Kowalski, the son of Polish immigrants, belongs to working class that implies the industrialization of the South. However, in the play, Stanley, the symbol of New South, is depicted as a cruel, violent, and rude worker. Williams shows the concept which the new society might be not so kind through such depiction.

     In the end of the play, that Stanley rapes Blanche symbolizes the final destruction of the Old South’s genteel fantasy world by the cruel but vibrant New South. At that time, New South, which possesses animal instinct, wins over the Old South, the ideal and romantic world. Besides, the madness of Blanche suggests that the value of South changes from gentility to people's  struggle for survival.


Sources from:

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/streetcar/study.html#explanation3

http://www.gradesaver.com/a-streetcar-named-desire/study-guide/major-themes/

A Streetcar Named Desire: Plot Summary

A Streetcar Named Desire: Plot Summary

Blanche DuBois, a Southern belle, moves to live with her younger sister: Stella Kowalski in New Orleans, because of the loss of Belle Reve, the DuBois family house in Laurel, Mississippi. Although Stella welcomes the arrival of her sister, it is obvious that Stanley Kowalski, Stella’s husband who dominates and abuses Stella emotionally and physically, does not want others disturb his life with Stella.

Blanche, who pretends that the Old South is not the past, leads her life in an imagination of the fantasy world of the cultivated, old South. Her behavior annoys Stanley because as a working-class man he thinks that Blanche looks down on him and she really does.

One day, Stanley discovers the real reason why Blanche leaves her hometown and comes to New Orleans. The truth is that Blanche fell in love with one of her students when she was an English teacher in a high school. The scandal spreads out so she was fired. To force Blanche face the music, Stanley confronts her in an outside department. At there, Stanley uses the cruel and violent method to attempt to make Blanche admits her terrible past. In the last confrontation, Stanley rapes Blanche. Such horrible reality results in the nervous breakdown of Blanche because of disillusion of her world. 


Sources from
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/streetcar/section10.rhtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Streetcar_Named_Desire_(play)

A Streetcar Named Desire: Main Characters



Blanche DuBois
(Cast by Vivien Leigh)

Blanche DuBois:  Neurotic central character as a high school English teacher from Laurel, Mississippi, moves to New Orleans to live with her younger sister named Stella and her husband called Stanley because she loses Belle Reve, the DuBois family home. She imagines living in the world of Old South chivalry and then causes her terrible destiny in the end. Actually, Blanche symbolizes the dead society of Old South and that old, intellectual romanticism.

Stanley Kowalski
(Cast by Marlon Brando)



Stanley Kowalski: The husband of Stella. Stanley, a Polish man, is heartlessly cruel to Blanche. He hates Blanche’s pretensions and wants to force her to face the music. He represents the new type of American in the New South: lacks education and deadly pursues success and wealth. 

Stella Kowalski
(Cast by Kim Hunter)

Stella Kowalski: Blanche’s younger sister who seems satisfied with her life as the wife of a New Orleans factory worker. She shares a robust sexual relationship with her husband―an animal, violent but renewing union.



Mitch

(Cast by Karl Malden)



Mitch: Stanley’s army friend, coworker, and poker buddy, who courts Blanche until he finds out that she lied to him about her sordid past.

Source from:

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/streetcar/characters.html
Picture from:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044081/

Tennessee Williams: Biography

Background of Tennessee Williams

 TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

1911-1983

Biography

Tennessee Williams is widely considered the greatest Southern playwright and one of the greatest playwrights in the history of American drama. Lots of his play, such as A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, are popular and widespread in the world.

 Tennessee Williams, born as Thomas Lanier Williams, was the son of Cornelius Williams, a shoe company executive, and Edwina, a Southern belle. Although his childhood in Mississippi was happy and carefree but after his family moved to the urban city, St. Louis, Missouri, the happiness of family was gone away. Notwithstanding, because of the unfortunate change in his life, Williams began to ponder what life means, to think the inward meaning of life.

Becoming an adult, Williams, who moved to New Orleans, started to use the nickname: Tennessee, which is given due to his southern background. In 1944, his first production: The Glass Menagerie brought him great success, followed by fame and wealth. Unfortunately, it was this success that made him difficult write so he went to Mexico to work on a play originally titled The Poker Night and eventually became one of his masterpieces, A Streetcar Named Desire.
 

After experiencing many tough time and success in life, in 1983, Williams died in New York and left those amazing works, which are considered to be the most wonderful plays among American history of drama.

Writing style

     Tennessee Williams, who used real life in the South as background in his plays, preferred to practice “poetic realism” in his plays. “Poetic realism,” a method to write play, uses the daily objects to symbolize some concepts or thoughts he wanted to express. In addition, Williams also portrayed the human emotions, especially brutality, violence, and sexual behavior. For example, in A Streetcar Named Desire, he arranged the male protagonist raped the female protagonist to show that New South substituted Old South.

Sources from:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/tennessee-williams/about-tennessee-williams/737//

http://www.gradesaver.com/author/tennessee-williams/

Pictures from:
http://www.corbisimages.com/images/BE084225.jpg?size=67&uid=053ddb67-560d-4004-af8b-227e6d24f3b1&uniqID=031a69cf-557c-4a7e-9879-216f8e25ecb0
http://image2.findagrave.com/photos250/photos/2005/153/1111_111781238299.jpg