Have you read this before or will you simply read this again?

The reading from Marvin Carlson’s The Haunted Stage is probably one of the most interesting ones I have come across recently, particularly being as it was one I found relatively easily to follow and understand (I believe anyway).

“[A]ll plays in general might be called Ghosts” (Carlson, 2003, 1), from this line I was intrigued, what was this ghosting that is apparently in everything and yet I had heard nothing of before? “[W]e are seeing what we saw before” (Carlson, 2003, 1) but what does this mean?

Establishing of course that what it was referring to was our own memories of what we have seen or even heard of, I understood and could then relate this productions, television and films that I had seen. The belief that when we watch an actor playing a new role you will think of him in the last role you saw him in, or possibly just the most memorable one. And when you watch a new production of a play you will think of the last production of that play you saw, or if it’s a new one maybe just the last performance you saw in general, or even just what you saw at that venue. Ghosting in theatre can relate to anything from the production to the actor, from the venue to the set, from the musical score to the script. As you read this now you may have in your head my previous blog post, or even the last blog post on you read on ghosting (whether it was better than mine or not I’ll let to you decide, either way when you read the next one, you may be even by haunted my me) after all, “[t]he present experience is always ghosted by previous experiences” (Carlson, 2003, 2).

However, “every play is a memory” (Carlson, 2003, 2) even brings in how plays potentially (usually) ghost real life as well as other plays. A writer may ‘think of’ a line of dialogue simply because they heard someone else say it in passing, or may create a character or event that is a relation to them. This made me think one thing I was taught in college that has been a constant thought of mine, that no story is ever original.

Christopher Booker states in The Seven Basic Plots that the constant recycled plots consist of: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy and Rebirth. These can of course then branch of into different subplots when elements are mixed between two of course, tragicomedy for example, but essentially these are the only stories we can tell. This also then moves onto the idea that there are only eight or so archetypes of character that will always be reused.

NOTHING IS ORIGINAL!

Even if you move away from the idea of having a limited number of plots and characters, ghosting can still be seen very clearly in modern popular culture. In the film industry for example, the past few years has seen a large increase in remakes, reboots, sequels and prequels (and those based on books and comics). This is to the point where (excluding art house films, though the same rule might apply) there are only 10-20 new releases each year in the cinema that don’t relate to the fore mentioned remakes, reboots, etc. this has at least been my own observation from working in a cinema for the past four years. The reason for the being so many of these ‘unoriginal’ films is due to the fact they are easier to ‘sell’ to an audience. They are already aware of the franchise, they know what to expected, they don’t need much back story and therefore need less advertisement and saves the distributors a lot of money. These distributors depend on ghosting to market their films and it works.

Another example of ghosting in film which I find interesting is in Willy Russell’s film adaptation of his own play, Educating Rita, directed by Lewis Gilbert. It has been made a regular assumption that Michael Caine (who stars in Educating Rita) is known for saying “not a lot of people know that” and is usually a line used whenever someone imitates him for comedic purposes, however until Rita he has never actually said this in any film. It became popular due to a comedy sketch where he was being impersonated and which became so popular that everyone simply associated this phrase with him. Because of this, Willy Russell actually wrote it into the film script for Rita, though it wasn’t in the stage script, just so it could now be said that Caine had now said the line he was so (wrongly) famous for. Caine was ghosted by peoples’ assumptions of something he had never actually said.

Back to the theatre though, as that’s what we should really be discussing, Carlson talks in his book about Noh drama from Japan where a play is “a story of the past recounted by a ghost” (Carlson, 2003, 3). This straight away made me think of Hamlet (because that is how haunted my mind is by Shakespeare). The fact that it is the ghost of his father who really sets the wheels in motion for Hamlet to kill his uncle when he finds out of the murder of his father “[r]evenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (Shakespeare, 1.5.29). Ghosting then comes in again to the play of Hamlet, when the prince of Denmark decides the way to get his uncle’s guilt out in the open is by having a play performed to him that resembles that of the murder he has committed: “I’ll have these players / Play something like the murder of my father / Before mine uncle” (Shakespeare, 2.2.607-608). Hamlet is therefore relying on his uncle to be ghosted by his own behaviour.

The whole concept of ghosting I have found fascinating, something that nearly everyone will be aware of in some respect (even just acknowledging the remakes of films) but will not necessarily be aware of their own awareness.

 

Work Cited

Booker, C. (2005) The Seven Basic Plots. London: Continuum.

Carlson, M. (2003) The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Ann Arber: University of Michigan Press.

Gilbert, L. (dir.) (1983) Educating Rita. [DVD] Carlton.

Shakespeare, W. (2008) Hamlet. Basingstoke: Macmillan.