Blackbird Analysis - (Long Version)
By Eric Shapiro - for Writing About Drama Section with Professor Wolf, Spring 2010 (3/8/2010) ...
The Audience in “Blackbird”
The effectiveness of David Harrower’s “Blackbird” as a work of drama lies in its ability to subvert traditional notions of morality. Although Harrower does not by any means attempt to justify child molestation (an impossible task that would waste the audience’s and the playwright’s time), he does reject the simplistic notion that a romantic relationship between an adult and a child is inevitably that of a heartless manipulator and an innocent victim. The reality, Harrower demonstrates, is, in some cases, far more messy, complicated and horrifying.
Throughout the play, the audience and, by extension, society in general, are as much participants as the two individuals on stage. What begins as a seemingly straightforward meeting between Ray, a middle-aged “sexual predator” and his prey, a young woman named Una, metastasizes into a three-way interaction between characters and audience. As Ray and Una recall the details of their affair, when he was in his 40s and she a 12-year-old girl, the audience sits in silent judgment.
The characters’ language serves to highlight the inadequacy of words to express deep, conflicted emotions. They are mired in what theater critic Caridad Svich refers to as “the disjunction between thought and action, and in inchoate and perhaps unreliable manifestations of feeling.” More often than not, words serve more to reflect an overly simplistic and ultimately detrimental conventional wisdom than what Ray and Una are actually feeling. The reductive, trivializing capacity of language, as wielded by society to enforce simplistic moral judgments and create characters, prevents the characters in “Blackbird” from achieving a lucid understanding of the complexities of an emotionally charged experience. Thus, they are deprived of the self-insight to head off their affair before it starts and, subsequently, the understanding that would allow them to move on. In calling attention to the ability of language to spread stereotypes, Harrower encourages the audience to rethink the stereotypes about pedophilia that, as exemplified by Ray and Una, only obscure true understanding. The power dynamic in Ray and Una’s relationship is not consistent with the child-as-hapless-unaware victim and adult-as-uncaring-manipulative-victimizer assumption promoted by the conventional wisdom of society.
In shedding light on the complex nature of Ray and Una’s relationship, Harrower does not absolve the latter from guilt. Rather, doing so alters the audience’s perception of Ray from a manipulative monster to a weak character without the backbone or moral maturity to reject the temptation of a young, willing girl prepared to lift him out of his isolation. As much as he is responsible for his mistake (which certainly does not go unpunished), he is portrayed as far more pathetic than despicable. He is a creature that acts without considering the effects of his actions. When Una tells Ray to stop rubbing his eyes, he defends himself: “I rub them because they hurt./It’s the only way to stop them from hurting” (Harrower15). Ray’s response is indicative of his childlike temperament and a willingness to give into urges without thought of the consequences. The latter foreshadows his easy seduction by Una.
Ray’s infantilization early on in the play is not consistent with society’s portrayal of him after his crime. His lawyers pressure him into claiming that he was abused as a child: “The lawyer asked me if hadbeen [abused]. It was better for me if I had been. Better for everyone if I had been. I read those books. I thought about my life. To be sure I wasn’t one of them” (Harrower 40). Ray’s lawyer tells him to adopt such an argument for his own good. This begs the question of why feigning abuse would help him. The answer is that society takes comfort in categorization. They take comfort in knowing that something they don’t understand – a grown man’s attraction to a young girl – is the result of a straightforward childhood trauma. In essence, Ray’s lawyer is asking to reduce his complicated feelings for Una to the simplistic truism that abuse begets more abuse so that they need not contemplate the notion that anyone they know, perhaps even themselves, could find themselves in the position of harboring the same perverse attraction. Hence, “it would be better for everyone.”
Conversely, Una is shown to be quite a determined victim, if not the instigator of the whole thing. Unlike Ray, she has a clear idea of what she wants: “I wanted you to be my boyfriend/I wanted to sit beside you in your car and be driven into town/and for people to see me/to see us” (Harrower 45). She acts based on a well-considered plan, manipulating a clearly lonely and disturbed man across the street by slipping notes under his windshield wipers and taking advantage of his vulnerability. She possesses traits that are characteristic of a pedophile: Ray, quoting a book on the subject, says, “These people are very very careful/are very very deceptive” (Harrower 41). It is clear that Una, not Ray is in the position of power in their relationship.
Furthermore, Harrower portrays Una as a remarkably mature person given her age. Other characters recognize as much. Ray tells Una: “You knew about love/You knew more about love than she did./Than I did/You knew what you wanted” (Harrower 47). Again, there is the sense that Una is driven by a goal, not childishly acting on instinct like Ray. He also says that she knows about love, something not typical of a 12-year-old. Echoing Ray’s assertion of Una’s maturity, the judge in Ray’s trial says she has “suspiciously adult yearnings” (Harrower 60).
The extent of Una’s maturity is unclear. At times, she acts like a child. For example, after her sexual encounter, she has a craving for chocolate. This leaves open the possibility that Ray and the judge are, to an extent, projecting. However, she clearly possesses some characteristic that makes her seem older and wiser than her age. This, in combination with Ray’s immaturity, subverts the implied power dynamic of their relationship and highlights society’s inability to comprehend it or deal with it.
Nevertheless, as harbingers of a stifling and inflexible conventional wisdom, the judge is quick to label Ray a monster and Una a victim. In refusing to look beyond pre-rendered easy answers and stereotypes, in refusing to see pedophilia as a complex phenomenon worthy of real psychological examination, the judge maintains a society of ignorance that is not conducive to a real understanding of pedophilia.
Devoid of the necessary tools to cope with his actions and move on, Ray adopts the language and criteria of society to deal with his guilt. He mentions having read books on child molesters to “be sure [he] wasn’t one of them” (Harrower 40). Using information gleaned from the books he’s read, Ray attempts to convince himself, Una, and the audience that he is not, in fact, a pedophile. Indeed, by society’s standards, he is correct. He does not meet any of the criteria provided in “the literature,” which reflects society’s (and the audience’s) consensus. The manner in which Ray becomes involved with Una does not match the calculated, methodical approach of textbook pedophiles. “You were someone’s/a neighbor’s daughter who/who was annoyed at the world that day. Not not a/target (Harrower 43).
Ray’s ability to disqualify himself from the “pedophile label” gives him the means to salvage his self-image and ignore the damage he has done to Una. He feels a legitimate emotional connection to Una that the audience and society, in their eagerness to cast quick, easy judgments, refuse to account for. Consequently, he takes on the same approach himself. Ray is able to delude himself into thinking that his feelings for Una are love and not merely an unnatural manifestation of unrequited lust and loneliness. Similarly, hindered as they are with the caricature of a pedophile, Ray and Una’s neighbors are unable to see the warning signs in the two characters’ interactions. They cannot fathom that the seemingly harmless man who is in a relationship with an adult woman is in fact a pedophile.
When it does come out that Ray has been molesting Una, society’s response, the response that the audience condones, does as much if not more damage to the latter than any sexual act that transpired. When Ray and Una recall the time they had sex in a hotel room, they both remember it as a positive experience. This is not to say that their relationship was healthy; it is, after all, possible to enjoy something that is bad for you. However, the word “abuse,” which characters and society use to label the encounter and Una encourages Ray to adopt on page 40, is woefully inadequate to describe what has occurred. In fact, the treatment that Una receives at the hands of society in the aftermath of the experience is far more akin to abuse than the experience itself, at least from her perspective:
“They drugged me. Held me down and injected me. Opened my legs and took- took out your come. Evidence. They asked me what you’d done to me. Then told me what you’d done to me when I wouldn’t. You were only after one thing. That’s why you disappeared. You’d gotten what you’d wanted” (Harrower 59).
When Una refers to “they,” she is talking about the doctors in particular and society in general, the so-called civilized, upstanding people that do not have sex with children. On the contrary, the treatment Una describes at the hands of society is monstrous and harmful on many levels. Physically, she is subjected to a horrifying ordeal. She is “injected” like an animal and her legs are forced open in a search for “evidence.” Una’s treatment at the hands of society sounds much more like abuse, in its forceful violation of her body and her dignity, than does her consensual and pleasurable sexual encounter with Ray, however sick and misguided it was.
However, society’s words, which could easily come from any member of the audience, are at least as damaging to Una as any physical violation. Regardless of whether Una is truly in love with Ray (whether a child can feel real romantic love towards an adult is a central question of the play), she clearly cares deeply for him. Imagine, then, the confusion that the doctors’ condemnatory words towards Ray must cause a young girl who is convinced that she has met her soul mate. The reaction on the part of society is tremendously insensitive in that it trivializes a relationship that felt (and may well have been) real to her. Rather than helping her come to terms with her relationship with Ray and its inappropriate nature, society turns him into a cartoon character, a moustache-twirling villain with no resemblance to the man she knows. The indoctrinated Una is the one the audience sees at the beginning of the play, but it soon becomes clear that society’s superficial slandering of Ray has done nothing to temper her feelings for him. Instead, it drives her back into his arms. On page 83, she literally latches onto him as he attempts to leave the conference room.
Towards the end of the play, Una speaks for the audience: “I don’t know what to believe… there’s so much to choose from” (Harrower 69). Una’s statement highlights the overall point of “Blackbird,” which is to force the audience to question assumptions they have about pedophiles and the detrimental effect these assumptions have on victims of pedophilia, and even the perpetrators themselves. The audience members stand in for society as a whole in that they bring certain misconceptions and oversimplifications into the theater that causes them to judge the characters in a certain way. Harrower uses the dramatic interplay between Ray and Una to encourage the audience to think more deeply about an issue that usually provokes knee-jerk reactions. He does not intend to change audience members’ minds about pedophilia, but rather he seeks to open them up to considering the emotional complexities, contradictions and power dynamics that underlie a sexual relationship between an adult and a child.
The Audience in “Blackbird”
The effectiveness of David Harrower’s “Blackbird” as a work of drama lies in its ability to subvert traditional notions of morality. Although Harrower does not by any means attempt to justify child molestation (an impossible task that would waste the audience’s and the playwright’s time), he does reject the simplistic notion that a romantic relationship between an adult and a child is inevitably that of a heartless manipulator and an innocent victim. The reality, Harrower demonstrates, is, in some cases, far more messy, complicated and horrifying.
Throughout the play, the audience and, by extension, society in general, are as much participants as the two individuals on stage. What begins as a seemingly straightforward meeting between Ray, a middle-aged “sexual predator” and his prey, a young woman named Una, metastasizes into a three-way interaction between characters and audience. As Ray and Una recall the details of their affair, when he was in his 40s and she a 12-year-old girl, the audience sits in silent judgment.
The characters’ language serves to highlight the inadequacy of words to express deep, conflicted emotions. They are mired in what theater critic Caridad Svich refers to as “the disjunction between thought and action, and in inchoate and perhaps unreliable manifestations of feeling.” More often than not, words serve more to reflect an overly simplistic and ultimately detrimental conventional wisdom than what Ray and Una are actually feeling. The reductive, trivializing capacity of language, as wielded by society to enforce simplistic moral judgments and create characters, prevents the characters in “Blackbird” from achieving a lucid understanding of the complexities of an emotionally charged experience. Thus, they are deprived of the self-insight to head off their affair before it starts and, subsequently, the understanding that would allow them to move on. In calling attention to the ability of language to spread stereotypes, Harrower encourages the audience to rethink the stereotypes about pedophilia that, as exemplified by Ray and Una, only obscure true understanding. The power dynamic in Ray and Una’s relationship is not consistent with the child-as-hapless-unaware victim and adult-as-uncaring-manipulative-victimizer assumption promoted by the conventional wisdom of society.
In shedding light on the complex nature of Ray and Una’s relationship, Harrower does not absolve the latter from guilt. Rather, doing so alters the audience’s perception of Ray from a manipulative monster to a weak character without the backbone or moral maturity to reject the temptation of a young, willing girl prepared to lift him out of his isolation. As much as he is responsible for his mistake (which certainly does not go unpunished), he is portrayed as far more pathetic than despicable. He is a creature that acts without considering the effects of his actions. When Una tells Ray to stop rubbing his eyes, he defends himself: “I rub them because they hurt./It’s the only way to stop them from hurting” (Harrower15). Ray’s response is indicative of his childlike temperament and a willingness to give into urges without thought of the consequences. The latter foreshadows his easy seduction by Una.
Ray’s infantilization early on in the play is not consistent with society’s portrayal of him after his crime. His lawyers pressure him into claiming that he was abused as a child: “The lawyer asked me if hadbeen [abused]. It was better for me if I had been. Better for everyone if I had been. I read those books. I thought about my life. To be sure I wasn’t one of them” (Harrower 40). Ray’s lawyer tells him to adopt such an argument for his own good. This begs the question of why feigning abuse would help him. The answer is that society takes comfort in categorization. They take comfort in knowing that something they don’t understand – a grown man’s attraction to a young girl – is the result of a straightforward childhood trauma. In essence, Ray’s lawyer is asking to reduce his complicated feelings for Una to the simplistic truism that abuse begets more abuse so that they need not contemplate the notion that anyone they know, perhaps even themselves, could find themselves in the position of harboring the same perverse attraction. Hence, “it would be better for everyone.”
Conversely, Una is shown to be quite a determined victim, if not the instigator of the whole thing. Unlike Ray, she has a clear idea of what she wants: “I wanted you to be my boyfriend/I wanted to sit beside you in your car and be driven into town/and for people to see me/to see us” (Harrower 45). She acts based on a well-considered plan, manipulating a clearly lonely and disturbed man across the street by slipping notes under his windshield wipers and taking advantage of his vulnerability. She possesses traits that are characteristic of a pedophile: Ray, quoting a book on the subject, says, “These people are very very careful/are very very deceptive” (Harrower 41). It is clear that Una, not Ray is in the position of power in their relationship.
Furthermore, Harrower portrays Una as a remarkably mature person given her age. Other characters recognize as much. Ray tells Una: “You knew about love/You knew more about love than she did./Than I did/You knew what you wanted” (Harrower 47). Again, there is the sense that Una is driven by a goal, not childishly acting on instinct like Ray. He also says that she knows about love, something not typical of a 12-year-old. Echoing Ray’s assertion of Una’s maturity, the judge in Ray’s trial says she has “suspiciously adult yearnings” (Harrower 60).
The extent of Una’s maturity is unclear. At times, she acts like a child. For example, after her sexual encounter, she has a craving for chocolate. This leaves open the possibility that Ray and the judge are, to an extent, projecting. However, she clearly possesses some characteristic that makes her seem older and wiser than her age. This, in combination with Ray’s immaturity, subverts the implied power dynamic of their relationship and highlights society’s inability to comprehend it or deal with it.
Nevertheless, as harbingers of a stifling and inflexible conventional wisdom, the judge is quick to label Ray a monster and Una a victim. In refusing to look beyond pre-rendered easy answers and stereotypes, in refusing to see pedophilia as a complex phenomenon worthy of real psychological examination, the judge maintains a society of ignorance that is not conducive to a real understanding of pedophilia.
Devoid of the necessary tools to cope with his actions and move on, Ray adopts the language and criteria of society to deal with his guilt. He mentions having read books on child molesters to “be sure [he] wasn’t one of them” (Harrower 40). Using information gleaned from the books he’s read, Ray attempts to convince himself, Una, and the audience that he is not, in fact, a pedophile. Indeed, by society’s standards, he is correct. He does not meet any of the criteria provided in “the literature,” which reflects society’s (and the audience’s) consensus. The manner in which Ray becomes involved with Una does not match the calculated, methodical approach of textbook pedophiles. “You were someone’s/a neighbor’s daughter who/who was annoyed at the world that day. Not not a/target (Harrower 43).
Ray’s ability to disqualify himself from the “pedophile label” gives him the means to salvage his self-image and ignore the damage he has done to Una. He feels a legitimate emotional connection to Una that the audience and society, in their eagerness to cast quick, easy judgments, refuse to account for. Consequently, he takes on the same approach himself. Ray is able to delude himself into thinking that his feelings for Una are love and not merely an unnatural manifestation of unrequited lust and loneliness. Similarly, hindered as they are with the caricature of a pedophile, Ray and Una’s neighbors are unable to see the warning signs in the two characters’ interactions. They cannot fathom that the seemingly harmless man who is in a relationship with an adult woman is in fact a pedophile.
When it does come out that Ray has been molesting Una, society’s response, the response that the audience condones, does as much if not more damage to the latter than any sexual act that transpired. When Ray and Una recall the time they had sex in a hotel room, they both remember it as a positive experience. This is not to say that their relationship was healthy; it is, after all, possible to enjoy something that is bad for you. However, the word “abuse,” which characters and society use to label the encounter and Una encourages Ray to adopt on page 40, is woefully inadequate to describe what has occurred. In fact, the treatment that Una receives at the hands of society in the aftermath of the experience is far more akin to abuse than the experience itself, at least from her perspective:
“They drugged me. Held me down and injected me. Opened my legs and took- took out your come. Evidence. They asked me what you’d done to me. Then told me what you’d done to me when I wouldn’t. You were only after one thing. That’s why you disappeared. You’d gotten what you’d wanted” (Harrower 59).
When Una refers to “they,” she is talking about the doctors in particular and society in general, the so-called civilized, upstanding people that do not have sex with children. On the contrary, the treatment Una describes at the hands of society is monstrous and harmful on many levels. Physically, she is subjected to a horrifying ordeal. She is “injected” like an animal and her legs are forced open in a search for “evidence.” Una’s treatment at the hands of society sounds much more like abuse, in its forceful violation of her body and her dignity, than does her consensual and pleasurable sexual encounter with Ray, however sick and misguided it was.
However, society’s words, which could easily come from any member of the audience, are at least as damaging to Una as any physical violation. Regardless of whether Una is truly in love with Ray (whether a child can feel real romantic love towards an adult is a central question of the play), she clearly cares deeply for him. Imagine, then, the confusion that the doctors’ condemnatory words towards Ray must cause a young girl who is convinced that she has met her soul mate. The reaction on the part of society is tremendously insensitive in that it trivializes a relationship that felt (and may well have been) real to her. Rather than helping her come to terms with her relationship with Ray and its inappropriate nature, society turns him into a cartoon character, a moustache-twirling villain with no resemblance to the man she knows. The indoctrinated Una is the one the audience sees at the beginning of the play, but it soon becomes clear that society’s superficial slandering of Ray has done nothing to temper her feelings for him. Instead, it drives her back into his arms. On page 83, she literally latches onto him as he attempts to leave the conference room.
Towards the end of the play, Una speaks for the audience: “I don’t know what to believe… there’s so much to choose from” (Harrower 69). Una’s statement highlights the overall point of “Blackbird,” which is to force the audience to question assumptions they have about pedophiles and the detrimental effect these assumptions have on victims of pedophilia, and even the perpetrators themselves. The audience members stand in for society as a whole in that they bring certain misconceptions and oversimplifications into the theater that causes them to judge the characters in a certain way. Harrower uses the dramatic interplay between Ray and Una to encourage the audience to think more deeply about an issue that usually provokes knee-jerk reactions. He does not intend to change audience members’ minds about pedophilia, but rather he seeks to open them up to considering the emotional complexities, contradictions and power dynamics that underlie a sexual relationship between an adult and a child.