Core Post 2 - Lauren Sullivan

Dryer’s language discussing Brando’s acting in A Streetcar Named Desire is interesting. He mentions the commonly held perception that the Method is more authentic than other acting styles, but he seems critical of it and never argues himself that this approach is more authentic. Instead, he emphasizes the redundancy that the Method creates or lends itself to. He claims this redundancy is created through prioritizing character over plot, which Dryer notes in Brando reducing his performance to basic psychology, redundant performance signs, and raw and violent emotion. Even more so, he argues that the Method is adaptable to performers “who are essentially the same in every film” (142). Dryer finds Brando guilty of this: “despite ‘fabricating an astonishing array of ethnic accents’ he is always ‘the surly proletarian who suspects every smell of middle-class decorum’” (142). This seems like a contradiction. How can an actor truly become the character he is playing and have all the characters he plays be largely the same? It seems to negate the authenticity of the Method, but perhaps there is more at play.

This brings in King’s arguments regarding authorship in “Articulating Stardom.” When compared to the stage, King argues that film greatly diminishes an actor’s authorship. When on stage, an actor has the maximum amount direct control over the character and his performance. In film, this control is shifted away from the actor and into other hands, like that of the director or editor. Streetcar is based on a play and the film’s approach reflects this; the narrative is not changed much from the play and its editing is largely minimized. This gives more authorship to the actors than other films might, but it is still diminished when compared to theater. Actors are further limited by their physicality and other extra-filmic factors (reputations, personas, circulated biographical information, other roles, etc.), and this means that actors may only be cast in specific roles. This may offer a different explanation as to why Brando’s performances are so similar across his career. Perhaps he does truly “get inside” each character he plays, but he is only cast in very similar roles because of how his physical attributes are culturally coded and how he is publicly perceived as a star.