classic classism and desire


"Take a look at yourself here in a worn-out Mardi Gras outfit, rented for 50 cents from some rag-picker. And with a crazy crown on. Now what kind of a queen do you think you are? Do you know that I've been on to you from the start, and not once did you pull the wool over this boy's eyes? You come in here and you sprinkle the place with powder and you spray perfume and you stick a paper lantern over the light bulb - and, lo and behold, the place has turned to Egypt and you are the Queen of the Nile, sitting on your throne, swilling down my liquor. And do you know what I say? Ha ha! Do you hear me? Ha ha ha!"




The video above is one of my favorite parts in the 1951 movie "A Streetcar Named Desire" By Elia Kazan. which is an adaption of the original 1974 play "A Streetcar Named Desire" written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play is about the disturbed Blanche DuBois moving in with her sister and her her brutish brother-in-law in New Orleans

The play portrays the huge culture and class clash between two characters, Blanche DuBois, an old but yet attractive posh woman from  Old South, whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask alcoholism and delusions of grandeur.  and Stanley Kowalski (the brother-in-law), a rising member of the industrial, urban working class.  

Throughout the film you cant help but to be in awe of the  complex relationship between the two characters. such great acting by Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando






 




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