Marlon Brando: Views ii

Hollywood was configured as the modern version of the god and goddess cults of ancient Greece. Hollywood determines the ideals of beauty, roles models, modes of acceptable power, etc. Whoever claims to be more beautiful than the most gorgeous actress is committing an act of hubris. Whoever acts outside of the stereotypes of Hollywood is ignored as weird or strange. The studio system provides the actor and the actress with all that she or he desires. They are like the temple priestesses of the cults of ancient Greece. Greta Garbo perfectly combines eros and thanatos, a modern Mona Lisa, with a voice that is filled with boredom and disappointment. Cults of death and beauty follow her. Garbomaniacs. Others come before Brando. Others see acting as pretending. Marlon is about to show that acting is about expressing genuine and magnified emotions. Marlon's Muse is Greta Garbo.

Stella Adler associated passions with Italians, but I cannot say that Marlon expresses the emotions of Italians. Marlon's emotions are much more anguished, hardened, dynamic, artistic yet curiously brutal. There's something so real about the emotions in Streetcar like Desire. I never realized that in America, South Koreans like me were seen with the same eyes that Americans saw Native Americans. So I never really knew that cultured Southern women saw me as a primitive, more or less. Streetcar juxtaposes the brutal, workingclass Polack with the cultured Southern Belle. Culture vs. Barbarity is the central conflict and in Marlon's version, the Polack wins. Somehow, Brando performed a catharsis in my soul of my anger toward Southern women. He performed a catharsis of my mode of scapegoating (frustration, aggression, scapegoating). Brando freed me sexually. I saw the sensitivity, fragility, and curious strangeness of Southern women. I must be quite frank here. I really don't see the charm of American women nowadays. I think that, in the past, I only saw them as charming because they were the forbidden fruit. I think that, after Streetcar, I began to see Southern women a little bit differently, but with equal indifference... domesticated, clueless, sensitive, spiritually inclining toward the cultish, etc.

Streetcar showed me something real for the first time in my life. In the Northeast, everyone seems to be acting. There's really nothing real. You rarely see real emotions displayed out in public. Getting a cold is real, but what people say and do... "Hi, how are you?" Fine." with a smile. Nothing really changes over time. Lies must be preserved by lies, but people don't really have a good memory. So people look puzzled at times when you ask them about something in the past. You just assume that most people are in debt and living beyond their means.

When Brando screams Stella and his wife comes down and hugs him. This was the REAL. His beautiful, muscular body taking hold of her, consuming her. Again, in High School, Charlotte Country Day, all these girl going out with one guy one time, then another, another time. We may as well just bring back polygamy. Is serial monogamy any different from polygamy? THE AMERICA that I wanted to acculturate into was the caring, loving family units of Jewish and Greek families who treated me like I was one of their own. This was not the Image of America I was fed by the Reagan Americans. I saw a happy mother and happy father and happy kids. I felt so robbed, but secretly, I still desired the forbidden fruit.

There's a Chaplinesque quality to Brando too. Chaplin's Muse was probably Greta Garbo. He does his gestures with the hat and otherwise that makes him a little more approachable.

But where else does the real insert itself into the text of Brando's Streetcar. One gets the sense that when the Vivien Leigh character is confessing about finding her husband in bed with a boy, it is Vivien Leigh speaking about Lawrence Olivier and that Brando probably seduced Vivien Leigh as vengeance toward a rival.