Cover not available

Article published In: English Text Construction
Vol. 14:1 (2021) ► pp.94–111

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Remediating the culture industry

Sam Shepard’s political play States of Shock

 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Published online: 15 September 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.21012.tho
Abstract
This article examines to what dramaturgical effect Sam Shepard’s political play States of Shock (1991) remediates strategies associated with the culture industry. In plays, spectators forge an interpretation from a medium that is considered ‘hypermedial’ or capable of combining discrete signifying systems such as dialogue, costumes, acting style and scenography at the same time. In States of Shock, genre remediation implicates its audience in the spectacle of war by juxtaposing American war heroism and military ideology with entertaining vaudeville. By examining Shepard’s appropriation of the vaudeville genre in relation to other dramatic signifying systems, the article offers a new and more layered reading of the play’s supposedly ‘blatant’ political message.
Article outline
  • 1.Revisiting Shepard’s late political plays
  • 2.Culture industry remediation and the hypermediality of the theater
  • 3.Analysis of States of Shock
    • 3.1Hypermediations of ‘the spectacle of war’
    • 3.2Confronting political ideology through vaudeville remediation
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
References (28)
References
Adorno, Theodor W. 1991. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, J. M. Bernstein (ed.). London: Routledge Classics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Altman, Rick. 2004. Silent Film Sound. New York NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baudrillard, Jean. 1995 [1991]. The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, Paul Patton (trans.). Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baugh, Christopher. 2005. Theatre, Performance and Technology: The Development of Scenography in The Twentieth Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bigsby, Christopher. 2002. Born injured: The theatre of Sam Shepard. In The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard, Matthew Roudané (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 7–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bolter, Jay David, & Richard Grusin. 2000. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bottoms, Stephen J. 1998. The Theatre of Sam Shepard: States of Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Callens, Johan. 2000. Diverting the integrated spectacle of war: Sam Shepard’s States of Shock. Text and Performance Quarterly 20(3): 290–206. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. Dis/figuring Sam Shepard. Brussels: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Collard, Christophe. 2018. Ecologies of media, ecologies of mind: Embodying authorship through mediaturgy. The Journal of American Drama and Theatre 30(2): 1–12.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Marinis, Marco. 1987. Dramaturgy of the spectator. The Drama Review: TDR 31(2): 100-114. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Iannucci, Armando. 2003. Shoot now, think later. The Guardian (28 April). <[URL]> (Last accessed on 4 April 2020).
Krekel, Michael. 1986. Von Cowboys bis True West: Sam Shepards Drama: Dokumente einer amerikanischen Phantasie. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lash, Scott & Celia Lury. 2007. Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marranca, Bonnie. 1981a. Alphabetical Shepard: The play of words. PAJ: Performing Arts Journal 5(2): 8–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1981b. American Dreams: The Imagination of Sam Shepard. New York NY: PAJ Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1982. Nuclear theatre. PAJ: Performing Arts Journal 6(3): 46–50. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McConachie, Bruce. 2008. Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre. New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mirowska, Paulina. 2017. Negotiating reality: Sam Shepard’s States of Shock, or ‘A vaudeville nightmare’. Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture 71: 368–385. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Neitzel, Britta. 2014. Narrativity of computer games. The Living Handbook of Narratology (22 April), Peter Hühn et al. (eds). Hamburg: Hamburg University. <[URL]> (Last accessed on 20 June 2021).
Rich, Frank. 1991. Review/theater; Sam Shepard returns, on war and machismo. The New York Times (17 May). <[URL]> (Last accessed on May 6 2020).
Rosen, Carol. 2004. Sam Shepard: A ‘Poetic Rodeo’. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roudané, Matthew. 2002. Introduction. In The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard, Matthew Roudané (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–6. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scannell, Paddy. 2013 [2007]. Media and Communication. London: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shepard, Sam. 1996 [1993]. States of shock. In Sam Shepard. Plays: 3. A Lie of the Mind, States of Shock, Simpatico. London: Methuen Drama, 139–185.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Skelton, Shannon Blake. 2016. The Late Work of Sam Shepard. London: Bloomsbury. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Snyder, Robert W. 1996. Vaudeville and the transformation of popular culture. In Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World, William R. Taylor (ed.). Baltimore MD: John Hopkins University Press, 133–146.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wade, Leslie A. 2002. States of Shock, Simpatico, and Eyes for Consuela: Sam Shepard’s plays of the 1990s. In The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard, Matthew Roudané (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 257–278. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue