Surviving the Good Life: Cruel Optimism of the American Dream in Modern American Drama

• Thesis title in Czech: Jak přežít blahobyt: krutý optimismus amerického snu v moderních amerických dramatech
• Thesis title in English: Surviving the Good Life: Cruel Optimism of the American Dream in Modern American Drama
• Key words: moderní americké drama|Lauren Berlant|krutý optimismus|Americký sen|normativita|rodina|identita|úspěch
• English key words: Modern American Drama|Lauren Berlant|cruel optimism|American Dream|normativity|family|identity|success
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2019/2020
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: doc. Clare Wallace, M.A., Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 04.12.2019
• Date of assignment: 04.12.2019
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 05.12.2019
• Date and time of defence: 03.09.2020 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 14.07.2020
• Date of proceeded defence: 03.09.2020
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: prof. Mgr. Ondřej Pilný, Ph.D.

Guidelines

The crisis of the American Dream and its possible detrimental effects became one of the most prominent topics for the American playwrights of the post-WWII era. For centuries, the American Dream has been providing citizens with blueprints for a good life. With time, this “charm of the anticipated success” [1] has turned into an oppressive force that dictates that a life, which cannot get into close proximity of the American Dream, might not be deemed worth living. Yet the fantasy has not been abandoned. Lauren Berlant explains such paradoxes with the concept of “cruel optimism” which is, in her words, “the condition of maintaining an attachment to a significantly problematic object” [2]. For example, maintaining an attachment to a fantasy of the good-life even though it has “less and less relation to how people can live” [3]. In my thesis, I will examine various scenarios of “cruel” attachments to the aesthetic conventions of the American Dream that appear in works of playwrights such as Sam Shepard, August Wilson, Tracy Letts, Suzan Lori-Parks and Arthur Miller. The goal is not only to discern views on the contemporary situation of the American Dream, but also to examine playwrights’ individual approaches to undermining fantasies of the good life.
Before starting to examine concrete examples of plays, the thesis will open with the introduction of Berlant’s concept of “cruel optimism”, its notions, and terminology, such as “crisis ordinariness”, “impasse” and “misrecognition”. The concept of “cruel optimism” will then be applied to a specific context – the attrition of the American Dream and the establishment of so-called “performing America”, where the survival depends directly on how well an individual can play out one of the fantasies of the good-life. The chapter will then continue to discuss different sets of problematic aesthetic conventions, that in practice substituted the promise of a “better, richer, happier life” [4], specifically, sets connected with intimacy, American identity and belonging, and upwards mobility and success.
Following chapters will focus on analysing each of the above three sets of conventions, and will be supported with examples of specific plays that use a “cruel optimism” scenario. The first will be dedicated to the fantasy of upwards mobility and success as the core element of the American Dream. Here, two plays, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and August Wilson’s Fences will be examined. The second set, related to the fantasy of intimacy, will be looking at Sam Shepard’s Buried Child and Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County, both exploring family as the structural given of the successful American life. Finally, the thesis will move on to the American identity and the dream of belonging by examining Sam Shepard’s True West accompanied by Suzan Lori-Parks Topdog/Underdog. In every play, I will be looking at the depiction of instability and fragility of the good-life fantasies through the usage and distortion of conventional images, utilization of space and time, and creation of various impasses.

[1] Jim Cullen, The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation (Oxford: Oxford Univesity Press, 2003) 5
[2] Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham, CA: Duke University Press, 2011) 24
[3] Berlant 11
[4] Cullen 4

References

Primary sources:
Letts, Tracy. August Osage County. New York: Theatre Communication Group. 2007
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. New York: Penguin Books. 1998
Parks, Suzen-Lori. Topdog/Underdog. New York: Theatre Communications Group. 2001
Shepard, Sam. Buried Child, &Seduced, &Suicide in B flat. New York: Applause Theatre Book Publishers. 1979
Shepard, Sam. Sam Shepard: Seven Plays. New York: Dial Press. 2005
Wilson, August. Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. London: Penguin Books. 1988

Secondary sources:
Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Durham, CA: Duke University Press. 2011
Bigsby, C.W.E. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama: Volume Three, Beyond Broadway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990
Bidsby, C.W.E. Arthur Miller: a critical study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005
Bigsby, Christopher. Twenty-First Century American Playwrights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2017
Creedon, Emma. Sam Shepard and The Aesthetics of Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmilan. 2015
Cullen, Jim. The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2003
Hays, Peter L. “Child Murder and Incest in American Drama”. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Winter, 1990): 434-448
Saddik, Annette J. Contemporary American Drama. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2007
Elam, Harry Justin. Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press
LeMahieu, Michael. “The Theater of Hustle and the Hustle of Theater: Play, Player, and Played in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Topdog/ Underdog”. African American Review, Vol. 45 Issue 1/2, (Spring/Summer 2012): p33-47
Schlueter, June. “Domestic Realism: Is It Still Possible on the American Stage?”. South Atlantic Review, Vol. 64, No. 1. (Winter, 1999): p. 11-25