Turn it on. Thereâs this story, about the first production
of the play âDeath of a Salesman'' in 1949. The last line of the play is said, the curtain
comes down...silence. The audience doesnât clap, or boo, or even
move. But there are men in their seats that are
just helpless. They have handkerchiefs over their faces. And eventually someone starts clapping, and
then everyone claps, and the actors bow, and things look like they should at the end of
a play. But there are these men who are still crying,
and they canât stop. Some switch has been flipped, somethingâs
been released, and it canât be pulled back in. Doctors are called to the theater. The men are taken to the hospital. They just canât stop crying. This is a story thatâs taken up space in
my brain for years. On one hand, itâs deeply sad, obviously. You ever seen your dad cry? This is like, a whole theater of your dad
crying. Advanced levels of sad. On the other hand itâs...itâs a little
funny? Like in an absolutely pitch-black sense, Iâm
talking Twin Peaks Funeral level, maybe just laughing because we donât quite know how
to deal with the emotions in front of us. Itâs an intensely weird thing to imagine
happening. And on a, uhh, third hand, it is really a
story about what a megaton Death of a Salesman was in 1949, because what else could have
caused this sort of reaction? Letâs talk about the play and give some
context, just in case you slept through this part of english class. Death of a Salesman is probably one of the
most famous pieces of American literature of the past...I dunno, lifespan of America. Like I said, it was originally staged on Broadway
in 1949- itâs been revived for Broadway four times since then, most recently in 2012. Itâs also been produced like a billion more
times for every regional theater and community production and high school showcase. Its author, Arthur Miller, is similarly one
of the most influential playwrights in American history, and although he wrote over two dozen
plays, Death of a Salesman is right up there at the top, maybe sharing space with The Crucible-
another play you might have slept through. The story of Death of a Salesman follows Willy
Loman, an aging...man who does sales. We never find out what he sells, nor does
it really matter. Willy has these grand ideas of what a salesman
is, what the profession represents- a prosperous man, well-liked, known. The problem is, of course, Willy is none of
these things. Itâs not that heâs achieved nothing- heâs
married, owns a house, has two kids. But at 63, he canât come to grips with the
idea that he is going to continue aging and eventually die without ever achieving whatever
he feels he ought to. This manifests in near-constant delusions-
Willy lies to his family and himself about how respected he is and how much money he
makes. He keeps himself going in a vain attempt to
return to âglory daysâ that he never really had. And, most damaging of all, he imparts these
expectations and pressure onto his son, Biff. Biff Loman, clearly Willyâs favorite child,
was a high school himbo and football star and then did what most people who play football
in high school do. He just became a guy. He did odd jobs, worked on a farm, bounced
between places. None of this is particularly damning, he just
wasnât an office guy. Seems like he woulda lived a totally normal
life- except for Willyâs insurmountable expectations in the, uhh, potential success
of his son. Willy constantly tells Biff about all the
business he should be succeeding in, if only heâd put his mind to it. And Biff believes him, because Willy has been
telling the same lies about himself his whole life. What Biff is left with, then, is a spiral
of guilt and disappointment, never able to become the man his father wants him to be. The same spiral his father is living in his
own life, fittingly enough. In the middle of the play, we find out that
Willy has been trying to kill himself. At the end of the play, he does. Just before, as delusional as heâs ever
been, Willy fantasizes about all the people from all the towns that will come to the funeral,
showing once and for all to his family that he was known, that his life meant something. Heâs also delighted that the money from
his life insurance policy can go to Biff, which he can finally use to invest in a business
and really become someone. Of course, neither of these happen. Willyâs funeral is almost completely unattended,
and his sons are as lost as theyâve ever been. Obviously, this struck a nerve in 1949. The ideas in the play, of Willyâs failure
as a businessman, his sons growing up to be no greater than him, the fact that the world
doesnât care about someone whoâs just âordinaryâ... Newspaper headlines wrote about the play with
headlines like âtragedy of the ordinary man.â Willy is tragic as an individual, but heâs
tragic as a symbol too. You can imagine the unsuspecting audiences
of those first showings, dumbstruck by a representation of their unspoken, repressed fears; that the
American Dream was a lie, or evolving faster than they were, or simply out of their reach. The idea that they wouldnât be able to give
a better life to their children. There were some that viewed the themes of
Death of a Salesman as so electric, so infectious, that it posed a threat to, uhh, AMERICA. Itâs not hard to read the play as a profoundly
anti-capitalist piece of art; the story only works, the characters only make sense, because
weâre already familiar with the crushing expectations and callous indifference of the
system we live in. Written by the ~communist-adjacent~ (and also
very Jewish) Arthur Miller and released in the early years of the Red Scare, Death of
a Salesman was construed as dangerously subversive by some institutional actors. In fact, for a 1951 film version of the play,
Columbia pictures attempted to slap a pre-movie short called âCareer of a Salesmanâ onto
every showing, a short that reassured audiences that the film theyâre about to see, full
of tragedy and dread, has nothing to do with the modern salesman, whoâs instead full
of vim and vigor and presumably never faces the least bit of existential despair. It was never released, partially because Miller
refused to sign off. He said âI was being asked to concur that
Death of a Salesman was morally meaningless, a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing.ââ But itâs mere existence indicates the electricity
of the ideas in the play- something in this work touched people, spelled out anxieties,
in a way so powerful that, I dunno, what if it convinced people to dismantle capitalism?? Spoilers, it did not. But this scale of reaction is the reason I
started with that story of the men who couldnât stop crying. Itâs such a perfect encapsulation of the
lightning bolt that was this play. Almost unbearably poignant, debilitatingly
bright. The thing is- that story about the men crying- The sources for this information are...well,
theyâre mixed. The first part, about the audience's silence
after the curtain came down, comes from Arthur Miller himself. He told the New Yorker about that exact series
of events in 1999, and is about as primary a source as you could hope for. He was an 84 year old man talking about something
that happened fifty years previous, but still- if we canât trust his account, then weâve
got nothing. The second part, the men who couldnât stop
crying, is- okay the first place I heard it was from my theater teacher when I was a junior
in high school. Sheâs rad as hell, and absolutely knew how
to impress the importance of a play onto a group of teenagers, but, ya know- she wasnât
there. Thereâs another person whoâs recounted
this story though- Mike Nichols, the man who directed the 2012 broadway revival of Salesman,
as well as The Graduate and Whoâs Afraid of Virigina Woolfe, heâs a big director. And he did actually see the original production! He was there in 1949! And he said âthere were fathers for whom
the doctor had to be called, because they couldnât stop crying all night.â Case closed. Okay not actually. Nichols says he went to the production in
1949, but he also says he doesnât really remember it. He would have been 18 at the time. And his full quote is actually âIf you went to a progressive school in
New York, a private school like I did, it was a big deal because there were stories
about fathers for whom the doctor had to be called because they couldnât stop crying
all night. It was a kind of a legend. It was so clearly a great play.â And thatâs...thatâs less conclusive. Thatâs not a firsthand account, thatâs
another person talking about a story he heard. Although he did give that interview after
my theater teacher told me the same story, so like...she didnât hear it from him, at
least? They both independently heard it? Which makes it...more possibly true, I guess? Itâs not uncommon for ~tall tales~ to spring
up around art with this kind of energy. Hereâs one of mine- I saw âGone Girlâ
in a packed theater of college students. Itâs one of the most fun movie experiences
I can remember. When I tell people about this, which Iâve
done several times because my life isnât that exciting, I say that at the climactic
Neil Patrick Harris Box Cutter scene, âthe whole audience was screaming.â Thatâs not really true. A lotta people gasped, and there were definitely
some whoops, but what Iâm trying to communicate with my hyperbole is there was some absolutely
wild energy in that theater at that scene. âA whole lot of people were feeling a whole
lot right thenâ doesnât really give the vibes Iâm looking for. So, âthe whole theater was screaming.â Iâm a liar. You caught me. Thereâs a more interesting version of this
though, one thatâs worked its way into film history. Everyone knows what Iâm going to say, letâs
say it together, âL'ArrivĂŠe d'un train en gare de La Ciotatâ, of course!! So hereâs the story: the year is 1896. Film is new, like really new, and there are
these hot young brothers on the scene, the Lumière brothers. Theyâve shown a couple films already, and
by films I mean âliterally just things that are filmed.â Previously, their smash hit was âWorkers
leaving the Lumière factory,â a recording of...workers walking out of a factory. But in January of 1896, they did a public
showing of âL'ArrivĂŠe d'un trainâ, or âThe arrival of a train at La Ciotat station.â And this is what becomes the stuff of legend. So the film itself is, well itâs pretty
well described by the title. There is a train and it pulls into a station,
slowing to a stop, and then various people walk around and get on and off the train. Itâs about 50 seconds long. We watch it now and have the appropriate reaction,
which is âhey trains are pretty neat!â But in the original screening in 1896, the
audience had a different reaction. The train draws closer and closer to the screen
and itâs not slowing down- in fact, itâs speeding up! Someone in the audience screams. They jump to their feet. The train is going to crash into them! Suddenly the theater becomes a stampede, people
running and jumping, attempting to get out of the way before the train crushes them beneath
its wheels. The power of cinema! This is an incredibly fun story for several
reasons. First off, it gives us the chance to condescend
towards people a century ago, which we all love to do. âIf I was present at the invention of cinema,
I would have simply recognized the separation between reality and pre-recorded images.â But at the same time, that awe and terror
the audience displays is satisfying. Sometimes I daydream about getting in a time
machine and like, showing the recent Spider-Man game to an arcade crowd in 1980 or something. I would hope their reaction would be as over-the-top
as an audience running from a filmed train. But I think the primary reason this story
has stuck around is it reinforces the power of film. From our position in the 21st century, when
video is the predominant form of...entertainment, news, how to learn new dances, itâs clear
that this technology radically changed the world. We want to hear that the arrival of film was
like a bolt of lightning, earth-shaking, literally something that causes people to leap out of
their seats. In the 2011 movie Hugo, a movie completely
obsessed with the legacy and power of old Hollywood, thereâs a scene where a train
smashes clean through a station, nearly running over dozens of people who scramble out of
the way. Hugoâs train scene is a number of things:
one, a bombastic demonstration of how far technology has come. Two, an attempt to parallel the arrival of
real 3D (Hugo was a big 3D movie) with the arrival of film as a medium. And three, just to pay tribute to this foundational
part of movie history. If thereâs one thing Marty loves, itâs
preserving cinema, remembering the past, paying tribute to the people who laid the rails weâre
still following today. Which makes it all the more interesting that
(you may have seen this coming), the panicked reaction to the âL'ArrivĂŠe d'un train en
gare de La Ciotatâ almost certainly never happened. In an absolute banger of an article called
âCinemaâs Founding Myth, â author Martin Loiperdinger goes through, step by step, everything
we know about Lumiereâs train screenings. He considers factors from the theaterâs
architecture to contemporaneous police reports to newspaper articles of the day. Nothing implies there was even a momentary
terrified reaction. However, by highlighting passages written
about the train by journalists and scholars, Loiperdinger is able to triangulate where
this myth would have grown from. In 1896, FĂŠlix Regnault wrote: We repeat what has often been said about the
nature and life of the scenes that Lumière presents us:..The beer foams that the waiter
at the coffee-house pours, and the glasses are emptied when the men drink. The locomotive appears small at first, then
immense, as if it were going to crush the audience; one has the impression of depth
and relief, even though it is a single image that unfolds before our eyes. And the same year, a Russian journalist named
Maxim Gorky is maybe the most explicit of all. In July of 1896, he wrote:
A train appears on the screen. It speeds right at youâwatch out! It seems as
though it will plunge into the darkness in which you sit, turning you into a ripped
sack full of lacerated flesh and splintered bones, and crushing into dust and
into broken fragments this hall and this building, so full of women, wine, music
and vice. A compelling description, almost 1:1 with
the myth weâre familiar with! But then he continues: But this, too, is but a train of shadows. Noiselessly, the locomotive disappears beyond
the edge of the screen. The train comes to a stop, and gray figures
silently emerge from the cars, soundlessly greet their friends, laugh, walk, run, bustle,
and . . . are gone. The common link between all these descriptions
isnât an actual fear of being run down, but a turn to that language because of an
inability to otherwise describe the sensation of watching this film. In a way, itâs disappointing to learn that
this foundational cinematic experience was an analogy, not a literal accounting of events. But a more charitable take recognizes that
itâs still pretty remarkable that many independent writers wrote about âL'ArrivĂŠe d'un trainâ
using this same language. Despite the lack of an audience stampede,
I donât think itâs unreasonable to describe the experience of seeing this early film as
an encounter with the fantastic, almost supernatural. Loiperdinger describes it as hyperrealism,
not just a simple depiction of life. That the audienceâs reaction wasnât panic
but still, in a way, a brush with something indescribable. Comical fleeing from the big filmed train
sticks around because...well, because we can describe that. There is, as with everything, also a layer
of politics under all this. As soon as 5 years after The Arrival of a
Train, there were new films like âThe Countryman and the Cinematographâ which depicted a,
letâs say, âBumpkinâ comedically terrified by a film of a train. Running alongside the story of the magic of
early film screenings is another narrative, one of the susceptibility of common (often
lower-class) people to unfamiliar technology. The most famous instance of this isnât on
film but radio, Orson Wellesâ 1938 radio play of War of the Worlds. And since youâve made it this far and likely
know this videoâs game by now, Iâll tell you: everything is not as youâve heard about
the reaction to this play. So, once again, letâs start with the legend: Itâs October 30, 1938. You know, the day before Halloween. Orson Welles and a team at the Mercury theater
have decided to put on a radio play, an adaptation of H.G. Wells novel, War of the Worlds. But their adaptation is a little different,
a little more exciting. Itâs designed to sound like a series of
breaking news bulletins, urgent reports cutting off the eveningâs pre-planned programming. And, itâs important to note, Welles and
company did say, did clearly say, that they were presenting a play. [In the War of the Worlds by HG Wells]]. But itâs radio, so if you happened to, I
dunno, get bored and switch to this station somewhere in the middle of the program, you
wouldnât have heard an announcement that you were listening to a play. You might have heard something like this. [screaming]. In the play, scientists observe explosions
on mars, then a strange object falls on a farm, then aliens come out of the object and
use a âheat rayâ on bystanders, and then a series of news updates detail the aliens
landing and wreaking havoc around the country. The military canât stop it! Theyâre releasing poison smoke around New
York! And then the broadcast goes silent. When it picks back up, itâs a more typical
radio play, following one guy wandering around post-invasion, trying to survive until, like
in the book, the aliens are eventually killed by âmicrobesâ in the Earthâs atmosphere. No one really talks about the second half
though. Hereâs some important context: this was
in 1938, a...somewhat tumultuous time in history, and one in which real news bulletins would
often interrupt whatever was currently playing on the radio. Americans had been hearing these really scary
âbreaking newsâ segments from Europe, basically tracking what would become World
War 2 less than a year later. If you were listening to the radio and you
heard one of these âwe interrupt our program to bring you a special broadcastâ type deals,
you were primed to hear some heavy stuff. So even though War of the Worlds was a well-known
entertainment property and even though they announced that it was fiction at the beginning
of the show, and even though the sequence of events is improbably, hilariously condensed-
from explosions on mars to a full takeover of the united states within 30 minutes- people
thought it was real. Switchboards lit up, thousands of people were
calling the police department, people needed to know if they should get in bunkers or on
the roof, people reported seeing smoke or even machines coming over the skyline. This panic was reported on across the country-
âRadio play terrifies nation!â âFake radio âwarâ stirs terror through
U.S.!â. Newspapers really latched onto this story,
amping up its infamy until, looking back now, it almost seems like it was some Purge-esque
night, people running screaming through the streets, convinced that they were moments
away from being wiped out. Weeks later, a newspaper survey would estimate
that millions of people were listening to the show, and almost 1 in 12 of them thought
it was real. The legend of War of the Worlds radio broadcast
grows, demonstrating everything from the gullibility of the nation to the power of radio to the
pre-war fears gripping America. And let me say: some of this definitely happened. We have interviews with switchboard operators,
for instance, who got many calls related to the program. But, in terms of the immediate impact on the
population- well I like this analogy Professor Michael Socolow used on Radiolab: Let me give you an analogy, okay? If you were to ask 100 Americans today, did
you see a plane fly into the World Trade Center on September 11th, I think you would get an
extremely high percentage of people say they saw that plane fly in. But thatâs because itâs part of our national
visual memory. Itâs really a trauma and itâs-itâs the
kind of that hysteria and panic weâre talking about. Itâs that moment in time in our relationship
to the media, okay? But if you were to actually find out whose
TVs were on live at 9:48 in the morning that day and who was actually watching there would
be a discrepancy in that number. Now, am I saying all those people are lying? All those people are confused? No, what Iâm saying is that the relationship
of memory to the media is extremely complex. I mentioned the survey done weeks later where
millions of people said they were listening. There was actually also a survey done that
night, the night the radio play aired. 5,000 Americans were asked, more than enough
to get a statistically significant answer, and of those surveyed, only 2% said they were
listening to War of the Worlds. And of that 2%, NONE said that they were listening
to a news broadcast. What Socolow and many other media scholars
have theorized is that the reports of panic from War of the Worlds were exaggerated by
newspapers, who had an ongoing feud with the relatively new medium of radio news. By painting radio as a dangerous form of communication,
one in which pranksters like Welles could cause national panics, newspapers could establish
that they were still the true reliable sources. And to them both, I say PODCASTS WILL BE THE
DEATH OF YOU ALL. The fascinating thing about the War of the
Worlds broadcast is, despite the originalâs inflated mythic quality, there have been re-broadcasts
of the play, and these have...also caused panic? There was one in 1968 in Buffalo New York
that, despite repeating several times that it was fiction, still resulted in thousands
of phone calls. There was a performance of it in Quito, Ecuador
in 1949 that resulted in actual military deployment and deaths, although the deaths were after
listeners realized they were being tricked by the radio station. Because the legend of War of the Worlds has
more obvious political machinations behind it than Death of a Salesman or Train Arriving
at a Station, itâs harder to unravel how people felt about it as...ya know, as art? But I think the idea of helplessly hearing
about something terrifying, something life-altering over the radio, hearing about events that
will change the course of history and being unable to act on them in any way, is as frightening
as itâs ever been. In 1938, the radio was reporting on sparks
that would lead to World War 2, in 1968 people would have been hearing about the atrocities
of Vietnam, both real and awful conflicts that we were both intimately involved in and
completely detached from. And thatâs what War of the Worlds taps into,
the bizarre double reality of being safe at home and embroiled in a conflict of life and
death. Death is one of the most dominant, maybe THE
dominant, theme in Homerâs Iliad (thatâs right, weâre talking about this now). Is fate set? Are the deaths of heroes inevitable? What is the cost of war? The epic poem dives into all of these. But, as rich as those themes are, the moment
of death makes up only flashes of the two dozen books the story is divided into. In a translation of the Iliad by Alice Oswald
however, death is the entirety. She begins her forward by saying âThis is
a translation of the Iliadâs atmosphere, not its story.â Barely a hundred sparse pages, a fraction
of the original work, her book- titled âMemorialâ- is made up exclusively of death, bracketed
by brief similes. The start of the book is a list of names,
two hundred names, with the promise that we will watch them each die. Oswaldâs translation draws inspiration from
funeral rites of the time, rituals involving poems said over the dead, but sheâs not
trying to simply repeat a mournerâs lament. Instead, sheâs attempting to evoke a very
specific feeling, one apparently felt by those who originally heard the Iliad orated, one
with a name youâre probably unfamiliar with: Enargeia. Itâs a feeling Oswald translates to âBright,
Unbearable Reality.â Here is a typical page from Memorial: Beloved of Athene Pherecles son of Harmion
Brilliant with his hands and born of a long line of craftsman
It was he who built the cursed fleet of Paris Little knowing it was his own death boat
Died on his knees screaming Meriones speared him in the buttock
And the point pierced him in the bladder And Pedaeus the unwanted one
The mistake of his fatherâs mistress Felt the hot shock in his neck of Megesâ
spear Unswallowable sore throat of metal in his
mouth Right through his teeth
He died biting down on the spearhead Like suddenly it thunders
And a stormwind rushes down And roars into the seaâs ears
And the curves of many white-patched waves Run this way and that way Like suddenly it thunders
And a stormwind rushes down And roars into the seaâs ears
And the curves of many white-patched waves Run this way and that way That repeated phrase is intentional, itâs
one of the most striking parts of Memorial. While Oswaldâs translation is nowhere near
literal, itâs an attempt to represent the oral tradition, and thus the feeling of the
original Iliad. In her own words: This version...takes away its narrative, as
you might lift the roof off a church in order to remember what youâre worshipping Because what sheâs striving for here isnât
completeness or unbiased accuracy, but that elusive concept called Enargeia. How do we define Enargeia? On a very base level, itâs something in
a work that induces visualization. If I wanted to be boring, I could say âthe
room was cold and the door was blue.â Bam. Enargeia. But thatâs not what it means really, certainly
not when used in context of these ancient oral traditions. Oswald translates it as bright, unbearable
reality, and- to further impress the power of the feeling- she continues, âitâs the
word used when gods come to earth not in disguise but as themselves.â The Iliad, and Homerâs works in general,
were known for this Enargeia feeling. In an article by Rutger Allan (et al.), they
describe his stories as such: âThe spell of poetry can make the hearer
forget both himself and the poet and the real world about him.... The story [in Homer] seems almost to tell
itself. The words which transport us to the world
of the heroes come from a source so submerged from view that the heroic life seems to move
of its own vitality.â Oswaldâs version specifically is drawn from
what she knows of funeral and mourning rituals, an attempt to recreate the laments for each
man that were built into the larger epic. And through her words, we can try and catch
a glimpse of that bright, unbearable reality they were said to experience. Hearing poetry with a transportive effect,
one that in a way lets the audience bear witness to the last moments of a personâs life. I can only imagine the impact of this, when
people you knew had likely died in the very same ways, would have been staggering. Now listen- I have used other peopleâs research,
newspapers, eyewitness accounts to try and assess the validity of the other claims weâve
talked about today. There is no chance of doing this with performances
of The Iliad from thousands of years ago. The epic itself is oral tradition, and so
too is our knowledge of what performances of it are like. If the legacy of reactions to a performance
72 or 83 or 125 years ago have been exaggerated, who knows what could have happened in the
8th century BCE. But whether the audiences of Homer and his
ilk were mentally swept to bloody battlefields or not, whether the sense of immersion was
really as powerful as is told, I canât shake this concept of Enargeia. Canât stop thinking about the bright unbearable
reality. Itâs the brightness of watching a screen
come to life, a frozen train station animate in a way never seen or imagined. Itâs the unbearable pressure of a war that
might be around the corner, manifested in a fantasy on the radio. Itâs the reality I imagine men saw in Willy
Lomanâs desperation, their own darkest fears reflected back at them. Describing the impact art has on us is incredibly
difficult. It often takes the form of feelings weâre
not able to verbalize, reactions weâll only come to recognize years later. I have spent, uhh, years here trying to focus
my own thoughts on the things that have affected me and help others do the same. And maybe thatâs why Iâm forgiving of
these hyperbolized stories, drummed-up accounts of extreme behavior. Because while the men who couldnât stop
crying or the audience that leapt out of their seats maybe never happened, the myths in themselves
are a form of Enargeia. Showing us, through legend, that bright unbearable
reality.
Jacob Geller has a great way of talking about art. I can't put it into words that well, but his whole vibe is really compelling to me.