Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work
Encyclopedia
Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work identifies distinctive aspects of the works of the British playwright Harold Pinter
(1930–2008) and gives an indication of their influence on Anglo-American culture.
defines it as 'of or relating to the British playwright, Harold Pinter, or his works'; thus, like a snake swallowing its own tail the definition forms the impenetrable logic of a closed circle and begs the tricky question of what the word specifically means" (103). The Online OED
(2006) defines Pinteresque more explicitly: "Resembling or characteristic of his plays. … Pinter's plays are typically characterized by implications of threat and strong feeling produced through colloquial language, apparent triviality, and long pauses." The Swedish Academy
defines characteristics of the Pinteresque in greater detail: Over the years Pinter himself has "always been very dismissive when people have talked about languages and silences and situations as being 'Pinteresque'," observes Kirsty Wark
in their interview on Newsnight
Review broadcast on 23 June 2006; she wonders, "Will you finally acknowledge there is such a thing as a 'Pinteresque' moment?" "No," Pinter replies, "I've no idea what it means. Never have. I really don't.… I can detect where a thing is 'Kafkaesque' or 'Chekhovian' [Wark's examples]," but with respect to the "Pinteresque", he says, "I can't define what it is myself. You use the term 'menace' and so on. I have no explanation of any of that really. What I write is what I write."
In December 1971, in his interview with Pinter about Old Times
, Mel Gussow
recalled that "After The Homecoming
[Pinter] said that [he] 'couldn't any longer stay in the room with this bunch of people who opened doors and came in and went out. Landscape
and Silence
[the two short poetic memory plays that were written between The Homecoming and Old Times] are in a very different form. There isn't any menace at all.' " Later, when he asked Pinter to expand on his view that he had "tired" of "menace", Pinter added: "when I said that I was tired of menace, I was using a word that I didn't coin. I never thought of menace myself. It was called 'comedy of menace' quite a long time ago. I never stuck categories on myself, or on any of us [playwrights]. But if what I understand the word menace to mean is certain elements that I have employed in the past in the shape of a particular play, then I don't think it's worthy of much more exploration."
'," as defined in his speech to the National Student Drama Festival
in Bristol
in 1962, incorporated in his published version of the speech entitled "Writing for the Theatre":
In his "Presentation Speech" of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature to Harold Pinter, in absentia, Swedish
writer Per Wästberg
, Member of the Swedish Academy
and Chairman of its Nobel Committee, observes: "The abyss under chat, the unwillingness to communicate other than superficially, the need to rule and mislead, the suffocating sensation of accidents bubbling under the quotidian, the nervous perception that a dangerous story has been censored – all this vibrates through Pinter's drama."
's 1989 double bill of The Birthday Party
and Mountain Language
(for Classic Stage Company
), American actors David Strathairn
and Peter Riegert
agreed with Jean Stapleton that "Pinter's comments … 'freed' the cast from feeling reverential about his pauses," and, while Strathairn "believes pauses can be overdone," he also "thinks Pinter's are distinctive: 'The natural ones always seem to be right where he wrote them. His pause or beat comes naturally in the rhythm of the conversation. [As an actor, you] find yourself pausing in mid-sentence, thinking about what you just said or are going to say.…' " Perloff said: "He didn't want them weighted that much. … He kept laughing that everybody made such a big deal about it.' He wanted them honored, she said, but not as 'these long, heavy, psychological pauses, where people look at each other filled with pregnant meaning' " (Jacobson).
More recently, in an article elliptically headlined "Cut the Pauses … Says Pinter", a London Sunday Times
television program announcement for Harry Burton's documentary film Working With Pinter, Olivia Cole observes that he "made brooding silence into an art form, but after 50 years Harold Pinter has said directors should be free to cut his trademark pauses if they want.…" In Working With Pinter (shown on British television's More 4 in February 2007), Cole writes, Pinter "says he has been misunderstood. He maintains that while others detected disturbing undertones, he merely intended basic stage directions" in writing "pause" and "silence". She quotes Pinter's remarks from Working With Pinter:
Exemplifying the frequency and relative duration of pauses in Pinter's plays, Cole observes that "Pinter wrote 140 pauses into his work Betrayal
, 149 into The Caretaker
and 224 into The Homecoming
. The longest are typically 10 seconds."
Pinter's having encouraged actors to "cut" his pauses and silences–with the important qualification "if they don't make any sense" (elided in Cole's headline)–has "bemused directors", according to Cole, who quotes Pinter's longtime friend and director Sir Peter Hall as saying "that it would be a 'failure' for a director or actor to ignore the pauses":
Cole concludes that Hall added, however, that, in Working With Pinter, Pinter "was right to criticise productions in which actors were fetishising their pauses".
Quoting J. Barry Lewis, the director of a recent production of Betrayal
, by Palm Beach
Dramaworks, Lisa Cohen observes that Pinter has "even entered popular culture with what is called 'the Pinter pause,' a term that describes … those silent moments 'filled with unspoken dialogue' that occur throughout his plays."
; Susan Harris Smith; mass media
accounts, as cited above). The Modern Language Association
annual convention has already hosted two linked programs on "Pinter's Influence and Influences" and hosted another one relating to this subject in 2007 (Merritt, "Harold Pinter Bibliography: 2000-2002"; "Pinter Society Events", Harold Pinter Society website).
Exemplifying Pinter's cultural influence for several decades, a line in "The Ladies Who Lunch", a song in Company
, the 1970 Broadway musical by George Furth
and Stephen Sondheim
, alludes to Manhattanite "ladies who lunch" taking in "a Pinter play", "fashionable" at that time (Merritt, Pinter in Play 217). Yet Pinter told John Barber ten years later, in 1980: "'This really is an awful business, this fashion. I must tell you I feel I've been unfashionable all my life. I was oldfashioned from the very beginning, and I'm unfashionable now, really.' "
Episode 164 of the very popular American television series Seinfeld
, entitled "The Betrayal" (originally broadcast 27 November 1997), is structured in reverse somewhat like Pinter's play and film Betrayal
. Jerry Seinfeld
's comic parodic homage to Harold Pinter, the episode features a character named "Pinter". Since the first airing of that Seinfeld episode and since the subsequent release of films like Memento and other popular works with reversed chronological structures, some media accounts (such as that in the IMDb
) refer to Pinter's plot device in his play and film as a mere "gimmick". But scholars and other critical reviewers consider the reversed structure a fully integrated ingenious stylistic means of heightening multiple kinds of ironies energizing Betrayals comedic wit, its cumulative poignancy, and its ultimate emotional impact on audiences, and the play has been produced throughout the United States, Britain, and parts of the rest of the world with increasing frequency.
A character in the fourth episode of the second season of Dawson's Creek
, "Tamara's Return" (28 Oct. 1998), alludes to Pinter's so-called "sub-textual
" use of silence as "a classic 'Pinter' moment". In dialogue between lead character Pacey Witter (played by Joshua Jackson
) and Tamara Jacobs (Leann Hunley
), his former English teacher with whom Pacey has had an affair, Tamara tells Pacey that an awkward moment of silence between them is "what we ex-English teachers call a classic 'Pinter' moment, where everything is said in silence because the emotion behind what we really want to say is just too overwhelming. … silence is an acquired taste. The more complicated life becomes the better it is to learn to say nothing." When Pacey inquires "Who is this Pinter guy?" Tamara urges him, "Stay in school." Later Pacey tells Tamara that he has "looked up this Pinter guy. Harold, playwright, the king of subtext. You say one thing, but you mean another," wondering further: "Do you think it's possible for us to have a moment without all the subtext?" "Uh, I don't know, Pacey," Tamara replies. "Words have always gotten us into so much trouble." Pacey and Tamara finally agree that "This Pinter guy was really onto something."
Further alluding to Pinter's renowned "pauses and silences", the song "Up Against It", from the album Bilingual
, by the English electronic music
/pop music
duo Pet Shop Boys
, includes the lines: "Such a cold winter/With scenes as slow as Pinter" (Tennant and Lowe).
Also illustrating the frequent allusions to Pinter's "silences" in commentaries about others' work, in a book review of Nick Hornby
's "debut teenage novel" Slam (Penguin Books
), Janet Christie observes hyperbolically that Hornby is "spot-on with the way a conversation with a teenage boy contains more meaningful silences than Harold Pinter's entire oeuvre …."
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
(1930–2008) and gives an indication of their influence on Anglo-American culture.
Pinteresque
"That [Harold Pinter] occupies a position as a modern classic is illustrated by his name entering the language as an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama: 'Pinteresque' "–placing him in the company of authors considered unique or influential enough to elicit eponymous adjectives. Susan Harris Smith observes: "The term 'Pinteresque' has had an established place in the English language for almost thirty years. The OEDOxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
defines it as 'of or relating to the British playwright, Harold Pinter, or his works'; thus, like a snake swallowing its own tail the definition forms the impenetrable logic of a closed circle and begs the tricky question of what the word specifically means" (103). The Online OED
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
(2006) defines Pinteresque more explicitly: "Resembling or characteristic of his plays. … Pinter's plays are typically characterized by implications of threat and strong feeling produced through colloquial language, apparent triviality, and long pauses." The Swedish Academy
Swedish Academy
The Swedish Academy , founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden.-History:The Swedish Academy was founded in 1786 by King Gustav III. Modelled after the Académie française, it has 18 members. The motto of the Academy is "Talent and Taste"...
defines characteristics of the Pinteresque in greater detail: Over the years Pinter himself has "always been very dismissive when people have talked about languages and silences and situations as being 'Pinteresque'," observes Kirsty Wark
Kirsty Wark
Kirsteen Anne Wark is a British journalist and television presenter best known for fronting the BBC Two's news and current affairs programme Newsnight since 1993, and its weekly arts annexe Newsnight Review which is now relaunched as "The Review Show".-Biography:Wark was born in Dumfries to Jimmy...
in their interview on Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
Review broadcast on 23 June 2006; she wonders, "Will you finally acknowledge there is such a thing as a 'Pinteresque' moment?" "No," Pinter replies, "I've no idea what it means. Never have. I really don't.… I can detect where a thing is 'Kafkaesque' or 'Chekhovian' [Wark's examples]," but with respect to the "Pinteresque", he says, "I can't define what it is myself. You use the term 'menace' and so on. I have no explanation of any of that really. What I write is what I write."
Comedy of menace
Once asked what his plays are about, Pinter lobbed back a phrase "the weasel under the cocktail cabinet", which he regrets has been taken seriously and applied in popular criticism: Despite Pinter's protestations to the contrary, many reviewers and other critics consider the remark, though facetious, an apt description of his plays. For although Pinter repudiated it, it does contain an important clue about his relationship to English dramatic tradition (Sofer 29); "Mr. Pinter … is celebrated for what the critic Irving Wardle has called 'the comedy of menace' " (Brantley, "Harold Pinter"; cf. "A Master of Menace" [multimedia presentation]).In December 1971, in his interview with Pinter about Old Times
Old Times
Old Times is a play by the Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. It was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre in London on June 1, 1971. It starred Colin Blakely, Dorothy Tutin, and Vivien Merchant, and was directed by Peter Hall...
, Mel Gussow
Mel Gussow
Melvyn H. Gussow was an American theater critic, movie critic, and author who wrote for The New York Times for 35 years.-Biography:...
recalled that "After The Homecoming
The Homecoming
The Homecoming is a two-act play written in 1964 by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter and first published in 1965. The original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for "Best Revival...
[Pinter] said that [he] 'couldn't any longer stay in the room with this bunch of people who opened doors and came in and went out. Landscape
Landscape
Landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including the physical elements of landforms such as mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of...
and Silence
Silence
Silence is the relative or total lack of audible sound. By analogy, the word silence may also refer to any absence of communication, even in media other than speech....
[the two short poetic memory plays that were written between The Homecoming and Old Times] are in a very different form. There isn't any menace at all.' " Later, when he asked Pinter to expand on his view that he had "tired" of "menace", Pinter added: "when I said that I was tired of menace, I was using a word that I didn't coin. I never thought of menace myself. It was called 'comedy of menace' quite a long time ago. I never stuck categories on myself, or on any of us [playwrights]. But if what I understand the word menace to mean is certain elements that I have employed in the past in the shape of a particular play, then I don't think it's worthy of much more exploration."
The "Pinter silence"
Among the most-commonly cited of Pinter's comments on his own work are his remarks about two kinds of silence ("two silences"), including his objections to "that tired, grimy phrase 'failure of communicationCommunication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
'," as defined in his speech to the National Student Drama Festival
National Student Drama Festival
The National Student Drama Festival was founded in 1956 by the Sunday Times arts columnist - the festival's first artistic director - Kenneth Pearson, the Sunday Times theatre critic Harold Hobson, and NUS president Frank Copplestone. The Sunday Times Editor, H.V...
in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
in 1962, incorporated in his published version of the speech entitled "Writing for the Theatre":
In his "Presentation Speech" of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature to Harold Pinter, in absentia, Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
writer Per Wästberg
Per Wästberg
Per Wästberg is a Swedish writer and a member of the Swedish Academy since 1997.Wästberg was born in Stockholm, son of Erik Wästberg and his wife Greta née Hirsch, and holds a degree in literature from Uppsala University...
, Member of the Swedish Academy
Swedish Academy
The Swedish Academy , founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden.-History:The Swedish Academy was founded in 1786 by King Gustav III. Modelled after the Académie française, it has 18 members. The motto of the Academy is "Talent and Taste"...
and Chairman of its Nobel Committee, observes: "The abyss under chat, the unwillingness to communicate other than superficially, the need to rule and mislead, the suffocating sensation of accidents bubbling under the quotidian, the nervous perception that a dangerous story has been censored – all this vibrates through Pinter's drama."
The "Pinter pause"
One of the "two silences"–when Pinter's stage directions indicate pause and silence when his characters are not speaking at all–has become a "trademark" of Pinter's dialogue called the "Pinter pause": "During the 1960s, Pinter became famous–nay, notorious–for his trademark: 'The Pinter pause' " (Filichia). Actors and directors often find Pinter's "pauses and silences" to be daunting elements of performing his plays, leading to much discussion of them in theatrical and dramatic criticism, and actors who have worked with Pinter in rehearsals have "reported that he regretted ever starting to write 'Pause' as a stage direction, because it often leads to portentous overacting" (Jacobson). Speaking about their experiences of working with Pinter in rehearsing director Carey PerloffAmerican Conservatory Theater
American Conservatory Theater is a large non-profit theater company in San Francisco, California, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. A.C.T. was founded in 1965 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Playhouse and Carnegie Tech by theatre and...
's 1989 double bill of The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (play)
The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays...
and Mountain Language
Mountain Language
Mountain Language is a one-act play written by Harold Pinter, first published in The Times Literary Supplement on 7–13 October 1988. It was first performed at the Royal National Theatre in London on 20 October 1988 with Michael Gambon and Miranda Richardson. Subsequently, it was published by...
(for Classic Stage Company
Classic Stage Company
Classic Stage Company, or CSC, is a classical Off-Broadway theater dedicated to reimagining the classical repertory for a contemporary American audience, presenting plays from the past that speak directly to today's issues. Founded in 1967, Classic Stage Company is one of Off-Broadway's...
), American actors David Strathairn
David Strathairn
David Russell Strathairn is an American actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award for portraying journalist Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck...
and Peter Riegert
Peter Riegert
Peter Riegert is an American actor, screenwriter, and film director, best known for his role as Boon from Animal House and crooked New Jersey State Assemblyman Ronald Zellman on the HBO original series The Sopranos.-Early life:...
agreed with Jean Stapleton that "Pinter's comments … 'freed' the cast from feeling reverential about his pauses," and, while Strathairn "believes pauses can be overdone," he also "thinks Pinter's are distinctive: 'The natural ones always seem to be right where he wrote them. His pause or beat comes naturally in the rhythm of the conversation. [As an actor, you] find yourself pausing in mid-sentence, thinking about what you just said or are going to say.…' " Perloff said: "He didn't want them weighted that much. … He kept laughing that everybody made such a big deal about it.' He wanted them honored, she said, but not as 'these long, heavy, psychological pauses, where people look at each other filled with pregnant meaning' " (Jacobson).
More recently, in an article elliptically headlined "Cut the Pauses … Says Pinter", a London Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
television program announcement for Harry Burton's documentary film Working With Pinter, Olivia Cole observes that he "made brooding silence into an art form, but after 50 years Harold Pinter has said directors should be free to cut his trademark pauses if they want.…" In Working With Pinter (shown on British television's More 4 in February 2007), Cole writes, Pinter "says he has been misunderstood. He maintains that while others detected disturbing undertones, he merely intended basic stage directions" in writing "pause" and "silence". She quotes Pinter's remarks from Working With Pinter:
Exemplifying the frequency and relative duration of pauses in Pinter's plays, Cole observes that "Pinter wrote 140 pauses into his work Betrayal
Betrayal (play)
Betrayal is a play written by Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of the English playwright's major dramatic works, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship,...
, 149 into The Caretaker
The Caretaker
The Caretaker is a play by Harold Pinter. It was first published by both Encore Publishing and Eyre Methuen in 1960. The sixth play that Pinter wrote for stage or television production, it was his first significant commercial success...
and 224 into The Homecoming
The Homecoming
The Homecoming is a two-act play written in 1964 by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter and first published in 1965. The original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for "Best Revival...
. The longest are typically 10 seconds."
Pinter's having encouraged actors to "cut" his pauses and silences–with the important qualification "if they don't make any sense" (elided in Cole's headline)–has "bemused directors", according to Cole, who quotes Pinter's longtime friend and director Sir Peter Hall as saying "that it would be a 'failure' for a director or actor to ignore the pauses":
Cole concludes that Hall added, however, that, in Working With Pinter, Pinter "was right to criticise productions in which actors were fetishising their pauses".
Quoting J. Barry Lewis, the director of a recent production of Betrayal
Betrayal (play)
Betrayal is a play written by Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of the English playwright's major dramatic works, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship,...
, by Palm Beach
West Palm Beach, Florida
West Palm Beach, is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and is the most populous city in and county seat of Palm Beach County, the third most populous county in Florida with a 2010 population of 1,320,134. The city is also the oldest incorporated municipality in South Florida...
Dramaworks, Lisa Cohen observes that Pinter has "even entered popular culture with what is called 'the Pinter pause,' a term that describes … those silent moments 'filled with unspoken dialogue' that occur throughout his plays."
Some examples of Pinter's influence on Anglo-American popular culture
Allusions to "the Pinteresque" and to specific characteristics of Pinter's works and, more recently, to his politics pervade Anglo-American popular culture (OEDOxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
; Susan Harris Smith; mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
accounts, as cited above). The Modern Language Association
Modern Language Association
The Modern Language Association of America is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature...
annual convention has already hosted two linked programs on "Pinter's Influence and Influences" and hosted another one relating to this subject in 2007 (Merritt, "Harold Pinter Bibliography: 2000-2002"; "Pinter Society Events", Harold Pinter Society website).
Exemplifying Pinter's cultural influence for several decades, a line in "The Ladies Who Lunch", a song in Company
Company (musical)
Company is a musical with a book by George Furth and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The original production was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony Awards and won six....
, the 1970 Broadway musical by George Furth
George Furth
George Furth was an American librettist, playwright, and actor.-Biography:Furth was born George Schweinfurth in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Evelyn and George Schweinfurth...
and Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
, alludes to Manhattanite "ladies who lunch" taking in "a Pinter play", "fashionable" at that time (Merritt, Pinter in Play 217). Yet Pinter told John Barber ten years later, in 1980: "'This really is an awful business, this fashion. I must tell you I feel I've been unfashionable all my life. I was oldfashioned from the very beginning, and I'm unfashionable now, really.' "
Episode 164 of the very popular American television series Seinfeld
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
, entitled "The Betrayal" (originally broadcast 27 November 1997), is structured in reverse somewhat like Pinter's play and film Betrayal
Betrayal (play)
Betrayal is a play written by Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of the English playwright's major dramatic works, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship,...
. Jerry Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld
Jerome Allen "Jerry" Seinfeld is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and television and film producer, known for playing a semi-fictional version of himself in the situation comedy Seinfeld , which he co-created and co-wrote with Larry David, and, in the show's final two seasons,...
's comic parodic homage to Harold Pinter, the episode features a character named "Pinter". Since the first airing of that Seinfeld episode and since the subsequent release of films like Memento and other popular works with reversed chronological structures, some media accounts (such as that in the IMDb
Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...
) refer to Pinter's plot device in his play and film as a mere "gimmick". But scholars and other critical reviewers consider the reversed structure a fully integrated ingenious stylistic means of heightening multiple kinds of ironies energizing Betrayals comedic wit, its cumulative poignancy, and its ultimate emotional impact on audiences, and the play has been produced throughout the United States, Britain, and parts of the rest of the world with increasing frequency.
A character in the fourth episode of the second season of Dawson's Creek
Dawson's Creek
Dawson's Creek is an American teen drama television series which debuted on January 20, 1998, on The WB Television Network and was produced by Sony Pictures Television. The show is set in the fictional seaside town of Capeside, Massachusetts, and in Boston, Massachusetts, during the later seasons...
, "Tamara's Return" (28 Oct. 1998), alludes to Pinter's so-called "sub-textual
Subtext
Subtext or undertone is content of a book, play, musical work, film, video game, or television series which is not announced explicitly by the characters but is implicit or becomes something understood by the observer of the work as the production unfolds. Subtext can also refer to the thoughts...
" use of silence as "a classic 'Pinter' moment". In dialogue between lead character Pacey Witter (played by Joshua Jackson
Joshua Jackson
Joshua Carter Jackson is a Canadian American actor. He has appeared in primetime television and in over 32 film roles. He is best known for playing Charlie Conway in The Mighty Ducks film series, Pacey Witter in the television series Dawson's Creek and Peter Bishop in the television series...
) and Tamara Jacobs (Leann Hunley
Leann Hunley
Leann Hunley is an American Emmy Award–winning actress. She is perhaps best known for her recurring role as Anna DiMera on NBC's long-running Days of our Lives.-Personal life:...
), his former English teacher with whom Pacey has had an affair, Tamara tells Pacey that an awkward moment of silence between them is "what we ex-English teachers call a classic 'Pinter' moment, where everything is said in silence because the emotion behind what we really want to say is just too overwhelming. … silence is an acquired taste. The more complicated life becomes the better it is to learn to say nothing." When Pacey inquires "Who is this Pinter guy?" Tamara urges him, "Stay in school." Later Pacey tells Tamara that he has "looked up this Pinter guy. Harold, playwright, the king of subtext. You say one thing, but you mean another," wondering further: "Do you think it's possible for us to have a moment without all the subtext?" "Uh, I don't know, Pacey," Tamara replies. "Words have always gotten us into so much trouble." Pacey and Tamara finally agree that "This Pinter guy was really onto something."
Further alluding to Pinter's renowned "pauses and silences", the song "Up Against It", from the album Bilingual
Bilingual (album)
Bilingual is the tenth album by the English dance music group Pet Shop Boys. It has sold about 1,000,000 albums world-wide.-Overview:...
, by the English electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
/pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
duo Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys are an English electronic dance music duo, consisting of Neil Tennant, who provides main vocals, keyboards and occasional guitar, and Chris Lowe on keyboards....
, includes the lines: "Such a cold winter/With scenes as slow as Pinter" (Tennant and Lowe).
Also illustrating the frequent allusions to Pinter's "silences" in commentaries about others' work, in a book review of Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby is an English novelist, essayist and screenwriter. He is best known for the novels High Fidelity, About a Boy, and for the football memoir Fever Pitch. His work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists.-Life and career:Hornby was...
's "debut teenage novel" Slam (Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
), Janet Christie observes hyperbolically that Hornby is "spot-on with the way a conversation with a teenage boy contains more meaningful silences than Harold Pinter's entire oeuvre …."
Works cited
- Christie, Janet. "Cautionary Tale about a Boy and Girl". Scotland on SundayScotland on SundayScotland on Sunday is a Scottish Sunday newspaper, published in Edinburgh by The Scotsman Publications Ltd and consequently assuming the role of Sunday sister to its daily stablemate The Scotsman...
, Books. Scotsman Publications, 7 Oct. 2007. WebWorld Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
. 9 Oct. 2007. [Outdated link.] "Cautionary Tale about a Boy and a Girl" (archived version). Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
, 13 Oct. 2007. WebWorld Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
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- Dorfman, ArielAriel DorfmanVladimiro Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.-Personal...
. "The World That Harold Pinter Unlocked". Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
. Washington Post, 27 Dec. 2008, A15. Print. The Washington Post Company, 27 Dec. 2008. WebWorld Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
. 9 Jan. 2009.
- Dorfman, ArielAriel DorfmanVladimiro Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.-Personal...
. " 'You want to free the world from oppression?' ". New StatesmanThe New StatesmanThe New Statesman is an award-winning British sitcom of the late 1980s and early 1990s satirising the Conservative government of the time...
, Jan. 2009. New Statesman, 8 Jan. 2009. World Wide WebWorld Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
. 9 Jan. 2009. ("Ariel Dorfman on the life and work of Harold Pinter [1930–2008].")
- Edgar, David. "Pinter's Weasels". GuardianGuardian.co.ukguardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry is the editor...
, "Comment is Free". Guardian Media GroupGuardian Media GroupGuardian Media Group plc is a company of the United Kingdom owning various mass media operations including The Guardian and The Observer. The Group is owned by the Scott Trust. It was founded as the Manchester Guardian Ltd in 1907 when C. P. Scott bought the Manchester Guardian from the estate of...
, 29 Dec. 2008. WebWorld Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
. 23 Mar. 2009. ("The idea that he was a dissenting figure only in later life ignores the politics of his early work.")
- "Editorial: Harold Pinter: Breaking the Rules". Guardian.co.ukGuardian.co.ukguardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry is the editor...
. Guardian Media GroupGuardian Media GroupGuardian Media Group plc is a company of the United Kingdom owning various mass media operations including The Guardian and The Observer. The Group is owned by the Scott Trust. It was founded as the Manchester Guardian Ltd in 1907 when C. P. Scott bought the Manchester Guardian from the estate of...
, 27 Dec. 2008. WebWorld Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
. 7 Mar. 2009. ("Pinter broke the rules in art and in life.")
- . Episode 4 of Season 2 (204). Dawson's Creek: The Complete Second Season. DVD. Sony PicturesSony Pictures EntertainmentSony Pictures Entertainment, Inc. is the television and film production/distribution unit of Japanese multinational technology and media conglomerate Sony...
, (released) 16 Dec. 2003. WebWorld Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
. 2 Oct. 2007.
- Tennant, NeilNeil TennantNeil Francis Tennant is an English musician, singer and songwriter, who, with bandmate Chris Lowe, makes up the successful electronic dance music duo Pet Shop Boys.-Childhood:...
, and Chris LoweChris LoweChris Lowe is an English musician, who, with colleague Neil Tennant, makes up the pop duo Pet Shop Boys.-Childhood:...
(The Pet Shop Boys). "Up Against It". Song lyrics. petshopboys.co.uk: The Official Site. 2 Oct. 2007. ["Browse all lyrics alphabetically" accessible via "Lyric of the day: Read more". Requires Adobe Flash PlayerAdobe Flash PlayerThe Adobe Flash Player is software for viewing multimedia, Rich Internet Applications and streaming video and audio, on a computer web browser or on supported mobile devices. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Flash authoring tool, by Adobe Flex or by a number of other...
8 or above.]
External links
- HaroldPinter.org – The Official Website of the International Playwright Harold Pinter (Home and index page)