Literature :
The Perfect Poster
The poster is a pictorial and striking representation of the Susan Laurie-Parks ’ attempt to make the audience understand the novel message given by her in “The America Play”, wherein she uses the look alike of an iconic president to draw the interest of the audience. This poster too focusses on the foundling father’s image to catch the eye of the viewers. Just as the dramatist uses repetition as a tool to highlight how history can be interpreted and reinterpreted,the mirrors in the poster shows endlessly repetititive images. The audience love sensational aspects of the lives of public figures, and keeping this in mind, the poster depicts the shooting in the head of the Lesser known Lincoln.
Lincoln’s image looms large all through the play. In the very exposition of the play the physical resemblance is between the founding and foundling fathers is mentioned. The latter was “tall and thinly built just like the Great Man” . As the poster shows, the digger dressed in a stovepipe hat and a false beard. Further comparisons such as the one below are made all through the play.
While the Great Man’s livelihood kept him in Big Town, the Lesser Knowns
Work kept him in Small Town.The Great Man by trade was a President. The
Lesser Known was a digger of graves.(160)
The play is about the history of the establishment of equality. The poster shows not this champion of equality, the one who proclaimed that all men were equal, but the blackman who looks like him. In the play Lincoln is just a figurehead, a statue. The reality is the man who is supposed to look like him. This is firmly established, when the grave digger gives a “Wink to Mr.Lincoln’s paste board cut out” and “A nod to the bust of Lincoln”. The superficial connection between the two is emphasised in the play. Lincoln might have lived in a log cabin before he became the president; but his history is not the whole history of America. The unwritten history of America is like the hole dug by the grave digger, which is a chasm. It is therefore right that the poster should focus on the plight of the black person, just as the play does. The play gives the importance to him that historians failed to give and so does the poster.
The poster shows the foundling father standing with a mirror in front of him and one behind him. So there are innumerable images of the same scene; that of a Lincoln look alike being shot. The main character wanted to make some money out of the quirk of chance that gave him an appearance very similar to that of a great icon and President, Abraham Lincoln. After a few failed attempts at cashing in on his resemblance, he begins to re enact the scene of Lincoln’s assassination. He pretended to be Lincoln seated on a chair and laughing at a hilarious comedy,when his customers could select a gun and shoot him. This scene is repeated several times during the play. It is identical each time, but for the variations in the way people reacted to it. The game titled, “Shoot Mr.Lincoln” is always played in this manner.
(A man (or woman) stands in position)
A Man : Ready
Foundling Father : HAW HAW HAW HAW
Rest : Haw Haw Haw Haw
(Booth shoots. Lincoln “slumps in his chair”. Booth jumps.) (165)
However, the final exclamation of the person who shoots changes everytime.The play wright is trying to show through this that repeated reading of history to several interpretations. History is probably an illusion of our mind then. The mirror represents this illusion.The placing of mirrors is such that we have multiple illusion, emphasizing the theme of varying interpretations of the history of America.Thus the poster succintly introduces an important theme show cased by the poet.
The shooting of Lincoln was sensational. Unfortunately, that is all people are seem to be interested in, rather than in the achievements of our forefathers or the omissions made in process of recording these victories. The lesser known tries to make money by making orations, but he is not successful.The public wants the gory details of death and disaster. The playwright depicts his love for unimportant gossip, in the scenes where characters discuss minute details of the murder. Last words and trivial details are remembered and repeated. The poster caters to this public taste for gore for it shows the Lesser Known being shot. As the main character describes,
The Death of Lincoln!: watching of the the laughter, the smiles of Lincoln and Mary Todd, the slipping of Booth into the presidential box unseen, the freeing of the slaves,
the pulling of the trigger, the bullets piercing above the left ear, the bullets entrance into the great head, the bullets lodging the great right eye, the slumping of Lincoln, the leaping onto the stage of Booth, the screaming of Todd, the screaming of Todd, the screaming of Keene, the leaping onto the stage of Booth; (188)
The poster shows the shooting and reflects the powerful satire of the playwright,who comments on people’s love for this kind of trivializing entertainment.
The poster thus encapsulates the major themes of the unwritten story of Blacks, the effect of repeated readings that make history look like an illusion, and the mind numbing love for sensation in the history of America.
Sources
1. Parks, Suzan-Lori. The America Play and Other Works. Newyork: Theatre Communications group, November 1 1994. Paperback
2. Winn, Steven. "'America' Gives History a Re-Do. Premiere of Parks' Provocative Play." 20 Nov. 2000 Web. SanFrancisco Chronicle.http://ww.brava.org/Pages/Reviews/AmPl_america.html. 23 April 2001.
