The Scenographic Worlds

Abstract

Institutions and the urban environment in the real world are not just instruments to allow the existence of society, but – as organizers of physical and mental space – they turn into constituting elements of individual existence in the world. In this respect, they unavoidably assume a scenographic nature. But while in theatre scenography completely replaces the characters’ world, in the real world scenography does not replace – it only intermediates – the world for individuals in a society. In the realist novel the scenographic nature of institutions and the urban environment is represented just as in the real world: these intermediate between the characters and the world. With this intermediation they achieve the expansion of scenography, the negotiation of tension, the definition of the characters’ fate within the events they are involved in. Whereas in Kafka’s novel the scenographic nature of institutions and urban environment is like that of a theatre: as a replacement of the world. Hence the tension is constant, the expansion of scenography impossible, the characters’ culpability a fact – this does not depend on the events in which they are involved, but on the positions imposed to them by the scenography. We also encounter in Calvino the same scenographic arrangement of the world as in Kafka. Only that Kafka’s characters are resistant towards the fact that their interiority is preceded and dominated by the scenographic nature of the world, whereas Calvino’s characters conform with this domination of the scenographic worlds, adapting as a premise of their existence the obtainment of spectacle. Jean Baudrillad in his Amérique shows us that the use of scenography as a replacement of, not an intermediation with, the world is possible in the real world, namely in the North American continent (as distinct from the European continent), and the effect is again the same: the acceptance of domination, where the members of this society are dominated by the world, this domination not being accompanied by resistance or dilemmas.

DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2014.v3n4p173