I wrote this for a playwriting class. I am debating whether it would be wise to submit it for a grade. I suppose the question is, is this a rant thinly disguised as a paper, or a paper thinly disguised as a rant?
The Edge of Our Bodies is a play written by Adam Rapp. It premiered in 2011 at the Humana Festival in Louisville, Kentucky… and, Mark, I can’t do this. I can’t write about this play and be appropriately distant and academic about it, so I’m going to have to take a more personal, discussion-based approach for this. These structural analyses are about what the plays do, correct? Well, this play made me angry, and not simple, flash-in-the-pan anger either, but the kind of anger that doesn’t bother you until it’s had time to simmer under the surface. This play is a gender-flipped modernization of The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, and this simple fact makes it impossible for me to regard The Edge of Our Bodies as anything remotely resembling an impressive artistic statement, a sentiment crystallized by the choices made in bringing this unnecessary vision to life.
Say what you will about The Edge of Our Bodies, but it’s definitely a play that is devoted to its premise, which, in this case, involves being a gender-flipped modernization of Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. The modern female substitute for Holden Caulfield, Bernadette, occupies the stage by herself as she monologues at the audience about the weekend she ran away from her boarding school to have adventures in New York City. These adventures, lest the connection to Salinger be somehow missed, include pursuit (and loss) of one-sided love, deep conversations with teachers, underage smoking and drinking, and sexual encounters in sleazy hotel rooms. Since this is a modernization, Bernadette has to up the ante and outdo Holden Caulfield in everything. While Holden was a virgin chasing the idea of a girl from his past and putting her up on a pedestal, the pregnant Bernadette is in pursuit of her older boyfriend who has moved on past her. Holden ended up turning down the prostitute he paid for, but Bernadette takes off her shirt and lets a stranger masturbate to the sight. She has no problems getting alcohol or cigarettes and goes the extra mile by casually mentioning past encounters with harder drugs. Oh, and her version of Mr. Antolini may not have tried to cop a feel, but instead goes the extra mile by committing suicide. I think Rapp is trying to show how the modern world has raised the stakes from where they were in the Fifties, but it ends up feeling horribly artificial.
Bernadette may get into more impressive drama, but this is then undercut by the seeming lack of consequences in the end, which is the largest divergence from Salinger’s work. The Catcher in the Rye ends with Holden Caulfield in some sort of sanatorium in California as a result of the profound effect his weekend in New York had on him. Bernadette starkly contrasts this by returning to her preppy boarding school, aborting her pregnancy, snagging an important role in a play, and letting her experience recede into the distance. Sure, the implication is that all she’s gone through will have future consequences, but the ending notes are different enough that it feels like Rapp missed the point Salinger was valiantly trying to make.
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I’m saying that The Edge of Our Bodies misses the point and as a result, it collapses in on itself like a punctured bouncy castle. Now, to an extent, this could be understandable, as many people miss the point of The Catcher in the Rye. For some, it’s because they’re so wrapped up in deep, abiding hatred of Holden Caulfield that they can’t see the coming-of-age story clearly, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. No, the entire play reeks of resembling the attitudes adopted by girls I used to go to school with, because, you see, I went to an all-girls prep school, Mark. I’ve been there, I’ve worn the “tartan skirt, white shirt, [and] white knee socks” (Rapp 297) ensemble, that was me at a point in my life not long passed, and I knew girls who failed to understand The Catcher in the Rye just the way Rapp did. Reason? They think Holden knew what he was talking about. They were the girls who most people will label as hipsters, and they will be right, because who else is going to quote Holden Caulfield and think they’re being profound but teenaged hipsters? Even though Bernadette never goes so far as to call anyone a "phony", her character is redolent with this attitude, and I have an immediate knee-jerk reaction of disgust to both her and this play. So, there’s a thing that this play does. It reminds me of young upper-middle-class hipsters who think that being disaffected is the same as being intelligent or original, and that sets me into slow-boiled rage that I can’t deal with until I’ve written a full paper about it.
This isn’t a play. I guess that’s my other real problem here. The Edge of Our Bodies only barely squeaks by as being a play because a maintenance worker shows up towards the end of the third act and begins to strike the set. Most of the time, Bernadette isn’t even engaging with the audience, she’s just reading to them out of “a black Moleskine notebook” (Rapp 297) that she’s apparently written her account in, with occasional moments where she directly addresses the audience in asides. That’s artsy, I’m sure, but it also serves to completely alienate the audience, which I’m sure is Rapp’s intention, which, you know what, great for him. Normally, this might’ve even been the sort of artsy that I could appreciate. Unfortunately, Salinger does the exact same thing in the way that Holden Caulfield narrates his story, something I can’t not notice while reading over The Edge of Our Bodies. It’s so narrative in nature that any stage direction is obtrusive and jars me straight out of reading. I cannot imagine trying to sit through the driveling diary of a pretentious high school girl who’s nothing more than a Holden Caulfield wannabe. And, really, what’s the point? Go read some girl’s LiveJournal. Actually pay attention to whatever your teenaged second cousin is posting on her Facebook. There’s roughly the same level of art being displayed there, and while it’s going to be pretty pretentious, at least it isn’t directly proposing that you should stage it.
In conclusion, I hate The Edge of Our Bodies, a four-act play by Adam Rapp. I hate that it thinks the world was clamoring for a modern, female take on The Catcher in the Rye. I hate that it tries to accomplish this goal as literally and as note-for-note as this play does while still insisting that it is a piece of performance art and not an AU Rule 63 fanfic written by some guy from Yale. Most of all, though, I hate how reading this play served to show me just how irritating my peers were and are, because that just leaves me feeling alienated and falsely superior to a bunch of kids my age who are just trying to figure out who they are. I hate this play because I can admit that it has a point. It may be an overly on-the-nose point, but it’s quite possibly an accurate one. Unfortunately, accuracy doesn’t guarantee quality, something that The Edge of Our Bodies ultimately lacks.
I'm not sure yet whether I'll be turning in this particular paper to my professor.
EDIT: Ohai, Mark. :)
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