By contrast, ‘Suddenly Last Summer’ still shocks and its more direct preoccupation with defining mental health still relevant today. What Stanley does to her seems almost immaterial, which is of course total nonsense. There is a great deal of melodrama – Blanche is already mentally unstable when she appears and the ending seems almost a continuation of this breakdown at a natural progressive rate. While classic literature hides issues in the veil of metaphor, these issues of desire, respectability and abuse are now so openly discussed that instead of shocking, ‘Streetcar’ seems rather lame to modern eyes. Williams himself has noted that the lead female character, Blanche, is a metaphor for himself and his own homosexuality – something which also could not be openly expressed at the time. When the film was produced, the ending had to be changed because the censors would not have allowed it otherwise. While I can appreciate how groundbreaking ‘Streetcar’ was when it first appeared on stage in 1947, a lot has happened in the seventy years since. I’ll be honest from the beginning: I think ‘Suddenly Last Summer’ is better. Having watched the lesser-known ‘Suddenly Last Summer’ last year, I felt it was time to kick this one into touch. ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ has been on the bucket list to read (and watch, of course) for a long time. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
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