Tennessee Williams
• Thomas Lanier Williams III
• 1911-1983
• Plays: The Glass Menagerie (1944),
Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a
Hot Tin Roof (1955),…
• 2 x Pulitzer Price for Drama (Streetcar
& Cat)
• Succesful adaptations for screen: Streetcar
Named Desire (1951), Baby Doll
(1956), Suddenly Last Summer (1959)…
2
1 2
, Tennessee Williams 1. Blanche = Repressed and “Forbidden” Sexuality
- Excessive yet hidden (multiple affairs, but wrapped in shame and denial)
- Queer-coded and transgressive (her husband’s homosexuality, her attraction to younger men)
- Marked by guilt and trauma, especially after her husband’s suicide
- Her constant need for dim light symbolizes her fear of sexual truth and exposure. Sexual desire for Blanche
is tied to loss, death, and self-destruction rather than pleasure.
2. Stanley = Aggressive, Normative Sexual Power
- Brute, masculine heterosexual dominance
- Sexuality backed by social and legal authority
- A modern, working-class masculinity that asserts itself through control and violence
- His sexuality is public, physical, and socially legitimized—even when it becomes abusive. The rape of
3
Blanche is the ultimate expression of how “acceptable” male sexual power silences other forms of sexuality.
3. Stella = Complicit Desire
A Streetcar named Desire:
- Sexual desire that accepts violence in exchange for stability
- Play written bij Tennesse Williams and later adapted to a film-script - The way heterosexual marriage can normalize abuse
- He introduced Marlon Brando on screen (before he was a theatre-actor) - The tension between sexual pleasure and moral compromise er choice to stay with Stanley shows how
- First time that the seks-appeal of an actor is really being highlighted society protects dominant sexual norms.
- He is a proto-typical method actor: very authentic and natural WHILE his co-player Vivien Leigh
4. Sexuality as Power, Not Romance: The film suggests sexuality is not primarily about love but about:
is a very ‘hysterical’ character
- Control
- Survival
- Movie plot: - Social legitimacy
- Follows Blanche DuBois, a fragile former Southern aristocrat who comes to New Those whose sexuality does not fit social norms (Blanche, her husband) are punished or erased.
Orleans to stay with her sister Stella and Stella’s rough, working-class
5. Cultural Context: Made in the early 1950s, the film reflects:
husband Stanley Kowalski.
- Fear of female sexual autonomy
- Blanche clings to illusions about her past and herself, while Stanley aggressively
- Anxiety about queer desire
exposes her lies and hypocrisies. Their clash represents a conflict between old
- Reinforcement of heteronormative masculinity as “real” and stable
Southern gentility and modern realism, as well as fantasy versus truth. Blanche’s
mental state deteriorates under Stanley’s cruelty and the collapse of her illusions.
- The story ends tragically when Blanche, psychologically broken, is taken away to a
mental institution, while Stella remains with Stanley, choosing stability over
confronting the truth.
3 4
, The plot: ‘Cat on a hot tin
roof’ (1958) “Since she [Blanche] is a kind of phony – just his [Kowalski’s] meat in a way, with
her pathetic pretensions and strenuously self-deceived gentility. Critics like Harold
Clurman thought that Brando unbalanced the play, putting the audience too much
1. Handsome young man – on Stanley’s side, and taking necessary sympathy away from Blanche. (…) But for
search for authenticity audiences this ‘unbalancing’ was often a relief – freeing us sometimes from our
sympathy with Blanche, from the oppression of her insistent claim on our pity, and
2. Rebellion and disruption of on our ‘higher’ feelings.”
order - immaturity Harvey, Movie Love, p. 129.
3. Sexual inuendo – disruption
of heteronormative order “we had a lot of uneasiness and ambivalence about this new, not-so-reliable boy-
4. Confrontation with the (ugly) man (…). He was a worry, for all his charm, even a social problem – in movies like
father (psychoanalysis) The Wild One (1954) and The Blackboard Jungle (1955) – someone we should do
something about, and sooner rather than later. This was the patriarchal view (the
5. Confirmation of order enlightened version). But it was also the sort of ‘mature’ and ‘responsible’ take on
through ‘catharsis’ (growth things that Brando and Dean seemed to demolish just by appearing on the movie
into maturity) or death (or screen – making everybody around them (especially if they were older) seem
punishment) radically less authentic.”
Harvey, Movie Love, 124.
5
= plot that is very common in these ‘style’ of movies Commentary of film critics:
Kazan Boys < Elia Kazan - Phony = bored kind of acting
- You start to symphatize with these kin dog young men: you start to like their
Important: homosexuality was always downplayed and never pronounced openly in
the movies cruelty
- The movies imbalance the official meaning of the movie
5 6
, See Brando in ‘Streetcar named desire’
Focus on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Play by T. Williams – Film adaptation by Elia Kazan
7 8
- Scene:
- After a fight with his friends he starts becoming violent and aggressive à
his wife flet upstairs
- He starts crying because of his wife went upstairs. = representation of his
immaturity. He love Stella in an immature way: he needs his mommy
- She cannot resist him and comes back, against the advise of the others. She
loves him in a sexual way
7 8
• Thomas Lanier Williams III
• 1911-1983
• Plays: The Glass Menagerie (1944),
Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a
Hot Tin Roof (1955),…
• 2 x Pulitzer Price for Drama (Streetcar
& Cat)
• Succesful adaptations for screen: Streetcar
Named Desire (1951), Baby Doll
(1956), Suddenly Last Summer (1959)…
2
1 2
, Tennessee Williams 1. Blanche = Repressed and “Forbidden” Sexuality
- Excessive yet hidden (multiple affairs, but wrapped in shame and denial)
- Queer-coded and transgressive (her husband’s homosexuality, her attraction to younger men)
- Marked by guilt and trauma, especially after her husband’s suicide
- Her constant need for dim light symbolizes her fear of sexual truth and exposure. Sexual desire for Blanche
is tied to loss, death, and self-destruction rather than pleasure.
2. Stanley = Aggressive, Normative Sexual Power
- Brute, masculine heterosexual dominance
- Sexuality backed by social and legal authority
- A modern, working-class masculinity that asserts itself through control and violence
- His sexuality is public, physical, and socially legitimized—even when it becomes abusive. The rape of
3
Blanche is the ultimate expression of how “acceptable” male sexual power silences other forms of sexuality.
3. Stella = Complicit Desire
A Streetcar named Desire:
- Sexual desire that accepts violence in exchange for stability
- Play written bij Tennesse Williams and later adapted to a film-script - The way heterosexual marriage can normalize abuse
- He introduced Marlon Brando on screen (before he was a theatre-actor) - The tension between sexual pleasure and moral compromise er choice to stay with Stanley shows how
- First time that the seks-appeal of an actor is really being highlighted society protects dominant sexual norms.
- He is a proto-typical method actor: very authentic and natural WHILE his co-player Vivien Leigh
4. Sexuality as Power, Not Romance: The film suggests sexuality is not primarily about love but about:
is a very ‘hysterical’ character
- Control
- Survival
- Movie plot: - Social legitimacy
- Follows Blanche DuBois, a fragile former Southern aristocrat who comes to New Those whose sexuality does not fit social norms (Blanche, her husband) are punished or erased.
Orleans to stay with her sister Stella and Stella’s rough, working-class
5. Cultural Context: Made in the early 1950s, the film reflects:
husband Stanley Kowalski.
- Fear of female sexual autonomy
- Blanche clings to illusions about her past and herself, while Stanley aggressively
- Anxiety about queer desire
exposes her lies and hypocrisies. Their clash represents a conflict between old
- Reinforcement of heteronormative masculinity as “real” and stable
Southern gentility and modern realism, as well as fantasy versus truth. Blanche’s
mental state deteriorates under Stanley’s cruelty and the collapse of her illusions.
- The story ends tragically when Blanche, psychologically broken, is taken away to a
mental institution, while Stella remains with Stanley, choosing stability over
confronting the truth.
3 4
, The plot: ‘Cat on a hot tin
roof’ (1958) “Since she [Blanche] is a kind of phony – just his [Kowalski’s] meat in a way, with
her pathetic pretensions and strenuously self-deceived gentility. Critics like Harold
Clurman thought that Brando unbalanced the play, putting the audience too much
1. Handsome young man – on Stanley’s side, and taking necessary sympathy away from Blanche. (…) But for
search for authenticity audiences this ‘unbalancing’ was often a relief – freeing us sometimes from our
sympathy with Blanche, from the oppression of her insistent claim on our pity, and
2. Rebellion and disruption of on our ‘higher’ feelings.”
order - immaturity Harvey, Movie Love, p. 129.
3. Sexual inuendo – disruption
of heteronormative order “we had a lot of uneasiness and ambivalence about this new, not-so-reliable boy-
4. Confrontation with the (ugly) man (…). He was a worry, for all his charm, even a social problem – in movies like
father (psychoanalysis) The Wild One (1954) and The Blackboard Jungle (1955) – someone we should do
something about, and sooner rather than later. This was the patriarchal view (the
5. Confirmation of order enlightened version). But it was also the sort of ‘mature’ and ‘responsible’ take on
through ‘catharsis’ (growth things that Brando and Dean seemed to demolish just by appearing on the movie
into maturity) or death (or screen – making everybody around them (especially if they were older) seem
punishment) radically less authentic.”
Harvey, Movie Love, 124.
5
= plot that is very common in these ‘style’ of movies Commentary of film critics:
Kazan Boys < Elia Kazan - Phony = bored kind of acting
- You start to symphatize with these kin dog young men: you start to like their
Important: homosexuality was always downplayed and never pronounced openly in
the movies cruelty
- The movies imbalance the official meaning of the movie
5 6
, See Brando in ‘Streetcar named desire’
Focus on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Play by T. Williams – Film adaptation by Elia Kazan
7 8
- Scene:
- After a fight with his friends he starts becoming violent and aggressive à
his wife flet upstairs
- He starts crying because of his wife went upstairs. = representation of his
immaturity. He love Stella in an immature way: he needs his mommy
- She cannot resist him and comes back, against the advise of the others. She
loves him in a sexual way
7 8
