An Analysis on Theatre, Victimhood, and Self-empowerment as Modern Feminine Survival Tactics

Trigger warning for discussions of suicide, self-harm, sexual assault, fetishism, eating disorders, implications of pedophilia and violence

‘Is she not saying, your help oppresses me? Is she not saying, the only way to avoid being a victim of the patriarchal structures of late 20th century capitalism is to become her own victim?’ Martin Crimp’s 1997 play, Attempts on her life, was first performed at the royal court theatre upstairs the year of its release. Written ‘for a company of actors whose composition should reflect the world beyond theatre’, the play explores the seedier, harsher aspects of reality, including pornography, ethnic violence and suicide. Crimp’s central character, Anne, is characterised as unique and empowered, but most importantly she is characterised by narrators and other characters describing her. The irony of a woman described as so empowered and having so little voice of her own throughout the play is crucial to the question: is liberation from patriarchal constraints even possible, or do acts of reclamation eventually end up catering to the male gaze regardless?

The scene ‘Untitled (100 words)’ details Anne's self-destruction, manifesting in ‘various attempts to kill herself.’ it is an effort to replace being a victim of ‘patriarchal structures’ with being a victim of her own actions and emotions. Arguably though, this effort may not be entirely fruitful as Anne's behaviour produces the same result she would achieve through allowing herself to cater to traditional expectations: a helpless victim of the male gaze. Anne’s actions are presented as exhibitionist; while motivated by her own suicidal ideation, her attempts to take her life work as ‘a kind of theatre for a world in which theatre itself has died.’ She leaves a ‘gallery’ of memorabilia surrounding her attempts, including ‘medicine bottles, records of hospital admissions polaroids of the several HIV positive with whom she has intentionally had unprotected intercourse, pieces of broken glass…suicide notes…’ a narrator describes this exhibition as ‘the spectacle of her own existence, the radical pornography…the religious object.’ The semantic field of language in this scene associated with Anne's suicide attempts is littered with sexualisation and ideas of performance: ‘it's sexy…voyeurs…pornography…object of herself…to be consumed…self-indulgent…entertaining.’ This opens up a dialogue between the narrators that evaluates her suicidal behaviour as a piece of artwork. One asks ‘Who would possibly accept this kind of undigested exhibitionism as a work of art?’ while the other offers the idea that ‘Gestures of radicalism take on new meaning in a society where the radical gesture is simply one more form of entertainment — in this case, artwork — to be consumed.’ As uncomfortable as it is to suggest, Anne's suicidality is both fetishised and commodified, something that is partially her own doing. The concepts of ‘pure narcissism’ and ‘self-indulgence’ are attributed to her performance, along with one of the narrators pushing for her to receive psychiatric treatment. An obvious but viable interpretation of Anne's ‘gallery’ is that it is an exaggerated cry for help, where she lays out the evidence of her mental state in the hopes of receiving validation or assistance. This idea is disputed by this narrator’s counterpart, who suggests that ‘help is the last thing she wants.’ The sexualised language used and the repeated hints at exhibitionism could indicate that her performance is for the purpose of her own sexual pleasure: ‘Surely our presence [the audience] here makes us mere voyeurs in bedlam.’ In forcing those around her to witness her mental decline, Anne may be participating in fetishism. She certainly is acting with the intention of performing, and of being watched.

This is where the idea of empowerment and reclamation comes in. Anne forces her peers into watching, something that she gets pleasure from, and this arguably serves as a reversal of typical sexual dynamics which place men in dominant, pleasure-receiving roles. In self-destructive behaviours, she reclaims her body and chooses to destroy it herself rather than allowing others to do it to her. However, in the process of doing so she achieves the same result that she would if she were allowing her environment to shape her into an object of the male gaze; that is to say, a helpless object. Men’s stereotypical attraction to what Ibsen referred to as ‘feminine helplessness’ tends to be the driving force of the objectification of women. it can be argued that this objectification is inevitable and thus Anne's efforts to control the means by which it occurs is the closest she can get to liberating herself from it. finding a way to enjoy or bear something painful and inevitable serves as a survival mechanism;

‘not the object of others, but the object of herself.’

The aesthetic framing of Anne's violence against herself is incredibly significant to its relevance as a piece of artwork. In ‘Aesthetic Violence and Women in Film: Kill Bill with Flying Daggers’, Kupfer argues that film, and by extension plays and scripts, aesthetically frame violence in three ways: symbolically, structurally, and as a narrative essential. Anne’s violence can be characterised as self-harm and fulfils these three framings. Symbolically it is an act of free will and reclamation of her own body, an opportunity to enjoy her ‘inevitable’ objectification. Structurally, the scene ‘Untitled (100 words)’ occurs five scenes after the last discussion of Anne's suicidality within the play, a scene titled ‘Mum and Dad.’ This sets up certain aspects of Anne's performative nature in advance. after a suicide attempt, she describes ‘[feeling] like a screen’ to her parents: ‘where everything from the front looks real and alive, but round the back, there’s just dust and a few wires…an absence of character.’ Here she details an experience of feeling disconnected from herself beyond her performance. The act of using performance as a means of openly criticising performance is certainly subversive and is a device seen in more modern media, such as Bojack Horseman (‘I felt like a xerox of a xerox of a xerox…not my character’) and in Bo Burnham’s ‘Inside.’ Crimp uses his play to propose ideas about the nature of acting, particularly its role in the lives of women. The sentiment of acting being a survival tactic for women is echoed in much earlier texts, such as Ibsen's ‘A doll’s house.’ Throughout the play, Nora caters to her husband’s infantilised fantasies of her whenever he is present, and doing so results in him giving her an allowance and certain limited but significant moments of freedom. Torvald admits, ‘I would not be a man if your feminine helplessness did not make you doubly attractive in my eyes’ and repeatedly states that he wishes some ‘terrible fate’ would befall his wife so that he could have the pleasure of rescuing her. Anne’s performance of suicidality, of feeling ‘beyond help’, would likely be received by men similarly to how Nora's childish facade is received by her husband, as a fantasy that involves saving her for their own sense of pleasure and accomplishment. However, what makes Anne's behaviour ‘radical’ is her refusal to accept help. she recognises that her feelings of hopelessness are fetishised and argues that ‘your help oppresses me.’ This sentiment is also reflected in ‘A doll’s house’; Nora must refuse Torvald's money and help in order to pursue her own freedom in the final act. Catering to his idealised image of a wife only served to help her survive her household, not to prosper or be her individual self. She had to leave the environment which forced her to perform behind entirely in order to discover who she is beyond the act. Not accepting help is Anne’s version of this, but the narrators consider the idea that even in isolating her act to only include herself, Anne still cannot escape objectification. Her ‘radical gesture’ of destroying herself and laying out the evidence of her behaviour is ‘simply one more form of entertainment, one more product… to be consumed.’ An earlier scene, titled ‘The camera loves you’ includes the line ‘we need to go for the sexiest scenario’, a statement which accurately summarises the likely reception to Anne's ‘dialogue of objects.’ Arguably another aspect of what makes Anne's predicament ‘the sexiest scenario’ is that even within the text itself she is the subject of the conversation, but rarely a participant. Anne is described by narrators, art critics, her parents, her family, etc, but only ever speaks for herself when her defiant statements are being quoted by one of these narrators. Descriptions of her self-inflicted violence fit Kupfer's final framing: a narrative essential.

Interestingly, the play consists of a somewhat non-linear narrative, where each of its 17 scenes has its own plot unconnected to that of the last. As a result, a narrative essential in ‘Attempts on her life’ would be a device, or in this case, an instance of violence, which builds our understanding of both Anne and the play’s messages, rather than a traditional narrative essential which would drive the plot forwards. The play delivers multiple instances of various forms of violence, ranging from ethnic violence to self-harm to forced pornography. Anne’s self-injury in particular is framed just prior to and just after the midpoint of the play. Before the midpoint, the audience learns of her ‘terrible detachment’ from the character she plays, and how she ‘feels like a screen.’ The midpoint, a scene titled ‘The international threat of terrorism™’ opens with a brief analysis of a statement made by Anne: ‘I do not recognise your authority.’ The speaker asks, ‘Does she really imagine that anything can justify her acts of random senseless violence?’ ‘Random’ and ‘senseless’ seem ill-fitting qualities to attribute to Anne's violence, particularly given that her parents state ‘she’s planned all this.’ However, this midpoint scene states ‘no one can find Anne's motive’, seemingly the reason that the speaker cannot see a possible justification for her behaviour. Choosing not to recognise the authority of those around her is yet another aspect of our protagonist’s performance that is ‘radical.’ In neglecting to acknowledge the power of those objectifying her, Anne is achieving two things; either she is allowing herself to experience her own body and emotions without it being for the sake of others, or she is allowing herself to be fetishised and is simply in denial of it. Her defiance is complex and the results of it, and indeed the motivations behind it, are difficult to ascertain.

Martin Crimp’s use of 17 separate individual scenes rather than a traditional singular plot narrative allows the audience to gain a multifaceted understanding of many multifaceted issues. Anne is placed and acts within varying contexts such as her own personal self-destruction, destruction of land that comes with ethnic cleansing, the commodification of female bodies and two different familial structures. The scene ‘The camera loves you’ emphasises how Anne is an ‘everywoman’ but rather than this term being used to describe an average woman in daily life, it instead refers to a woman who is, simply put, everything. Anne is described in the scene ‘Girl next door’ as ‘the girl next door…royalty…a pornographic movie star…a killer and a brand of car…a terrorist threat…a mother of three…femme fatale…a presidential candidate…a predator…’ by not allocating a specific speaker to each line, crimp allows the director to decide who describes Anne and in what way. Lines such as ‘What we see here is the work of a girl who clearly should have been admitted, not to an art school but to a psychiatric unit’ can be spoken by a parent, an art critic, a teacher, anyone, and the relation of the speaker to Anne is what characterises the comment and thus characterises her. Someone described as ‘self-indulgent’ by a parent is very different to someone described the same way by a lover. This means that Anne is not just every woman, but every woman to everyone. By placing this ‘everywoman’ in such a range of contexts, she arguably becomes a plot device used to convey meaning, and it can be argued that this negates the more empowered features of her character. It is entirely common for female characters to be reduced to plot devices, however, most often when this occurs, the character is two-dimensional. Anne, on the other hand, is consistently given additional layers to her character in every scene; she exists to be characterised. Excessive use of character description in conjunction with limited speaking time is either evidence that crimp’s writing is atypical in style but not theme, or that it is poignant.

Arguably, by giving Anne countless traits and emphasising ideas of performance and media, Crimp is using his 17 scenes as an extreme example of the commodification of female bodies. Anne is sold to the audience as this larger-than-life persona, someone who fulfils a million roles in subversive ways that are interesting to watch, but she still ‘feels like a screen.’ Again, this sentiment of the effects of performance on an actor is echoed in many modern texts and pieces of media, but ‘Attempts on her life’ makes this point in specific reference to women. Real-life examples of Anne's treatment exist, and her ‘everywoman’ role allows audiences to relate Anne to any number of women existing in media. The way that others only talk about Anne when describing or evaluating her mimics the way that agencies and record labels create a solid branding for their actors, musicians, and so on. This brand becomes an intrinsic part of their genuine personality as they cannot be caught behaving in a way that is not consistent with it. Acting becomes a constant, and these women are constantly selling a brand or persona, and have very little space to behave in ways that feel true to themselves instead. Acting ‘out of character’ results in the loss of public support, funding from agencies, job offers, etc, and thus the character created for celebrities is vital to their survival in their respective industries. As previously discussed, traditional texts argue the importance of theatre for women’s survival just as much, namely Ibsen's ‘A doll’s house.’ In the same way that Nora must leave the environment that forces her to act in order to be happy or individual, Anne must do the same; but her attempts at suicide suggest that the environment forcing her performance is not a household or an industry, but ‘the patriarchal structures of late-twentieth-century capitalism.’ Either she dies or ‘becomes her own victim’ in an attempt to escape constant performance, but even her death becomes somewhat performative. Even dead, many female celebrities continue their branding through martyrdom. There is very little room for one to make art detailing suicide, sex, and the like without seemingly crossing the line between expression and glorification. Women who suffer are not necessarily acting, but as their suffering is a part of their life experience, it becomes interwoven in their branding or public image: Amy Winehouse's experiences with alcoholism and bulimia come to mind. Winehouse never glorified alcoholism herself, but songs such as ‘rehab’ and documentaries covering her illness released after her death have certainly been accused of doing so. Agencies and other creatives took advantage of Winehouse's struggles in order to perform their own ‘activism’ or ‘spreading of awareness.’

In light of ‘Attempts on her life’ and the concepts surrounding performance that it poses, we must consider:

is liberation from patriarchal constraints even possible, or do acts of reclamation serve to eventually end up catering to the male gaze regardless?

It would not be accurate to the play’s style and purpose to try to make one singular conclusion to this question. Crimp uses varying styles and contexts in order to showcase the various aspects there are to this issue; the necessity of performance, the constraints it leads to, the sexualisation of suffering, brand maintenance, and so on. Anne’s lack of voice in this play can be read either as an example of the very thing the play criticises, or simply just poor usage of character, and the former feels most appropriate for crimp’s writing style. The play implies that victimhood can be intrinsic to womanhood, but presents Anne's defiance as idealized, encouraging it. Theatre can be used as both a survival mechanism and a method of empowerment, but the play posits that it is only empowering to a certain extent; it allows one to control the means by which they are objectified but not to actually avoid objectification. One can behave in undesirable manners, such as Anne's displays of suicidality and exhibitionism, but then we must examine their motivations. Is Anne behaving in this way solely based upon her low mental health? Or is the fact that she is also engaging in a form of exhibitionism and forcing an audience evidence of her sexualising her own experience? If so, her sexualisation of suicidal behaviour likely stems from the ‘patriarchal structures’ she is working to avoid being a victim of, suggesting that it is not possible to liberate oneself from them. Anne is evidence that women are not separate from the patriarchy, but active participants in it as it is a collection of ideals engraved into western society. It would be unfair and somewhat dejected to conclude that these ideals cannot be unlearned, but ‘attempts on her life’ certainly illustrates that unlearning them is a more active and difficult task than simply holding a feminist ideology.