Friday, March 6, 2020

Post 7 from Tiffany--Behind the Scenes: Hidden vs Public Transcripts

Hey y'all.

What stuck with me this week was the idea of Public vs. Hidden Transcripts. 

"If subordinate discourse in the presence of the dominant is a public transcript, I shall use the term hidden transcript to characterize discourse that takes place "offstage," beyond direct observation by powerholders. The hidden transcript is thus derivative in the sense that it consists of those offstage speeches, gestures, and practices that confirm, contradict, or inflect what appears in the public transcript. We do not wish to prejudge, by definition, the relation between what is said in the face of power and what is said behind its back. Power relations are not, alas, so straightforward that we can call what is said in power-laden contexts false and what is said offstage true... What is certainly the case, however, is that the hidden transcript is produced for a different audience and under different constraints of power than the public transcript."1 

What happens when you think you're speaking hidden transcript, but in reality you're speaking public transcript, and what you say was intentioned for one audience, but was heard by the other? This is also playing lightly with the idea of incongruity. Incongruity means out of place — something that doesn't fit in its location or situation. In this context, it's an unexpected shift in audience and power.

In The Fox On the Fairway by Ken Ludwig, the playwright plays with this idea by causing a microphone to go on unexpectedly while one of the characters, Henry Bingham, confesses their love for another, Pamela Peabody. His impassioned, love-sick confession meant only for Mrs. Peabody, is broadcast for the entire country club where he is in charge, leading to an embarrassing aftermath and reputation amongst his fellow golfers. What Mr. Bingham intends to share privately with Mrs. Peabody is heard by the entire country club. If the microphone hadn't worked, as was always the case with this particular mic, the speech would have been private and the embarrassing aftermath would not have happened. Bingham and Peabody may have even begun a sexy affair and handled their relationship with more control and on their own terms.


The Fox on the Fairway, by Ken Ludwig | Theatre Baton Rouge | Photo by Megan Voiselle Collins

A good real life example is when news anchors think they're still off camera and say things they think only the studio can hear. Below is a short video of a news anchor who appears to fart off camera, believing the gesture of his fart is not heard or noticed by viewers, but in the video clearly appears to be heard. It could be a sound in the room of the people videotaping, but we'll suspend our imaginations for the sake of the subject discussion. I like this example because it's a gesture/action rather than spoken transcript.

For this week's post, share a time you experienced or a time in history when someone speaking, gesturing, or practicing something that they meant to be hidden transcript, but ended up delivering it as a public transcript. A time you didn't know you were on speaker phone and said something private, a time someone flipped another person off thinking they couldn't see, but they could, or a time when you heard a microphone left on backstage during a show and heard more than you probably wanted to in the audience, and so on. What happened as a result? What would have happened if this transcript had remained hidden?

1Scott, James. From Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, Yale UP, 1990.

3 comments:

  1. Victoria's post has some great examples of this. I for one didn't know that Jack Nicholson had improvised the Here's Johnny line. Another great improvisation was by Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones. This, of course, is a famous one, but in the first take of the chase scene in Cairo (Cairo? we'll call it Cairo), Indy ends up stuck confronting a Bedouin warrior who is strategically wielding a massive curved sword. Harrison Ford, as the story goes, improvised pulling out his pistol and shooting the warrior. Originally a massive sword fight was scripted, but the team liked the improv so much they kept it.

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  2. Henry's post is touchingly personal. It is a remarkable perspective on what kind of harm can be done when a private transcript becomes public. In some cases it can go beyond embarrassing oneself and hurting another. Is it still embarrassment then or is it guilt?

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  3. I read Victoria's blog this week and really liked the use of a positive example of an actor giving hidden transcript that was turned into public transcript and had a positive result: one of the most memorable lines in the movie.

    Another example I think of like that is in the sitcom Parks and Recreation when Chris Pratt's character, Andy tells the character Leslie Knope that his computer is telling him that she has "network connectivity problems." The line was improvised and not meant to be such a highlighted moment, but the director decided to keep it and it's now one of his most well known lines in the show.

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Prompt from Victoria!

On Friday, we discussed how traditional clothes is a part of cultural performance. Dresses, t-shirts, hats and other items represent herit...