Shirley Valentine: Ultimate Essay
Coursework #1
The screenplay, Shirley Valentine, written by renowned playwright, Willy Russell, contemplates the life of a distressed Liverpudlian woman in her mid-forties trying to abscond her way into freedom. The play depicts her gradually realizing with deep sorrow that she had let twenty years of her life slip past her unused. She had been enshrouded in fog and was forced to submit herself to the role of the typical English house-wife. Her duties included the bringing-up of children, taking care of the husband, cooking, cleaning, washing - evidently, you can see the stereotypical essence of the role already. By the end of the screenplay she had attained this amazing albeit realistic transformation from rugged, Shirley Bradshaw, the typical housewife - to a free, relaxed, rebellious and light-hearted Shirley Valentine; the Shirley Valentine that had twenty years ago seemed to have faded from the planet.
Russell employs several dramatic techniques to enhance the transitions/phases that Shirley goes through; her regrets, her predictions, her reactions and responses to other characters, and, most importantly, the motivation provided by other characters in various situations for Shirley to take the steps that would inevitably lead to her sudden "change of life". One of these techniques are as follows; to illuminate Shirley's feelings of regret, Russell makes use of flashbacks, showing only the specific moments in her memory that would be of importance, rather than to display all the events in chronological order, which would bring boredom to the audience and an unprofessional touch to the play. By employing this technique and many others, he succeeds in making the readers able to understand the importance of Shirley's change.
Distinguished and well-respected playwright Willy Russell is the author of Shirley Valentine. Born in Whiston, near Liverpool in 1947 he left school by the age of fifteen. Russell was brought up "in a very maternalistic atmosphere" because of all his female siblings around him constantly. From there - at his mother's suggestion - he entered the hairdressing profession for six years. During this time, he felt he was doing a job he "didn't understand and didn't like". He yearned to try and do the "one and only thing" he felt he understood, felt that he could do: to write. Realising that he didn't have a convenient atmosphere, he retired from hairdressing to the academic world. Of course, his time spent in hairdressing did not go to waste. Due to the fact that it was a ladies' salon, he had gained even more knowledge and cognition of the female mind; their feelings, what and why they do the things they do. He said that aside from the experience gathered at work, even as a child he supposed that he "must have spent a lot of time sitting un-noticed but absorbing the women's view of the world." Undoubtedly, this intimate acquaintance with the female psyche is a key part of writing Shirley Valentine, as it focuses on his female main character's thoughts, feelings and actions.
Shirley Valentine is a genre which has a striking resemblance to a "kitchen-sink drama". It is influenced by this genre because of its same qualities. Kitchen-sink dramas tend to be portraying a drama of social realism - focusing on real-life issues - this coincides with Shirley, Russell is very much painting a picture of a realistic social dilemma - with the addition of the normal, everyday conversational dialogue spoken.
A difference between the usual "kitchen-sink drama" and Shirley is that Shirley becomes iron-willed (unlike English women in normal kitchen-sink dramas) and escapes from her life of ...
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Shirley Valentine is a genre which has a striking resemblance to a "kitchen-sink drama". It is influenced by this genre because of its same qualities. Kitchen-sink dramas tend to be portraying a drama of social realism - focusing on real-life issues - this coincides with Shirley, Russell is very much painting a picture of a realistic social dilemma - with the addition of the normal, everyday conversational dialogue spoken.
A difference between the usual "kitchen-sink drama" and Shirley is that Shirley becomes iron-willed (unlike English women in normal kitchen-sink dramas) and escapes from her life of boredom. This all corresponds with the lives of working-class women - dull, uneventful, boring, and more importantly, full of wasted opportunities.
Russell signifies his view of feminism; complete drivel. By introducing the character Jane, he exaggerates in a funny way and derides her paranoia about men when Jane says, "All men are potential rapists." Willy Russell reinforces this silly comment by providing information about Jane in a voiceover by Shirley: we find that her husband had run off with the milkman - which is very likely to be a reason for her feminism.
The screenplay begins by exhibiting a series of sixteen sketches which instantly delineate the outline oh Shirley's life. The sketches each show a different typical household chore for a housewife - thus establishing Shirley's character. It shows that her life is monotonous, never changing - as with the picture itself. Another factor is that all the sketches are embellished in blue and have the residual hue of blue. The colour blue is often associated with depression, confusion and sad times. Other small but very significant details of the transitions are the soft blurriness of the sketches and also the slow fading during the transitions between them. They give us the idea that Shirley's thoughts are "clouded" in a way, and emotions unclear; also reinforcing the monotony of her life. While the sketches are shown, the background is infused with a beautiful but sorrowing, "heaviness of heart" type soundtrack. The soundtrack is very revealing of Shirley's feelings at the beginning and expresses her regret of "leaving behind" Shirley Valentine, so to speak. Phrases like "a bird is born to fly", or another line speaks of "I'd like the chance to be me" evidently confirms that she does not wish to be part of this "caged" life at present. It shows how her life had changed twenty years ago to what it is now and has been all this time - also, it signifies her ambitions for freedom, and the mournful tone of the song conveys a sense of regret and depression.
The film then begins, the last sketch dissolving in to a real-life moving picture - a road is shown, straight and as far as the eye could see; Russell could be using this to represent Shirley's life as straight and never-ending, or as I mentioned, monotonous. The cloud and rain also conveys a mood of melancholy as does the drab kitchen once we see Shirley enter the house.
Willy Russell cleverly employs the use of flashbacks to ascertain the emotions of Shirley and show the audience Shirley's dissatisfaction with her life. The flashbacks help by skipping back to the key part of Shirley's memory to show us the vital scenes which correlate with Shirley's life and show the events which consequently lead to where she currently is in the play. This method proves to be far more effective than to place the play in a chronological structure which would in turn make the play tiresome, let alone unprofessional.
Collectively, there are eight flashbacks in the Liverpudlian-based part of the play. The flashbacks are usually shown to convey a sense of remorse from Shirley, regretting letting all that life go unused. They are also inventively used to introduce the characters which would later on contribute greatly to Shirley's decisions.
For example, in one flashback, Shirley's daughter Millandra is introduced. Although Millandra's appearance must be accounted for, the real purpose of the flashback is to imply to the audience that Shirley is longing to keep as much of the memories of her old life as she can when she whines, "But I like rum and coke." Millandra states that Shirley is behind the times and that "everybody drinks wine now." Before the flashback, Shirley is drinking wine. It implies that she had given up hope of trying to keep her old life; it seems as if she was forced to settle into her new "caged" life.
In another flashback, the purpose this time is to show her reminiscing, looking back and regretting not taking opportunities and different options to keep her old life. In this flashback she is with her friends, at a bar, enjoying herself, being Shirley Valentine; she is joking, speaking freely, "they have drinks in front of them. They are all laughing uproariously." The significance of this is that she does not spend time with her friends anymore, and this in turn implies that she is indeed stuck with Joe, part of this typical routine: cleaning, washing up, shopping, and cooking for the husband when he gets home at six o' clock sharp. Clearly, it would be unsurprising to find that she hasn't had any fun for twenty years.
Furthermore, another flashback reveals that far back into her childhood her life expectations and morale hadn't been exceedingly good either. At school, even the teachers put Shirley down and lowered her spirits. She begins saying how she much desired for to be an air hostess or a courier, thus authenticating her love for travel, as we will find out. Her dreams were slowly extinguished when she realised that, "it was only the clever ones who got to do things like that. The ones like Marjorie Majors." She goes on to say "Marjorie took private elocution lessons", and "That makes four billion house points she's got so far" spilling out her envy for Marjorie. This envy wasn't actually negative, though she expressed it as if it was; with hints of sarcasm and dislike. Nevertheless, it seemed as if she had always had a longing to be like her, smart enough to be able to be recognised and able to do something significant in her life, for example, to travel. Later on in the flashback, a crucial change occurred in the hall in front of the whole school. The headmistress asked "What was man's most important invention?" and Shirley desperately puts her hand up, one hundred percent confident that she had the correct answer...her confidence did not even waver when the headmistress said impatiently, as if there was no point in considering Shirley's contribution; "Oh, Shirley, do put your hand down. You couldn't possible know the answer." After finally being put in the position that she couldn't ignore Shirley's quivering but upright hand, she accepts by saying, "You might as well get it wrong along with everybody else". Shirley in fact gets the answer correct, but the headmistress is so taken back, she cannot believe it. In her anger she dismisses any hopeful praise that Shirley hoped to get. We can easily establish that the headmistress actually found pleasure in tormenting Shirley like this. Shirley, traumatised by the experience, realised that although she wanted school, school didn't want her. She tells us this in a voiceover; "I was never really interested in school after that. I became a rebel". Being a rebel, she claimed she hated school, disrespected their regulations and code of conduct to display her feelings through her appearance; "I used to wear my school skirt so high up you would've thought it was a serviette." Later on in the flashback she confesses that she never really hated anything, "the only thing I ever hated was me." This crucial statement implies that she was dissatisfied with what she was then, and part of the reason that she dwelled upon that memory was that because she is discontented with her life at present also. She wished that she could change what happened, so that the end result wouldn't be where she was now, having thrown away so much of her life for nothing - and being completely powerless to restore it.
Finally, a fourth extremely significant flashback shows Shirley recollecting her memories of first moving into the house. She and Joe were only a few weeks into their marriage, and unlike the situation between them now, the love and affection they shared with each other was full, still blossoming. The scene begins with a much younger Shirley and Joe painting the kitchen. We can instantly see that the affection that was between them before hadn't been in the household for a prolonged time when Shirley says in a voice-over, "Oh that seems a long time ago. We hadn't long been married...". It also implies that she misses that affection and those good times. In the scene, Joe and Shirley have a fun fight with paint; and clearly we can see how much joyous they are. At the end of the scene, Shirley and Joe are in the bath together, and Joe proclaims, "I love you....Shirley Valentine," and the flashback then ends. Shirley follows this with a significant comment; "He used to love me because I was a nutcase. Now he just thinks I am a nutcase." This tells us how Joe's loving behaviour towards Shirley has slowly extinguished.
Russell uses many minor characters to interact with Shirley. These minor characters appear only occasionally, but each encounter reveal to the audience more of Shirley's character. The most important of all encounters is when Shirley is in Greece, and she meets the other English holiday makers; Dougie, Jeanette, Sydney and Thelma. As she departs from the coach, she instantly absorbs the surrounding beauty and looks out at "the stunning natural beauty of the place". She may have already established a negative point of the view of the other holidaymakers when they say, "Travel agent said we'd like it here. I'm a bit dubious meself," and "There's more life in a crematorium." Soon after that, when she is sitting alone at the hotel restaurant, she is sipping at her wine, "completely at peace", "gazing out of the window, taking in the stunning view". Her tranquillity is "shattered" by Jeanette, who seemed to have thought Shirley was sad and lonely by herself. Shirley reluctantly accepts Jeanette's invitation to join their table. She attempts to settle in, and immediately stiffens at the boring talk Dougie and Jeanette make about Jacuzzis and such. Her temper takes a sudden flare when Sydney joins the conversation, and bluntly and openly disrespects Greek culture and heritage. "...thing is, Dougie, I could like Greece, I could, if it were more like Spain. It's not - an' I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why Greece isn't like Spain. Because Greece well, it's all too Greek. Take me point? An' that's what's wrong with Greece." This is a crucial moment in the play to divulge Shirley's personality more. She reacts with anger, "speaking with emphasis". "Excuse me. Excuse me. You do watch the Olympic Games, I take it? And you do realise that it was the Greeks who invented the Olympic Games?" She continues on to mention that Jeanette's Jacuzzi was invented by the Greeks, and then finally she builds up to say, "And it was the Greeks, I'll have you know, - who were responsible for the most important invention of all - the wheel!" Undoubtedly, Shirley had put forward her dignity to defend Greece and to disclose the English holidaymakers for their wrongdoings.
