從恐懼到笑：巴羅的《步步驚笑》 - 政大學術集成

全文

(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士論文. 指導教授：姜翠芬先生 Advisor：Dr. Jiang Tsui-fen. 政治大從恐懼到笑：巴羅的《步步驚笑》立 ‧. ‧ 國. 學. From Fear to Laughter: Patrick Barlow’s The 39 Steps. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 研究生：蔡坦欣 Name: Tsai Tan-Hsin 中華民國 108 年 12 月 December 2019. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(2) From Fear to Laughter: Patrick Barlow’s The 39 Steps. A Master Thesis Presented to Department of English National Chengchi University. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of. ‧. Master of Arts. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. by Tsai Tan-Hsin December 2019. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(3) Acknowledgement The path I am taking is an endless one. Boring as it may be, I believe everything I encounter will become, or even has become, a part of me. After all these years studying as an English major, I can finally say that I am actually better than I was. Thanks to the encouragement of Professor Chen I-u and Professor Guy Matthew Redmer at Tamkang University, I did not retreat from taking up the path of research. With the training of Professor Kuo Tsi-tzong, I have acquired great translating ability that facilitates my conveying of ideas. Being trained by Mr. Ted Partington at National Taiwan University, I am now more confident in my ability to write.. 政治大. My friends deserve my wholehearted gratitude. To my great TA partner, Su Yu-. 立. wen, thank you for your sincerest concern and prayers. I hope your path of academia. ‧ 國. 學. will treat you well. To Cheng Ming-fang, thank you for your accompaniment throughout this three-and-a-half-year torment; You have always been a role model to. ‧. me. To Hu Chia-wei, thank you for standing beside me in most of the courses I took.. y. Nat. sit. To Huang Yen-hao, thank you for your suggestions for my thesis. To Hsu Wei-Han,. n. al. er. io. thank you for preparing the refreshment for my oral defense and all your assistance in. i n U. v. our TA work. To Tseng Hui-yun, thank you for your encouragement (if you still. Ch. engchi. remember). To my friends, Tseng Ya-chi, Yi Hsuan-wen, Wu Chu-yin, and Lin Yuchun, your presence and words have always been comforting and supporting. I hope you are all doing well and will be better in the future. To all my students in the course Western Literary Classics and Humanistic Traditions, Between Humans and Machines: Technology Trends and Application Ethics and Read the World through Literature, thank you for tolerating me when I was not ready to be your TA and withstanding my ill-prepared teaching. I bid you all good luck and farewell. For the accomplishment of this thesis, I would like to thank Professor Lin Chihsin for giving me the chance to be your teaching assistant in your course Western iii. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(4) Literary Classics and Humanistic Traditions for three terms. This job contributes greatly to my skills of teaching, writing as well as literary analysis. I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to Professor Hsu Li-hsin. Not only does your warmest caring support me throughout these years, but your allowing me to become the editorial assistant of Wenshan Review also gives me a great chance to see how professional research looks like. I also appreciate dearly the suggestions given by the committee members of my proposal defense, Professor Chao Shun-liang and Professor Chen Yin-i, and the committee members of my final defense, Professor. 政治大 my advisor, Professor Jiang Tsui-fen. Your extremely harsh comments on my writing 立 Brian David Philips and Professor Shih Yi-chin. I am grateful for the instruction of. keep me vigilant at all times. Most importantly, I want to thank my parents and. ‧ 國. 學. brother for standing alongside me throughout all these years, providing me with. ‧. everything I need, and supporting my decision without discouraging me.. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. iv. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(5) 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文提要論文名稱：從恐懼到笑：巴羅的《步步驚笑》指導教授：姜翠芬教授研究生：蔡坦欣論文提要內容：. 政治大濫且公式化地使用懸疑、驚悚，甚至看似毫不相關的戀愛元素時，一個犯罪小立. 犯罪小說是一個以恐懼情緒為核心的大眾文學子文類。在當代犯罪小說氾. 說的文學傳統逐漸成形。當這個文類的公式化情節、角色逐漸使觀者感到無. ‧ 國. 學. 趣，希求進行批判和重構的作者開始了諧擬的風潮。這些作者於模仿、諷刺犯. ‧. 罪文學之時，將令人害怕的氣氛轉為嘻笑，也凸顯出恐懼和笑之間的微妙關. y. Nat. 係。恐懼和笑之間的關係已經眾多科學家及哲學家探討。這些探索者包括米哈. er. io. sit. 伊爾．巴赫金 (Mikhail Bakhtin)以及約翰．莫瑞爾 (John Morreall)。然而，在這些探索中，多半的研究都專注於探討恐懼情緒是如何被化解並轉變成笑，而忽. al. n. v i n 略了恐懼亦可作為笑料。本論文透過分析派卻克．巴羅的喜劇《步步驚笑》，主 Ch engchi U 張它以陳腔濫調情節、刻板印象角色以及後設劇場手法，諧擬犯罪文學的傳. 統，將步肯的小說《第三十九階》及希區考克的電影《國防大機密》中的恐懼轉化為笑聲，並樹立喜劇美學「嘉年華劇」。. v. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(6) Abstract The popular modern literary subgenre, crime fiction, is a genre of fear as its core. When contemporary crime fictions have overly and formulaically used suspense, shock, and even love elements, a convention of crime fiction comes into being. As viewers become dissatisfied with formulaic plots and character designs of crime fiction, the writers, hoping to criticize and reform this genre, begin a trend of parody. These writers, imitating and mocking crime literature, transform the frightening atmosphere to a joyful one, and highlight the subtle connection between fear and. 政治大 scientists and philosophers, including Mikhail Bakhtin and John Morreall. However, 立 laughter. The connection between fear and laughter has been investigated by many. among these investigations, most of them concentrate on how fear is relieved into. ‧ 國. 學. laughter and neglect the fact that an issue of laughing with fear exists. With the. ‧. analysis of Patrick Barlow’s comedy The 39 Steps, this thesis argues that through the. y. Nat. display of trite plot patterns, the exaggerated portrayal of stereotypical characters as. er. io. sit. well as the use of metatheatrics, this play parodies the conventions of crime fiction, channels the fear in Buchan’s novel The Thirty-Nine Steps and Alfred Hitchcock’s. al. n. v i n C h and establishes movie The 39 Steps toward laughter, a poetics of carnival thriller. engchi U. vi. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(7) Table of Contents. Acknowledgement.......................................................................................................iii Chinese Abstract............................................................................................................v. 政治大. English Abstract...........................................................................................................vi. 立. Chapter One. Introduction.............................................................................................1. ‧ 國. 學. Chapter Two. Parody in The 39 Steps.........................................................................15. ‧. Chapter Three. From Fear to Laughter........................................................................36. Nat. io. sit. y. Chapter Four. Conclusion............................................................................................51. n. al. er. Works Cited.................................................................................................................54. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. vii. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(8) Chapter One Introduction Aristotle, proposing a standard for literary criticism in his Poetics, argues that fine literature should be capable of arousing emotion such as pity and fear (61). Experiencing such emotion, spectators are expected to achieve the state of catharsis. Preferring tragedy over comedy,1 Aristotle makes perhaps the first distinction between high and low literature. With such an idea as beginning, scholars of western literature have undergone countless debates on the functions and values of literature.. 政治大 glorify high literature, in which readers are able to identify complex themes, hidden 立. Today, even in an era when different thoughts are equally valued, most scholars still. meanings, complicated characters, and deep philosophical issues. Thus, those publicly. ‧ 國. 學. accepted, attractive and entertaining works of popular literature are considered. ‧. inferior because of their formulaic plot patterns and relatively plainer characters.. y. Nat. Benefited from the effort of Leslie A. Fiedler, Andreas Hussyen, Umberto Eco. er. io. sit. and many other critics, popular literature, in which the emotional element becomes one of the keys to evaluation, has gained the attention of literary scholars since the. al. n. v i n C hfiction, with the exciting last century. In this field, crime plot design, charismatic engchi U. protagonists and romantic2 episodes, has almost always been favored by readers. Due to the success of William Godwin, Edgar Allen Poe, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a golden age of crime fiction was founded (Rzepka 4), inspiring more famous writers such as Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie. As the production of such an era, a convention of crime fiction came into being. When the charm of Doyle’s Holmes stories spread across the world, they become the In Poetics, Aristotle argues that comedy “aims at representing men as worse, tragedy as better than in actual life” (52). By saying it represents men “as better,” Aristotle elevates the place of tragedy when, to him, comedy can only represent men “as worse” (52). 2 When this term has multiple meaning, I am referring to the literary plots that are “[d]esirous of or wanting love and romance” as defined in Oxford English Dictionary (“Romantic”). 1. 1. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(9) most influential predecessors of crime fiction in terms of the design of investigation plots and characters (Worthington 26). Apart from the numerous adaptations of Holmes stories, readers can also easily discover the plot, the investigation techniques as well as the image of Holmes in other crime fiction investigators of later times such as Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Maurice Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin. With the high degree of resemblance in these plots and characters, a convention of crime fiction reveals itself. Since the 1960s, with the fact that the status of popular literature has been. 政治大 century, crime fiction parody can also be found in films. Good examples are the 立. elevated, a trend of crime fiction parody has been developed. Since the twenty-first. cartoon series Pink Panther (1969-2011) by Blake Edwards, the movie Zoolander. ‧ 國. 學. (2001) by Ben Stiller and Johnny English (2003) starring “Mr. Bean.” These works,. ‧. featuring incapable detectives and spies that usually accomplish their missions by. y. Nat. luck instead of intelligence and skills, intrigue laughter from the viewers. The parody. horrific scenarios, replacing the tremor of fear with laughter.. al. er. io. sit. of original crime fiction relieves the negative emotion resulted from nervous and. n. v i n C h Barlow, havingUabsorbed the nutrients of In 2005, British playwright, Patrick engchi 3. this trend, created a stage production of The 39 Steps.4 Barlow’s The 39 Steps is a comedy adapted from Scottish novelist John Buchan’s5 1915 novel and British. Born in 1947, Patrick Barlow has been one of the most popular comedy playwrights in the UK. He has been famous for his two-men performance group National Theatre of Brent whose minimalist theatrics later becomes one of the features of his creations. After his The 39 Steps has been awarded with one Lawrence Oliver Award in 2007, two Tony awards, Two Drama Desks Awards in 2008 (Barlow), he goes on to produce two more comedic adaptations: Charles Dickins’ A Christmas Carol (2015) and General Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur (2017). 4 The title, “The 39 Steps,” originally refers to the location where the villains are hiding in John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps. Later in Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptation, “The 39 Steps” becomes the name of the crime syndicate that seeks to steal valuable information from England. 5 John Buchan (1875-1940) was a novelist known for his best-seller The Thirty-Nine Steps and the sequential works of Richard Hannay’s adventure. Other than this identity, he was also a journalist, historian, soldier and governor general of Canada. He has been considered one of the pioneers of spy fictions when his works predates most of the famous espionage novels such as Ian Fleming’s and Robert Ludlum’s. 3. 2. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(10) director Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 movie under the same name. Buchan’s The ThirtyNine Steps is one of the classical precursors of espionage novels and twentiethcentury crime fiction. Later, keeping only the name of the main character, Richard Hannay, as well as the fundamental themes such as order, identity, and relationship (Yacowar 147), Hitchcock created a movie The 39 Steps that became one of his most well-known works. After more than half a century, taking the original concept from Simon Corble and Nobby Dimond,6 Barlow retained Hitchcock’s synopses,7 altered some of the dialogues written by Ian Hay, and transformed the thriller8 into a. 政治大 exaggerated portrayal of stereotypical characters as well as the use of metatheatrics, 立 comedy. This thesis argues that through the display of trite plot patterns, the. Patrick Barlow’s The 39 Steps parodies the conventions of crime fiction, channels the. ‧ 國. 學. fear in Buchan’s novel The Thirty-Nine Steps and Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The 39. ‧. Steps toward laughter and establishes a poetics of carnival thriller.. y. Nat. Barlow’s The 39 Steps is a play of two acts and thirty-three scenes. Act One. er. io. sit. begins with Richard Hannay’s self-introduction and immediately changes to Mr. Memory’s show where a mysterious lady asks Hannay to take her back to his place.. al. n. v i n C h lady, AnnabellaUSchmidt, tells him about a story of At Hannay’s place, the mysterious engchi espionage, a foreign spy agency called The Thirty-Nine Steps and a villain whose left small finger misses a joint. Later that night, Annabella is murdered. Knowing he has become the prime suspect of this murder, Hannay immediately follows the clue—a name of the location, Alt Na Schellach—to track down the criminals and prove his It is noted in Barlow’s script and many secondary resources that the original concept of the fourperformer cast is produced by Corble and Dimond. 7 The screenplay of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps is a work of cooperation by Hitchcock and French playwright, Charles Bennett. 8 The genre, “thriller,” in A Glossary to Literary Terms, is characterized under “detective story,” specifying the fictions that feature “a rapid sequence of sensational events,” including “hairbreadth escapes of a protagonist from relentless and terrifying pursuit by sinister enemies” (Abrams 84). Nowadays, it is most often used to describe the popular writings with “formulaic plot and thin characterization” (85). Buchan’s term “shocker” is a synonym for “thriller” in most of the research on Buchan’s novels. 6. 3. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(11) innocence. On the train, Hannay meets a woman named Pamela when the police are looking for him. In order to persuade Pamela to help him, Hannay explains the situation to her. Pamela, finding his spy story hard to believe, exposes him to the police, which forces Hannay to start running again. After several episodes of pursuit and escape, Hannay finally arrives at Alt Na Shellach and meets Professor Jordan. In the meeting with Professor Jordan, Hannay discovers that the respected professor is the leader of the foreign spies and is shot by the professor. The shot concludes Act One. At the beginning of Act Two, Hannay appears in the sheriff’s office, trying to. 政治大 a follower of the Professor. With a handcuff on his wrist, Hannay escapes again. 立. convince the sheriff in arresting Professor Jordan. The sheriff, however, appears to be. When Hannay is blending into the crowd, he runs into Pamela once more. Episode. ‧ 國. 學. after episode, Pamela eventually believes in Hannay’s innocence and joins him to stop. ‧. the foreign spy from leaving the country with the stolen secret.. y. Nat. The original versions of The 39 Steps—Buchan’s novel and Hitchcock’s film—. er. io. sit. have been discussed by many scholars. Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps has been researched from both historical and psychoanalytic approaches with a focus on war. al. n. v i n Ctheh historical background and fear. Kate MacDonald, outlining of World War One, engchi U points out that John Buchan’s thriller is significantly influenced by the war (The. Fiction of John Buchan 10). Nathan Waddell extends the discussion about the wars by identifying the “cultural fear” of invasion reflected on the villains appearing as foreign spies in the novels. Calling this projection “paranoid imagination,” Waddell approaches Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps by arguing that the work is “an extension of the invasion novel tradition in which a model of masculinity derived from the imperial pioneer is offered as such a gesture of self-defense.” Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps has been investigated through the perspectives of cinema studies, gender, and materialism. The critic, Stuart Y. McDougal, from the 4. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(12) standpoint of cinema studies, notes that each scene in Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps revolves around elemental fear (235). Jocelyn Camp, highlighting the female elements which are absent in Buchan’s novel, states that the female characters in Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps distinguish the film from the novel and elevate its value. Toby Miller and Noel King, using Louis Pierre Althusser’s concept of ideology, discovers the ideological depiction of class and materialism in the film. Even though Barlow’s The 39 Steps has not been researched by many scholars, it has received more compliments than criticism. Since the premiere in London’s West. 政治大 both the audience and the critics. As an anonymous critic of York Press records, the 立 End, the comedic effect of this play has been received considerable applause from. preservation of tension of thriller in the comedy is considered as the chief success of. ‧ 國. 學. Barlow’s The 39 Steps (Review: The 39 Steps). Michael Billington, who regards the. ‧. play as “genuinely funny,” reports that this play arouses the sense of superiority. y. Nat. among the audience which “lies with us (the viewers) rather than with Buchan.” His. er. io. within the viewers.. sit. comment points out that this play elicits laughter by creating a sense of superiority. al. n. v i n C toh Broadway in 2008, After the play transferred Beatrix Hesse, with Linda engchi U. Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation, speculates that the use of familiar plots in The 39 Steps contributes to the success of adaptation (157). Centering on the use of metatheatricality, Daniel Frezza comments that Barlow’s The 39 Steps is a postmodernist work that “simulates a reality” and “comments on this simulation” (9). Emphasizing the “playfulness” of metatheatrical devices, Liu Yang (劉陽) asserts that Barlow’s The 39 Steps turns the classical, suspenseful thriller into humorous, innovative comedy by setting Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps as a game in various aspects. Eve Luddington praises the play for it contains “verbal and visual brilliance,” “organic unity,” a complicated comedic style and “total control” of dangerous but 5. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(13) hilarious skills. As most of the critics approached this play with the theory of theatre performance and adaptation, the majority, seeing the transformation from thriller to comedy, do not seem to realize the importance of the fear-to-laughter process. The research regarding the transformation from thriller to comedy has been left uninvestigated. Therefore, this thesis takes Barlow’s The 39 Steps as an example, from the perspective of Russian theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of carnival, to demonstrate the intriguing issue of laughing with fear.. 政治大 laughter. Carnival is essentially an occasion that relieves the participants from fear. In 立 Bakhtin’s theory of carnival offers an in-depth understanding of parody and. Bakhtin’s Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics,9 carnival is “a pageant without footlight. ‧ 國. 學. and without a division into performers and spectators” (122). It is an occasion. ‧. suspending the “hierarchical structure and all forms of terror, reverence, piety, and. y. Nat. etiquette connected to it” (123). When “all forms of terror, reverence, piety, and. er. io. sit. etiquette connected to” the “hierarchical structure” inevitably result in the emotional stress of fear, the act of suspending them becomes a suspension of fear. Thus, carnival. al. n. v i n C h the boundary between can be understood as a form that obscures the performers and engchi U spectators and results in the suspension of fear.. The nature of carnival is a relativizing force against fear. Relativity is the core quality of carnival. For Bakhtin, everything in carnival including carnival itself is relative. According to Bakhtin: All the images of carnival are dualistic; they united within themselves both poles of change and crisis: birth and death (the image of pregnant death), blessing and curse (benedictory carnival curses which call simultaneously for. 9. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics is hereafter abbreviated as PDP. 6. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(14) death and rebirth), praise and abuse . . . Very characteristic for carnival thinking is the utilization of things in reverse: putting clothes on inside out (or wrong side out), trousers on the head, dishes in place of headgear, the use of household utensils as weapons, and so forth. (PDP 126) With “the utilization of things in reverse,” carnival intentionally violates the common knowledge and mainstream thinking. The images of carnival suggest a sense of incongruity that relativizes everything. With such nature, the participants are led to the comic joy of “relativity of everything” (PDP 125). This nature is presented in the. 政治大 As the physical appearance of carnival’s relativity, parody is one of the observed 立. form of parody.. phenomena of carnival. Parody in carnival is not a mere ironical imitation but a new. ‧ 國. 學. way of viewing an object. Moreover, when dealing with forms of grotesque realism,. ‧. Bakhtin contends that parody contains the power to “degrade, bring down to earth,. y. Nat. turn their subject into flesh” (Rabelais and His World 20).10 This characteristic of. er. io. sit. parody uncovers its most prominent technique: a change from high to low, lofty to despicable and the spiritual to the material. This technique, transferring the awareness. al. n. v i n of the viewers, relieves theirC scared emotion into laughter. hengchi U. In the most general understanding, parody is inseparable from the impression of. imitation and laughter. In A Glossary to Literary Terms, parody is categorized under high burlesque, referring to the literary genre that “imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work . . . and deflates the original by applying imitation to a lowly or comically inappropriate subject” (Abrams 38). The criteria of parody, in this definition, are concentrated on satirical imitation and subversive laughter. In the context of Bakhtin’s theory of carnival, parody is referring. 10. Rabelais and His World is hereafter abbreviated as RW. 7. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(15) to the comical imitation. Saying that parody is “organically alien” compared with the other genres, Bakhtin emphasizes that parody is not just “a naked rejection of the parodied object. Everything has its parody, that is, its laughing aspect” (PDP 127). In this sense, Bakhtin’s parody, although containing satirical and subversive power, focus more on pointing out the “laughing aspect” of the parodied object. Laughter, as a consequential effect of parody, is another aspect of carnival. By calling the laughter in carnival “ambivalent,” Bakhtin emphasizes the feature of carnivalesque relativity (PDP 126). Relieved from the tension of fear, carnival. 政治大 threatening attack. Declared by Bakhtin, laughter “is one of the essential forms of the 立 participants laugh like ancient human beings relieved from the alarm of live-. truth concerning history and man; it is a peculiar point of view relative to the world;. ‧ 國. 學. the world is seen anew, no less (and perhaps more) profoundly than when seen from. y. Nat. to the unveiling of true nature of human beings. Bakhtin contends,. ‧. the serious stand point” (RW 66). In other words, Bakhtin’s laughter in carnival leads. er. io. sit. Genetically [carnival laughter] is linked with the most ancient forms of ritual laughter. Ritual laughter was always directed toward something higher: the. al. n. v i n sun (the highest god), other C gods, the highest earthly h e n g c h i U authority were put to shame and ridiculed to force them to renew themselves. (PDP 126-127). Laughing at “something higher,” carnival put the authoritatively fearful image to shame. Ridiculing fearful objects through parody, the participants of carnival relieve themselves into laughter. Ambivalent laughter triggered by parody contains both a new perspective and reforming power against what is high, authoritative and fearful. From the help of parody and laughter, carnival leads to two main effects. The first and foremost effect is the obscuring of the boundary in hierarchy. This phenomenon, noted by Bakhtin, is called “free and familiar contact among people” (PDP 123). With the nature of relativity, carnival eliminates the distinction between 8. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(16) “the actor (character and narrator)” and “spectator (reader)” (Vice 149). Blurring the distinction between narrator and reader dismisses the spectator’s (reader’s) fear of the authority. The second effect is the effect of “carnivalization.” As noted by Bakhtin, carnival “has worked out an entire language of symbolic,” which means carnivalization, and the transposition of carnival into literature is called “carnivalization of literature” (PDP 122). The significance of this “carnivalization” is that it is capable of producing the effect of “formal, genre-shaping influence on literature” (PDP 123). Proposing a different perspective through parody and laughter,. 政治大 both formal and essential change of literature. 立. carnival reshapes the fearful text into a new genre. Therefore, carnival is capable of. Although Bakhtin’s concept of carnival is connected to fear, his fear is one kind. ‧ 國. 學. of fear more inclined toward awe; however, there are other kinds of fear frequently. ‧. found in literary works. Fear in Bakhtin’s concept of carnival is related to “all forms. y. Nat. of terror” that is connected to the “hierarchical structure” (PDP 123). In this context,. er. io. sit. Bakhtin’s fear is always toward “something higher” in the “hierarchical structure” (125-126). With an emphasis on hierarchy, Bakhtin’s fear is an awe of the authority.. al. n. v i n Ctightened Whereas Bakhtin’s fear is the resulted from the pressure of the U h e n gemotion i h c authority, the kind of fear ordinary people are more familiar with is a negative. emotion of “pain or uneasiness” aroused by “danger” or “evil” as defined in Oxford English Dictionary. Explicating the emotion of fear, John Morreall uses man’s experience encountering a menacing dog as an example.11 When a man encounters a threat from a menacing dog, fear is caused by a cognitive awareness. Threatened by the teeth of. Although in the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke has already explained fear in its relationship with human’s self-preservation in his book A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Morreall’s explanation of fear is quoted here for it contextually relates more specifically to the connection between fear and laughter. 11. 9. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(17) the dog, he thinks that the dog is going to attack him. As a consequence, he instinctively desires to flee from the dog or fight it. In such process, this awareness causes a biological “secretion of epinephrine” that results in the increasing of “the muscle tension, the release of blood sugar, faster heartbeat, shallower breathing” (Morreall, Comic 28). Sensing these changes, he is prepared to engage in a physical reaction of fight or flight for one’s survival. In other words, fear is bound with humans’ intuition of self-protection. Morreall contends that fear is an ancient emotion that is rooted in human’s survival instinct (Laughing 31). Moreover, Morreall further. 政治大 and mentally stimulates people to act (Laughing 38). In sum, this stress is the core 立. discusses fear by saying survival instinct is a stress or pressure that both physically. element of fear regardless of what triggers this emotion.. ‧ 國. 學. In his investigation of the relationship between fear and laughter, Morreall. ‧. proposes a theory of play mode to explain the issue of laughing with fear. As the. y. Nat. ethnologist Jan van Hoff observes, young people tend to laugh in the game of chasing. er. io. sit. (qtd. in Morreall, Comic 38). Instead of simply screaming, they are laughing in the tension of pursuit and escaping. Morreall argues that this emotion of fear is expressed. al. n. v i n in laughter because the participants C of the game are operating h e n g c h i U with a joking tone that implies the threat in this activity is not real (Comic 36). This concept of joking tone,. demonstrating how laughing with fear is possible, is known as the Play Mode Theory. When Bakhtin’s theory of carnival lacks specific explanation for the suspension of fear, Morreall’s theory of play mode becomes a supportive concept to explicate the issue of laughing with fear. The fear manifested in The 39 Steps is in fact an inherent element in crime fiction. As a popular modern subgenre of fiction that centralizes tension and excitement, crime fiction is most obvious with the fear of life-endangering crime in the plot. This fear is generated when the spectators are kept expecting a certain 10. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(18) outcome of the plot while the outcome is deliberately delayed. Thus, spectators are anxious to see if the bomb will eventually go off, if the hero can arrive in time to rescue his girlfriend who is caught by the enemy, or if the protagonist will be captured and killed by the villains. This deferral of the outcome leads to the effect of suspense and fear toward uncertainty. As an adaptation of suspense thriller, Patrick Barlow’s The 39 Steps utilizes the stress of fear. The fear in Barlow’s The 39 Steps is an essential element from its two source materials. Buchan, undergoing World War One, constantly reveals his concern. 政治大 Preface 4). As a soldier and political statesman, Buchan develops a fear rooted in his 立 about the war, anarchy, and the fragility of civilization in his works (MacDonald,. patriotic concern that the harmony of western world may be destroyed easily by. ‧ 國. 學. chaos. Hitchcock, growing up in the time when fear of uncertainty became highly. ‧. contagious, often expresses a sense of nihilistic fear in his films (Hemmeter 67). His. y. Nat. The 39 Steps, produced between the periods of two World Wars, reflects a fear similar. er. io. sit. to Buchan’s by the lurking suspense throughout the film. Since both Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps and Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps are considered pioneers of spy. al. n. v i n thrillers, the investigation ofC this inherent fear can U h e n g c h i be extended to the genre of crime fiction as a whole.. To relieve this inherent fear in the lineage of The 39 Steps, Barlow intentionally applies the technique of parody in his The 39 Steps. This thesis analyzes this technique in three aspects: the display of trite plot, exaggerated portrayal of stereotypical character and metatheatrics. Firstly, Barlow’s The 39 Steps utilizes the formulaic plot design as comedic material. By incorporating an artificial, inappropriate and absurd arrangement of the formulaic plot in crime fiction, Barlow’s The 39 Steps ridicules the conventional plot development in crime literature. In this way, Barlow’s emphasis of inappropriateness and absurdity evokes echoes from the 11. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(19) spectators against the plot formula that have become trite. For example, in Act One, Scene Nine, Richard Hannay is being pursued by the policemen on the train that leaves him no escaping route. In order to avoid the police, he bursts into a carriage and kisses Pamela. Even though he is in danger, the nervous atmosphere is suddenly turned into a romantic one. The artificiality in this scene, highlighting the inappropriate timing along with the contradictory atmosphere which crime fiction and film often employ, incites laughter and relieves the tension. Besides parodying trite plot patterns of crime fictions, this play is intentionally. 政治大 Hannay becomes a flirting, charming hero like James Bond; Professor Jordan 立. designed with several stereotypes of crime fiction characters. In this play, Richard. becomes an evil maniac like Adolf Hitler, a figure that has become a source of evil. ‧ 國. 學. characters in many modern fictions; Annabella Schmit is remodeled into the femme. ‧. fatale, a character model that is frequently seen in modern crime fiction. These. y. Nat. characters, under deliberate exaggeration, bring the serious and fearful images down. er. io. sit. to earth with the emphasis of the “laughing aspect” of the character.. In addition, Barlow’s The 39 Steps adopts the style of metatheatre. Metatheatre is. al. n. v i n a popular form when it is applied toC comedy. Lionel Abel,U h e n g c h i coining the term. “metatheatre” in his 1963 book, Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form, explains this term as a reflection of comedy and tragedy in which the spectators can feel the joy and sympathy for the characters simultaneously (Tragedy 172). Selfconsciousness, being the center of this dramatic structure, is most often observed in the form of “a play within a play” and self-aware characters. Modern comedies including The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) (2011)12 and The. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) is a comedy written by Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield of Reduced Shakespeare Company. 12. 12. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(20) Play that Goes Wrong (2015)13 often present a metatheatrical dimension by the designs of accidental errors in mechanism or performance and self-conscious performers on the stage. In Barlow’s The 39 Steps, the accidental errors in the performance break down the illusion created by the text and relieve the spectators from the emotion of fear in Buchan’s and Hitchcock’s texts. Freed from the stressful emotion, the spectators experience a sense of relaxation. The comfort is expressed in the mood of humor in which the spectators laugh at the nerve-tightening plot. In so doing, this innovative. 政治大 familiar contact” between the spectators and the texts. Through the genre-shaping 立 play obscures the serious and fearful images and attains the Bakhtinian “free and. genre of comedy which I term as “carnival thriller.”. 學. ‧ 國. force of carnival, Barlow’s The 39 Steps carnivalizes the original text and shapes a. ‧. In “carnival thriller,” although the atmosphere is almost constantly nervous, the. y. Nat. tension causes the spectators to experience fear but express themselves with laughter.. er. io. sit. Barlow’s The 39 Steps is selected to explain the idea of carnival thriller owing to the fact that it is a creation adapted specifically from the works that are designed to shock. al. n. v i n C h an atmospheric and terrify. When this play highlights shift from fear to laughter, engchi U. Barlow’s The 39 Steps establishes a poetics. Through analyzing the parody and the fear-to-laughter transformation in Barlow’s The 39 Steps, this thesis argues that this play parodies the conventions of crime fiction, channels the fear in Buchan’s novel The Thirty-Nine Steps and Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The 39 Steps toward laughter and establishes a poetics of carnival thriller. This thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter One is the introductory chapter. Chapter Two analyzes the play as a parody by comparing Barlow’s The 39 Steps with. The Play that Goes Wrong is a comedy created by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields of Mischief Theatre. 13. 13. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(21) Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps and Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. I investigate the parody against the convention of crime fiction by breaking down the humorous parts in Barlow’s The 39 Steps and identifying the trite plot patterns, stereotypical characters as well as the metatheatrics. Chapter Three analyzes the genre-shaping force of the fear-to-laughter transformation. I utilize Bakhtin’s theory of carnival to the exploration of the innovative transformation displayed in this play, which establishes itself as a poetics of comedy. The final chapter is the concluding chapter of this thesis.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 14. i n U. v. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(22) Chapter Two Parody in The 39 Steps For Bakhtin, parody is most significant with its subversive power. Saying “[e]verything has its parody, that is, its laughing aspect” (PDP 127), Bakhtin considers parody a technique that is most prominent in pointing out the incongruous aspect of the parodied object. As mentioned in the previous chapter, parody consists of two elements: imitation and laughter. More specifically, parody incites laughter with imitation. The technique of parody usually involves exaggerating or reversing. 政治大 the imitated object is the conventions of crime fictions. Intriguingly, only a few 立. certain features of the imitated object. In the case of Patrick Barlow’s The 39 Steps,. people have used the term “parody” to describe Barlow’s The 39 Steps. Billington. ‧ 國. 學. describes the play as a “send-up”, which is a colloquial term used to describe “[a]n act. ‧. of mocking and teasing” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (“Send-up”).. y. Nat. Don Aucoin, a theatre critic at the Boston Globe, calls the play a “slapstick farce.”. er. io. sit. Ben Brantley, in two of his reviews, highlights the playfulness in this play and describes it as a “farce” and “spoof.” While both “slapstick” and “farce” are. al. n. v i n commonly used to describe C comedy that is designed h e n g c h i Uto elicit laughter (“Slapstick”;. “Farce”), “spoof” refers not only to game-like quality but also the act of satirizing of a particular genre (“Spoof”). Although such comments by critics do not use the word “parody,” they point out the parodic nature in Barlow’s The 39 Steps. Barlow calls this play a “pastiche” (qtd. in Ihler 7), indicating his sarcastic intention. However, Barlow seems to have the intention of satirizing neither John Buchan’s The ThirtyNine Steps nor Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps but the conventions of crime fiction. The conventions of crime fiction have an immense influence on the genre of crime fiction. A convention is constructed when specific plot patterns or character prototypes occur frequently in works of a given genre. It is not only a mark that 15. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(23) categorizes particular works under certain genre; it is also a result of the viewer’s selection. John G. Cawelti contends that the conventions of popular literature consist of formulas, including “favorite plots, stereotyped characters, accepted ideas, commonly known metaphors” and other elements that the public have taken for granted (71). Using westerns as example to explicate the concept of formula, Cawelti asserts that they “must have a certain kind of setting, a particular cast of characters, and follow a limited number of lines of action” (75). Similarly, the crime fiction genre also has accumulated fixed sets of plot arrangements and characters as its formula.. 政治大 However, although viewers enjoy particular formulas, the formulas cease to be 立. Formulas forming conventions are those found to be favored by the public.. favorable when they are overused. Certain formulas such as a hero appearing as. ‧ 國. 學. prince charming to save the damsel in distress, an evil maniac inventing a diabolic. ‧. scheme to destroy peace, and a hero falling in love with the lady he rescued are easily. y. Nat. discovered in many works of crime fiction. This chapter argues that Barlow’s The 39. er. io. sit. Steps parodies the conventions of crime fiction by applying the trite plot patterns, stereotypical characters of crime fiction, and metatheatrics to Buchan’s The Thirty-. n. al. Ch. Nine Steps and Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps.. engchi. i n U. v. The trite plot pattern of crime fiction is a defining feature of the genre. By applying it to the original plots of Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps and Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, Barlow parodies the trite plot pattern in crime fiction, which is designed specifically to build a suspenseful and romantic atmosphere. Suspenseful plot patterns are one of the defining elements of crime fiction works (Simon 2). In most thrillers, the suspenseful plot is the major factor that contributes to the readers’ emotional stress. Suspenseful plot patterns immerse readers in the anxiety of the deferred outcome. Readers cannot relax until the outcome has been revealed. Among writers of thrillers, Buchan and Hitchcock can be taken as the pioneers of the suspense novel 16. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(24) and film respectively, as they developed an iconic formula for suspense. As such, Buchan is known for introducing the suspense formulas later established as part of the foundation of thrillers. He utilizes such plot elements as murder, the so-called “wrong man” narrative, and the accidental hero to create a general suspense formula in his The Thirty-Nine Steps (Palmer 89-90). Although the invention of this formula may not be exclusively attributed to him, Buchan was a pioneer of the use of such plot arrangements in the eyes of experts on Buchan such as Macdonald and Waddell. Declaring himself greatly influenced by Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps (Boyd. 政治大 suspense to the world with his The 39 Steps (Palmer 90; Glancy 14). Maximizing the 立 and Palmer 7), Hitchcock inherits Buchan’s formula and introduces his own style of. viewer’s anxiety of a lurking threat, Hitchcock often uses a plot in which the. ‧ 國. 學. protagonist is under the menacing gaze of the villain in the dark. In such a plot. ‧. pattern, any small event may be caused by the villain. In his The 39 Steps, when. y. Nat. Hannay brings Annabella back to his apartment, the phone rings shortly after their. er. io. sit. arrival. Under heightened emotion, Annabella asks Hannay not to pick it up. After a while, the phone stops ringing. The viewers’ question of what this phone call might. al. n. v i n C hof suspense. Such U entail enhances the atmosphere examples of suspense formula can engchi be found in other Hitchcock movies such as North by Northwest, Rear Window, and Psycho. After Hitchcock’s utilization, this plot pattern has become one of the most common plot devices in crime fiction. Since commercial novels and movies have been mass-produced with such a formula, this plot pattern has become trite. Parodying this trite plot pattern, Barlow in his The 39 Steps imitates the scene with the suspenseful atmosphere disturbed by an unfitting sound effect. When this plot pattern is designed for the atmosphere of suspense, the unfitting sound effect breaks the suspenseful atmosphere with absurdity. In Act One, Scene Three, like Hitchcock’s version, Hannay brings Annabella back to his apartment after the chaos 17. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(25) in the music hall. Shortly after they talk, the phone rings, (Telephone rings.) HANNAY. Hello. There’s the telephone. ANNABELLA. Don’t answer it, please! HANNAY. Why not? ANNABELLA. Because I think it is for me. (HANNAY picks up the phone. It goes on ringing. An awkward moment for the actors.). 政治大 (HANNAY drops the phone on its cradle. The ringing continues then stops.) 立 ANNABELLA. Please don’t answer!!. (Barlow 17). ‧ 國. 學. The first time the sound effect breaks off, the suspenseful atmosphere in this scene. ‧. builds up when Annabella becomes emotionally hyperactive in response to the sound.. y. Nat. However, when Hannay, disbelieving Annabella, picks up the phone, the phone rings. er. io. sit. on. In a realistic play, the phone would stop ringing when the receiver is picked up. The audience might expect the phone call to bring in more complicated plot.. al. n. v i n C h this possibilityU However, the ringing-on phone eliminates and creates absurdity. This engchi sound effect, defying the logic of the plot, breaks the suspense. By breaking this. atmosphere with absurdity, this scene parodies the trite plot pattern that is designed to build up the suspense. Apart from the suspenseful plot pattern, the romantic plot pattern is also crucial to a crime fiction. In popular literature of almost every era, romantic plot patterns are nearly indispensable components. Take detective fiction as example. In Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes works, Holmes’ admiration for his female rival, Irene Adler, evokes the interest of readers despite the sparsity appearance in the works. Two of the most popular adaptations of Doyle’s Holmes stories have taken advantage of the readers’ 18. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(26) interest in these two characters. One is a pair of movies featuring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes in 2009 and 2011; another is the television series, Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. In these adaptations, the romantic relationship between Holmes and Adler has been significantly elaborated. Take spy genre as another example. In almost all the novels, comic books and movies of James Bond, the plot pattern of Bond falling in love with the female character that he rescues is the most iconic of this series. With such facts, no matter how little a portion romantic plot patterns occupy in crime literature, including detective fiction and the spy genre, they. 政治大 Nevertheless, a romantic plot pattern becomes trite when the signposting of the 立. seem to fascinate viewers.. romantic plot too frequently and artificially leads to an anticipatable result. When a. ‧ 國. 學. general romantic formula is coined as “male protagonist plus female protagonist. ‧. equals lovers,” a pattern of romantic plot development reveals itself to the viewers.. y. Nat. Take one of the James Bond movies, Die Another Day (2002), as an example. When. er. io. sit. Bond arrives in Cuba to pursue the villain who escaped his apprehension in North Korea, Bond meets the female protagonist, Jinx, at the beach. As soon as Bond sees. al. n. v i n Jinx appearing from the sea,C the camera focuses onUthe impressive figure of Jinx and hengchi. the romantic soundtrack begins (00:36:03–00:36:07). These two presentations signify that Bond is attracted to Jinx and that they undoubtedly have a love story ahead to be developed. Even though it may be reasonable to take the plot in such a direction, the formula of plot development has been so commonly grasped that when viewers see the exact outcome of a man falling in love with the woman as they have predicted, they are unsurprised, unentertained, and unsatisfied. Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, lacking any major female character, can barely be related to the romantic genre. The romantic plot is one of the major differences between Buchan’s and Hitchcock’s versions. Hitchcock’s adaptation, adding two 19. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(27) major female characters to Buchan’s basic story structure, builds romantic plots that are one of most eye-catching features in the movie. Barlow’s The 39 Steps parodies the trite romantic plot of crime literature by applying this pattern to the iconic plots of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. In Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, Hannay takes the train to Scotland to prove his innocence when he is mistaken for the murderer of Annabella. On the train to Scotland, Hannay is cornered by two policemen, one from either end of the coach. In desperation, Hannay breaks into one of the compartments, where Pamela is sitting. As the policemen, checking one compartment after another,. 政治大 the lips to cover his face, thereby avoiding apprehension. 立. approach the one Hannay is taking shelter in, Hannay hugs Pamela and kisses her on. In Act One, Scene Nine, of Barlow’s The 39 Steps, the plot development of this. ‧ 國. 學. episode is almost the same as that in Hitchcock’s version. However, Barlow alters the. ‧. original atmosphere by modifying the sound effects. In this scene, when Hannay. y. Nat. breaks into the compartment, he pretends to be the romantic partner of Pamela:. er. io. sit. HANNAY. Darling! How lovely to see you!. (He kisses her passionately. She is too shocked to gasp.). n. al. (Romantic music.). Ch. engchi. i n U. v. (The two POLICEMEN meet at the door. Stare wide-eyed as HANNAY and PAMELA kiss.) (Barlow 34) Watching Hannay being almost captured by the policemen, the viewers sense that the atmosphere becomes nervous. However, the nervous atmosphere is immediately disrupted by romantic music. This romantic music, being unfitting for such an episode, breaks the nervous atmosphere. In this effect, such music exaggeratingly reminds the viewers of the commonly used romantic plot pattern of male and female protagonists falling in love with each other at first sight. Thus, this absurd presentation indicates and satirizes one of the trite plot patterns of romantic 20. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(28) atmosphere often occurring in crime movies. Apart from the trite romantic plot pattern of falling in love with the female protagonist at first sight, Barlow parodies another romantic plot pattern in his The 39 Steps, one that is not highlighted with a romantic atmosphere. Instead, the plot is designed to set the male and female protagonists in an enclosed space. Being in such a place, the two protagonists are very likely to develop an intimate relationship since close contact is inevitable. In Hitchcock’s original version, Hannay and Pamela escape from the hitmen disguised as police when they are handcuffed together. They. 政治大 each other, they can get only one room because they are still handcuffed together. 立. find themselves a hotel to rest in after escaping. Although they act irritably toward. Thus, Hannay and Pamela have no choice but to share an intimate space.. ‧ 國. 學. In Barlow’s The 39 Steps, this scene has been altered with illogical statements to. ‧. parody the trite plot pattern. By highlighting the logical incoherence of the statements,. y. Nat. Barlow parodies the artificiality of this plot pattern. In Act Two, Scene Twenty-Six,. er. io. sit. Hannay and Pamela visit the McGarrigle hotel when they have been handcuffed together. The hostess, Mrs. McGarrigle, enthusiastically invites them in:. al. n. v i n C You MRS MCGARRIGLE. be certain that at the McGarrigle Hotel a warm h ecan ngchi U McGarrigle welcome awaits ye.. HANNAY. Thank you. As I was – MRS MCGARRIGLE. Isn’t that right, Willie? MR MCGARRIGLE. Aye. HANNAY. Marvelous. Anyway – MRS MCGARRIGLE. Despite it being off-season. HANNAY. Yes. Um we’d like to stay the night if you could accommodate us. MRS MCGARRIGLE. Ach well! Let us see. Let us see. Let us see. (peers at book) 21. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(29) Well – we’ve just the one bed room left. With the – er – one bed in it. (She beams cheekily. Pamela freezes.) But ye’ll not be minding that? HANNAY. No no. Quite the reverse! (Barlow 81) Being “off-season,” the hotel is unlikely to have had only one room left. This illogical statement shows that this scene has been designed to set the male and female protagonists together in one enclosed space. Such an illogical statement renders the design of this scene artificial. Such artificiality draws the attention of the viewers. 政治大 protagonists in the same room for the development of their romantic relationship. 立 toward the commonly used trite plot pattern of setting the male and female. pattern that can be often found in modern crime fiction.. 學. ‧ 國. Highlighting this artificiality, Barlow parodies another kind of trite romantic plot. ‧. Other than the parody of trite plot patterns in Barlow’s The 39 Steps, the parody. y. Nat. of stereotypical characters is another parodic aspect of this play. When readers tend to. er. io. sit. have a fixed impression toward a certain kind of character, writers of crime fiction also incline to create characters using commonly accepted prototypes. As these kinds. al. n. v i n C hgradually become the of creation accumulate, the prototypes stereotypes. engchi U. 14. Barlow’s. The 39 Steps parodies the stereotypical characters of hero, villain, and femme fatale by degrading their images. In examining the source of twenty-first century fictional heroes of popular literature, we can almost always discover some inherited elements of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. These heroes, unlike the villains who are sabotaging peace,. In Oxford English Dictionary, the word “prototype” as a noun is defined as the “first or primary type of a person or thing” or “an original on which something is modeled or from which it is derived” (“Prototype”). The word “stereotype” is defined as a “preconceived and oversimplified idea of the characteristics which typify a person, situation” (“Stereotype”). Although “prototype” seems to be similar to “stereotype,” the former emphasizes being “primary” or “original” in usage, while the latter is used to describe an idea that is “preconceived,” “oversimplified,” and typifying. In other words, the word “stereotype” differs from “prototype” in its focus of the quality of bias, a more negative concept. 14. 22. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(30) are dedicated to protecting and restoring it by using their intelligence and physical ability. Furthermore, these heroes usually have overwhelming charisma that attracts their romantic partners and viewers. These elements, having special reference to Holmes and Bond, are easily connected to these two characters by viewers. Thus, when an investigator analyzing the crime scene with exceptionally detailed observation skills or a spy complementing outstanding ability in nearly every field with sexual charisma appear in a story, the viewers can easily associate them with these two characters.. 政治大 and Hitchcock’s Hannay, the character image is based on the best-known spy 立. In Barlow’s The 39 Steps, although the protagonist takes the name of Buchan’s. character, Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Fleming’s Bond has become a prototype for. ‧ 國. 學. almost every spy movie. Being criticized for being unrealistic and romanticized. ‧. (Britton 5), Bond has been woven into the spy’s identity. Although Bond is sexually. y. Nat. unrestrainable and often resorts to violence to overcome obstacles, his character is. er. io. sit. designed to exhibit patriotism and morality. That is to say, even if he enjoys the flirting with the dangerous women, he cannot ignore their evil actions that may be. al. n. v i n harmful to the nation or the C world. Furthermore, inU h e n g c h i spy movies such as Mission. Impossible and Bourne Identity,15 the protagonists are often branded as dangerous criminals by the national agencies that seek not only to apprehend but also to eliminate them. Regardless of the injustice they have suffered, the protagonists still dedicate themselves to the greater good of the national harmony. This tendency fortifies the portrayal of the protagonists as champions for justice. Buchan’s Hannay is a typical hero in this line of spy movie hero. In his combat Bourne Identity is a serial espionage thriller created by Robert Ludlum (1927–2001) in 1980. The novel introduces one of the most famous spy characters, Jason Bourne, to the world and earns Ludlum the reputation of “father of the international thriller.” The novel was adapted into a film starring Matt Damon in 2002. The film led to five sequels. The fifth installment, Jason Bourne, was produced and released in 2016. 15. 23. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(31) with the spy syndicate Black Stone, he strives to capture the foreign spies. Stopping the theft of critical information, Hannay concludes at the end of the novel: “I had done my best service, I think, before I put on khaki” (Buchan 149). Taking pride in his service to the country, Hannay is a typical patriot who equates the defense of the national interest with justice. Thus, Hannay’s action of fighting with the villainous spies with no regard for his own safety is also a sign of Hannay’s firm belief to his justice. Hitchcock leaves most of Hannay’s background information untold; however, his. 政治大 adapted from a work whose basic theme is good versus evil, with the hero being a 立. Hannay still demonstrates similar heroic characteristics to Buchan’s Hannay. Being. metropolitan gentleman rescuing a damsel in distress, Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps falls. ‧ 國. 學. into the genre of romance, in which the chivalric spirit plays a significant part in the. ‧. establishment of a heroic impression (Brill 90). Greatly influenced by Buchan,. y. Nat. Hitchcock displayed a conspicuous tendency of using a similar image of the hero for. er. io. sit. his protagonist in his The 39 Steps.. Unlike Hitchcock paying homage to his predecessor, Barlow degrades the heroic. al. n. v i n C h the characterUas immoral. This degraded image of Hitchcock’s Hannay by portraying engchi. image consists of two characteristic depictions: a lack of self-restraint and cheating. In Act One, Scene Four, Hannay is sleeping on the couch because Annabella is occupying the bedroom. In Hitchcock’s version, at midnight, Annabella walks out of the bedroom, wakes Hannay to tell him something, and eventually collapses upon Hannay, revealing a knife on her back. In Barlow’s version, Annabella walks out of the bedroom seductively, tempting Hannay to think that they are going to kiss. When they are about to kiss, Annabella falls and shows that she has been stabbed. In this scene, Annabella’s seductive walk toward Hannay is a common signal of a romantic scene. Although Hannay’s expecting a kiss from Annabella is a reasonable reaction to 24. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(32) this circumstance, such an action is a sign of desire-driven personality instead of a rational, controlling one. Another example of the degraded image of hero lies in Act One, Scene Five, of Barlow’s version where Hannay is trying to leave his flat and get rid of the monitoring spies after witnessing the death of Annabella. On his way out, Hannay meets the milkman carrying milk bottles. At first, Hannay attempts to convince the milkman to give him his cap and coat by paying him one pound and telling him the real reason: he is being pursued by the men hiding in the shadows. However, the. 政治大 Hannay has no choice but to lie to the milkman with a story in which Hannay is “led 立 milkman takes Hannay’s story as a fiction. To obtain the help he desperately needs,. on” by a beautiful woman into a trap and the two men are her accomplices. While the. ‧ 國. 學. truth is not accepted, the milkman easily accepts the fictional version, agreeing to give. ‧. Hannay his cap and coat:. y. Nat. MILKMAN. Cor blimey! I wouldn’t be in your shoes! ‘Ere have my cap and. er. io. sit. coat.. (takes off his cap and coat). n. al. Ch. HANNAY. Thank you.. engchi. i n U. v. (HANNAY puts on the cap and coat.) MILKMAN. Perfick! HANNAY. I say. (puts his hand in the pocket, gives him a note) Take a pound. MILKMAN. A pound! That’s very kind of you! HANNAY. (gives him another) Take two! MILKMAN. Two pounds! God bless yer guv! Leave the pony round the corner. You’ll do the same for me one day. 25. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(33) (HANNAY runs off. Exits. MILKMAN looks at the money. Looks at us.) Hang on! That’s outta my coat! That’s my money you just give me! Oi! Come back ’ere! Oi! (He chases after HANNAY. Exits) (Barlow 24) Breaking his promise by paying with the milkman’s money, Hannay is degraded by this cunning behavior to anything but hero. Since a hero is usually virtuous in a crime fiction, Hannay directly reverses the heroic image through his action of cheating.. 政治大 conventional crime fiction heroes by degrading the commonly acknowledged heroic 立 Through application of the desire-driven and cunning image, Barlow parodies. images with his version of Hannay.. ‧ 國. 學. Villains in the fictional world are usually the flip side of heroes. When heroes are. ‧. striving to maintain, restore, or protect the status of peace and order, villains seek to. y. Nat. undermine it. In Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, the villains are a group of spies who. er. io. sit. show substantial patriotism for their own country. Even though their operation jeopardizes world safety, the villains, having solid resolve for a patriotic cause, better. al. n. v i n C hfor a different purpose establish themselves as heroes striving rather than common engchi U. criminals who seek only to destroy. In Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, the villains’ agenda is to steal the design of the latest silent engine, which is crucial to British air defense. Professor Jordan in this film has a calm and civilized appearance and behavior. Although his goal is similar to the spies’ in Buchan’s version, Professor Jordan is devoid of any apparent enthusiasm. Lacking any detailed explanation of Professor Jordan’s criminal motivation, the film gives little information on his intention. Thus, Professor Jordan seems more evil than the spies in Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps. Hitchcock’s Professor Jordan is without a doubt the arch villain in The 39 Steps. When the Professor reveals to Hannay his true identity as the head of the spies and his 26. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(34) intent to kill Hannay by pointing a pistol at the trapped hero, his voice is elegantly calm. The same civil quality is found in his wife, who walks in and sees the situation, but still asks whether Hannay is going to stay, revealing no trace of terror. Their civilized appearance, therefore, is a sign of hypocrisy (Yacowar 150). This hypocrisy, revealing their cruelty, is conspicuous evidence of villainy. Crime fiction villains’ cruelty may be inherited. An extreme lack of humanity is directly linked to the idea of cruelty. A cursory examination of famous crime fiction villains such as Professor Moriarty in the stories of Sherlock Holmes, Joker in Bob. 政治大 shows that their intentions revolve around a unified concept: destroy the status quo 立. Kane’s Batman comic series, Auric Goldfinger in the James Bond movie and novel. associates them with evilness if nothing else.. 學. ‧ 國. and build a world order of their own. This concept of extreme mass destruction. ‧. The act of mass destruction leads to a very specific impression in the collective. y. Nat. memories of twentieth and twenty-first century people. One of the most famous. er. io. sit. events of mass destruction is the holocaust in World War II. This inhumane operation by Adolf Hitler resulted in a large number of deaths of Jewish civilians. Thus, both the. al. n. v i n C hhave become labelsUof insanity, inhumanity, as well name and image of Adolf Hitler engchi. as conceptual evil. Many war movies about WWII unavoidably have two features in common: replicating and caricaturizing Hitler’s inhumanity. Not only does this phenomenon indicate that people have recognized such characteristics as signifiers for villainy, but it also shows that Hitler has become a stereotype for villains. Professor Jordan in Barlow’s The 39 Steps parodies this stereotype of a villain in crime fiction. In Act One, Scene Eighteen, Hannay meets Professor Jordan in his study. Trusting Professor Jordan as his ally, Hannay tells him his goal of bringing the head of the criminals, who does not have the top-joint of his little finger, to justice. With elegance and sarcasm, Professor Jordan holds up his hand, showing his one27. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(35) joint-short little finger. Thereby revealing his true identity, Professor Jordan starts to convince Hannay to join him in his criminal operation. As the tension is heightened, Professor Jordan’s speech gradually evolves: PROFESSOR. That [crime syndicate] is the only one place you will find ‘love’ old chum. Where you really and truly belong. (We notice a German accent subtly emerging from the professor’s cultured British tones. HANNAY stares in horror as the truth starts to dawn.) Oh we will give you love, Hannay. And in return? You will love. 政治大 eternally by destiny itself!! Well old sport? What do you say? Will you 立 us!! The master race. On our great unstoppable march. Commanded. join us? Hannay?! (Barlow 57). ‧ 國. 學. The professor’s villainous image of Hitler is supported not only by his German accent. ‧. but also by such radical Nazi terminology as “love,” “master race”, and “march.”. y. Nat. Such terms, sloganized by radical political activists including Hitler’s Nazi Party,. er. io. sit. Stalin’s Soviet Party, and Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Chinese Communist Party, contemporarily signify a sense of catastrophic decline of humanity with a horrific. al. n. v i n C himitating the extreme historical reference. By exaggeratingly villains and by engchi U. associating them with Hitchcock’s Professor Jordan, Barlow parodies the stereotype of the crime fiction villain. The femme fatale in Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps is one of the most important features parodied by Barlow. In her discussion of the connection between Hitchcock’s and Barlow’s versions of The 39 Steps, the critic Beatrix Hesse indicated that Hitchcock’s Annabella Smith is a typical femme fatale (161). The term femme fatale refers to an “attractive and seductive woman,” especially one “who is likely to cause risk to or the downfall of anyone who becomes involved with her” (“Femme fatale”). Seductiveness and dangerousness, then, are the core elements of such a character. 28. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(36) Textbook examples of such a character include Irene Adler in Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia, the “Catwoman” in Bob Kane’s Batman, and James Bond’s female rivals and associates. The addition of a female role has been regarded as an ingenuous stroke by Hitchcock, since Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps obviously lacks a major female character. Nervous, paranoid, and terrified, Annabella in Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps introduces the first sense of suspense. Although she does not live long enough for character development, Annabella’s encounter with Hannay in the music hall, in. 政治大 relationship. The erotic impression, accompanied by the tension of being hunted, 立 which she asks Hannay to take her home, signals a possibility of a romantic. supports Annabella being presented as a femme fatale.. ‧ 國. 學. Barlow’s Annabella Schmidt degrades the serious image of this character by the. ‧. exaggerated imitation. In Hitchcock’s version, Annabella appears with a strong sense. y. Nat. of mystery and fear, and her image is serious. However, maintaining the. er. io. sit. mysteriousness of the character, Barlow’s Annabella Schmidt speaks with a heavy German accent that endows her image with the sense of menace (Barlow 16). In. al. n. v i n addition, Annabella SchmidtC exhibits seductiveness h e n g c h i Uin her movements. In doing so, Barlow exaggerates and distorts Hitchcock’s version of Annabella by combining it. with the stereotypical features of the femme fatale. Thus, Barlow’s Annabella does not only imitate Hitchcock’s 1935 blonde, she exaggeratingly replicates the character with behavioral symbols for dangerousness and seductiveness to parody the stereotype of the femme fatale in crime fiction. Whereas the dramatic form of metatheatre was first introduced by Lionel Abel in the 1960s, this form can be traced back to the play-within-the-play design in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. As one of the earliest and most well-known metatheatrical forms, the play-within-a-play design is utilized by modern dramatists such as Luigi 29. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(37) Pirandello and Samuel Beckett. Although the two dramatists do not always simply adopt the play-within-the-play, their theatrical style often introduces such a metatheatrical dimension. Summarized by Martin Puchner, modern metatheatre is usually presented by means of “accidents of machinery of the play,” “something go[ing] wrong” or “the play simply no longer progress[ing]” (18). Based on Puchner’s summary, metatheatrics can be distinguished into mechanical errors, performer’s mistakes, and looping plot development. Since metatheatrics involves “errors” and “mistakes,” it requires what is “correct” as a reference. With the new perspective. 政治大. emerging from what “goes wrong,” metatheatrics becomes an efficient device for parody.. 立. Stereotypical plots and characters are the components of crime fiction. ‧ 國. 學. conventions. Furthermore, they also contribute to the development of the plot. With. ‧. the core of creating errors, metatheatrics interrupts the plot development. Applying. y. Nat. metatheatrics to Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, Barlow parodies the crime fiction. er. io. sit. conventions in his version. Although the plot of Barlow’s version is almost identical to that of Hitchcock’s, Barlow applies three types of metatheatrics to three of the. n. al. Ch. scenes in Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps.. engchi. i n U. v. The first type of metatheatrics involves the use of mechanical error. In Act One, Scene Three, of Barlow’s The 39 Steps, the sound effect that appears at the wrong moment is mentioned. In this scene, when the phone in Hannay’s apartment rings, Annabella nervously stops him from answering it. Ignoring Annabella, Hannay picks up the phone. However, the sound effect of the phone ring continues. This awkward situation is worsened by the “actress” who plays Annabella, following the designed script, saying, “Please don’t answer” (Barlow 17). Breaking the suspenseful atmosphere, this malfunction of the stage effect disturbs the reasonable development of the plot and degrades the credibility of this play. Such presentation exposes the 30. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.

(38) viewers to the idea that what happens on the stage is an illusion and urges them to view the play from a more realistic perspective. The second type of metatheatrics is related to performers’ mistakes. Performers’ mistakes function similarly to the phone ring that should not appear after being picked up, which breaks the consistency of the logic and realism in the play. In Barlow’s The 39 Steps, a performer’s mistake is significantly metatheatrical. Abel emphasizes “selfconsciousness,” “self-awareness”, and “self-reflexivity” in metatheatre (Abel, Tragedy vi; Puchner 2); performer’s mistakes show such features by presenting. 政治大 Annabella stops Hannay from answering the phone, she tells him her story as an 立 performers not as characters but human beings. In Act One, Scene Three, after. “agent.” When Hannay shows his disbelief, she asks him to peer through the window. ‧ 國. 學. blind to see whether there are two men monitoring them beside the street lamp.. ‧. Hannay does what she asks. At this moment on the stage, when the actor of Hannay. y. Nat. peers through the blind, Clowns 1 and 2 appear beside the stage, wearing sinister. er. io. sit. trilbies and carrying a British lamp post. When Annabella nervously asks “Now do you belief me?” Hannay takes another peek and sees the two men showing up beside. al. n. v i n C h Hannay is convinced, the stage again. However, although after a few lines of engchi U. conversation, Hannay looks through the blind again. This time, the two Clowns show up with the street lamp beside the stage again, but their arrival is slightly delayed. Seeing this miss of timing, the performer of Hannay sighs impatiently (Barlow 1819). As the delay of the clowns’ arrival deviates from the original plot development, Hannay’s sighing is also not in the original plot development. With this sighing, the performer of Hannay in Barlow’s The 39 Steps shows that he is aware of the fact that he is only an actor in a performance. The third kind of metatheatrics in The 39 Steps is the looping plot development. Plainly speaking, it is a fixed set of lines and actions that proceeds with a recurring 31. DOI:10.6814/NCCU202000023.