Patrick Clarke, History and Politics at St Peter's College
On Ann and Arthur
In an essay of February 1949 entitled ‘Tragedy and the Common Man’, the American playwright Arthur Miller argued that “the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were”. Miller wrote the essay just over a year after the opening of Death of a Salesman on Broadway, a play in which he used the dramatic form of tragedy to explore the demise of the archetypal post-WWII American ‘common man’ through the play’s protagonist, Willy Loman. The core of Miller’s argument in the 1949 essay is that the sense of tragedy is evoked in an audience when they see a character do anything, “if need be, to secure one thing – his sense of personal dignity”. An audience is shaken only when, according to Miller, they have to watch the dignity of a character be repeatedly wounded despite the heroic attempts of that character to fight back against the onslaught. For Miller, this spectacle is enlightening in how it reveals “man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself justly”.
If only Miller, in his final years (he died in 2005), watched The Weakest Link. Many of us, I am sure, were shocked by the footage from the well-known Noughties show that began to circulate about a month ago. It showed the host, Anne Robinson, eviscerate a contestant, Ann, in front of an audience which usually numbered between one and two million from week-to-week, simply because she was a single mother and she was poor. The responses varied, from calls (as yet unheeded) for the offer made to Robinson of hosting Countdown to be withdrawn, to Jason Okundaye’s article in Tribune, ‘The Blair Show’, which argues that The Weakest Link was one of many television shows that grew up under the Blair government precisely because their portrayal of the undeserving poor chimed with the New Labour view.
Miller is not famed for his presentation of women but, personally, it was Miller who helped me understand my own gut response to the clip. I believe that Miller’s ideas enlighten all of us on the left, regarding one of the fundamentals of our political mission: in fighting for the disadvantaged, we are fighting for their dignity, as well as their material well-being. Here’s the opening exchange between contestant and host:
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Ann (contestant): I’m a full-time single mum to three boys… Anne Robinson: Three great boys? Ann: Three great boys, yep… Anne Robinson: So how many ASBOs? Ann: Pardon me, what, sorry? Anne Robinson: ASBOs? Ann: Can you clarify that please, erm, nerves have taken over… Anne Robinson: Have they? Ann: Yeah, haha… Anne Robinson: How many of your three boys have got tags, on their ankles? Ann: Oh, erm, well none
