On Susan Sontag’s Scripts From The Perspective Of "Power And Discourse"

Susan Sontag began to cut a figure in American literature in the 1960s.For more than half a century,she has become a well-known "star"writer,who,together with Simone Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt,has been crown with"the most important female intellectual in the contemporary western world".She has been writing all her life,covering a wide range of fields from essays and novels to dramas and films in which she has always adhered to her own cultural beliefs and made her own independent voice with unique perspectives and insights.The Sontag scholarship has gone through quite a long period both at home and abroad.At the beginning,scholars were attracted to her critical essays,while in recent years,the research heat on Sontag’s fictional works has been on the rise.As an important part,however,there are still many gaps in the study of Sontag’s scripts.Sontag had a lifelong passionate for drama and film and devoted much of her life to writing scripts that not only carried out the style of her fictional works,but also reflected her literary theory or aesthetic thoughts to some extent,which has a great research value.Throughout her career,Sontag totally wrote five scripts,most notable Alice in bed,Duet for Cannibals and Brother Carl.The thesis selected three representative scripts mentioned above as research subjects,from the perspective of "power and discourse" and through a close reading,to analyze the different power and discourse relations,the operation of power and the resistance to power presented in the scripts.Patriarchal power is one of the multiple"micro powers".In the play script Alice in bed Sontag creates a female character Alice who has been sick in bed for years,and expresses the oppression and resistance of women under the patriarchal society through her feminist discourse;The political power conflict is performed in the film script Duet for Cannibals,In a political game full of crisis,the power of discourse brings the manifestation of authority as well as the distortion of humanity;In the screenplay Brother Carl,the power-crushing society makes the traumatized people turn to be silent and even brings death,but "silence" at the same time as a unique form of discourse brings the final spiritual salvation.Power is all around.Power disciplines the discourses and behaviors,and discourse,in turn,constitutes power.Based on the above research,the thesis comes to the conclusion that Sontag pays attention to the marginalized groups under the patriarchal system or the hierarchical system in her script writing,reveals the struggle and conspiracy in the power society profoundly,but at the same time,she does not forget to offer spiritual comfort to the broken heart.Sontag,whose script writing embodies her keen cultural sensibility and deep humanistic concerns,is worthy of the title of"Conscience of the American Public".