MASSCULT AND MIDCULT
599
Wilder has here made the final statement of the midbrows'
nostalgia for small-town life, as Norman Rockwell has done it
for the lowbrows in"his
Post
covers.
Our :Town's
combination
of quaintness, earthiness, humor, pathos and sublimity (all
mild) is precisely Rockwell's, and the situations are curiously
alike: puppy lovers at the soda fountain, wives gossipping over
the back fence, decent little funerals under the pines, country
editor, family doctor, high school baseball hero, all running in
their well-worn grooves. What gives the play class, raising it
into Midcult, are the imaginary props and sets and the inter–
locutory stage manager, devices Mr. Wilder got from the
Chinese theater (he always gets them from somewhere). Brecht
used similar devices to get his "alienation effect," to keep the
audience from being hypnotized by the stage illusion-an
original and hence shocking idea. But Mr. Wilder has nothing
artistically subversive in mind; on the contrary,
Our Town
is
as hypnotic, in the usual theatrical sense, as
East Lynne.
The
stage manager is its heart, and he is such a nice, pipe-puffing,
crack.er-barrel philosopher-pungent yet broadminded-that
only
.a
highbrow can resist his spell (or, of course, a lowbrow).
He comments on the local cemetery:
This is certainly an important part of Grover's Corners. It's
on a hilltop-a windy hilltop-lots of sky, lots ·of clouds--'Often
10ts of sun and moon and stars. . .. Yes, beautiful spot up here.
Mountain laurel and Ii-lacks. . .. Over there are the old stones
~1670,
1680. Strong-minded people that come a long way t? be
independent. Summer people walk around there laughing at the
funny words on the tombstones. It don't do any harm.... Over
there are some Civil War veterans. Iron flags on their graves. New
Hampshire boys ... had a notion that the Union ought to
be
kept together, though they'd never seen more than fifty miles of
it. All . they knew was the name, folks-the United States of
America. And they went and died about it.... Yes, an awful lot
of sorrow has sort of quieted down up here..
