The Balcony | Society as a Brothel: Genet's Satire in The Balcony
In this excerpt from ‘‘Society as a Brothel: Genet’s Satire in ‘The Balcony,’’’ Bermel explores the implementation of imagination to portray satire.
Genet’s plays, like Pirandello’s, have become a treasure house for the rococo critical imagination. As the visitor basks in the heady atmosphere—the mirrors, the screens, masks, grandiose costumes and cothurni, the role-playing, verbal efflorescence, and paradoxes—he burbles about the undecipherable nature of levels, dimensions, contexts, multiple images, loci, ritualism, and infinities of reflections. . . .
Genet takes for granted [in The Balcony the] confusion between sexual and social obsessions. In the brothel’s studios the devotees abandon themselves...
[The entire page is 2670 words long]
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