Dinner as Drama, Party as Play

[DLaurent]

Peter Seller's The Party

 

[jenks]

Proust
Lots of Dance to a Music of Time

 

[william_kent]

A New Year's Eve special...



Dinner For One

The Little-Known British Comedy Famous in Germany

Apparently this is a staple of German TV New Year's Eve programming

Every year, on the last day of December, a black and white sketch is shown across Germany. The highly popular Dinner for One or Der 90. Geburtstag in German, has been broadcast since 1963, delighting viewers for over half a century. But the story of this cult classic is an unusual one – the original play and actors originated from the United Kingdom, yet almost nobody in Britain has heard of it.

The plot involves an old lady who insists that her butler impersonates the deceased friends she has invited

I couldn't get past the first minute - it looks awful

 

[william_kent]

there is a British stereotype that the Germans have no sense of humour

but on the basis of their love of "Dinner for One" I am inclined to disagree... they do, but it is just one that we British can not begin to understand.....

 

[sus]

Parlor Games - TV Tropes

Before Board Games, Card Games, Tabletop Games, Video Games, and Web Games came along, people just had their own persons to play games with guests. These are known as Parlor Games. In the past, these were used in fiction for the same purpose as …

tvtropes.org

 

[sus]

OK everyone's had a good go of listing random movies that are tangentially connected to theme. All well and fine, this is the way of the board.

But now we need to talk through the themes. We need to exercise our thinking caps. What are the tropes? Why are we attracted to those tropes? What do they say about the (real) world we inhabit?

 

[...]

OK everyone's had a good go of listing random movies that are tangentially connected to theme. All well and fine, this is the way of the board.

But now we need to talk through the themes. We need to exercise our thinking caps. What are the tropes? Why are we attracted to those tropes? What do they say about the (real) world we inhabit?

Well done Spendo, keep the plebs in line.

 

[shakahislop]

i was off my face on vicodin for a few days in Cambridge MA about a decade ago, in some sublet house of a friend full of beat poet books, there was some famous play or book that i picked off the shelf that i've totally forgotten the name of which was a fairly ugly story about a dinner party gradually getting more and more tense. it was one of the first things i'd read that seemed like a sadistic pisstake of the kind of audience that was likely to watch or read it. like whoever wrote it was trying to chip away at the sensibilities of its audience. a kind of act of hostility.

there's also episodes of peepshow and the US office which are about awkward dinner parties, they're both great. actually there's two different peepshow episodes about that. dinner parties in particular are a tour de force of sensibility and manners in real life, you are sat there for a couple of hours and any conversation is inescapable even if it's offending someone or ratcheting up some kind of tension. one of the harder social events to navigate. can be quite glorious on the odd occaision that they really bloom. plenty of dramatic possibilities in the basic set up of people being locked together by social norms for an extended period.

 

[Murphy]

Well done Spendo, keep the plebs in line.

 

[Murphy]

Imagine giving a fuck about dinner parties, it helps to be able to cook

The more amusing form of dinner get togethers are match making set-ups. Witnessing my other half and her conniving friends attempt supposedly serendipitous matches has proven hilariously successful and borderline catastrophic at times. Children now exist from such unions, as do divorces. Expand the invitations and...

The English and their manners. Bit like the Japanese for heavily coded nuances, island cultures always in the existential presence of being usurped. Drunks who don’t know they’re drunk are far more grating.

The volume goes up. They tell everyone they’re going for a piss. They eat all the cheese. They steal your lighter and text you from the same room they’ve got it hostage. They won’t fuck off. It’s 3am and they’re deep into a bottle of port that’s appeared from nowhere. Oh god no. Your partner tells the drunks she’s going to bed. Fuck. That’s leaving me to it and telling me to get on exiting them out. 4am. They’re offering you lines of pub dust. You suspect this has already been going on during their piss breaks. One of them starts crying about their ex and someone says the ideal remedy (as a form of caring) is to definitely rack up more lines. More lines? A prime suspect might have injested something else too, they’re the only person not talking, just staring blankly. The taxi/Uber bloke comes through in time. Tip the cunt a score personally for intervening. Get shouted at for staying up late with certain known twats. Lie in the dark.

Artifice

Table as power, domus campfire motif

Home as conquered nature/garden, see significance of food sourcing too with majority domesticates

Bounded - inclusion v exclusion

Candles for light, enlarged pupils, like Barry Lyndon where certain world views coalesce, note I tied Toadboi’s homework up for him here

Overhearing a slithered male attendee ask a female colleague “which perfume is that?” and inwardly grin at his immediate rejection when she subsequently gets up to go out for a cigarette

Add relational/class anxieties and/or gloating, which is why they’re so tedious

 

[sus]

Very good. Riffing on these—

Being on the list, not being on the list (inclusion/exclusion)

Often these parties have a nested physical-sociological structure of inner sanctums—the VIP lounge is roped off, or there are private bedrooms at the house party, or there's an upstairs, or an after party (this one being a temporal—instead of spatial—distinction that reflects and reinforces sociological distinctions)

Being seen at, being seen, to see and be seen

Who is there both reflects and also creates a sense of community, group, "us"

Dressing up, strutting your stuff, having go-to anecdotes or answers to small talk questions ("What do you do for a living?" ritual, in the States) that define Who You Are Socially. The little rituals, the repeated lines and stories

 

[sus]

Probably something deep lizard-brain ancestral about the rituals of sharing food. Everyone getting equal portions. Everyone getting offered a slice.

 

[Leo]

Friends from outside the US find it weird/amusing/unsettling that NYC smalltalk kicks off with "what do you do" (work/status), followed by "where do you live" (a reflection of how cool you are), "how long have you been there" (to determine if you were a cool visionary/pioneer or a follower), and "do you rent or own", which is sometimes boldly followed up with "what's the rent/how much did the co-op/condo/house cost". It is fairly intrusive, when you think about it. But you get so used to it that you wonder what people elsewhere actually talk about with strangers at a party.

 

[version]

i was off my face on vicodin for a few days in Cambridge MA about a decade ago, in some sublet house of a friend full of beat poet books, there was some famous play or book that i picked off the shelf that i've totally forgotten the name of which was a fairly ugly story about a dinner party gradually getting more and more tense. it was one of the first things i'd read that seemed like a sadistic pisstake of the kind of audience that was likely to watch or read it. like whoever wrote it was trying to chip away at the sensibilities of its audience. a kind of act of hostility.

Sounds like Bernhard's Woodcutters.

 

[IdleRich]

lower middle class rendition

"Play for Today" Abigail's Party (TV Episode 1977) ⭐ 7.9 | Comedy, Drama

1h 42m | PG

www.imdb.com

and a juggernaut of gems

The Celebration (1998) ⭐ 8.0 | Drama

1h 45m | 15

www.imdb.com

Was wondering when Abigail's Party would show up... when we watched/rewatched it the other day comparisons were drawn to Who's Afraid of Viriginia Woolf?

 

[IdleRich]

And like you say Gosford Park. White Lotus revolves around a lot of meals, has this feeling and the sexual stuff happening. Group Who Dunits like GP, similar structure. Like the game of Clue. Everyone sitting around chattering breaking into new groups and arrangements. The spontaneous choreography of chatter and canoodling.

Isn't Gosford Park like a low-rent remake of La Regle du Jeu? Although I guess that doesn't take place over one night.

 

[IdleRich]

"Another Round" made me profoundly grateful for booze. Without booze life wouldn't make sense. (No offence teetotallers.)

Fuck em

 

[IdleRich]

Ive been a party person in two periods- freshman year of college when I didnt want to be a virgin anymore and then when playing in bands a few years later. Before in between and since ive never known enough people to make them not uncomftorable. You need to have a firmly understood relationship with a a ton of people or the gnagging 'why am I here' questions will ruin it. This is why work parties are popular, this question is awnsered.

I love house parties, I like meeting people and so on... no-one really has them in Portugal cos everyone lives in flats on top of each other so you can't have a hundred people playing music until midday.

 

[IdleRich]

Friends from outside the US find it weird/amusing/unsettling that NYC smalltalk kicks off with "what do you do" (work/status), followed by "where do you live" (a reflection of how cool you are), "how long have you been there" (to determine if you were a cool visionary/pioneer or a follower), and "do you rent or own", which is sometimes boldly followed up with "what's the rent/how much did the co-op/condo/house cost". It is fairly intrusive, when you think about it. But you get so used to it that you wonder what people elsewhere actually talk about with strangers at a party.

Met about a hundred people at the weekend, chatted to some of them for hours... trying to think what about... one was getting divorced, fighting his wife over his forty million pound company, one was a fashion student that I chatted to for yonks but can't remember what she said, there was some Arab girl chopping out speed for everyone on the bar but I was far gone by that time.... what does anyone talk about ever really?

A lot of people admired my coat apparently - including randoms on the tube and in the pub, a police guy in Sainsbuy's, a homeless bloke, someone selling CDs outside a pub, numerous other people, singer from Alabama 3 tried to get it off me - so that started a lot of conversations... maybe just a way to get talking... but why? Looking back on it I talked to so many people I'd never met before for hours on end and in total there were probably about three worthwhile words exchanged... but it was fun so maybe that doesn't matter. As long as it's not like that all the time. But it probably is.

 

[IdleRich]

I guess the idea that generates the excitement when you head out to a party party (ie not a dinner party) is that anything could happen, you could meet anyone and go anywhere with them and do who knows what? You probably won't... but in theory it's one of the few times with a genuine chance of unscripted and unprescribed adventure. And films or plays based on parties exploit the tension between the social rules that still exist and the dream that they don't. Or something.

Good party scene in the otherwise bad Breakfast at Tiffany's film I seem to remember, also the cut together conversations in Gaddis' Recognitions become particularly effective in the long party scenes (I think there are two).