More on Pinter

I believe I can be a little more articulate on my feelings about Pinter - I was reacting in a hurry earlier. I am glad that a playwright won the Nobel Prize. I believe Pinter deserves quite a bit of recognition for what he has done. He's a fascinating playwright mostly because his plays have a great deal of depth that leaves room for actors' and directors' interpretation. However, his portrayals of women disturb me profoundly. They are all a combination of uptight frigid bitch and whore. Seriously, think of Ruth in The Homecoming or the woman in The Servant or Stella in The Collection. He's working out some serious sexual issues with women by turning them into these weird dark fantasy creatures. Even creepier that most of these women were played by Vivan Merchant, who was his wife. So if you can turn off all feminism and other forms of identity politics (Pinter's characters occasionally make really strange racist remarks where you don't know if Pinter is making fun of his characters or not and I believe almost all of his plays are all white) then sometimes you can enjoy how nasty the people are to each other, but I always have reservations. Pinter's plays aren't enjoyable, and generally they aren't really political either. Thinking about the implications generally upsets me. The thing he seems to be doing most with plays such as The Lover or The Homecoming is shattering middle class repressed sexuality, which is a good thing, but he seems to do it in such an anti-woman way that it disturbs me. Not that his men necessarily come off well, but the women always seem to be a bit of this same woman.