Ted Hughes Conflicting Perspectives

In his 1997 lecture “Representation and the Media”, Stuart Hall explains the role of representation as one that figuratively bridges the gap between existence and associated meaning. It thus follows that composers may use the representation of conflicting perspectives, in particular, as a tool within their texts to shape this desired meaning. The poems Your Paris, Fulbright Scholars and Sam from Ted Hughes’ 1998 anthology Birthday Letters, as well as George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four conjointly reflect the ideas pertaining to representation raised by Hall. Both texts explore how outward appearance often conflicts with inner reality, and examine the role that self-interest plays in this. This allows Hughes and Orwell to compound upon Hall’s idea of the “double meaning” of representation – a tool that may be used to either offer a depiction of something, or to re-present something that already exists.   Furthermore, Hall’s idea of the conflictive “distortions of reality” this dual meaning may present to dialectic individuals is also actualized within Birthday Letters and Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Stuart Hall’s perception of a personified “image” that “culture is saturated by” is realized through the representation of Sylvia Plath as a figure whose inner disposition conflicts with the ‘image’ she assumes in Hughes’ poems “Fulbright Scholars” &“Your Paris” . As the first poem in Birthday Letters, Fulbright Scholars closely adheres to Hall’s account that one form of representation is to “offer a depiction of something”. Hughes reflects upon the literal ‘image’ of Plath noting her “long hair, loose waves / Your Veronica Lake bang”, echoing Hall’s idea that representation is essentially “giving meaning” to something previously unexamined. Allusions to American pop culture create implications of ‘acting’ that are hyperbolized to Hollywood-esque levels as Plath “grins” for “the cameras, the judges, the strangers, the frighteners”. An anaphoric listing of...