FILM / Asteroid City (2023) : A Queer, Metamodernist Exploration of Midcentury Alienation / C. Show
Image © Focus Features
The black-and-white framing device of Asteroid City (2023) provides the narrative of the play with context, specifically context surrounding artists, especially queer artists, and their anxieties embedded within their art. Conrad Earp, the playwright, is gay and lives his life in part through his art. His study features homoerotic nude paintings of cowboys, and the narrator indicates he writes plays about the West. In the simplest of terms, we can see his Western fantasies at play with the romance between June, the shy school teacher, and Montana, the confident cowboy. We see a version of this fantasy play out with the arrival of Jones Hall, the actor. He surprises Conrad with his captivating charm. During Jones’ monologue for Conrad, a spotlight clearly illuminates the painting of the nude cowboy beside him. After the monologue, Jones takes off his pants, and the two kiss while “Canon in D Major” plays in the background, traditionally a song played at weddings.
Beyond Conrad’s simple Western fantasies, the play delves into themes that are associated with the concept of encountering the wilderness and unknown, even going so far as to propose the title The Cosmic Wilderness for the play that is eventually titled Asteroid City. Through much of American literature, this wilderness would be embodied through the physical terrestrial West, but in Asteroid City, the desert merges with the idea of the cosmic wilderness and through that, the question of the meaning of life. Conrad waxes on this subject, almost as though he were in conversation with himself, arguing with himself about the fate of humanity and whether or not life has any meaning. In Conrad’s play, Midge Campbell reads from a script where her character dies by suicide, and in her own life, she chooses her art in lieu of relationships with other people, namely her kids but also the many physically and emotionally abusive men in her life who have almost definitely contributed to this anxiety. Juxtapose this with the idealistic dialogue of Dr. Hickenlooper, the scientist in charge of research at the crater. When Woodrow states, “This is our chance to be worthwhile in our lifetimes,” Hickenlooper pulls him aside and assures him it’s all worthwhile, providing him with hope for the future. Conrad Earp is described as a “fragile genius,” so it stands to reason that these ideas grapple within him and spill into his art.
A more obvious example of characters living through their art is Schubert Green, the director. He lives backstage for the duration of the Asteroid City production with the crew washing his clothes and performing other household duties. In his introductory scene, his wife says she no longer loves him and tells him goodbye. He is seen boxing the air for some reason during this conversation, and upon second viewing, the reason is clear. There is a punching bag stationed in the right of the frame with the title of the play he was in, The Welterweight. Schubert punches the air instead of punching the actual bag as a show that he lives through fantasy instead of living through real life. He states he shouldn’t be alone in a room with real windows, a cryptic piece of dialogue that implies some sort of suicidal ideation. While it is not made explicit that Schubert is queer, his interactions with Conrad and Jones Hall, the actor, imply some sort of deep intimacy between the men. Namely, when Schubert enters the room for the play workshop, Conrad reaches up his hand and the two grasp and continue to hold hands for some unknown reason. The narrator states that Schubert has had a long relationship with success, which suggests he is engrossed in his art as well as with the creators and actors who perform alongside him.
There are parallels that suggest Schubert is a stand-in for real life director Elia Kazan, who was also a director who immigrated to America and shortened his name; Kazan also earned a reputation for being promiscuous much like Schubert as well. That would suggest Conrad Earp represents Tennessee Williams, as Kazan directed the film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), while the opening shot of the character Jones Hall frames him as James Dean. The way Jones has his feet propped on a table as well as the way he has his sweater over his nose are a clear allusion to Phil Stern’s photographs of Dean, solidifying the film as some sort of alternate universe to the one we inhabit.
Whether or not the character of Schubert is intended to be read as queer, Jones and Conrad’s relationship informs a queer reading of the narrative of the Asteroid City play. The cast of strange characters search for connection with each other, while Dinah and Woodrow agree they’d feel more at home outside the earth’s atmosphere, using the alien concept as shorthand for feeling like an outsider. Augie lives through the lens of his camera, while Midge lives through her scripts. There’s great pain between them that they express through rehearsing the dialogue of Midge’s movie script. Both admit they are always waiting for their next thing, never content or satisfied. They search for satisfaction through their art, but their art is never finished just as the junior stargazers will always be searching for that next scientific discovery that will make them great or relevant or, as Woodrow states, “worthwhile.” The children and several of the adults are characterized as outsiders, and this assembly and subsequent quarantine happen to allow them time to connect with people who share that same strangeness.
Ultimately, Jones Hall, the actor, doesn’t understand the play. Jones doesn’t have the requisite experience with grief and thus struggles to process Conrad’s untimely death, and in addition, to understand Augie’s mourning. He asks Schubert (and in a fourth wall break, the audience) if he’s doing the character right. Schubert tells him that he has become Augie, and Augie has become him because Augie’s story is now his own story, encouraging him to live through the play. He searches for meaning in Conrad’s death and finds comfort on the balcony in the cut scene between Augie and his dead wife almost as though Conrad were speaking to him beyond the grave, reminding him of a piece of the play that provides him with context much like the framing device provides us with history to contextualize the Asteroid City narrative.
The great question that sticks with me is Conrad’s stance on life and what he’s trying to convey with his play, echoing Jones’ statement, “I still don’t understand the play.” In the scene where Augie and Midge are rehearsing, Augie asks why Midge’s character died by suicide and tells her there’s so much left of the world to see. She replies, slumped over the bathtub, that she’s already seen it. This sentiment sits heavy with the viewer. Is this the heart of the play? Is this the central tenet–that there is no use in living because there are no more surprises left? The introduction of the alien addresses this, disproving that one could have possibly seen everything. Is the alien a reason to continue living? An unexpected visitor much like Jones was when he arrived in Conrad’s study carrying his favorite ice cream.
This fascination with death and dying runs throughout the play, and one has to wonder if Conrad was doomed by his own narrative, setting Jones up to mourn him as Augie mourns his wife. From a meta standpoint, it’s as though Conrad left instructions for Jones that he wouldn’t understand until after his death. On the balcony where Jones takes a smoke break, the actress who played Augie’s wife recites dialogue from the cut scene, stating that Augie will need to replace her. Conrad’s own words are assuring Jones that not only can he move on but that he must.
Overall, the Asteroid City film couches the heteronormative play within a queer narrative, wherein the play cannot be understood without the context of the queer men that helped create it, and in turn, the creators and actors cannot be understood without the lens of the play with its thesis on grief, alienation, death, and unlikely connection. In the censorship riddled atmosphere of the 1950s when this film is set, the play doesn’t feature explicitly queer characters. And although the television program hosted by the narrator recounts the story of the Asteroid City play, including the story of how Conrad meets Jones Hall, who knows if what we see depicted is actually what’s being shown in the television program. It’s intentional that the audience doesn’t know what is television programming or a true accounting of events or the play itself seeing as the program’s narrator played by Bryan Cranston makes an appearance in Asteroid City’s colorful world, only to walk offscreen once he realizes he’s not supposed to be in the scene. The blending of realities is the point because art is a mirror and often a window, and Asteroid City breaks that window, merging the realities just as Jones breaks Conrad’s window right before entering a closet and exiting as Augie Steenbeck.
C. Show (they/them) is a Central Arkansan author whose short fiction has been previously published in ImageOutWrite, Every Day Fiction, and Flash Fiction Magazine. Their poetry chapbook is set to be published by new words {press}.
