Considering the Canon: Blithe Spirit

Classics are supposed to be cultural markers that tell us something timelessly and universally human about ourselves. By such a litmus test, Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit ought not to be counted with the canon.

Blithe Spirit tells us something about ourselves, but it's not timeless, and it's not universal. Coward's farce plays towards audiences' (especially American audiences') desire to feel superior. The tools it uses are often dated, and never admirable.

An English comedy of manners, Blithe Spirit saw its London debut in 1941 and hopped the pond the same year. Charles and Ruth Condomine invite eccentric medium Madame Arcati over for a little séance so that Charles can mine her for details for his upcoming novel. Arcati accidently conjures Charles' dead wife, and hilarity ensues. The jokes include references to lazy Indians, wife-beating and sexual assault, but primarily the humor comes from the characters always being one step behind the audience.

Coward flatters the audience by giving them an easy metaphor and a sense of superiority to the British characters. For American audiences, this is particularly apt. In the States, audiences are fascinated by all things British and aristocratic: look at the popularity of Downton Abbey and Jane Austen's novels. By staying one step ahead of them in Blithe Spirit, Americans are elevated from middle class mediocrity to a place above the fantastically aristocratic Brits. In addition to taking shots at his neighbors, Coward takes cheap shots at Indians ("Well, for one thing [Indians are] frightfully lazy and also, when faced with any sort of difficulty, they're rather apt to go off into their own tribal language which is naturally unintelligible"), and Cockney laborers with the clownish Edith. In addition, the jokes about domestic violence ("ELVIRA: Not at all - you were an absolute pig that time we went to Cornwall and stayed in that awful hotel - you hit me with a billiard cue. CHARLES: Only very, very gently...") and sexual assault ("CHARLES: You let him kiss you though, didn't you? ELVIRA: How could I stop him? He was bigger than I was.") aren't terribly funny.

If Blithe Spirit accesses anything universally human about us, it's our desire to feel superior to our fellow human beings. The tools it uses to make us feel superior are dated 73 years since they were written, and so can hardly be called "timeless."