Topical Guide 756
Mark Dorset
Props
Real Objects in Fiction
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 52:
Susan Nordhouse, “By the Light of the Paper Moon,” in Perception magazine:
Ultimately, of course, the work that we call Ariane raises questions about what in the material of the drama is real and what is artificial, what it means to be playing a part, pretending to be someone else, and, ultimately, what it means to be oneself, and to be alive. H. Nelson Guzmán, in his intriguing (and, one feels compelled to note, partially fictionalized) biography, Nothing Up My Sleeve, points out that a hat, a simple hat, introduced into a film as a property, or “prop” (and surely Guzmán intends us to recall the photographer in Antonioni’s Blow-Up, who, in need of a “prop,” that is, a property, for a staged photograph, goes to a jumble shop and buys a “prop,” that is, a propeller), is no longer a simple hat, or even, quite, a real hat, but has become a “hat,” that is, Hat playing the part of “Hat,” just as the actress who wears it—Darlene Snell, let us say—is playing the part of “Diane Farrell.”
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition:
prop 1
n. 1. An object placed beneath or against a structure to keep it from falling orshaking; a support. 2. One that serves as a means of support or assistance.
prop 2
n. 1. Any of the articles other than costumes and scenery used by an actor or performer during a performance on stage or in a film. [Short for property.] 2. Someone or something displayed to impress others or provide a false impression.
prop 3
n. Informal A propeller.
Mark Dorset (me), Topical Guide 14:
In Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blowup, the photographer identified only as Thomas (David Hemmings) visits an antique shop in search of a prop, definition 2-1, for a photo shoot. He spots the ideal thing: a prop, definition 3, and buys it, turning it into a prop, definitions 2-1 and 3, and possibly 2-2 as well, since his buying it gives us the impression (false? or accurate?) that he is a very literal-minded fellow; that impression is likely to influence our judgment when Thomas begins making inferences about the enlargement of a photo that may or may not reveal a murder. I think it’s one of the wittiest scenes in cinema, but maybe that’s just me.
Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium: “Quickness”:
I would say that the moment an object appears in a narrative, it is charged with a special force and becomes like the pole of a magnetic field, a knot in the network of invisible relationships. The symbolism of an object may be more or less explicit, but it is always there. We might even say that in a narrative any object is always magic.
See also:
Real Objects in Fiction TG 132
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