Good News - Essay

Adonia Dhanjal, 3M11, 19 octobre 2010

« Good news », Text analysis :

This short story is about the audition of a 9 year-old girl for a television show. Her mother, Iris, had been in few serials when she was younger, so she’s the one who pushed her daughter, Bea, into that milieu.

Their relationship between them is not like a mother and a child. Iris acts more like a friend, or even like a theatrical agent. Iris is convinced that Bea is gifted to be an actress, we can see it at the first page, line 21 : « And Bea had talent, Iris was sure of that. ». She has prejudices on the other participants because she has eyes only for her daughter : « The child was timid, which of course was what they wanted (…) she didn’t have teeth like that. ». She only sees the actress in Bea and not her as a daughter : she worries all the time if she has practised enough or what did the juges said about her : « ‘Practise a bit ? (…) it would pass the time » (page 3, line 10 to 11) , « ‘They say they liked you ? Iris asked in the café. ‘They say anything ?’ » (page 2, line 21) and « ‘They wanted you to do it with the movements ? Iris asked. ‘Like I showed you ?’ »
Iris is also not showing an optimistic attitude towards Bea when they are waiting for the phone call : « ‘Don’t be disappointed,’ Iris kept saying » (page 3, line 13).

Iris’s husband, Dickie, doesn’t have the same point of view about Bea’s futur. He had a quarrel with Iris about the contests and he went away.   Still, he’s not present for his daughter and doesn’t really pay attention to what she’s doing : « He’d stood perfectly still (…) he said » (page 2, line 28 – 29). He asks about her role after she had contested and not before « ‘So what kind of story is it ?’ » (page 3, line 8). He and Iris are not acting like real parents to Bea, they are distant to her.

This problem of relationship is because of this TV-sitcom production. We can see that a lot of different people come to audition. Iris show us that...