LITR 4370 TRAGEDY Final Exam Samples 2015 (final exam assignment) Model Answers to Part 3. Complete Research Report

Part 3. Complete Research Report: Write at least 8-10 substantial paragraphs with four sources to complete your Research Report on selected special topic.

Zach Mayfield

The Evolution of Modern Spectacle and the Sublime

          According to the course website, “spectacle is…a concept that in today's popular speech lives in different words—words and phrases like "special effects," "costume design," "stunts," and "computer graphics"” (White).  I am particularly interested in how spectacle has evolved since Ancient Greece and how it has been used in tragedy. Even though spectacle in tragedy is generally repressed so as to allow for the audience’s attention on the importance of the plot, and even though Aristotle claims spectacle “is the least artistic, and connected the least with the art of poetry” (6g), he does admit that it has an emotional appeal. It is this emotional appeal that allows for the sublime to occur, something that is universally associated with quality and brilliant works of art. My research will focus on the evolution of spectacle since Ancient Greece and its relationship with tragedy, and show how spectacle has always made way for the sublime to occur throughout human history.

As previously mentioned, spectacle has evolved considerably since Aristotle’s time, and I aim to shed light on theatre’s relationship with spectacle and how it relates to tragedy. Some forms of spectacle are timeless and have more or less stayed the same. Implication of extreme violence, for example, is still played out on stage. In Agamemnon, even though his and Cassandra’s murders took place offstage, Clytaemnestra being covered in blood and the showing of the bodies on stage is still considered spectacle. As tragedy modernized, it becomes somewhat more spectacular, and certain periods of tragedy indulge spectacular scenes of blood and murder (White), as seen in King Lear when Gloucester has his eyes gouged out on stage. Music is another ever-present aid to spectacle. In Ancient Greece, this was usually in the form of the chorus. Today, we may have choirs or bands that sit below the stage and perform the soundtrack to the play, or music may simply be played on a sound system with audio equipment. Other forms of technology improved the use of special effects, which the Ancient Greeks did use, albeit in more rudimentary forms. Without advanced lighting and sound systems, people had to be resourceful to create certain effects. For example, shaking a piece of sheet of metal or banging a gong to create thunder or the sound of galloping horses.

Today, spectacle has evolved into something very different than it was in Ancient Greece and the Renaissance. Modern stage performers like Cher and Lady Gaga have achieved a very high celebrity status, and are popular amongst many people. Their concerts incorporate the use of professional dancers, acrobats, giant mechanized props, fog machines, strobe lighting, large televisions and projectors, intricate stage mechanics, and even holograms. It is also worth noting that the status of actors and actresses has been elevated in our current society. For example, when a glamorous celebrity such as Charlize Theron takes a role that requires her to become “ugly,” as she did in the 2003 movie Monster, her appearance in and of itself becomes spectacle. However, the most extreme evolution of spectacle comes in the form of computer generated imagery, or CGI. Though it should be noted that the extent of CGI is much more limited on stage performances than it is on film, it is impossible to talk about spectacle in a modern context without mentioning CGI. Filmmakers are able to create entire worlds and gargantuan monsters, making great visual strides in terms of sci-fi and other fantasy genres. In his essay, “Curiosity or Contempt: On Spectacle, the Human, and Activism”, Baz Kershaw acknowledges how before our current post-industrial societies, people associated the concept of spectacle with size and grandeur. He describes how this idea is changing through the availability of the Internet,  “The transformation of the human sense of scale derives from a human shrinkage of the world… global digitization through the Internet has scaled down the world even more… spectacle can now be minute” (596). Kershaw uses the microchip as an example of a way to scaling down spectacle. I do find evidence of this miniaturization process in my own life. For example, when Lady Gaga televised one of her concert tours. This allows the material to be viewed in a more intimate setting, such as one’s living room, as opposed to the giant arena where the concert actually took place.  

While in some cases of spectacle have been miniaturized, post-industrial societies do still experience spectacle on the grand scales of our ancestors. Spectacle and tragedy have always been associated in real life. Kershaw suggests, “Possibly there has always been a close connection between spectacle and disaster, because disaster unexpectedly unleashes extreme powers that rupture a world we would prefer to keep wholly intact” (596). The violence and destruction wrought by beheadings, lynchings, executions, storms and natural disasters, etc., are still ever present, many of which have the potential to be gateways to the sublime. Even the concept of a traditional funeral could be considered spectacle, especially when there is an open casket and the corpse is dressed and made up to be on display in front of guests.

Continuing on the evolution of spectacle and tragedy, I would like to take a specific look at a more modern tragic film so that it may be better understood as to how tragedy and spectacle in the Greek and Shakespearean sense have adapted in the modern world. Robert Aldrich’s 1962 film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a prime candidate for analysis because of its more or less keeping with the “less is more” attitude in regard to spectacle in more serious, thought-provoking pieces of film and theatre. Like most of the Ancient Greek tragedies, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? does not outright show killings or murders. When Elvira the maid is struck in the head with a hammer, she is not on screen when she dies--the camera only shows Jane with the hammer in her hand. This movie is also somewhat in keeping with Greek tradition in the sense that the main characters in the film (Blanche more so) are of high status, and while they may not be a royal family, Blanche at least has the elevated status of being a wealthy movie star. The main aspects of spectacle in this film come from Jane’s appearance as an aged alcoholic woman with childish ringlet curls in her hair, heavy makeup, and thick dark eyeliner. What makes the spectacle eerily effective is when she sings out of tune and dances to an old song that she used to perform to when she was a little girl. There are also moments of suspense leading up to the effectiveness of spectacle when Jane serves Blanche her lunch on two occasions where Blanche is delivered first a rat, and then her pet parakeet, on a silver platter.

With a basis of modernized tragedy having been explained, I will now shift my analysis to spectacle in Shakespeare’s King Lear, which will then transition specifically to spectacle’s relationship with the sublime. The storm that Lear gets lost in would be an ongoing spectacle, probably done with something like rattling sheet metal or a gong for thunder as previously mentioned. Gloucester's eye gouging is also done on stage, and depending what the playwright had access to, could have even used animal blood or something similar in color and texture to show that the act had been done. The storm in King Lear is a visceral symbol for Lear’s own increasing madness and the chaos he experiences. Because of this, a kind of “double spectacle” occurs as Lear continues to fall further into madness while the massive storm continues on, where Lear experiences a loss of his identity. Shakespeare captures the poetic, terrible, maddening risk of losing control over one’s body and mind through Lear’s time in the storm, giving us a glimpse into the sublime, as Lear cries out:

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!

You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,

Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!

Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,

That make ingrateful man! (3.2.1-5)

The course website defines the sublime as “a concept in Aesthetics--the branch of philosophy concerning the nature of beauty (or its counterpart, ugliness). For an audience, beauty is that which gives us pleasure (or ugliness gives pain)” (White). Especially in modern times, spectacle is almost essential in creating something sublime. I’ve already established that tragedy in real life begets spectacle, usually in the form of natural disasters and violent acts. Building on this idea, spectacle and the sublime are also closely related, as many natural disasters and acts of violence (or otherwise violent occurrences) tend to delve into the concept of the sublime. In his essay, “Terror and the Sublime”, Terrence Des Pres states that, “There is, or can be, something demonic about the sublime--some delight in destruction which aims particularly at the diminishment and finally the annihilation of the human image” (139). Going back to my example of Lear, who becomes consumed in manic obsession to the point of risking his own life and identity in a dangerous storm, the sublime seems to present terrible and alluring opportunities for its recipients. Part of that allure, it seems, is the disintegration of the human body, or more broadly, the disintegration of an entire world, perhaps through an apocalypse or other destructive means. This transitions nicely into Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where the character Life-in-Death seems to embody this concept. The Mariner describes Life-in-Death as such, standing on a rotting skeleton ship:

Her lips were red, her looks were free,

Her locks were yellow as gold:

Her skin was as white as leprosy,

The Night-Mair Life-in-Death was she,

Who thicks man's blood with cold. (2.190-194)

Despite her very lively features and disposition, she is nonetheless described as a nightmare, with her skin looking as if she were a corpse. Add her striking appearance to the supernatural setting of the ghost ship, and spectacle has indeed given way into the sublime.

          Though spectacle’s scholarly reputation is less than stellar, one cannot deny the emotions and sensations it invokes. Without these, we would only have speech and dialogue to go on, which would admittedly have much less of an effect without the aid of spectacle, especially considering that spectacle is indeed the gateway to the sublime. Audiences would cease to transcend their own worlds into the realms of whatever media they might indulge in. It is the spectacle and sublime that audiences remember, and it is from the sublime that audiences are able to think back and analyze what exactly it was that got them to that point--the dialogue, plot, etc. Spectacle and the sublime leave a lasting impression and plant the seeds of appreciation for masterful works of art, and their knack for invoking a kind of transcendence can be immensely powerful for audiences of all kinds.

Works Cited

Aristotle. Poetics. Online posting. n.d. Course webpage Tragedy. University of Houston-   Clear Lake. Web. 20 Feb. 2015.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, and Paul H. Fry. "Part the Third." The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: Complete, Authoritative Texts of the 1798 and 1817 Versions with Biographical and Historical Contexts, Critical History, and Essays from Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999. 43. Print.

Des Pres, Terrence. “Terror and the Sublime.” Human Rights Quarterly 5.2 (May, 1983): 135-46. John Hopkins University Press. Web. 8 May 2015.           <http://www.jstor.org/stable/762250>

Kershaw, Baz. “Curiosity or Contempt: On Spectacle, the Human, and Activism.” Theatre Journal 55.4 (Dec., 2003): 591-611. John Hopkins University Press. Web 8 May 2015 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25069332>

Shakespeare, William, Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Andrew Gurr. "King Lear: A Conflated Text."The Norton        Shakespeare. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. 2528. Print.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? By Ernest Haller, Michael Luciano, Lukas Heller, Jack Solomon, George E. Marsh, Harold E. McGhan, Alex Romero, and Frank DeVol. Prod. Kenneth Hyman, Robert Aldrich, William Glasgow, Norma Koch, Jack Obringer, Monte Westmore, Florence Guernsey, and Peggy Shannon. Dir.    Robert Aldrich. Perf. Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono, Wesley Addy, Julie Allred, and William Aldrich. Released through Warner Bros., 1962.

White, Craig. “Spectacle”. Online posting. n.d. Course webpage Tragedy. University of       Houston-Clear Lake. Web. 8 May 2015

---. “Sublime”. Online posting. n.d. Course webpage Tragedy. University of Houston-Clear Lake. Web. 8 May 2015