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LITR 4370
TRAGEDY
Midterm2 Samples 2015 (midterm2 assignment)
Model Answers to Part 2. |
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Part 3. Begin Research Report: Write at least
3-4 substantial paragraphs with two sources toward completion of
your Research Report on selected special topic
(to be completed on
Final Exam)
Part Three:
Spectacle and the Sublime: Respecting and Challenging Convention
Reading Aristotle's Poetics has been
a revelatory experience, and indeed a great pleasure. These last few months I
feel like I've been witness to the steady deconstruction of a delicate engine.
Familiarized now with the origin and inner workings of the written
western word, I see how our greatest wordsmiths and creators might approach the
craft from a savvy technical standpoint so as to maximize the desired dramatic
effect. The balance struck between the handling of spectacle and the sublime is
of the utmost poetic importance in tragedy. Across time, starting with the
ancient Greek dramatists and continuing with Shakespeare and leveling out with
21st-century cinema, the best writers have simultaneously adhered to and
diverged from Aristotle's tragic principles concerning spectacle and the
sublime, while the worst appear to have disregarded them entirely.
At its pinnacle, tragedy is capable of
provoking what Aristotle considered the most potent human emotion: a catharsis,
a combination of "pity and fear" (Poetics, XIII). To best achieve this
emotional high, Aristotle believed certain conditions must be met, including but
not limited to the tactical manipulation—or repression—of spectacle, defined by
the Oxford English Dictionary as "a person or thing exhibited to, or set
before the public gaze as an object" ("Spectacle"). The sublime, defined by Dr.
White as "beauty mixed with terror danger threat—usually on a grand or elevated
scale", makes the audience feel a "powerful mixture of pleasure and pain" ("The
Sublime"), and is closely related to catharsis. Good tragedy neither panders nor
"let[s] us off easy" (Evans); it challenges, enthralls, and destabilizes us by
means of careful deployment and concealment of spectacle.
The Greeks, in keeping with Aristotle's
Poetics, mainly repressed spectacle in pursuit of catharsis. Constrained
through they were by the dearth of props and special effects which we of the
modern age take for granted, they made the most of their situation. Palatial
edifices, complete with impressive but not gaudy columns, act as backdrops in
both Agamemnon and Oedipus Rex. A nice trapping not altogether
overwhelming, the beautiful carpet from Agamemnon additionally qualifies
as spectacle because it is purple, the rarest natural color, the color of
royalty. That said, with Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, the spectacle of
violence is kept out of sight. Jocasta and Antigone hang themselves off-stage.
In Agamemnon, the eponymous character's murder also takes place
off-stage, reported by a final scream and Clytemnestra's subsequent
declarations. The presentation of the Agamemnon's blood-soaked robes in The
Libation Bearers essentially marks the limit the Greeks are willing to go
to, visually. Even when violence gets maniacal and unique, as evidenced in
The Bacchae by the dismemberment of Pentheus at the hands of the incensed
maenads, the brutality is filtered secondhand though a messenger's telling of
it. However, when Oedipus, newly eyeless, suddenly emerges from the
palace doors, the spectacle, "an appalling sight" (Oedipus Rex,
1549), is made all the more powerful by the skillful repression up to that
point, which is to say the play earns its violence through patience, and the
catharsis is thereby enhanced. Unburdened in the main by the traumatic shock of
upfront violence or exorbitant exhibition, we are freer to contemplate the
ethics of taboos and more susceptible to catharsis. After all, the
suggestion—the mere story, when handled masterfully, using "noble diction"
(Longinus, qtd. in "The Sublime")—is enough to rouse empathy. We do not require
graphic physical evidence of every tragic story we hear in life, so why should
we in art? The Greeks are proof that tragedy is great and gut-wrenching by
virtue of the right words and plotting rather than by ostentatious spectacle.
Overdependent on full-scale glitz and flashy
effects, some modern ventures seem to exist in a universe apart from the one the
Greeks and Shakespeare long ago inhabited. Some creators eschew
spectacle-repression completely. Take for example the artless Expendables
film franchise. Defiling silver-screens near you, this action series features a
supergroup of aging, muscular Hollywood hunks who shoot big guns at bad guys,
drive rare fast cars off imposing cliffs, jump out of aircraft, and withstand
many explosions, all the while soundtracked by generic blaring power-chord
riffs. Here, spectacle is the blatant focal point. The average theatergoer
surely does not attend such thrillers to intelligently grapple with ageless
philosophical, sociocultural dilemmas. These full-tilt unearned extravaganzas
bordering on the absurd—lacking a scintilla of humor, grace, or wisdom—are
exercises in pure macho wish-fulfillment, even the most rabid advocate must
admit. With the endless inundation of spectacle, rumination becomes a lost cause
and the spectacle itself is shortly emptied of its already scant emotional clout
as the excess normalizes and plateaus. Indeed, producers designing future
installments are tasked with surpassing the outrageous standard set by the
previous films' many spectacles which have mindlessly eclipsed all competing
poetic elements, or else ticket sales will plummet. Aristotle would frown upon
this inversion of values since spectacle is "the least artistic . . . and
connected least with the art of poetry; plot . . . is the soul of tragedy . . .
and character holds the second place" (Poetics, 6g; 6e). Try as they
might, cadres of shock-jock filmmakers are hard-pressed to grab hearts and
inspire Aristotelian catharsis. "We've become so desensitized to this flash,"
reasons Whitney Evans, "that we are no longer truly affected by it" (Tragedy and
Spectacle, Including the Sublime). The Expendables films, harmless
popcorn joints they may be, fail to strike a sensible artistic balance with
spectacle and the sublime; therefore, serious critics and gatekeepers will no
doubt deny the series entrance into drama's pantheon beside Shakespeare, the
Greek playwrights, and the rest.
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