Thinking/Discussion Prompts:

Ian Johnston's "Preliminary Observations on Classical Greek Culture" and Joe Sach's "Aristotle's Poetics"

Figure 1. detail of Aristotle from Raphael's The School of Athens

Here are what I believe are some of the most interesting observations made by Johnston on classical Greek culture and by Sachs on Aristotle's Poetics, and also some points for your reflection related to these observations.

I. Ian Johnston, "Some Preliminary Observations on Classical Greek Literature"

a. Johnston notes that classical Greek writers and artists were "at the cutting edge of the Greek cultural consciousness and thus . . . the major features of their vision of the world have a significant relationship to wider cultural concerns." Here we see the idea that literature and art, although they are fictional [writers "make things up"], bear a direct connection to the so-called "real world," and I would also add that it is often in art that certain social and cultural problems are worked through in a way that is not always possible in social reality.

b. Johnston points out the uniqueness of Greek religion in its emphasis on gods that are exactly "like humans," and therefore, "Divine motivation is thus linked directly to the constantly shifting and frequently irrational feelings within the human family, and the forces which rule the world are made instantly recognizable and emotionally intelligible because they have such a familiar form." Further, and most importantly, "this view of the cosmos enshrines conflict as the heart of divine and natural processes. And such conflicts are not, as in other religions, allegorized pictures of the forces of good fighting the forces of evil, but much more unpredictable and morally ambiguous stories, often without any clear 'lesson' for human beings, other than the repeated emphasis that the gods are powerful and inconsistent. Just as ambiguity is a central fact of human family life on earth (with blurred lines of authority, shifting allegiances, volatile emotions, and uncertain motives), so ambiguity is a central fact of life in heaven and thus of explanations for natural events." You will see, hopefully, that ambiguity plays a central role in The Iliad, Agamemnon and Medea, especially with regard to the relation between violence and justice.

c. Because, as Johnston notes, the Greek gods provided no direct instructions [nor wrote an official "holy book"] regarding how human beings were to interact with the gods and with each other, there is always a "radical uncertainty about divine purposes." As such, in The Iliad, Agamemnon and Medea, as you will hopefully see, a lot of anxiety is produced [both for the characters, and for us, as an audience] over what is the "right thing" to do, especially as regards the so-called "just" act of vengeance.

d. Regarding the Greek concept of "dike" [pronounced "dee-kay"], or justice, Johnston writes, "The Greeks . . . developed a particular interest in the hero who is killed or who self-destructs in his quest, the person who does not learn the importance of the community and return to it but rather one who, having launched himself against Fate, continues his fight against the unknown well beyond the limits of human prudence or communal restraint until the ironic mystery and power of what he is up against destroys him. In short, the Greek preoccupation with dike leads them to a celebration of the tragic vision of experience." You will want to pay attention to how this tragic vision of experience plays itself out in The Iliad, Agamemnon and Medea, although not necessarily in the same ways.

II. Joe Sachs, "Aristotle's Poetics"

a. Sachs writes, explicating Aristotle's thinking, that "If no one had the power to imitate action, life might just wash over us without leaving any trace." This is to say, or rather to ask, without the artist who takes it upon herself or himself to imagine/imitate reality in her or his work, how would we know how to interpret our reality? How would we make sense of it? Can we make sense of it without art, and if so, how so?

b. As Sachs reminds us, in Aristotle's view, an artwork [a drama] is a tragedy when it arouses in the audience "pity and fear," and it is imperative that they be aroused in us together, for pity without fear is just empty, tear-jerking sentimentality, and fear without pity is a like a slasher horror flick in which there is a certain indulgence in the cheap "thrill" of being scared but no real connection is forged with the characters. And while the tear-jerker movie might make us feel good about ourselves [because we've cried for somebody, but it's ultimately a "nothing" feeling without the fear attached], the horror movie, while we are indulging in the pleasures of being "shocked," might end up just "coarsening" our feelings, making us numb to real horror. More importantly, for the purposes of this class, Sachs writes,

"There are stories in which fearsome things are threatened or done by characters who are in the end defeated by means similar to, or in some way equivalent to, what they dealt out. The fear is relieved in vengeance, and we feel a satisfaction that we might be inclined to call justice. To work on the level of feeling, though, justice must be understood as the exact inverse of the crime--doing to the offender the sort of thing he did or meant to do to others. The imagination of evil then becomes the measure of good, or at least of the restoration of order. The satisfaction we feel in the vicarious infliction of pain or death is nothing but a thin veil over the very feelings we mean to be punishing. This is a successful dramatic formula, arousing in us destructive desires that are fun to feel, along with the self-righteous illusion that we are really superior to the character who displays them. The playwright who makes us feel that way will probably be popular, but he is a menace."

What is important to understand here is that neither the tear-jerker movie, the slasher horror flick, or the revenge fantasy is what Aristotle meant by "tragedy," because they all arouse passions in a "dangerous way." But the question is also raised: how can we tell the difference between these "lower" forms of tragedy and a tragedy that arouses fear and pity in just the right ways?

c. So, what is "tragedy," then, for Aristotle? Sachs writes, "Tragedy seems always to involve testing or finding the limits of what is human. This is no mere orgy of strong feeling, but a highly focused way of bringing our powers to bear on the image of what is human as such. I suggest that Aristotle is right in saying that the powers which first of all bring this human image to sight for us are pity and fear," because when these two things are brought together they bring about a "cleansing," or "catharsis," of the human passions.

d. So, what, then, is "catharsis," as Aristotle understood it, in relation to the tragic drama? Sachs writes,

"Ask yourself how you feel at the end of a tragedy. You have witnessed horrible things and felt painful feelings, but the mark of tragedy is that it brings you out the other side. Aristotle's use of the word catharsis is not a technical reference to purgation or purification but a beautiful metaphor for the peculiar tragic pleasure, the feeling of being washed or cleansed. The tragic pleasure is a paradox. As Aristotle says, in a tragedy, a happy ending doesn't make us happy. At the end of the play the stage is often littered with bodies, and we feel cleansed by it all. Are we like Clytemnestra, who says she rejoiced when spattered by her husband's blood, like the earth in a Spring rain (Agamemnon: 1389-92)? Are we like Iago, who has to see a beautiful life destroyed to feel better about himself (Othello: V, i, 18-20)? We all feel a certain glee in the bringing low of the mighty, but this is in no way similar to the feeling of being washed in wonderment."

But this also raises the question: what does it mean, or feel like, to be "washed in wonderment" at the conclusion of a play like Agamemnon or Medea, or even during that scene at the end of The Iliad where Priam and his former enemy Achilles embrace each other? We will explore this question in more detail when we get to these plays. Sachs also asks us to consider the Greek tragedy as a species of "beauty": tragedy, when it is really good and done at a very high artistic level, is supposedly "beautiful." What does it mean to consider the tragedy as beautiful? This is something we might ponder as the course progresses, especially since the films I have chosen all treat violence in highly artistic and even aesthetically "beautiful" ways.

e. As regards the "right" forms of pity and fear, as opposed to the "wrong" forms [illustrated above], Sachs writes that pity cannot be just wallowing in "feeling sorry" for someone, nor is looking down on someone because they don't meet our moral standards. A more appropriate way of understanding pity is to see it as a form of *seeing* the truth in a situation--really seeing how someone has been harmed and empathizing with them in a way that understands that any violation done to another person is also a violation to human decency and justice, and therefore is a violation to all of us. Fear, then, is directly connected to this, because when we see that what can be done [violently and injustly] to others can be done to us, then tragic fear "shows us what we are and what we are unwilling to lose." Further, Sachs writes,

"our feelings of pity and fear make us recognize what we care for and cherish. When the tragic figure is destroyed it is a piece of ourselves that is lost. Yet we never feel desolation at the end of a tragedy, because what is lost is also, by the very same means, found. I am not trying to make a paradox, but to describe a marvel. It is not so strange that we learn the worth of something by losing it; what is astonishing is what the tragedians are able to achieve by making use of that common experience. They lift it up into a state of wonder."

One of the questions we will want to explore, especially with regard to a film like Funny Games, is what happens when we either do or do not recognize ourselves in the tragic victims, and whether or not a piece of ourselves is really lost in the destruction of the fictional characters of tragic art. How, also, are we to identify with these characters--in what ways, more specifically, do we identify, and what happens when we can't identify?