Friday, July 02, 2004
A Forum on Theatre and Tragedy - Marvin Carlson
A Forum on Theatre and Tragedy In the Wake of September 11, 2001 Theatre Journal 54 (2002) 95138 © 2002 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
Predictably, and certainly not inappropriately, the term tragedy has
been very widely invoked in our attempt to speak the unspeakable, to
express the inexpressible in the wake of the emotionally and culturally
shattering events of September 11.
Rarely, however, has the term been invoked with much awareness of its
theatrical heritage, since it has long since cast off its theatrical
moorings to float freely through the semiotic field, applied to almost
any event, of any magnitude, that involves human
suffering, especially when that suffering is extreme, unexpected, and
seemingly undeserved. Certainly in this sense the loss of life on that
day, with its attendant train of trauma and mourning which for a long
time to come will haunt the imaginations of
all of us, fully merits this sometimes overused term more fully than any
event in recent American experience.
Largely lacking, however, in the widespread invocation of this
emotionally charged term, has been much sense of what its implications
have been in the site of its original cultural articulation, the
theatre. This is, perhaps not too surprising. In modern
America we are not at all accustomed to regarding theatre as mode of
exploring significant cultural, social, and philosophical questions, and
tragedy, the theatrical form that engages these questions on the deepest
level, has been particularly slighted
in our cultural tradition. This is not, I think, simply because we do
not think of theatre as a central cultural expression. Much more
fundamental, I believe, is an American cultural imaginary that leaves
very little room for the development of a concept of
tragedy in the traditional European mode.
Fundamental to the founding myths of America was the idea of a fresh
start, a Rousseauesque innocence and a boundless optimism. There was
little room or tolerance for the burdens of the past and the wayward,
even malicious, turns of fate so
critical to the work of the great tragic writers of Europe. Pain and
suffering were acknowledged, of course. Any work dealing with the human
condition could hardly deny them. But the favored dramatic mode for
dealing with such matters in America
has not been tragedy, but melodrama. Pain and suffering were not the
result of inexplicable forces in the universe, but of the machinations
of evil characters, who were inevitably eventually thwarted and
vanquished. This is the scenario that
continues to ground much of our popular entertainment, most notably the
popular disaster films of the past several decades, which for many us
provided the most immediate and vivid point of reference as we attempted
to fit the unimaginable attack
into our personal and cultural imaginary.
I cannot count the number of times that I heard some variation of the
phrase It seemed like a film from people attempting to articulate
their reaction to images of the disaster. Indeed it did seem like a
film, and an all-too-familiar one, the film in which an
innocent and trusting America is suddenly without warning attacked by
some alien forcerevived prehistoric monsters, alien and hostile beings
from outer space or the depths of the oceans. New York is a favored
target of such attacks, marked by the
destruction of the great recognizable icons of that citythe Statue of
Liberty, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Centerwhile
terrified citizens see in panic through flames, billowing clouds of
smoke, and falling debris. Suddenly these
identical scenes appeared on our television screens, in a horrifying
Baudrillardian example of the real projected as a simulacrum of an
already familiar imaginary.
With so convenient a narrative as the melodramatic disaster film readily at hand, we have now entered the next phase of that narrative. A shocked and deeply hurt, but mightily resilient America mobilizes its forces,seeks out and destroys the evil Other,
and restores the world to its state of innocence. This is the scenario we are now pursuing, with Osama bin Laden as Darth Vader and George W.
Bush as Luke Skywalker (conveniently ignoring the easy reversibility of
such Manichean structures and thus unable to comprehend how so many in the world see the US as the powerful Darth Vader and bin Laden as a kind of defiant Luke Skywalker).What will happen to both sides when the clear-cut world of the
melodramatic imagination encounters the complex, ambiguous, shifting,
and dangerous world of contingent reality will inevitably occupy our
attention for the foreseeable future.
What seems clear at present, nevertheless, is that however frequently
the term tragedy may be heard today, there is at least so far very
little evidence of tragic insight.Perhaps we as a culture now have some
idea of what Artaud meant when he said, We
are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theatre
has been created to teach us that ?rst of all. Even this, however, the
knowledge of the terrible and necessary cruelty which things can
exercise against us is still, I think, masked by our melodramatic
construction of the events of September 11. Of course the act itself was
a savage and heinous one, as clear an eruption of evil into everyday
existence as most of us have ever seen. Yet tragedy, while recognizing
the presence of evil, attempts to push us beyond that recognition, to
consider such matters as the strength of the human spirit in adversity,
the mystery Schopenhauer pursued of the apparent inevitable and tragic
clash of wills, and, perhaps most difficult for a proud, prosperous, and
apparently blessed people like ourselves, that uncomfortable and
difficult tragic concept of hubris, according to whose inexplicable
workings security and apparent blessing may contain the seeds of
catastrophe. Like the proud, prosperous,and apparently blessed Oedipus,
we were men most mighty, on whose fortunes what citizen of the world did
not gaze with envy. But like him, into what a stormy sea of dreaded
trouble we have come. Let us now pray that, as the Greek tragedians
hoped, we can find the wisdom that comes through suffering.
MARVIN CARLSON
City University of New York
Predictably, and certainly not inappropriately, the term tragedy has
been very widely invoked in our attempt to speak the unspeakable, to
express the inexpressible in the wake of the emotionally and culturally
shattering events of September 11.
Rarely, however, has the term been invoked with much awareness of its
theatrical heritage, since it has long since cast off its theatrical
moorings to float freely through the semiotic field, applied to almost
any event, of any magnitude, that involves human
suffering, especially when that suffering is extreme, unexpected, and
seemingly undeserved. Certainly in this sense the loss of life on that
day, with its attendant train of trauma and mourning which for a long
time to come will haunt the imaginations of
all of us, fully merits this sometimes overused term more fully than any
event in recent American experience.
Largely lacking, however, in the widespread invocation of this
emotionally charged term, has been much sense of what its implications
have been in the site of its original cultural articulation, the
theatre. This is, perhaps not too surprising. In modern
America we are not at all accustomed to regarding theatre as mode of
exploring significant cultural, social, and philosophical questions, and
tragedy, the theatrical form that engages these questions on the deepest
level, has been particularly slighted
in our cultural tradition. This is not, I think, simply because we do
not think of theatre as a central cultural expression. Much more
fundamental, I believe, is an American cultural imaginary that leaves
very little room for the development of a concept of
tragedy in the traditional European mode.
Fundamental to the founding myths of America was the idea of a fresh
start, a Rousseauesque innocence and a boundless optimism. There was
little room or tolerance for the burdens of the past and the wayward,
even malicious, turns of fate so
critical to the work of the great tragic writers of Europe. Pain and
suffering were acknowledged, of course. Any work dealing with the human
condition could hardly deny them. But the favored dramatic mode for
dealing with such matters in America
has not been tragedy, but melodrama. Pain and suffering were not the
result of inexplicable forces in the universe, but of the machinations
of evil characters, who were inevitably eventually thwarted and
vanquished. This is the scenario that
continues to ground much of our popular entertainment, most notably the
popular disaster films of the past several decades, which for many us
provided the most immediate and vivid point of reference as we attempted
to fit the unimaginable attack
into our personal and cultural imaginary.
I cannot count the number of times that I heard some variation of the
phrase It seemed like a film from people attempting to articulate
their reaction to images of the disaster. Indeed it did seem like a
film, and an all-too-familiar one, the film in which an
innocent and trusting America is suddenly without warning attacked by
some alien forcerevived prehistoric monsters, alien and hostile beings
from outer space or the depths of the oceans. New York is a favored
target of such attacks, marked by the
destruction of the great recognizable icons of that citythe Statue of
Liberty, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Centerwhile
terrified citizens see in panic through flames, billowing clouds of
smoke, and falling debris. Suddenly these
identical scenes appeared on our television screens, in a horrifying
Baudrillardian example of the real projected as a simulacrum of an
already familiar imaginary.
With so convenient a narrative as the melodramatic disaster film readily at hand, we have now entered the next phase of that narrative. A shocked and deeply hurt, but mightily resilient America mobilizes its forces,seeks out and destroys the evil Other,
and restores the world to its state of innocence. This is the scenario we are now pursuing, with Osama bin Laden as Darth Vader and George W.
Bush as Luke Skywalker (conveniently ignoring the easy reversibility of
such Manichean structures and thus unable to comprehend how so many in the world see the US as the powerful Darth Vader and bin Laden as a kind of defiant Luke Skywalker).What will happen to both sides when the clear-cut world of the
melodramatic imagination encounters the complex, ambiguous, shifting,
and dangerous world of contingent reality will inevitably occupy our
attention for the foreseeable future.
What seems clear at present, nevertheless, is that however frequently
the term tragedy may be heard today, there is at least so far very
little evidence of tragic insight.Perhaps we as a culture now have some
idea of what Artaud meant when he said, We
are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theatre
has been created to teach us that ?rst of all. Even this, however, the
knowledge of the terrible and necessary cruelty which things can
exercise against us is still, I think, masked by our melodramatic
construction of the events of September 11. Of course the act itself was
a savage and heinous one, as clear an eruption of evil into everyday
existence as most of us have ever seen. Yet tragedy, while recognizing
the presence of evil, attempts to push us beyond that recognition, to
consider such matters as the strength of the human spirit in adversity,
the mystery Schopenhauer pursued of the apparent inevitable and tragic
clash of wills, and, perhaps most difficult for a proud, prosperous, and
apparently blessed people like ourselves, that uncomfortable and
difficult tragic concept of hubris, according to whose inexplicable
workings security and apparent blessing may contain the seeds of
catastrophe. Like the proud, prosperous,and apparently blessed Oedipus,
we were men most mighty, on whose fortunes what citizen of the world did
not gaze with envy. But like him, into what a stormy sea of dreaded
trouble we have come. Let us now pray that, as the Greek tragedians
hoped, we can find the wisdom that comes through suffering.
MARVIN CARLSON
City University of New York
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