Something Worth Trying

  You know, the number one organ of ridicule nowadays, is the newspaper. And if you open the newspaper any day of the week, it’s full of people who’ve messed up their lives. They’ve slept with the wrong person. They’ve taken the wrong substance.They’ve passed the wrong legislation. Whatever it is. And then are fit for ridicule. In other words, they have failed. And they are described as “losers.” Now is there any alternative to this? I think the Western tradition shows us one glorious alternative .And that is tragedy.

Tragic art, as it developed in the theaters of ancient Greece, in the Fifth Century B.C., was essentially an art form devoted to tracing how people fail. And also according them a level of sympathy. Which ordinary life would not necessarily accord them. I remember a few years ago, I was thinking about all this. And I went to see “The Sunday Sport,” a tabloid newspaper that I don’t recommend you to start reading, if you’re not familiar with it already. And I went to talk to them about certain of the great tragedies of Western art. And I wanted to see how they would seize the bare bones of certain stories if they came in as a news item at the news desk on a Saturday afternoon.

So I told them about Othello. They had not heard of it but were fascinated by it  And I asked them to write the headline for the story of Othello.They came up with “Love-Crazed Immigrant Kills Senators Daughter” splashed across the headline. I gave them the plotline of Madame Bovary. Again, a book they were enchanted to discover. And they wrote “Shopaholic Adulteress Swallows Arsenic After Credit Fraud”  And then my favorite.They really do have a kind of genius all of their own, these guys. My favorite is Sophocles’ “Oedipus the King.” ”Sex With Mum Was Blinding” 

In a way, if you like, at one end of the spectrum of sympathy, you’ve got the tabloid newspaper. At the other end of the spectrum you’ve got tragedy and tragic art. And I suppose I’m arguing that we should learn a little bit about what’s happening in tragic art.It would be insane to call Hamlet a loser. He is not a loser, though he has lost. And I think that is the message of tragedy to us, and why it’s so very very important, I think.

puddlenotes:

(via magscostello)