Atonement

The movie that I think falls into the realm of an Aristotle tragedy is Atonement. In Atonement, Cecilia, a young woman from a wealthy family falls in love with Robbie, a young man who works for her family, a relationship that is kept secret as it would be inappropiate since they are from different social classes. However, the woman’s sister, Briony, who has a very active imagination, finds out about the relationship, misconstrues what is taking place, wrongfully accuses Robbie of rape and sends him to jail. In jail, he is given the choice to live out his sentence or fight in World War II. He chooses to fight and eventually dies on the battlefield. Cecilia, who is heartbroken, moves to London, where she becomes a casualty of the London bombings that occured during the war. Briony, knowing that she caused the death of her sister and her sister’s lover, puts her pain into writing and becomes a successful author. Her last book is autobiographical, and she recounts the role she played in the destruction of two lives. However, instead of writing that Cecilia and Robbie die, she ends the book by saying that they survived the war and she apologized for her mistake, and in doing so atones for her past.

This movie technically has three different tragedies, one for each of the main characters. Robbie commits hubris by going after a woman he is not supposed to, and he pays with his life. Cecilia commits hubris by yearning for a man she is not allowed to have, and she too pays with her life. Briony commits hubris by snooping (which is how she discovers the relationship), and she pays by having to live with the guilt of her actions. The movies somehow implies that the guilt faced by Briony was more of a punishment than the death that Cecilia and Robbie face because they die knwing the truth and the fact that they still love each other, whereas Briony does not atone for her sins and has to live with the pain. The concept that death is actually a respite may not necessarily fit into the Aristotelian tragedy, but the concept that the guilty are punished is definately evident. Also, there are some histrionic moments, which is expected as it is a dramatic and spectacularly depressing movie, which I am sure Artistotle would cringe at, but the dramatic moments do not detract from the storyline or the message, and are definately conducive in making a good tragic story.

Does Inception have Too Much Spectacle?

First of all, if I’m choosing too obvious a movie to analyze, I’m sorry, but I’m hoping that enough students in discussion will have seen this film to get a good discussion going.

So, when Inception was first advertised, the one thing that was most shown-off was its spectacle. We got to witness Paris folding in on itself, a city square with debris flying every which way, and a scene in a hotel hallway that was rapidly and surreally rotating. With all this flash, it could seem that this would be a film that Aristotle would hate.

However, I think that if Aristotle was somehow able to come to the year 2010 and actually sit down and watch this film, he would be impressed. Although the spectacle is perhaps what got a lot of modern Western moviegoers to come see the film, what really pulls the film, what got it an Oscar nomination, and what would impress Aristotle is its engaging plot and superb character development. Although at the begining, the plot of Inception seems to be just a heist movie with a dream-oriented twist, the first reversal comes when we realize that a greater focus of the movie is on the inner struggle of its main character, Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), meaning that Aristotle’s two most important aspects of tragedy, plot and character, are one in the same in Inception.

As Cobb prepares for one last dream-entering job that will give him the means to return home to his family, he allows Ariadne, a bright student, to join his team. Cobb proceeds to show Ariadne  (played by Ellen Page) the ropes of shared dreaming, but in turn, Ariadne learns more about Cobb by witnessing his dreams. As Ariadne learns more about Cobb’s dark past, so does the audience, and this achieves three things. First, it creates a reversal, because while Cobb is supposed to be the one helping Ariadne, it is Ariadne that discovers that Cobb is the one whose problems need resolving. Second, it allows Ariadne to achieve deeper and deeper recognition of the issues that Cobb has. Third, and most important, it creates an ingaging story and develops Cobb’s character astoundingly well, pulling the audience in so that they are interested to learn what the universal message of the film will be. I think Aristotle would be appreciative, if not thoroughly impressed.

In the closing scenes of the film, Cobb is able to step out of the shadow of his past through one last grand recognition of his own – that his wife, his real wife, is gone, and that the projection of his wife in his dreams isn’t real. He is able to let go. This final strong plot point helps most of all to get the final universal of the film across: that people, as a whole, can very easily blur the lines between reality and fabrication.

Although Inception is very well-known for its spectacle, I believe that this spectacle takes a back seat to plot and character in the end, making the film as a whole something Aristotle would appreciate.

-Christopher Hoef

The Connection Between Livestock and Honor

Okay, so I just made a post on Poetics, but I was really intrigued by our discussion of Ajax today and I couldn’t help but make connections to other things I’ve read. While I know a lot of people in our discussion didn’t think it made much sense for Ajax to be “dishonored” for torturing and killing the Greeks’ livestock, it made perfect sense to me. So, sorry about the length of this:

The Greeks are considered descendents of the earlier Indo-European peoples, who (put simply) spread into Europe to make the Greeks, Celts, Slavs and Germanic peoples, and into India as the ‘Aryans.’ What is fascinating to me, is that there are similarities between all of these cultures because of this common root, and one of those similarities is the idea of livestock–especially cows–as sacred. Many creation stories involve cows. In Norse religion, a cow nursed the first god. The Egyptians sacrificed other animals, but never cows! In their mythology, there is reference to a “sky cow.” As most people probably know already, in India cows are considered sacred, due to religious connections. In Greek religion, there are references to cows as well. For example, Io is frequently depicted as a heifer because Zeus turned her into one.

It definitely makes sense for cows to be thought of as the origin of life; they provided milk, material for clothes and tools, meat, and many of the things essential to life for the ancients. Thus, their value would later become a type of wealth.

In many Bronze Age cultures, certainly not just the Greeks, livestock indicated high presitge, honor and wealth, and were these assets lost, so was ones honor. For example. The Celts took their livestock very seriously! In the great Irish epic, the Táin, a massive war is started over one great bull, because the high queen Medb of Ireland and her husband, each want to prove they are the most powerful, which will be shown by who has the greatest bull. Similarly, we see this in the Iliad and other Greek texts frequently. What do the the Achaeans take as booty? (aside from unfortunate women) Livestock, as proof of the honor they won and the honor the Trojans lost. This great collection of animals won in war shows their power, like how the Sun God’s cattle in the Odyssey can not be touched, otherwise it is a slight to him.

Another Celtic example is in the Welsh Mabinogion, when the king of Ireland comes to marry the princess of Wales. When her brother mutilates his horses–the finest in the land–Wales has been dishonored and a war is started between the two countries that leaves 7 survivors. Pretty intense stuff, right? But it makes sense. One of the most frequently referenced Celtic goddesses is Epona, a horse goddess (who was later adopted by Roman soldiers). So, they had a religious connection to horses and cows, which later developed into a sign of wealth and prestige. This is exactly like when Ajax mutilates the livestock of the Greek army, and strife and pain follow. Everything he did before as a soldier is now overcome by this great dishonor, much like that the king of Wales ends up facing.

So, when Ajax slaughters the Achaean livestock, it is sacrilege, plus he is taking away the prestige, wealth and honor of the Greek army. It is like he has ruined all the honor and prestige he had emassed for them as a great warrior, because he has eliminated the booty to prove this wealth. Thus, it is no surprise that his fellow soldiers, raised in this cow crazy culture, hated him.

-Stephanie Leitzel

Aristotle and the Tree of Life

After reading Poetics, I’ve decided that Aristotle would absolutely abhor the Tree of Life, which came out this year. It is an art film, that attempts to grasp the meaning of life (of course), and reflects on the main character’s (Brad Pitt) childhood in Texas. The thing is, is a good portion of the movie is all “spectacle.” It’s like paying seven dollars to see a picture show of galaxies and earth and dinosaurs, and every once and a while you are teased with some story line. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing pictures of the ring nebula on the big screen, probably more than anyone, and dinosaurs are awesome, but Aristotle wouldn’t like it. From Poetics, we see that he values a complex plot above spectacle and that he enjoys a very logical, linear plot structure. From the Tree of Life, we see that the director, Terrence Malik, values the opposite; he loves spectacle and the plot–if you can even call it that–is a very fragmented non-linear one.

However, if in some bizarre alternate universe Aristotle could come to the future and watch the Tree of Life, he would probably spend the whole movie distracted by the pictues of the ring neblula and other galaxies, wondering “where is the phere of the Prime Mover and what’s all this other junk?”

-Stephanie L

Harry Potter

Okay, I know.  I suck for doing this one, but I went home over the weekend, and ABC Family was doing their Harry Potter weekend, and every other example I can make myself come up with just pales in comparison to Harry Potter.  So, here I go.

When Snape kills Dumbledore at the end of the sixth book, many hearts were broken, mine included.  Despite all their suspicions and various conspiracy theories, the students and staff always trusted Dumbledore’s judgement.  So when Professor Snape is the one to use the killing curse on Dumbledore on the top of the tower, one of the most intense examples of recognition begins.  Everyone at Hogwarts thinks they’ve found out whose side Snape is really on, but when Harry finally sees Snape’s memories in the pensieve, he truly recognizes Snape for what he is; a man fighting against Voldemort in honor of his own love for a girl.

As for reversal, Voldemort believes he has killed Harry nearing the end of the seventh book, but Harry ends up killing Voldemort soon after that, the complete opposite of what we thought happened, and not at all what we expected.

Pallu

Chihiro in Wonderland

Hayao Mizayaki’s masterpiece Spirited Away follows the adventure of ten-year old Chihiro, who traverses an alternate world in efforts to save her parents. Chihiro’s family becomes lost and runs into an abandoned amusement park, where a witch, Yubaba, turns her parents into pigs–a 21st century version of The Odyssey and Circe. The fantasy elements of the plot make the film what it is–a spectacular and captivating visual experience.

And what better method of mimesis than animation? Miyazaki is given many liberties through this technique, but Aristotle may disagree with his heavy use of spectacle. Nonetheless, the plot would not be the same without the magnificent spirits and scenery of the spirit world. The film may seem episodic with its different scenes, but there is a logical flow through them, all leading up to the heartwarming climax. The audience cheers for Chihiro throughout her quest in which she befriends the enigmatic spirit No-Face,  the dragon-morphing Haku, among other memorable characters. We also can’t help but feel concerned for her when Yubaba steals her name or when Yubaba threatens to kill her parents; Aristotle asserts that these feelings of pity and fear are key products of a great drama.

The film is poignantly wrapped to a close with two instances of anagnorisis. Indeed, Chihiro literally does recognize Haku as the river spirit who saved her life as a child and correctly recognizes that none of the pigs are her parents. Catharsis, too, is induced, as all our feelings of distress and sympathy for Chihiro dissolve into sentiment.

Open Your Eyes

Vanilla Sky is an epic movie that I would highly recommend to anyone who has an interest in psychological thriller movies (like Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind or The Science of Sleep), or dreaming in general.  (Warning: Please don’t read this if you might be interested in the movie).  The movie follows David, who gets his face disfigured when his ex-girlfriend Julianna tries to kill him in a car accident.  He wakes up, gets his face fixed, and lives on with his new girlfriend Sofie.  The problems start to arise when he notices various oddities in everyday life.  Long story short: he actually committed suicide by drug overdose after the accident and having his face disfigured , and is in cryogenic sleep to keep himself alive indefinitely.  He is given the choice to have his eternal lucid dream restarted, or to wake up 150 years after he first went to sleep.  He picks the later, and the movie ends.

David very loosely fits the mold of Aristotle’s tragic hero.  He had great happiness when he was with his girlfriend, and had a tragic fall that was entirely his own fault.  He essentially lived with hubris prior to his fall, which makes this story seem closer to the Greek’s masterpieces than it really is.  He committed suicide after losing his girlfriend Sofia in a drunken fight after having his face disfigured from his ex-girlfriend (Julianna’s) intentional accident.  However, there isn’t ever an appearance of anagnorisis in his tragic fall.  All in all, David loosely fits the mold of a tragic hero.  The plot, however, is of my personal favorite variant: one that isn’t fluidly connected even after the end of the movie.  The plot requires the watcher to think over the entire thing multiple times before understanding what happened.  This of course defies Aristotle’s view of plot, which is the idea of a well formed, connected plot.

“Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.”

Plot of Macbeth

Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, is a tragic play in which the central figure, Macbeth, is destroyed by his wife’s, and his own, ambition.  The complication of Macbeth goes from the opening of the play until a man who technically was not born of woman (he had a Cesarian section) announces this fact to Macbeth and then kills him.  Throughout the complication, Macbeth orders numerous people to be killed, including Macduff and his wife and children, and personally murders the king, Duncan.  Some of the plots succeed, but some of them fail, and as Macbeth becomes ever more involved in his methods of violence in order to solve his problems and make himself king of Scotland, he makes more and more enemies.  As he and his wife are driven mad by guilt, Macbeth’s enemies continue to plot against him until, at the point which completes Macbeth’s reversal of fortune and begins the solution of the play, Macbeth is killed by Macduff.  Macbeth is a complex tragedy; there is an intense moment of recognition and reversal when Macduff informs Macbeth that he was not, in fact, born of woman.  The one problem that Aristotle might have with Macbeth as tragedy would be that the audience does not feel very much pity for Macbeth at the end of the play.  Yes, his wife (and eventually he) die and he makes a sad speech about how insignificant human life ultimately is, but he did terrible things throughout the play, so there is almost a sense that he deserved what he got.   

Memento

Memento is a movie about Leonard Shelby, a man who is unable to make new memories after being struck on the head while trying to confront two men who were attacking his wife.  His last memory is of his wife dying.  The movie follows him as he attempts to find and kill the other attacker.  Unlike most movies, the plot of this movie works backwards, starting with Leonard shooting the man he believes to be the other attacker, Teddy, and working toward the true beginning, when Teddy, actually a police officer, tells Leonard that his wife survived the attack and actually died of an insulin overdose.  Teddy also reveals that the second attacker has been caught and killed.  Angry about this revelation, Leonard decides to set himself to kill Teddy by writing down notes to help him remember later to track down Teddy (Leonard uses a complex system of notes and tattoos to keep track of his life).

Aristotle would approve of Memento because it is filled with many other reversals, similar to the major one at the end of the movie, when the audience learns that Leonard has set up Teddy to be murdered.  Although he would approve of the complex plot, I do not think Aristotle would approve of how the plot is presented backwards.  In the Poetics, Aristotle states that the plot should be logical and each event should be a result of preceding events.  Technically, each event in Memento is the result of preceding events, but it is not presented that way.  Aristotle would not approve of how the plot is presented in an illogical, and sometimes very confusing, manner.  Also, although Memento does have a beginning, middle, and end, Aristotle would most likely not approve of the fact that it is presented end, middle, then beginning.  Aristotle would approve of Memento‘s plot because it represents a single action (Leonard attempting to get revenge for his wife’s death) and has an appropriate magnitude.

Memento could not be classified as a tragedy, according to Aristotle’s definition, because, although it tells the story of an average person, Leonard does not experience a change of fortune.  At the end of the plot, Leonard’s situation is just as bad as it is at the beginning of the plot.  The only character that could be viewed as a tragic hero is Teddy, because he is an average person whose fortune changes for the worse.  I do not think that Aristotle would classify Teddy as a tragic hero because Teddy’s misfortune is not caused by an error on his part, it is caused by Leonard’s split-decision to seek revenge.  Aristotle would not approve of Teddy’s murder because Teddy is a fairly good man whose fortune is changed, which Aristotle would classify as an inadequate plot.  Overall, I do not think that Aristotle would approve of Memento because, although it has reversals and a complex plot, it is too confusing and does not have all of the characteristics of a tragedy.

I Am Your Father

In examining Aristotle’s “parts of plot” I couldn’t help but think of that famous line from that famous series, Darth Vader’s identification to Luke of his true identity in the Star Wars series. Although I am far from being an expert on the series and assert neither it’s superiority nor it’s inferiority to other movies/series, I would like to put it to Aristotle’s test of what makes a satisfactory plot. The first aspect of the plot  described by Aristotle is the reversal. I would argue one of the most influential and important reversals to the series is the training of Anakin as a “good” Jedi and the “Chosen One” to destroy the Empire but instead he does the opposite by giving into the “dark side” and rising to become one of the Sith Lords of the Empire. Then there is the recognition which takes form in those immortalized words “I am your father” spoken by Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker. Luke tries to deny this fact but cannot argue with the truth. Not only does this identify his greatest enemy as his father, but it identifies Luke as a part of Vader and his heir. This relationship horrifies Luke as he moves from ignorance to knowledge and evokes terror and pity for the young man who is at the mercy of his father and is shamed and disgusted by his father. Finally, there is suffering which is pervasive in the series but in the scene between Vader and Luke, the recognition is preceded by severing of Luke’s forearm and followed by Luke’s deceptive, and seemingly-suicidal jump. The series ends with Vader’s death which somewhat redeems him as he tries to protect his son. So whether or not Star Wars is the greatest series of all time, by Aristotle’s standards, it’s plot was made of the right stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6sj89xgnl4 Fast Forward to 1:25 🙂