Genre

Collected lecture/discussion notes. Some parts are very fragmented, but offered here as a study aid, not a primary learning source. Citations are lost. None of the thoughts are original.

Origins of genre:

• Greek serious drama - called tragedy - evolved from dithyramb. The meaning of tragedy was really created by Aristotle 200 years after beginnings.
• Greek light drama - called comedy - evolved from festivals, parades. Aristotle called this "old comedy," and defined it as based in character and satire.
• Farces - a modern term (since 1500) applied to comedic folk forms - non-literary, often improvised, known in most cultures, evolved as satirizing of social behavior.
• Greek "new comedy" - Aristotle's term for the comedies of Menander and others who made the farce form literary, and imposed some of the character and ideas from Old Comedy upon it.

Indian Sanskrit drama divides genre on a different basis: moods, flavors, content.

Categories are not inherent in nature - it is human intellect deriving similarities among individuals and using the over-all aspects of the grouping to predict other aspects of an individual within the group.

Tragedy

• One of strongest patterns involves making choice, then facing the results of that choice.
• Choice frequently occurs long prior to play.
• "The hero regains his own soul by bringing back the token of his identity [from his quest for meaning or immortality in life], even as he pays a terrible price for what he has won."
• Great crisis challenges hero to utmost.
• "Isolation is the immediate price the hero pays for taking up his burden, but it is an isolation, a rebellion, that gives him identity."
• "To the extent that a man asserts his difference, his ability to stand apart from the universe and declare that it is wrong, he becomes a tragic hero."

• Passion: Hero undergoes tremendous suffering and struggle in which he questions basis of his own being and sees foundation of his world shaken.
• Perception: Meaning becomes clear, reconcilliation of hero to world. Most suggest hero really had it coming, thereby establishing fact that universe does have order, no matter how vague. ("chaos to order" in tragedy - Aristotle).

"In deep humility of suffering, tragic hero often discovers new bond of sympathy with all suffering humanity."

Discussion groups: "Tragic vision"; characters of Oedipus & Jocasta; use of chorus & structure; themes & motifs (repeated images, statements, actions for overall theme)

Melodrama

"Melodrama underscores a basic truth in the human condition: the majority of crises and conflicts in our daily lives lack tragedy's broader moral dimensions."

• Few conflicts in life are tragedies.
• Events of disaster are unrelated to the disposition of the protagonist. Protagonist's "moral character is not essential the vent and whose suffering does not imply related guild or responsibility."

"There need not be any meaningful relationship between the suffering of the protagonist and the cause and nature of the disastrous event."

• Suffering is caused by external forces, not willfully provoked. No guilt or responsibility.
• Key is externality.

• Melodrama gives indirect, objective form to our irrational fears.
• Characters of melodrama feel sorry for themselves.
• Clearly established moral principles.
• Motives are simple or non-existent.
• Virtue triumphs, punishment usually appropriate to the crime.
• Morality clear: good vs. bad. Good always wins, punishment usually poetic.
• Issues are resolved.
• Characters are "whole," not caught up in moral dilemmas or contradictory and conflicting feelings and impulses.
• "Win or lose, the action of melodrama is basically that of an undivided protagonist facing an outer conflict." Therefore the outcome is simple and the conflict won or lost.
• We don't want to escape problems, we want them resolved favorably.
• Characters feel sorry for themselves.

Tragicomedy

• Occurs because of lack of agreement about values, behavior. Human behavior is relative, so there is no set of univocal symbols or meanings for actions.
• Lack of social agreement on values: funny vs. serious.
• No action is therefore subject to one interpretation.
• Life is portrayed. Avoids the idealism of tragedy, the purity and virtue of melodrama, the lack fo immediate gravity of events of comedy.
• As in life
  • -No tragic idealism, moral dilemmas of major proportion
  • -No petty simplistic good vs. evil dilemmas of melodrama.
  • -No disproportionate gravity (things taken too seriously) as in comedy.
  • -No rebellion and functioning beyond social law as in farce.
• Ultimate outcome is usually a kind of hope.
• Most variable form.
• While life is tough it is hopeful.

Comedy

Comedy not definable by structure or subject matter.

"The spirit of comedy celebrates our capacity not only to endure our tragic fate, but to overcome it with energy and exuberance. . . . Our fate may be tragic, but comedy, in all its forms, asserts the joy of survival in an acceptable and accepting world."

Comic view of life and its world

• -Celebration of capacity to endure. Endurance of life == & indomitable fool
• -Turmoil and confusion to stability. Normal functioning, predictions, expectations, rational progressions are thwarted temporarily - or world is typically chaotic and only momentarily resolved.
• -World without real pain; painful consequences always short circuited. Pain is never funny. No real pain - no serious consequences
• -Indomitable fool: usually often a clown figure immune from natural or social law. He'll trick and cozen people, may even get caught, but we know he won't be hurt and will come out break-even or better in the end.

Plays something serious, but is undercut by an incongruity; a falling short of an agreed-upon standard of seriousness.

"Comedy, then, operates in that middle zone between the serious and the absurd which Aristotle called the ludicrous. It is an area which excludes nobility of character, painful consequences, and the consummation of any events likely to offend our moral sensibilities."

• Ludicrous: Obviously absurd, incongruous, exaggerated or eccentric. Not always comic, but one of the tools of comedy. A serious action undercut by some incongruity (tuxedo with tennis shoes, wedding ceremony on roller skates), something given disproportionate seriousness (girl staying out of public because she broke a nail). Must never be painful, physically or emotionally.
• Serious events can have no serious consequences.
• Some things which once were funny are now painful; and many things once serious are now funny.
  • Merchant - funny villainous Jew was funny in 16th C. England, not today.
  • Seduction of naïve country girl used to be funny.
  • Clichés of melodrama used to be serious.

Farce

• Chaotic, not complex.
• No concern for fates.
• Little psychological development. No character development
• Motivation incredible
• Plot resolution insignificant
• Spirit of violence and rebellion
  "It is an anarchic vision directed at strong, publicly approved vales and standards of behavior."
• Pleasure comes as release of frustration without consequence.
• Expression of repressed wishes.

• Those with power order the world for their benefit.
• We spend our lives being repressed by our culture - restricted in what we may do, especially in expressing our own anger and frustration and contempt for which there are stiff penalties.
• Farce permits us to act out those expressions vicariously, without suffering consequences. Subjects for farce include: any form of pretentiousness, sex, morals, religion, sanctity of death, race or ethnic background, anything that is taken seriously by those who pretend to order the world.
• Requires community values to be effective. Past matters of rebellion may no longer be repressive (turn-of-century French bedroom farce). [I love Lucy, Road Runner, Saturday Night live, Beavis & Butthead, South Park]
• Naturally farce is dismissed by those who hold power because they hold the values that farce attacks. It is non-literate because it is the product of the repressed social strata. Therefore the literate do not regard it highly. It has immediate, explosive impact. Comedy tends to accumulate.
• Non-literate doesn't mean it's not written.
• Satire is not necessarily farce.
• Farce belongs to the actors.
• Plot tends to be a strung-together series of incidents, a succession of images.
• Plot may be situation which throws elements together for farcical results.

Farce historically is the first clearly developed form. When first man imitated another to make fun of him, farce was created. But because it is not literate, not usually written. Commedia dell' Arte relied heavily on farce.