Philosophy of the Performing Arts

184 performance as art
a probable consequence of his or her fatally flawed judgment. This presup-
poses a measure of intellectual involvement on our part, as audience, if we
are to determine that events are indeed unfolding in the way we would have
expected. We must be moved in the relevant ways by what we take to be
an intelligible fate that befalls one who deserves our pity and/or fear. Only
in this way can our experience in watching the tragic drama help to bring
our emotional dispositions into line with our rational assessment of situa-
tions. This enables the emotions to support reason in shaping our conduct,
as Aristotle thinks they should. But the tragic effect does not require that we
respond critically to what is represented. Rather, we must be carried along by
the narrative in order for the tragic effect to occur. Thus, in an important
sense, the task of the playwright is to emotionally manipulate the audience,
via their involvement with the fate of the characters. The theatrical medium
is then the means whereby such manipulation takes place. For this reason, it
is important that the medium not interfere with the spectator’s emotional
engagement with the narrative, otherwise catharsis will not occur.
Theater, then, must meet a number of conditions if it is to realize its
proper Aristotelean purpose. Characters must be psychologically rich, fully
drawn individuals, whose experience the viewer seeks to understand, thereby
becoming emotionally engaged by the narrative. The play must present a
self-contained narrative universe, where events can be understood in terms
of the laws of that universe and the motivation of the characters. This leads
us to relate the represented events to other things within the universe of the
play, and to experience a sense of narrative and moral closure when the cur-
tain falls. The medium strives to be transparent , so that viewers attend to what
is going on, rather than to the technical devices being used in the narrative.
The Aristotelean model of theatrical performance faces at least two kinds
of challenge, only the second of which will concern us here. The first chal-
lenge is to explain how Aristotelean theater is possible in the face of two
famous “paradoxes.” First, the paradox of fiction asks, of fictional narratives
in general, how we can be emotionally moved by something we take to be
fictional. Normally, it seems, our emotions presuppose certain beliefs about
the reality of the things that move us. This is obviously a serious matter for
the Aristotelean account, since the “proper pleasure” of tragedy – catharsis –
can occur only if the play has already elicited pity and fear in the audience.
The second paradox – the paradox of tragedy – asks why, if tragedy arouses
in us the unpleasant emotions of pity and fear, we would choose to sub-
ject ourselves to the experiences associated with tragic drama. Philosophers
have offered a number of solutions to these two paradoxes, but we need not
pursue them further here.^5
The challenge that does concern us relates not to the possibility but to
the desirability of theatrical performances that fit the Aristotelean model. The