claim. It alsofits with Diderot’s claim about actors studying us to learn
about our emotional responses. If emotions were a matter of pure con-
vention, then there would be no point studying us at all (except perhaps
studying our responses to conventional emotion-symbols).
As for his second claim about actors feeling nothing: one might
wonder, and some indeed have argued along these lines, whether there
might be some interplay between putting on certain outward signs of fear,
anger, etc., and then, in consequence, actually feeling them to a certain
extent. There might not be such a sharp line, that is, between feeling the
emotion and showing the outward signs of the emotion. So, for example,
clenching yourfists might actually make you feel angry. The extent to
which one accepts this interplay relates to the point just made about
Diderot’sfirst claim. If the outward signs of emotion, as used by the
actor, are not in fact the real things, but rather a matter of stage con-
vention, then putting on those outward signs should have no effect at all.
So looking afraid, on the stage, looking nothing like looking really afraid,
will do nothing to trigger fear.^77
Diderot’s claims about acting, if accurate, have positive as well as
negative implications –as he clearly acknowledges. For one thing, it
makes space for acting as a genuine technical skill. Good actors aren’t
merely people who feel strongly and on cue – they study people’s
expressions, movements and voices and they must train and practice like a
musician or an athlete. When an actress portrays a distressed mother,
claims Diderot (perhaps hyperbolically), her cries are planned to the nearest
twentieth of a quarter-tone.^78 Diderot’s claims about actors are informed by
his friendship with the famous English actor, David Garrick. Garrick, says
Diderot, would practise different facial expressions, one after another,
representing strong and contrasting emotions. All the while, he would feel
nothing at all.^79 One is reminded of a musician practising scales. Diderot
was writing as the social status of the actor, although still not respected
(as Rousseau argues, above), was certainly better than it had been. Some
actors (and even some actresses) were able not only to make a living, but
even to become wealthy by their profession. Mme Clairon, mentioned in
theParadox of Acting, is one example. Garrick is another: not only was the
word‘star’(meaning a successful actor)first used for him; he would sub-
sequently have the honour of being buried in Westminster Abbey. Just
fifty years earlier, in France, the police had, under cover of darkness,
tossed the body of the celebrated actress Adrienne Lecouvreur into an
unmarked pit.^80 The conception of acting as a craft was made all the
more plausible once it was, relatively speaking, more profitable and more
socially acceptable.
Second, if he’s correct, Diderot makes Plato’s case against acting a lot more
difficult. If actors don’t really feel, don’t really sympathise with their
A school of morals? 121