of the ability of theatre to transmit an author’s beliefs. We saw, in
Chapter 2, that deriving an author’s claims about the world from a play
text or theatrical performance is hardly a simple matter. To state the obvious:
writing a play in which a character makes a statement is not the same as
making that statement yourself, nor is it (contraAristotle) the same as
stating that characters of that kind always or typically make statements of
this kind. Take the controversial speech at the end ofSeven Jewish Children,
quoted above: does this represent Churchill’s view of how Jews think
about Palestinian children, how Israelis think, how at least some Israelis
think, how some Israeli settlerssometimesthink? Is it her idealised por-
trayal of a way of thinking that informs Israeli foreign policy and repre-
sents a stage in the history of Israel, even if no individual would ever
think or utter these words? Or is she equating what Jews suffered during
the Holocaust with what Palestinians suffer in Israel? (‘Iwouldn’tcareifwe
wiped them out...’) The answers to these questions are not forthcoming
from the text or from theatrical performances of the text, and it’s not clear
that theyneedto be for aesthetic purposes. But, obviously, if we want to
take Churchill (or, more generally, her play) as making a politicalclaim –
the kind that could be true or false–then we’d want to be pretty sure
which of these options to begin with. All of them may be wrong; but
some are more plausible, and some are more incendiary, than others.
Even supposing we could derive a statement, we would still be faced
with another familiar concern, stemming from Plato’s arguments against
mimesis.The Platonic objection would be that playwrights don’t really
have any special expertise when it comes to politics, so there is no reason why
they should pretend to or why, if they do, we should listen. As discussed in
relation tomimesis, Plato’s fear is that audiences will fail to appreciate the
ignorance of the playwright and will be taken in by various elements of
the performance. Where the play makes claims about politics, the
thought that an ignorant and opinionated artist, especially a gifted one,
could influence the views of an audience becomes a cause of some concern.
The use of theatre–and of art more generally–as propaganda in the
service of certain authoritarian regimes has helped to give a modern twist
to this ancient concern.
Contrary to this Platonic thought, though, it’s not clear that all con-
tributions to politics must be in the form of making statements, or of the
amassing and communicating of knowledge. If what politics needs is
another discursive article or another set of statistics, then perhaps theatre
is not the best forum for such a contribution. But there are many
instances of‘contributions’to politics in the narrower sense, which don’t
take this form and which probably wouldn’t have been nearly as effective
if they had. A black woman who refuses to give up her seat on the bus is
not obviously communicating knowledge to those around her.
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