Is it possible that drama in theatre or television can intervene in the changing world or can it merely reflect it?
The poetics of a passive reflective theatre, a theatre where the audience escapes from reality into an entertaining world of illusion, is attributed to Aristotle. This is the dominant form of theatre today, as well as being prevalent in the vast majority of film and television drama. It is drama built around a common structure of start, middle and end – where any questions raised get answered and everyone lives happily ever after (apart from the bad guys who get their just desserts). Aristotle’s philosophy is that the purpose of such drama is to act cathartically, purging the audience of unsettling emotions – the impact is a form of sedation of the audience and consequently preservation of the status quo.
Aristotle was first and foremost a logician. He didn’t invent the naturalist, reflective poetics of theatre; he was an eloquent commentator on it and his descriptions remain relevant to much of what film and theatre provides today. Kenneth Mcleish describes Aristotle’s fundamental beliefs as follows:
“It was axiomatic in Aristotelian thinking that chaos is inferior to order and that there is an orderly, organic progression from one state to another. By implication, everything in the universe and in human imagination has its hierarchy. In Poetics men are superior to women, and both are superior to slaves. “Good” people are superior to “bad” people and the reasons can be defined.”
Read more (PDF) >>