Blog post #2! I have no witty byline..

I am dreadfully sorry to post this so late. I finished it last night (or, rather, early this morning) but since I refuse to publicly display just how late I stayed up, I decided to post it later this morning.

I think the use of coerciveness in Aristotle’s plays was very well explained, personally, and it made sense to me. Where I have trouble following is how the structure of Aristotle’s plays, which set out a very clear series of emotions he means for the spectator to experience, relates to the structure of modern plays (and movies and what have you) in general. I certainly agree that theater, like any art form, can be used in a coercive fashion. But I would not go so far as to say that Aristotle’s didactic structure applies to much of what I see today.

I also find Plato fascinating despite relatively little knowledge of his works. The idea of nature tending to, if not perfection (at this point the term perfection has so many connotations I don’t feel right using it because of the necessary explanations involved), then at least some end, makes sense. I like the way Aristotle extends this to say that art and science intervene where nature isn’t reaching its ends. I don’t agree that theater as a method of correction for the “mistakes” nature makes is necessarily a bad thing; simply that it depends who it is doing the correcting. It bears keeping in mind that the person writing the play will have certain aims in doing so, and it is certainly right to question those aims and, as Boal says, to try to figure out “what does [catharsis] correct… and what does it purify? (TOTO p. 27).