Evidence of Things Not Seen

My first instinct is to spend this entire post raving about the Spielberg's choice to NOT show the shark for 90% of the movie Jaws. But that seems a little on-the-nose, and I can't remember if we discussed it in class or not. Still, spend a few minutes appreciating the sheer terror of what you can't see in this scene...

My brain then leapt to the pilot episode of The West Wing. The episode centers around a member of the president's staff having an unfortunate interchange with a right wing religious figure on television, and not knowing if or when the president will fire him. The president, Martin Sheen, is referred to through the entire episode, but we don't actually meet him until the final three minutes or so. The president is largely Dark Matter, until the moment when he bursts into a meeting and makes it clear to everyone why he is the president.

What an entrance! This is a great example, as Emily prompted, of something being more impactful once it was shown, than if it had remained Dark Matter. The original idea of The West Wing was to have it be entirely about the staffers around the president, and only see him once every three or four episodes. The problem became, Martin Sheen is so damn good, and he made such an impact with only three minutes of screen time in one episode, that they immediately realized the show was just as much about him as about the people around him. In this way, what was primarily supposed to be Dark Matter materialized into the anchoring force of the entire series.

Finally, when asked to ponder the idea of Dark Matter that enforces some sort of political morality, my mind wandered to 12 Angry Men. Both the play and the movie center around 12 members of a jury forced to deliberate the guilt or innocence of a boy accused of killing his father. The play in particular is set in one location, there is no intermission, and nobody leaves the stage for 90 minutes. The actors/characters are literally shut away in a room until they come to a decision. Initially, 11 members vote the kid guilty. That leaves one juror, Henry Fonda in the film, who argues that the boy might be innocent and it's worth going over the information. Slowly but surely, for good or ill, he convinces everyone else to change their mind.
This the main piece of Dark Matter in this work is the suspect, the boy accused of killing his father. In the movie, there is an initial shot of an immigrant teenager. In the play, we never see the boy, but he is repeatedly referred to as an immigrant teen from the wrong side of town. As the story unfolds, we see this Dark Matter exposing each juror's individual biases and personal tendencies. One juror hates immigrants; one places no value on the boy's life, but simply wants to get to a baseball game; one is an old man initially too tired to put up a fight, but eventually emboldened to change his vote; one is a father estranged from his own son who wants to unleash his own pent up rage on anything he can find. It's really a rather brilliant piece of storytelling. All of the characters have a common goal and obstacle: to come to a decision that is independent of their own personal views and opinions. From a political standpoint, Juror 8, the stand alone juror at the beginning, operates as a sort of panopticon. He is not unseen, but his motives are. He says he simply wants to give the boy his due discussion. Conversely, none of the other jurors can hide from his gaze. They are stuck in a single room, and must at some point face this juror and own up to what it is that is keeping them from voting "not guilty." Juror 8 is the filter through which we the audience can see the various shortcomings of the judicial system. And how there is actually no way to be an unbiased juror. Hovering over everything, of course, is the Dark Matter. The boy who may or may not have killed his father awaiting his fate. Literally everything that happens is because of him, and he never once steps onto the stage. And even though we see him for a brief second in the film, he never speaks nor moves. He is the Dark Matter that binds the rest of the dramatic action together.

And for those that haven't seen it, here you go.

The Tragedy of Tragic Art

Reading Schechner's article about the tragedy of 9-11 made me think of two works of art specifically tied to that day. The first is a photograph, entitled The Falling Man, taken on the day by journalist Richard Drew:

It is a rather well-known picture, which became a touchstone for many people when trying to deal with the absolute horror of the day. For those unaware of the picture's difficult history, there is an excellent article from Esquire Magazine.

This is one of those pictures that I find myself unable to look away from. There is an undeniable grace to the almost peaceful position of the man in the picture. Juxtaposing that grace and beauty with the unbearable pain of what must have been his "moment before" makes me ache. When this picture was originally taken it was used in several prominent newspapers, including the New York Times. However, the picture receive much criticism and backlash, and was only used the one time, because readers found it to be disturbing and in poor taste. The general feeling was that we as a society were intruding on a very personal final decision and action, and that no one had any right to use a picture of that moment for publicity. But it seems to me that if we follow Shakespeare's advice and "hold a mirror up to nature," we have no choice but to accept this picture's place in the artistic world. The way the man lines up with the straight lines of the building behind him, the way he seems to be in motion even as he is suspended in the center of the picture, the emotional response the picture brings out in us, the viewers...are not these what the avant-garde artists were seeking? To provoke and disturb though the devices of art?

A second piece of art that came out of the drama of 9-11 is a play by Neil Labute entitled, The Mercy Seat. 

Written in 2002, it was one of the first plays to deal directly with the national tragedy. It centers around a man and woman who had been having a workplace affair for some time. They work in the World Trade Center but had left the office early for a tryst at her nearby apartment. And now, because of the events of the day, one can assume that the man's family believes him to be dead. So they are faced with the idea that they can call his family and reassure them that he's fine, but risk revealing why, or they can use the tragedy as an opportunity to run away and truly start over.

It's an uncomfortable play that forces you as the audience to consider that even in the face of unspeakable horror and tragedy, there are some that would seek to make it all about them. Like good art should, and like the avant-garde artists would urge us to, the play considers questions that most people would not. It is unafraid to look a tragedy in the face and ask, "But what can this do for me?" Cold and unfeeling? Sure. Realistic and worth the time it takes to consider? Absolutely.

The Tragic Manifesto of the Real
We, the purveyors of the tragically real, do hereby put forth that Shakespeare's mirror of nature allows no room for equivocation. Those who would choose to look away; from horror, from tragedy, from reality, from  life...have no more place in this world than they do in our theater. We must not shrink from what others would deem uncomfortable, unsuitable, inappropriate. Rather, we must be decidedly headstrong in putting forth art and theatre that reflects the very things about ourselves and our society that are in fact unsuitable, inappropriate, and ugly. For it is these things that makes us real and true. Ask the unmentionable question. Seek the unfavorable answer. Destroy the conventions of the polite and the nice and the normal. Through these things we will find ourselves. For until we have found ourselves, we can never be free. Can never be real. Can never be us.

Art Creating Art Creating Art

It's an interesting question: does a piece of art (music, book, play, painting, sculpture, etc) lose it's intrinsic artistic value/meaning the more popular it becomes and the more frequently it is reproduced?  My initial reaction is...no. Because art should be fluid, existing and changeable in the popular culture. I write a song which in turn becomes so popular that other artists want to sing that song. In so doing they make it their own, creating another piece of art that is both an interpretation of mine but also specific to them. And so it goes.
For example, much of musical theatre is comprised of musical interpretations of literary novels. There are hundreds of musicals that use books as their source material. A personal favorite of mine is Spring Awakening. Based on a German play written in 1891 by Frank Wedekind, it was turned into a musical in 2006 by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater. The original play was subtitled, A Children's Tragedy, and dealt with sexually oppressive German culture in the nineteenth century. The musical version takes that idea of children on the brink of sexual awakening and sets period-esque book scenes against contemporary rock music. The concept is that the musical numbers are the inner expression of the angst and frustration that children feel while growing up. The writers make the point that when left alone, kids just want to rock out, and so when the musical numbers take place the children use hand-mics, literally becoming rock stars until the music stops.

At which point they go back into scenes that are written in the period of the late 1800s. If Wedekind hadn't written the original German play we wouldn't have the contemporary musical (which as very popular, winning multiple Tony Awards and running for over 2 years). You can't have one without the other. Does the popularity and success of the musical overshadow the initial artistic impetus of the original play? Or does that very success owe itself entirely to the play?

I think the purpose of art is to inspire. If that inspiration takes the form of simulation, than that simulation can stand as both a copy of the original and a new original in it's own right. Why can't both pieces of art be "legitimate, good, beautiful"? There are probably some purists who value the original play of Spring Awakening  better than the musical, and that's fine. The subjective nature of art ensures that you will never please all the people all the time, and vice versa. But that is not what the artist need concern themselves with. Rather, their job is to create, and let those creations inspire other creations, on and on for as long as there are artists. Now watch more of the musical...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsR3te9wJKE