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| D. W. Griffith, Akira Kurosawa, Sam Peckinpah |
'I portray men as they should be, but Euripides portrays them as they are.'
-Sophocles on Euripides, quoted by Aristotle in 'Poetics'
'I want to make Western like Kurosawa makes Western'.
-Sam Peckinpah's opinion on Akira Kurosawa
If there is a creative force that has passed through the history of humanity, that is the power of drama. Humans have always been moved and inspired by stories that shed light on the different issues around them. From the most primitive forms of oral delivery of stories to the most sophisticated visual presentations, the benchmark for great drama has not really changed. Yet the more we try to compare great dramatists from different eras, the more similarities we will be able to discover. Through the apparatus available at the dramatist's disposal are very different due to technological or cultural factors, they are also capable of addressing the eternal themes humans have been always been concerned about. The three great dramatists of Classical Greece – Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides – have written some of the most beautiful tragedies of the Western culture, and we are still in awe of their artistic caliber and their insightful perspectives regarding the human condition. The dramas from the Classical Greece have influenced many subsequent art forms, not limiting to theater, poetry and novels. The dawn of the 20th century saw the emergence of the Seventh Art – cinema. The greatest filmmakers of our age have just exerted as much influence to us like the ancient dramatists to the people of ancient Greece. David W. Griffith, Akira Kurosawa, and Sam Peckinpah have made landmark films through the different parts of the 20th century. Though they have long passed away, their films have continued to leave lasting impressions to the audience nowadays. If we take the trio of Greek tragedians and the trio of filmmakers together, wouldn't it be fun to see how their masterpieces may interact with each other?
The series of 'Greek Dramatists vs. Filmmakers' will include:
Greek Dramatists vs. Filmmakers : Prelude
From tīmḗ to Time : Homer and Aeschylus
Aeschylus vs. Griffith
Sophocles vs. Kurosawa
Euripides vs. Peckinpah
A common consensus is that Western Literature originated from the work of the ancient Greek poet Homer, who was believed to live in the late eighth and early seventh century BC. 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey' were the first two poems by Homer that appeared in Western Literature. These are known as epic poems – they are very long and have a consistent theme and narrative through the poems. The setting of these poems were in the Mycenaean period of ancient Greece (1600-1200 BC), when the iconic battle at Troy took place. Though Homer did have some information of historical facts from his ancestors, he has used his own imagination to provide a fictional account of the stories in this period, involving both mortal heroes and gods. In Homer's era, these epic poems were delivered as oral poetry, meaning that poet would recite his own poems in front of the audience, so that these poems also resembled music and drama. The performative aspect of a narrative was already evident in the earliest days of literature.
Since the time of Homer, the ancient Greece has seen a more organized development and poleis (singular : polis) were formed. The poleis were city-states that possessed infrastructure for organizing the public life of the residents. Eventually at the 5th century, the city Athens stood out as the most prosperous city in ancient Greece, signifying the dawn of the era of 'Classical Greece'. Athens was successful both in terms of political power and cultural strength. In each spring, there was a festival known as 'City Dionysia', in which there were a number of cultural activities to celebrate Dionysus, the god of wine. One of the most popular programmes in City Dionysia was the tragedy competition, which not only served as a testament to the legacy of Athens in history, but also led to the emergence of 3 of the most wonderful playwrights in the history of drama.
Greek tragedy was believed to be evolved out of dithyrambs, which were choral songs that celebrated Dionysus. The Greek tragedy, while heavily influenced subsequent work in theater and cinema, were not really hard-core drama. They more resembled a combination of poetry, music and drama. Because the words spoken by characters were important for the plot and the audience's understanding, the tragedians concentrated on the lyrical aspects of these lines and the quotes were all formalized and stylized like those found in poems, and were not naturalistic like colloquial speech.
For the annual tragedy competition in City Dionysia, 3 finalists would be chosen to compete in this '3-way Mexican standoff'. Each playwright would have to submit and perform a series of 3 tragedies, and an additional satyr play which was tragicomedic in nature. The 3 tragedies might not necessarily be related in terms of plots, and because much of the work for these ancient playwrights have been lost through time, we were not able to map out the combinations of the play and understood if there was any reasons or motivations why a playwright would put together any three plays in a given year.
Anyone who started reading a Greek tragedy will find the experience strange and a bit alienating. That is because a lot of assumptions commonplace in ancient Greece are different from the modern world, and it is worth appreciating these curious points before getting into the content of the tragedies itself.
Through the influence of Homer, the plot of almost all the Greek tragedies of the Classical Greece took place in the Mycenaean era, though the playwrights did take liberty in changing some of the plots of the myths passed down from the predecessors. It was not uncommon for different playwrights to write about the same character yet with different plots and outcomes. Thus, it is crucial to note that the poems and plays from these Greek poets playwrights were fictional work, and they did not necessarily represent the historical reality.
Because of these influences, almost all Greek tragedies were non-secular. They always included some supernatural and mythological elements in the plots (and the action of the divine indeed drove much of the development of the plot itself), and were seldom naturalistic as in the literature and drama of the modern world. This aspect is in particular alienating to the modern readers, who believes in the existence of an objective reality based on reason and science. What is even stranger is that the religious beliefs in ancient Greece pointed to a polytheistic system of the Divine (many gods), as opposed to the monotheistic (one god) system in most religion nowadays. The Divine of the Greek religion was a family of gods and goddesses, led by the patriarch Zeus and his wife Hera. These gods were anthropomorphic – meaning they took human forms – and behaved quite like humans. While Zeus was the leader and he demanded respect from his family members, they might not obey him, and in many cases this led to the influence of the human affairs in the Greek tragedies. Zeus, for example, often could not get complete obedience from Hera, who often did things her own way (and Zeus's infidelity to Hera did not help the issue neither). The gods not only interacted and conflicted with each other, they also interacted with mortal humans. It was totally common, say, for the goddess Athene sitting next to you and started talking to you in the plays. The human and the divine was mingled up in the ancient Greek plays, giving them a strange sense of coherence of the mythical world they were attempting to portray.
I would like to elaborate on this point as it is the aspect that makes the Greek plays weird for the modern readers. In the context of the history of ancient Greece, the supernatural plot made a lot more sense to the ancient Greek people than the modern people, because ancient Greek culture had a strong religious aspect. The ancient Greek people believed in gods and often used the myths and its derivatives – like prophecies and oracles – as a framework for them to understand their world and influenced their moral outlook. What motivated their actions and behaviors were often related to their perceptions of the Divine and how they made sense of the these cultural artifacts. The fact is that the ancient Greeks have had a very different worldview from ours. Indeed, one can start to see that it is not very different from the modern world. While the modern world is secular and rational, it is still okay to have faith and become religious (or superstitious), and one can take a preference and attribute to fate rather than free-will for his personal outlook.
An explanation more relevant to the the context of tragedy itself is the universalizing effect the Divine has given to the action or narrative of the plays. The affairs of the gods provided a background to influence the human action and drove the plot forward. It also served as a contrast to the human world. The playwrights wished to reflect the limitations of human knowledge and a tragic view of world, consumed by mortality and suffering. The action of the individuals in the human world were seen as insignificant for the Divine world, let alone for the whole universe. Such a cautious tone demonstrated the worldly wisdom of these ancient artists.
Though the tragedies always possessed a supernatural dimension, they have inspired the future generations because of the humanistic dimensions they have successfully illustrated. The stories itself often reflected the concerns of the Athenian age, such as personality, family, civilization, and social and political issues. For Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, while they followed the framework of the Homeric myth, engineered the plots of their plays to explore problems faced by human existence. For our chosen filmmakers – Griffith, Kurosawa, Peckinpah – they focused on ability of human beings to shape history and influence nature. While they all rigorously criticized human folly and weakness, they were just as enthusiastic to celebrate the tremendous potential offered by Man.
The great Greek tragedians provided the future playwrights the benchmark of a brilliant drama – humanity's struggle against forces they cannot understand or control, such as the dark side of their minds, the State and Fate itself. The playwrights stressed human choices and responsibilities as much as god-ordained experiences in these struggles – a story only determined by co-incidences or tragic fate alone would not make a great story, because that would suggest a completely meaningless existence. The psychological character inherent in the protagonist would lead him to commit a hamartia (a tragic error), leading to his downfall. The death, self-sacrifice or ultimate failure of the protagonist can generate catharsis in the audience, resulting in an intense and emotional response to the plight of the characters in the play. The final spiritual victory achieved by the protagonist suggested there was a point to endure all these sufferings, to 'go through hell' through the plays. This aspect of the tragedy is a testament to the highest power of drama available to mankind.
by Ed Law
Conatus Classics
