The passage of time does not necessarily separate the common concerns for artists from different era. While it makes sense to appreciate art through a contextualist perspective, trying to understand the motivations of the author from the context which the author finds himself / herself in, one cannot be oblivious to the fact that there are many essential and timeless themes that artists continue to have the urge to express their personal views through their work. That is why we can often compare works of different artists, even if they belong to different fields. The eternal issues that fascinate humanity, that leads us to find approaches to 'know more about ourselves', are always evident in the various forms of art. The Greek philosopher Aristotle has written probably the first work in drama criticism in the Western culture – 'Poetics'. In this work Aristotle urged his audience to distinguish between the philosophical concepts of 'universal' and 'particular', and how various forms of written language – poem, verse, and prose – could serve as vehicles to express these ideas. The contrast between 'universe' and 'particular' is not only important for the abstract philosophical issues, but also for the appreciation of style in drama. Before we start the collisions of worlds between the Greek tragedians and modern filmmakers we should make sense of the these concepts.
The universal aspects of humanity are attributes that are shared by every humans, and are independent of circumstances and contexts they find themselves in. Human 'nature', the various stages of human existence, the cycles and construction and destruction, are common to different human cultures, and one should not be surprised that thinkers and artists from different cultures often think alike. Socrates and Confucius, Fichte and Yangming Wang, Nietzsche and Zhuang Zi, seemed to place concern in similar issues regarding humanity. Not only this reflects intelligence is independent of culture, that also shows the existence of universal themes across time.
Yet the more the time progresses, emphasis has started to be placed on individual difference. Now the concern is not on what is common in all of us, but what is specific about each of us. The advent of humanism advocated for individual psychology and look for 'particulars'. In fact if we observe the trend of the development of tragedies from Aeschylus to Euripides, the direction from universal to particular is very evident. The focus shifts from emphasizing the big picture to more specific inner thoughts of the characters through the centennial development of the ancient art form. Curiously, when cinema from Griffith to Kurosawa to Peckinpah also followed a similar trajectory. It is possible to conceive of the reason as that the pioneers of various art forms often had ambitions to capture as much as they can, through the use of their new found techniques.
A common aspect between Aeschylus and Griffith is that they were among the first practitioners of an art form, and they both possessed original insights that revolutionized the ways their respective art forms will be viewed by future generations. In Aeschylus’s case, he was among the first artists to appreciate the dramatic potential of choral songs, widely performed in Greece even before his times. Through the first tragedian’s efforts, he transformed these choral songs, which often possessed a coherent narrative and were about ancient myths, into full-fledged dramas. Aeschylus achieved this feat by some techniques that might appear obvious and simplistic for today’s audience – by increasing the numbers of actors, and by enhancing the dramatic conflicts between characters. Though that appeared to have long way to go when compared to the sophisticated dramas that originated from it, Aeschylus has laid the core foundations for the dramatic art - indeed also for novels, poetry and eventually cinema.
For D. W. Griffith, it is curious to note a similar scenario that took place in the early 20th century. That was a time when different forms of art – theater, novels, poetry, painting, sculpture and music have already been developed into mature art forms. Yet at that time, cinema was still at its infancy – arguably any thing that remotely resembled a ‘motion picture’ only appeared in the 1890s. The movies from the early age were choppy, silent, and black-and-white. It is also essential to note that the intention of showing movies at that era was to be some forms of spectacle, to show the audience a new sense of wonder. The movies in their earliest days often did not have any stories to tell, and they did not have anything to say. While certain pioneering films, like Edwin S. Porter’s ‘The Great Train Robbery’ and Georges Melies’ ‘A Trip to the Moon’ appeared to have an obvious and coherent plot, most movies were shown for the sake of ‘showing such an idea was possible’. One would certainly not compare the narrative contents of such films with a play by Henrik Ibsen or a novel by Emile Zola, which also appeared in the late 19th century. It is through the work of D. W . Griffith, who possessed a foresight of the narrative potential of this new medium. While early films like 'A Trip to the Moon' had a run time of about 10 minutes, Griffith's landmark film, 'The Birth of a Nation', had a length of 175 minutes and a coherent plot. Griffith did have a long story to tell!
Both Aeschylus and Griffith were fascinated with history. To put it in a more specific way, they were both interested in the concept of 'time'. As mentioned in the previous article, in the drama festival of Athens, each playwright had to submit 3 tragedies for each entry. It is widely accepted that the 3 plays are not necessarily related in terms of content. For Aeschylus, he tended to write 'trilogies', meaning that the 3 plays were not only related in theme, but they were also continuous in a temporal matter – like 'Lord of the Rings', for example. We are lucky the one of his complete trilogies have survived, so we can appreciate what that means to be a trilogy. 'The Oresteia', which chronicled the generational conflicts of the Agamemnon household through revenge and bloodshed, was like an ancient version of a soap opera about a dysfunctional family. Through the play, Aeschylus explored the relations of events through time – the past and the present. While one can not run from the consequences that originate from past events, we can take action to guarantee a better possible future.
Griffith was also very interested in portraying the image of time through cinema. Because of the technique of editing, cinematic time can be distorted and transformed to give a more sensational feeling to the audience, rather than like a 'surveillance camera' style video. Deleuze, in his analysis of Western cinema, coined this as the 'movement-image' and cited Griffith's films as exemplary. Griffith had the ambition to capture the totality of the cinema, using the technology he had at his hands at his era. While Griffith did not invent the technique of montage editing, he was among the first to apply this technique for dramatic and narrative purpose. Though the use of editing, he broke down a whole set of actions to its components, giving the audience a visceral feel. Yet, the summation of all these components represented the full story Griffith was attempted to illustrate. His meticulous combinations of these sequences led to Deleuze's comments that they represented an organic unity, unfolding through cinematic time. Such an approach reflected Griffith's commitment to capture all the possible perspectives of a given cinematic scenario.
In terms of narrative style, Aeschylus used contrast to heighten the dramatic conflicts. The events through the generations in 'Oresteia' seems to echo with Heraclitus’ conception of ‘unity of opposites’, reflecting the irony that history is repeating itself with a pattern, a testament of the universalizing aspect of human nature itself.
Griffith also appreciated the power of contrast for dramatic effect, and he employed a style of parallel and convergent editing to this end. In 'The Birth of a Nation', the filmmaker portrayed a number of military conflicts. The use of convergent editing portrayed the action of the two conflicting parties in parallel, until coming to a final convergence point for the showdown. The tension that was generated from this arrangement is significant, and the classic cowboy 'walking prelude' before a shootout from many Westerns is a clear influence from this kind of style, for which Deleuze coined as a 'duel mode'.
Greek drama, with the attributes appearing as a combination of poems and music, observed rigorous metrical requirements. The standard format for Greek tragedy was iambic trimeter, yet dramatists like Aeschylus could also be quite flexible regarding these rules. For example, he could switch to a metric which sounded like a faster pace of speaking when he wanted to illustrate emotional excitement. The choral section were mainly formalized songs, and it is crucial to stress these were not merely some ancient versions of 'transition shots'. Not only the odes from the chorus were memorable and insightful comments about human nature, they were stylized and catchy in a sense it resembled the dynamic shots of cinema. Aeschylus has adopted a staunch formalism in his choral songs. Not only they came in pairs known as strophe and antistrophe, these lines often addressed and contrasted each other in terms of content, giving a classical and balancing beauty to these ancient songs. Furthermore, Aeschylus used a lot of repetitions, not only certain words, or even certain lines or passages in his choral lyrics, to stress and imprint, like what Homer would have done, the essential and universal statements he wished to pass on to his audience. If the verse speech spoken by the characters represented the particular perspective - what these individuals thought about through speaking out their minds, then the songs and odes delivered by the members of the chorus served a deeper and holistic purpose. As in the case of 'Oresteia', the repetitions of words as well as recurring scenes suggested the inevitable doom that different generations would experience the bloodshed and suffering again and again.
The earliest days of cinema were not that fortunate. Being silent films, the filmmakers could not use spoken words to convey meanings. For Griffith, he was able to stress the difference between subjective and objective perspectives through the meticulous use of camera angles and distances. For the incidents that involved groups, he employed long shots and mobile camera style to lead to a result as grand as possible. Indeed the mobile camera style was employed by many masters who wanted to portray cinematic dynanism – from Erich von Stroheim to Abel Gance to Daisuke Ito, dynamic shots were used to show 'large actions'. Griffith was just as good as showing subjective emotions through the use of static close-ups : an image of Lillian Gish, one of the most famous actresses of the silent era of cinema, was a classic example. Her character was abused by her parents, and the close-up of her distressed look would generate sympathy from any audience. From these contrasting techniques Griffith could illustrate the different mental perspectives commonplace in other art form.
While Greek drama were limited in using words to convey meanings and visual imaginations, the three great tragedians all embraced the power of words. They applied their caliber to deliver beautiful lines who evoked poetic images in the audience's mind. Poetic images led to great metaphors, and Aeschylus played with contrasts in his portrayal of epic cycles, giving us the impression of the very existence of conflicting sides. Metaphorically, the first two parts of the trilogy dealt with darkness of human psyche, and the third part provided light of civilized existence. The co-existence of light and dark served as a unity of human existence, and the ability to turn from dark to light was a testament to human potential.
Many of the most iconic images from cinema came from the Silent Age, because the filmmakers had so limited resources to produce films, and they could not rely on a great quote, great music, or spectacular effects to give the audience a lasting impression. Griffith, like his fellow silent filmmakers, had to focus 100% on the mise-en-scene – what was put onto the screen. Yet, the most important asset any filmmakers needed is the substance of the film itself. For Griffith's film 'Intolerance', he led us through the earliest days of human civilization, and showed that certain attributes of humanity re-surfaced again and again. Like 'Oresteia', the painful cycles of retribution and suffering passed through generations, just as essence of human nature disguised itself through different faces throughout history. The humanity of Aeschylus and Griffith can be felt through their attempts to change our world with art : only by using reason, and having a will to confront and analyze our mistakes in the past can divert us from an inevitable fate of tragic proportions.
Aiskhulos Euphorionos Eleusinieus* and David Wark Griffith might be separated by thousands of years in time, yet their common emphasis on the themes of individual and State, history and psychology, light and dark, are so similar that I cannot help but feel that there are some universal themes that continues to fascinate artists ever since the earliest point of human culture. In fact, I will not be too surprised to note that Griffith was influenced by Aeschylus and other Greek dramatists, because in the old days well educated individuals were often well acquainted with texts of Classics and Humanities, and any great artists, which possessing unique gifts in themselves, were also inspired by the old masters. If Aeschylus never existed, the power of drama might never be fully realized. Without D. W. Griffith, modern cinema cannot exist.
by Ed Law
Conatus Classics
*This is Aeschylus’s ‘full name’ in the context of his time, which was designated as ‘Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, of the local organization (known as deme) Eleusis’).
