Today’s Plan:
- Syllabus: Required Materials
- Let’s Talk About
GamesArt - Homework
Let’s Talk About Games and Art
This is the third time I’ve taught this course. The previous two times, I opened with a project built around Roger Ebert’s tired article “Video Games Can Never Be Art.”. Essentially, students dismantled Ebert’s opposition to considering games as art by emphasizing how a specific game reflected Aristotle’s notions of mimesis or catharsis. We are going to do this, because it is a bit too much like shooting fish in a barrell. But I do want to talk about mimesis and catharsis today. My idea here is to provide us with an initial lens for thinking about what games do to us (ideologically), how they shape the ways we see ourselves and think about our world.
Mimesis
The stock definition of the ancient Greek term mimesis is “imitation,” though the more precise philosophical sense, attributed to Plato and Aristotle, is often “representation.”
Plato, Aristotle’s teacher, was suspicious of art because it was merely mimesis– that is, representation of the material world (which itself is a mere representation of a transcendental Ideal/divine world). For Plato, being a representation (a copy, an imitation) was a pejorative. Anticipating Karl Marx by about 2000 years, Plato believed art was a kind of opiate that distracted people from engaging more important questions and problems.
Aristotle rejects Plato’s condemnation, and argues that mimesis is superior to reality (or that art is superior to history). The artist has the power to represent things not as they are, but as they should be or as they could be. This is how I interpret Aristotle’s argument that art represents “men in action” either “better than in real life, or […] worse” (I.10.a). This exaggeration provides art with its pedagogic potential–the core to Aristotle’s defense of art. Sometimes in the real world, evil prevails. But art can be better than the real world–the artist can ensure a moral ending.
Beyond such moral/pedagogic potential, however, Aristotle believes that the representations we encounter in art shape who we are and how we learn to navigate the world:
Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in thing imitated.
To understand what Aristotle means by contributing to our advancement and learning, one must recognize the difference between plot and theme, what Aristotle designates as the difference between “narrative” and “action.” This gets us at the heart of what art imitates–what is the “action” of a poetic drama (which in Ancient Greece is a catch-all term for all artistic production). Plot is what happens in the narrative. Theme indicates what the narrative “is about.” To be more explicit: what general problem/tendency of the human condition does this particular story address? What does it teach us of the struggle to be human? to be better? to live the good life? So by mimesis, imitation, representation Aristotelian aesthetics points to how (or whether) a piece of art instructs on how to live a good life. Art shows us examples of characters (ways of being in the world), and–as we will see below in the discussion of catharsis–it often provides us with models for how to respond (or, in the case of tragedy, how not to respond) to the challenges of human existence.
When writing about the games you play in your gaming journal this semester, one thing to pay attention to is representation: what human archetypes does the game present?
What questions of human existence does it pose? Upon what themes does it tread?
Catharsis
Above, Aristotle referenced the “pleasure” experience via art as one of the two primary causes for poetry. Pleasure here must be scare quoted, because often the impact of aesthetic works isn’t necessarily enjoyable. Aristotle is approaching one of those timeless introductory questions to the humanities: why do we enjoy things that make us cry?
His answer is
Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action, that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions. (VI. 1-2)
Of course, there is something memetic or pedagogical going on here as well–we are learning the proper way to handle those difficult situations in life. But we are also releasing frustrations. This, Aristotle argues, is essential to human life. Gain and struggle are unavoidable. Art not only teaches us how to deal with such difficulties, but also helps us cope with the frustrations we accumulate on a daily basis.
As you are playing, be on the lookout for cathartic moments. Pay attention to when you feel anxious, stressed, sad, angry, joyous. Pay attention to the way a game is designed to make you feel.
A Quick Exercise
Games and art.
Homework
Purchase the Sicart book and Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us.
