Today’s Plan:
- Project 1: Revise and Resubmit
- Project 2: Some Preliminary Paper Expectations
- Thursday: Class in Ross 2261 Computer Lab
Project 1: Revise and Resubmit
I realized after last class that I didn’t specify that everyone is invited to revise and resubmit their Project One paper for a higher grade. Generally, my feedback should help guide your revisions, and you are welcome to pop into office hours to clarify what I’m looking for. Project One Revisions will be due March 1st.
Project 2: Checking In / Preliminary Paper Expectations
Let me review:
- Thus far you should have played your game for X hours
- Thus far you should have used our heuristic as a way of thinking and writing about your game
I skimmed through the gaming journals and found a wide range of progress. Word counts: 40, 350, 495, 500, 800, 910, 1100, 1115, 2600. Of course, quantity and quality, and what have you. I didn’t score the journals. I will on Thursday. Have 1000 words.
Curran on Catharsis
Shorter response:
So I see catharsis as the transition of emotions from pity or fear to something else like relief or contentment.
Longer response:
From the closing, I understand that Curran is promoting the idea that catharsis involves creating in the audience pity and fear, followed by (not getting rid of it) ‘compensating for’ said emotions by offering relief in the form of the understanding that comes with the unachievable-in-real-life birds eye view of a tragic story. Curran poses the question “what is the other emotion that compensates for the pain” and doesn’t exactly answer it. It seems he’s saying the answer is catharsis itself, but we can’t have the word in the definition of the word now can we.
Me: I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the Greek, it reads something like catharsis works by generating catharsis, which serves to temper catharsis.
To be honest I’m not fully convinced by Curran’s conclusion. He seems to be arguing the important factor of tragedy is the fact that it presents us with something to pity+/fear in a context where we can see the whole picture–and that that in itself is the catharsis. I think I agree that in most cases at least, tragedy creates the initial emotions that need to be remedied( though that idea sends me down a slippery slope of seeing tragedy as a weird privileged vomitorium-type thing. We just create unpleasant emotions to have them purged/’compensated for’? That feels real weird.).
But I’m not convinced the “point” is the relief from seeing the whole story of a tragedy. I understand there is something there, where seeing a story fully complete gives us a sort of relief we can’t get from life. There’s something about seeing the whole tragic picture that is doing something important. But is that thing it’s doing arguably educating? Something Curran already discounted?
Me:
I write this sharing your skepticism. I think there might be some relief in seeing the whole along the lines of the comfort we get for thinking there’s justice in the universe, and/or proposing that there is some underlying sense to our pain. Curran is emphasizing the “continuity of plot,” especially because it can offer us hope. Perhaps, unlike the tragic character, we can recognize the moment(s) of opportunity to escape our fatal flaw. Perhaps we find solace in the incredible, the artificial, series of coincidences that lead to the fall (although this feels more likely in comedy, the unpredictable rise).
I’ll say that I don’t think the purpose of tragedy is to release fear or pity. That’s too narrow. Both in the sense that I don’t think tragic exploration limits itself to what we fear and who we pity (for suffering what seems injust or caprice whims of fate).
Catharsis reaches out to us and reminds us, rekindles, relights, what is already there. Our fear of death. Our fear of loss. Our struggle to find meaning in our lives. Our desire for a soulmate. The pain of rejection or betrayal. Catharsis is a term for the resonance between what we see on the stage, the screen, the page, and our own troubles. This isn’t to say we can’t have a powerful sympathetic response to a narrative to which we have no lived correlate–I find Eli Weisel’s Night to be incredibly powerful despite the fact that I have not experienced genocide. Night is doing powerful work, I would simply insist that it is not cathartic work, because there is no resonance for me. This does not mean it is not “pedagogic” instructive–it certainly aims to teach us how (not) to live. But there is no movement, connection to my life (and, without falling into the “universal” rabbit hole, etc. etc).
So, if I had to lay down a fundamental first principle for catharsis, it would be that there must be a fundamental identification between the action of the tragedy and the audience/reader/player.
Last of Us and a Tragic Hermeneutic Method
Reaction to the opening scene of Last of Us.
Methodology for a close reading:
Oscillation between concrete detail/event and its meaning/purpose.
First, the “action” of the tragedy happens at the very end of the game. Everything that comes before it builds our empathy for the main character.
Second, I think the opening scene is particularly powerful and cathartic. Joel struggles to escape the initial outbreak with his daughter, only for her to be killed?
What emotions does this scene work to generate?
You won’t know until the end of the tragedy whether those emotions fit into a continuous whole, what part they play in the dramatic work. Does that make sense?
Methodology for a close reading:
Oscillation between concrete detail/event and its meaning/purpose.
Homework
Thursday’s class is in the Ross 2261 computer lab.
Continue to play your game and write (you should have a minimum of 1200 words in your gaming journal).
Be sure to submit a gaming journal to campus (Google Doc preferred, but I’ll look at a Word Doc too).
