Re: Comedy of Survival

["Doug Richards" <DRICHARD@mail.keuka.edu>]

"ofcourse, life is more interesting and complex than the genres we have 
received from the past" 

Really?



Douglas Richards
Professor of English 
Keuka College
drichard@mail.keuka.edu
315-279-5242


-----Original Message-----
From: "Jay Ball" <ageeball@gmail.com>
To: asle@interversity.org
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:23:00 -0400
Subject: Re: [asle] Comedy of Survival

> I would have to dispute with Rinda that tragedy is unconcerned with the
> "community." Whether we are speaking of the Greeks, Shakespeare or
> Arthur
> Miller, tragedy has historically been tightly wound to the fate of the
> polis. Hamlet and Denmark are inseparable. Comedy, on the other hand,
> has
> more often represented a retreat from the civic to the domestic sphere.
> The
> irritation that attaches itself to any discussion of genre is that we
> can
> always find exceptions - and often times the exceptions and the works
> that
> mix genre are the most interesting and enduring literary artifacts.
> And, of
> course, life is more interesting and complex than the genres we have
> received from the past. However it has to be said that genre has hardly
> disappeared, especially in popular forms of performance. And as Fred
> Jameson
> got it right in the Political Unconscious, all but the most open-ended
> narratives finally choose to enforce closure that is designed to
> produce a
> certain attitude to its contents. Put simply, stories still tend to
> resolve
> in either happy or sad endings. Sometimes loss is averted and one is
> left
> touched by hope; in tragic endings, loss is presented as final and hope
> is
> replaced by despair. Sometimes issues are binary or 'dichotomized.' 
> Polar
> bears, for example, will or will not become extinct because of global
> warming. So however we wish to define our terms with respect to genre,
> people - such as the directors of An Inconvenient Truth - remain
> confronted
> with decisions about how to frame these issues.
> 
> Thanks for following up on my query, Rinda.  ;) [a comic frame]
> 
> Jay
> 
> 
> 
> choices have to be made: is it better to represent the survival of
> polar
> bears as imaginable (comedy) or should we start to frankly mourning
> their
> inevitable decimation in the more deferred hope that a sustained
> confrontation with loss
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 12:31 PM, Rinda West <rindaw@comcast.net>
> wrote:
> 
> > Good comedy contains tragedy, and tragedy contains comedy.  In the
> first
> > couple of acts of Shakespeare's plays there are characters and events
> that
> > could lead to a comic resolution, but the characters are killed
> (Mercutio,
> > Polonius) or banished (Kent) or the moments backfire.  Characters
> make
> > choices that lead to the tragic outcome. Similarly, the comedies
> teeter on
> > the verge of tragedy and some choice or, often, miracle of conversion
> or
> > discovery yields the happy outcome.  Genre is a choice.  I agree that
> > dichotomizing comedy and tragedy doesn't serve environmentalism.  
> Meeker
> > makes the point that the focus of tragedy is the individual (I am
> going to
> > die someday!) while comedy foregrounds the community (we are going to
> > survive!), but both are part of our toolkit for bringing the moral
> and
> > emotional content of the environmental crisis into focus for people
> for whom
> > it's not as immediate a concern as the mortgage payment or job
> insecurity.
> >
> > Rinda
> >
> > Rinda West Landscape Designs
> > 773-575-1205
> > www.rindawestdesigns.com
> > My new book, Out of the Shadow:  Ecopsychology, Story, and Encounters
> with
> > the Land, is now available from
> > http://www.upress.virginia.edu/books/west.HTM or at Amazon.com
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: asle-owner@interversity.org
> [mailto:asle-owner@interversity.org] On
> > Behalf Of Frank McGill
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 10:53 AM
> > To: asle@interversity.org
> > Subject: Re: [asle] Comedy of Survival
> >
> > I'd add that Meeker's very formulation--comic versus tragic--is
> itself a
> > tragic view of the world, an us-vs.-them dichotomy that lies at the
> heart of
> > much of what he classifies as a tragic attitude. Wouldn't a more
> comic
> > formulation strive to accommodate the tragic view (and others) rather
> than
> > demonizing or directly opposing them? Live *and let live*, isn't it?
> >
> > Frank
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > >From: Richard Kerridge <r.kerridge@bathspa.ac.uk>
> > >Sent: Sep 24, 2008 9:28 AM
> > >To: asle@interversity.org, asle@interversity.org
> > >Subject: Re: [asle] Comedy of Survival
> > >
> > >I've always found Meeker's argument troubling because it seems so
> close to
> > fatalism. Survival, mere survival, is its highest ambition. Tragedy,
> at
> > least in its Romantic form, can come to fatalism from the opposite
> > direction, accepting death and the loss of the world because the
> world is
> > not worthy of the Romantic idealist. I'm not sure either provides the
> right
> > framing for environmentalism.
> > >
> > >Richard
> >
> >
> > Tell me, what is it you plan to do
> > with your one wild and precious life?
> >                        --Mary Oliver
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