Although I was able to engage and understand the play my personal “emotional investment” in it was low. As I considered this, I quickly realized an essential part of both drama and public speaking in regards to “managing and mediating the irrational”; it must be experienced by the audience first hand.
What I mean by this is that the irrational remains irrational if the audience of those speaking do not vindicate the speaker. For example, Hecubas use of Mimesis caused many of the other characters as well as the audience to justify her irrationality.
Both drama and public speaking has the same purpose (as pointed out by Joseph Pearson); “to objectify, classify, and understand” the irrational or the event as a whole.
The differences found within these two parts is the way in which they arrive at the desired outcome. While the application of drama (one could say mimesis generally speaking) brings a sense of connection and validation (therefore persuasion) to emotion, public speaking (rhetoric) allows one to explain and persuade using speech. Drama seems to bring out so much emotion or, for lack of a better word, “drama” that one wants to connect emotionally with the individual. This being said, if that connection is not made as it was not for me in the playwright Hecuba than the irrational continues to look irrational. The same is true with public speaking; if one is unable to connect through the use of ethos, logos or pathos than the speech itself has no ability to put into context or rationalize the irrational.
Both methods of language require the audience or recipient to emotionally/mentally invest in the communication to manage or mediate the irrational. Without this connection the yelling and crying are just more yelling and crying and the words of persuasion are simply words unheard and therefore remain irrational.
I felt the "emotional disconnect" that you speak of for the play as a whole. There were parts that spoke to me, but on the whole I still saw it as irrational. I thought maybe there was something wrong with me, that I didn't understand it. thank you for pointing out it wasn't me!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the Greeks in general were able to emotionally connect--if somehow that was a learned skill in their culture and society--or if they felt the same weirdness we felt. Did they like drama because they could genuinely relate, or only because it was crazy and entertaining?
ReplyDeleteisn't it funny how our cognitive dissonance leads us to justify and vindicate the speakers solely on the basis of the emotion and feeling they wield as they present their point?
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