Epic theatre as a cure to modern cinema: reality tv as its successor in divorcing the actor from the program, bringing the real back to mix over the illusionary narrative (Benjamin, 100)—fourth wall breaks in spaceballs, monty python and dead pool
Brecht innovated a new type of theatre. One that demonstrates a dichotomy between the actor and character. Yet much of cinema confuses the actor into the reality that is the play. A varying difference centred on infusing the audience into the scheme instead of holding them off but there are exceptions of characters winking at the audience acknowledging their fiction.
Brecht’s system is quite unique. His goal was to innovate theatre beyond the cinematic hopes that have engulfed the audience for a long time. The actor takes on a role and is identified with that specific actor and its correlation. Instead of sitting through a fluid set, intermissions would cut the scene into multiple acts. The point to break the illusion consistently. Brecht wished to distance the audience from the character as much as possible. Instead of subdued by their voyage into their space of fiction, to be sitting back watching them candidly. To be a spectator instead of a fan. Watching one’s son compete in sports. After a loss, patting him on the back reminding him it is only a game. For the jolly father observing to recognise the frailty of the aggressive event. Relinquish overt emotions and simply cheer for the child’s success. Parents who scream at coaches or referees have forgotten the motto and are induced into the game’s aura. Alienation allows emotions to stay calm while still involved in the event.
Western theatre focused on emotions and psychological states. Identify with the hero on his journey. The audience is witnessing history. They cheer him on as they fall prey to his invitation. Sensuality is increased on the monitor for human responses. Whether that be laughter or sorrow. Sitcoms with laugh tracks to induce the audience to follow suit. The joke landed one must laugh. The laugh track is verified evidence that the joke was found funny. The laugh track appeals to emotion. It requests the audience to laugh alongside. Whether to laugh at the joke or the laugh. It seduces them into the comedic relief. It’s consistently messing with the human psyche. People are laughing it must be funny. Even if watched alone, there are other voices laughing. Altering the perception of the television series. It must be funny, I will continue to watch it. While a trick, it intends to bring the emotional appeal to the audiences’ engagement. Psychologically undermining the truth with a false group laughter. The impact bolsters the show’s credibility at its appeal to the heart of humanity.
Shakespeare’s constant use of comedy and tragedy appealed to the emotional turmoil of the audience. The action-packed play was more about how to bring the audience to its knees. The tragedy strikes into the audience’s purview. What if I was Hamlet? Losing a father in such dire asides questioning his own sanity. Romeo and Juliet meeting the demise of sacred true love. Such unfortunate consequences. Setting up a story to engage the audience. Empathy swarms the audience. It is so sad for Romeo and Juliet unable to be wed. There love a scarlet letter. Forbidden by their household hate. Children unable to breach the ties of a long feud. Even Macbeth reaches the sensible sympathy. A man following his wife and ambition. Too much too proud leads to his downfall. The flaw inherent and unable to be overturned. A prophecy embedded no changing the future. If Oedipus could not alter his fate nor could Macbeth. The audience follows the protagonist’s trek only for him/her to die. The ending inevitable but the journey is captivating rooting for their victory that finishes with somber cries.
His comedies engage the audience on laughable grounds. Enjoying the jokes and absurdity penned in the plot. The use of drama to reel in the audience only furthers their commitment to the character arc. The audience watches as the protagonist ventures and develops. Exploring distant lands learning magic. It is the utter novelty that magnifies the interest. Obsessed with the journey, the audience finds its reflection in the irrationality displayed. It projects genuine resolve and world building. Emotion is sky high with scant sorrow to keep the audience guessing. The addition of fictional drama to incur the audience’s interest speaks in his embellished historical plays. Driving irony and purpose him, the melodrama only ensnares the audience’s commitment to the character. Laughing kindly as the heroes make their way to the finish line. For better or for worse, psychological toying trampled the realistic guise. Swept up into a moment of alignment with the character’s mission. Dreaming about sailing alongside them one day.
Surrealism in the Theatre of Cruelty developed by Artaud sought to assault the audience with illogical sensations. While a revolution in its own right it attempted to cage the audience in a play. Rid the stage and props. The senses overloaded with sounds and lights. Yet the concept of surrealism overwhelmed the audience with persistent sensual shocking. The shock was a mind-bending current to highlight the light screens pinpointing a new direction. Wowed by the array of diversity pounding the brain as the characters encircle. Stanislavski approached theatre in a far more cinematic aspiration. A deepening awareness of the fictionality. Wishing to divert from the shallow nonsense tied into the dramatic endowment. Instead to be honest with the audience. If they are to be engaged in the play, the play should be real. Though by definition, it cannot be real it at least can be more reflective of genuine events. For historical plays to be more by the book. To be content with less drama for the sake of sincerity and accuracy. The goals was not more sales but honest expression.
Stanislavski’s model was too risky for Brecht. Brecht intentioned on accepting the fiction. Yet no level of true human behaviour can overrule the fictional plot. Brecht wished for more than stooped in the play’s prose. Do not just fall in love with the character, question his journey. To bring logic into the equation and ponder the situation gleefully. The narrative strikes an intrusive chord that stalls the logical deduction. Brecht thus intentionally halted events in order for people to gather themselves and discuss the acts. Desiring the audience to learn instead of feel. Theatre was educational for the audience to develop from the experience. To not merely revel in the drama but to absorb the lessons. To reverse the psychological dogma for educational mania. By shifting actors to various roles, the semantic visual was confounding. It was the character that was necessary not the actors attached to a single persona. It was the actions, the values beneath that were meaningful. A deep level of distaste for herd immunity. Accepting at face value what is visualised on set. To get into the intellectual effort over the emotional grandiose.
Cinema plays by naturalistic themes. Holding the emotional drama as a way of generating interest and sales. Even shows unaffectionate for lack of drama, have drama. The psychological ordeal of engagement with characters is mesmerised on screen. Whether that be a cartoon or real life. Whether it be a superhero or teen drama. The senses crave the suspense. The spectacle enhances the personal interest. Driven by the invasive psyche. No wonder drama shows last the longest. Playing on people’s emotive strains to keep them watching. Learning from cinema and wandering into the fictional atmosphere. It almost seems real. Manipulated to perfection. Well doused with sinister tumultuous melodrama. All keys for an engaging audience. Hurled into the cinematic universe. A spectacle that though seems fictional is absorbed as lively. A way of realistic fiction unresolved in the everyday world. Each episode encountering more and more understandable aspects. Even the fantasy genre can cradle human interest. It is all about the plot manipulation and spectacle draining. A matrix constructed and entrapping the audience into the facade for the duration.
Beyond the audience’s personal engagement with the characters themselves is the identification with the surrealism. Stanislavski’s model is wholly misinterpreted. His intent is misdefined by the director but accepted by the audience. Romance and history are curled into dramatic narratives. Embellished with heightened emotion to freak the audience into submission. Learning the wrong lessons. Never questioning the veracity of claims. Blindly following the rules as they are illustrated on the screen. It is all too clear and all too emotional. Marvelling at the ease that people crave the emotional connection. Linking to the character as a friend. Feeling the anger in the protagonist’s soul. It is duration of engagement in the show. Even in the fictional universe, the extensive attachment to character is expelled in difficult moments. No matter how fictional, the troubling encounter raises heartbeat scratching fingernails. It is fiction but the suspense haunts the audience. Hoping for the best. Wishing to feel good on behalf of the character. A self interested egotistical yet psychologically warranted response. Entertainment is to feel good but it is the identification that nominally undermines the illusionary detail.
There is a way to break this binding hypnosis. Breaking the fourth wall. Characters telling the audience to chill out. Recognising holes in the universe. The audience awakened by this momentarily lapse in cinematic fluidity. The character smiling at the camera screen deviously admitting he has transcended the truth. He is playing a game and caught all of them in it. Comedies such as Spaceballs, Monty Python and Deadpool do this incredibly well. Instead of showing one scene where this occurs. It is a common trope. A polemic on the audience to whither them away from the stimulating narrative. The action is halted by a brief interruption in the plot. A battle stopped to discuss logistics. The meta moments that derail the realistic agenda. It is obviously fake. The most famous fourth wall break in Spaceballs is the classic line “we’re in the now now”. While trying to find the assailants. Darth Helmet and his assistant pull out a Spaceballs VHS tape off. They roll through the movie and reach the moment where they are. They argue back and forth about where in the movie the scene occurs finalising with the phrase "now now". Essentially watching themselves watching the tape.
Monty Python has a cruel moment where Dingo admits to the audience that the directors considered cutting her line. Characters with no connection and even those who haven’t been introduced tell her to get it on. The policeman end the movie by walking up to the camera guy and turning it off. Deadpool famously mentions breaking the fourth wall inside a fourth wall to make sixteen walls. He also kills Ryan Reynolds preventing Green Lantern. Yet most of his gimmicks are monologues to the audience. The mockery unlike Monty Python does not necessitate stage art or dialogical dialectics. It is similar to Ferris Bueller. Though for the latter the entire movie is speaking to a camera. The audience is the observers from the camera. Then again this breaches the surrealism by ensnaring the audience in his monologues. Deadpool’s sudden misdirections provide the audience a breather to reflect on the situation. Pause from the action to hear a joke. Ferris Bueller pulls the audience by the hand throughout the movie. There is no pause. The audience is sucked into his journey. It is the inverted fourth wall. He may be speaking directly to the audience but the audience is not provided any alienation. There is no dichotomy between real and fiction. If anything it is the most real as it is a direct confrontation with zero breaks. A modelled personal adventure alongside the protagonist. The ultimate denial of Brecht’s program.
Other than movies, reality television has provided theatre without pause for the real or fiction. Game shows or documentaries are personified. There is a level of drama inserted as well as pervasive editing but the audience perceives the real talent explored. America’s Got Talent is mixed with real clientele and responses from real judges. Hard Knocks documents NFL training camp following the series of football teams and their drama. The illusionary is subtle. Since most of it is real the audience believes it to be real. Some of reality tv is scripted. Such cases distort audience perception. It deviously projects itself as realistic but is a concocted plot to deceive the audience. It is not to say that they are staged but that they are filled with psychological personas that engage the psyche. Contestants are real people but a lot goes into ensuring they are a perfect candidate. Passing auditions and building a compelling backstory is perfect primetime television. The contestant may be blind but it is the story that always finds the hearts of the audience. Producers know the system and while it may not be a scam it is deceptive outright.
Epic theatre plays into an attempt to capture the mythic education of old. To revive the stories that were enthralled with values to permeate the soul. Oral messaging while creating the fiction in the brain could be isolated from the values. A concocted narrative and a lesson are easier to distinguish when it is solely aural. The entire point of the narrative is to teach. Yet with the onset of theatre. To satisfy the visual desire, entertainment found drama to be emotionally viable. Yet the eyes overlook the value. Sucked into the event the idea loses its merit. Ignored for the enjoyable action. The cornea imprinted with novelty. Brecht sought to uproot this misdirection. The lessons could be entrenched in the story if there was pause. If focus was lost momentarily. Recovery would allow the mind to regain its mojo and rationally analyse. The mind blurs in the visual appraisal of the haunting sin. All the deadly sins emerge from ill-sight. Zoomed in a single urge unable to break with the emotional powerhouse. It is the alienation and consistent movement that enables the viewer to disconnect. To be liberated by the coercive illustration.
Breaking the fourth wall is a start to ensuring the audience understands the loony bin they have preoccupied themselves. While the end of a film brings back sanity to the real. The possibility of these events do reoccur in the mind. Experts brought in to play on peoples’s psychological aspirations. The comedic trope gawks at the action-packed thriller beef for a sizzling outdated inquiry to the viewer. To laugh at him for his overstimulated audacity. While Fight Club and American Psycho speak to the audience it is more scripted than an interruption. The difference for Deadpool is the witty ploys that he necessarily reminds the audience that he is fiction and is just having fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment