CATHARSIS
What is aesthetic catharsis?
The concept of aesthetic catharsis was articulated by Aristotle in ancient Athens. He proposed that an audience could identify with the characters, situation and/or plot of a play, and in the process purge any unhealthy emotions simulated or stimulated by the story. However, modern psychological research has uncovered a down-side of this psycho-social projection – people who let out or act out their emotions this way may become habituated to the cycle of excitement and release, so much so that the emotions’ intensity and longevity increases rather than decreases.
So much for the theory – what about the practice? People often go to a comedy to get a good laugh, or go to a tragedy to get a good cry. There are heroes audiences love to love, and villains they love to hate. Many actors make a career out of using their personality, their skills, and their props to “own the part” of a particular example or type of stage character – Leonard Nimoy as “Mr. Spock”, Jack Palance playing a cross-section of reprehensible villains, Christopher Reeves as “Superman,” etc. Many children love animated features, and collect all of the memorabilia associated with them. Teenagers flock to schlock horror films to get a good scare; the worse those movies are, the better the kids like them. Women patronize “chick flicks” (Sex and the City) and men prefer “macho movies” (Bruce Willis in the Die Hard series). Some combinations of heroes and villains transcend all audiences (Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig, all as James Bond, the biggest series franchise in movie history [only the Tarzan series of movies could be considered a rival, and a pale one at that!]).
How does catharsis work?
Effective villains are truly odious – Richard Widmark playing a psychopath who pushes a cripple woman down a staircase; Lee Marvin as Liberty Valance, an outlaw without a single redeeming quality; and Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lector, a psychopath with only one redeeming quality (his intolerance of rudeness!) Effective heroes are truly admirable – William Shatner as James T. Kirk of Star Trek; Charlton Heston as Moses and Judah Ben-Hur; Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Comedians need to embody a unique combination of bathos and pathos (Woody Allen as the little Jewish klutz; Bing Crosby and Bob Hope as the travelling smart-alecs in their Road… series). We cheer, and squirm, and jeer along with all of them, and they laugh all the way to the bank – so they must be doing something right for us.
There is a dark side to catharsis too. D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation resurrected support for the Klu Klux Klan. The James Bond movies distracted the British public from MI 6’s intelligence fiascos. Sometimes the public just seems to want their complacency reinforced.
