From Issue 8, January 2003:

The Case Against Aristotle:
The Road Less Travelled

by Steve Nallon

Aristotle is believed by many to be the ‘father’ of dramatic analysis. In this article Steve Nallon argues that Aristotle may have been wrong more often than right. ScriptWriter invites you to assess the evidence.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by.
And that has made all the difference.
– Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken

Aristotle was wrong. Not only was he wrong, he was guilty of negligence and false evidence in his assessment of dramatic art. His theories have caused real harm, both grievous and bodily, to the writer and the dramatic medium of cinema. To borrow his own words, Aristotle is guilty from ‘beginning, middle to end’.

There is a curious parallel to be found in Aristotle’s teaching and the approach of modern screenwriting gurus. John Truby’s ‘Classic Structure’ uses terms such as ‘Self-revelation’ and ‘Double Reversal’, both of which have their origins in Aristotelian theory. Aristotle’s concept of peripeteia, an action in drama that causes a contrary and unexpected result, is very close to Robert McKee’s theory of ‘The Gap’. Even the beginning, middle and end model has certain things in common with the myth theory of Challenge, Attainment and Return. I would not fault any of these connections. However, the very fact that a paradigm is called ‘Classic’ and its alternatives are referred to as ‘anti-classical’ has created a prejudicial and unequal goats-and-sheep attitude to the world of story. And Aristotle is responsible for this mind-set where one way of telling is raised above all others.

In his thinking and his nature Aristotle was a patriarch not a democrat, and what one finds both in the tone and content of Poetics is an I know best attitude that is essentially based on a two-tier perspective of the right way and the wrong way to do things. Unfortunately, this attitude and thinking still pervades the modern world of screenwriting.  In this article what I propose to show – in a somewhat adversarial manner – is that the so-called ‘alternative’ or ‘anti-classical’ structures were never anything of the sort because before Aristotle’s Poetics, the concept of a classical route, the direct, single plot action, did not exist. And if one doesn’t have an exemplary route, all paths are of equal worth. Aristotle took us down his path but let us, on this journey, take the road less travelled by…

Let me begin by offering a brief summary of Aristotle’s character and its relevance to this debate. Aristotle was above all a rationalist who believed in causality and logic. These are the gifts he gave to Western thought. By occupation, Aristotle was a marine biologist whose work was even praised by Darwin. Quite right too, for Aristotle’s mind was that of the deductive scientist who categorised distinct organic forms. However, a mind that sees the world as if everything in it can and must be labelled is not a mind that is necessarily of benefit when understanding performance and dramatic form.

I therefore begin my case against Aristotle with his labelling instincts and distinctions. Early in Poetics Aristotle makes a sharp and defining distinction between the two mediums of performance in Greek cultural life, namely theatre and the recital of epic poetry (sung epic poetry still exists today, notably in the Balkans but it has no real modern equivalent in any other Western media). He makes a distinction between two ‘modes’ of presentation and he calls one showing (mimesis) and the other telling (diegesis). The theatre, he says, shows whereas epic poetry tells.

The problem with this is that Aristotle does not appear to recognise shades of grey. The truth is, neither drama nor epic poetry was or ever has been that absolute in its presentation. However, let us leave epic poetry aside and stick to drama in its widest form and take a trip to the movies that sometimes have elements of ‘telling’ in the ‘showing’.

CONT. in Issue 8.