From Issue 1:

These extracts – exclusively published in ScriptWriter Magazine - are from his forthcoming book, Aristotle in Hollywood, which examines Aristotle’s theory of drama as applied to blockbuster movies, top-rating television drama and best-selling novels.

I have taken Aristotle’s idea of the correspondence of storytelling technique and emotional experience at face value simply because it seems totally rational: a good story brings about pleasure. It’s obvious. Otherwise why would we pay to go to movies or read fiction? We can even say that the pleasure is the object in itself and a story is the means to bring about that pleasure. The more pleasure a story can bring about, the better and more popular the story.

To unravel the essence of the pleasure by asking questions of the audience would be very difficult because the components of pleasure are to a great extent unconscious. The audience experience the pleasure of a good story communally but, when asked individually, they name different things as the cause of the pleasure. One person thinks it’s the good acting, another thinks it’s the attractive women, a third says it must be the beautiful scenery, and a fourth person says it’s the genre. These elements are relevant, but they do not explain why certain stories become immensely popular as novels as well as movies, or why a certain Arnold Schwarzenegger or Harrison Ford movie becomes successful and another with the same actor does not. It does not explain why, when a film of one genre is a hit and Hollywood thinks this is what people want and they make several more movies of that same genre, they often fail.

The starting point of Aristotle’s drama theory is that the plot structure is the decisive influence in bringing about the ‘proper pleasure’. If we accept this starting point, analysing the plot structure will enable us to understand the essence of the audience’s pleasure. We could say that the pleasure is the object and the plot structure the means. By understanding how emotional experience is created by successful storytelling strategies, we might be able to predict, to some extent, the probable success of different stories of any genre before they are presented to audiences.

Predicting success is, in fact, the film industry’s (and the publishing industry’s) greatest challenge. Hollywood film production is usually a multimillion-dollar investment so risk management is a priority. Many a film has proved to be a commercial failure despite the stars, the enormous budgets and the professional marketing efforts, whilst other films may become a huge successes.

In the Rhetoric Aristotle defines fear (phobos) as the anticipation of evil, anxiety and unrest which is caused by a notion (phantasia) of impending danger (mellontos). This notion has to be strong enough to produce the emotion. In the Rhetoric a synonym for the term phantasia is expectation (prosdokia). Fear is caused by the expectation of an impending disaster.

In this definition of fear, Aristotle says that fear is not felt for events far in the future but only when the danger is imminent. It also includes a pleasurable element, namely the hope for safety. Fear is connected to goal-oriented action. When a man is afraid, he seeks safety and directs his actions towards this goal. Without the hope of safety, a man is not just fearful but desperate.

To summarise, we can say that fear is partly the expectation of impending danger and partly concerned with the mental effort and physical action needed to remove oneself from the situation which brings about hope. Hence fear is a special mixture of anxiety and pleasure.

Aristotle says that a good drama produces both pity and fear. His explanation of fear in the Rhetoric, relates to a threat that is directed to an individual. But in a drama we are watching someone else (another character) being threatened and if we are able to identify with their plight, we are able to feel both fear and pity for them even though we are sitting safely in the audience. If we examine the definition of pity, we can see a reason for such empathy.

By having an understanding of the nature of the ‘proper pleasure’ we can also understand how to intensify the involvement and suspense of the audience: it is to make the viewers care as much as possible about the characters in the room. Were the characters two brutal gangsters, the audience would not feel very much for them because, according to the argument propounded in the Poetics, bad characters deserve to be punished. But if we like the characters or if they are morally good, they do not deserve to suffer. Furthermore, if we really care for the characters, the emotion of suspense is intensified. For instance, if the character is a woman with whom we have fallen in love and the bomb explodes just after she leaves the meeting, we can easily identify with her emotions of relief as she realises how close to death she had been. If she dies in the explosion, we feel deep grief as the suspense gives way to feelings induced by the tragic ending of a lovely character.

CONT. in Issue 1.

© Ari Hiltunen 2001

To be published in early 2002 by Intellect Books.