but its all deliciously political.

 The action starts. The hero shows a flaw in his behavior, a hamartia; and even more surprising, one learns that is it by virtue of this same hamartia that the hero has come to his present state of happiness. Through empathy, the same hamartia that the spectator may possess is stimulated, developed, activated. Suddenly something happens that changes everything...the character, who bc of his hamartia had climbed so high, runs the risk of falling from those heights. peripeteia: a radical change in the character's destiny, a reversal. The spectator, who up to then had his own hamartia stimulated, starts to feel a growing fear. The character is now on a way to misfortune. Peripeteia is important because it lengthens the road from happiness to misfortune...the taller the palm tree the greater the fall. The peripeteia suffered by the character is reproduced in the sepctator as well. OR, the spectator could follow the character empathically until the peripeteia, and then decide to detach himself. the tragic character must also pass through what Aristotle calls anagnorisis-- that is, through recongition of his flaw as such and, by means of reasoning, the explanation of it. The hero accepts his error, hoping that empathically the spectator will also accept as bad his own hamartia. But the spectator has the luxury of having erred vicariously...he does not really pay for it. Aristotle demands a terrible end, a catastrophe so that the spectator will keep in mind the terrible consequences of committing the error not just vicariously but also in actuality. The catastrophe is always such that not to die is worse than death. P, A, and C all work to evoke catharsis in the spectator!

See how theater is political? See how theater is the most perfect artistic form of coercion??

- How often-- remember?--our sympathy has been more with the bad guy than with the good one! The "Westerns," like the children's games, serve the Aristotelian purpose of purging all the spectator's aggressive tendencies. 

- this system functions to diminish, placate, satisfy, eliminate all that can break the balance-- all, including the revolutionary, transforming impetus. 

- the objective of Artistotle's very powerful purgation system is to eliminate all that is not commonly accepted, including the revolution, before it takes place. It is designed to bridle the individual, to adjust him to what pre-exists. If we want something different, we need a new poetics!