[academic writing; January 2011]
As the genre of rock music entertainment and its identification of celebrities have developed into its own canon through the second half of the twentieth century, often reckless and chaotic individuals have been, and continue to be, popular, lucrative and acceptable, no matter how tragic. This discussion will apply Aristotle's definition of a tragic figure as presented in the Poetics to a concept of rock musician as posed by Lester Bangs in an August 1981 Musician magazine article, “Jim Morrison: Bozo Dionysus a Decade Later” (2003, p. 213), in an effort to better understand how rock music continues promote dark, chaotic and often tragic characters as noisy and reckless, creative heroes.
Aristotle's Tragedy in Poetics
In Aristotle's tragedy, individuals experience “good or bad fortune” that “extends from the beginning of the change to the end” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XVIII, para. 1): a definition of plot in which some transformation may exist within at least one of the individuals involved. This transformation serves to shape the characters in question, as Aristotle reiterates, “...the best test to take is the plot. Identity exists where the Complication and Unraveling are the same” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XVIII, para. 3). The definition of a dramatic and tragic work comes through the simultaneous plot elements.
Tragic characters in a dramatic work need four elements: a general goodness, “propriety,” both “consistent” and “consistently inconsistent,” and an understanding of “the necessary or probable” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XV, para. 1). These elements together create a character in conflict at least on one count; a character's wrestling with any individual element of these four, in the face of “good or bad fortune” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XVIII, para. 1) may alone suffice to create dramatic tragedy.
The abundance of Poetics concerns the elements of dramatic tragedy; its opposite, comedy, is delivered fleeting attention, as in Part V: “Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type-- not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect of ugliness which is not painful or destructive” (Aristotle, n.d., Part V, para. 2). Tragedy is also built of imitation, and may extrude and amplify from life those “defect[s] of ugliness” which are “painful or destructive.”
Through establishing guidelines for the construction of plot, for the use of the burden of tragedy (in contrast with the “ludicrous” of comedy), and for identifying what elements are necessary to create a viable character, a definition of the tragic figure emerges: one who has been faced with a truth and has responded with transformation, however “consistent” or “consistently inconsistent” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XV, para. 1). This may come to include a character in exterior or interior conflict, one in love, in pain, or as one experiences moments of fleeting clarity.
Tragedy in Rock: Context for the Lizard King
Has rock music always been built of Aristotle's dramatic and transformative tragedy? Elvis' first gold records were teenage love songs, however tragic; Chuck Berry wrote little else. Among so many others, the Doors began their career and amassed their fame during the second decade in the evolution of the genre of rock music, during a period when music and songs were being increasingly linked to social movements and polarization. For this reason alone, the identity and characteristics of who sang what during the 1960s became important, and new models of recording artists' musical and personal transformations became necessary. Novelty and humor during rock music's most formative years became relegated to being elements of psychedelic perspiration, and directly tragic themes began to prevail.
Much scholarship on the Beatles has detailed their collective and individual embrace of chaotic, excessive seriousness, moving from outright-love pop songs like “Eight Days a Week” to the dark rapture of “Helter Skelter” in only a handful of years. If there had been any humor to rock and roll music during rock's earliest days, of Bill Haley and Elvis, social revolution and war may have weeded it out, as these 'consistently inconsistent' events exterior to the craft of rock music promoted among some musicians an embrace of a dark and chaotic transformation.
Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek started The Doors in California, in July of 1965 (“The Doors,” 2011), and made new use of the evolving medium: Morrison's poetry served as lyrics for Manzarek's keyboard riffs, and national success came quickly. Morrison's implosion as a rock 'success' is legendary, and helped set a tragic precedent for creative individuals working in the genre of rock music; as if taking part in Aristotelian dramatic tragedy onstage, his 'good fortune' of success yielded painful personal transformation to a fatal extent.
The plot of Morrison's fame may be studied in detail using Aristotle's distinctions meant for staged tragedy: a Dionysian loss of self in the face of wild success matches themes of “Complication” and “Unraveling” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XVIII, para. 3). Bangs' (1981) article illuminates some of Morrison's outrageous behavior, including arrests for public indecency and repeatedly insulting his audience at a concert (p. 218), to make a larger point regarding cultural acceptance of : “these kids today would feel threatened by any performer who came out today and started acting like Morrison did, so is it only the remove of a decade that allows them to feel safe enjoying his antics?” (p. 217).
The Tragedy of the “Bozo Dionysus”
Aristotle's definition of tragedy informs Bangs' (1981) characterization of Jim Morrison as rock's groundbreaking “Bozo Dionysus” (p. 213), as dramatic, tragic figures experience moments of realization often too late, and the drama comes through an abandonment of the self. Bangs' (1981) point continues to be relevant: “If Jim Morrison cared so little about his life, was so willing to make it amount to one huge alcoholic exhibitionistic joke, why should they or we or anybody finally care, except insofar as the seamy details provide trashy entertainment?” (p. 218). While modern, mass media may contribute to the roots of present-day “trashy entertainment,” Aristotle's tragic and ill-transformed character may be seen to be at work.
Continued reception and regard for creative, tragic figures like Morrison may do more harm than good, according to Bangs (1981): “it's exactly such insane tolerance of another insanity that also contributes to them [artists like Morrison] drying up as artists. Because how can you finally create anything real or beautiful when you have absolutely zero input from the real world, because everyone around you is catering to and sheltering you?” (p. 218). Morrison's death came in 1971, his final tragic transformation. The “insane tolerance” of Morrison has only continued, and may be seen as having spread to realms of both film and political celebrity, perhaps for different reasons.
Bangs (1981) was writing to ponder a wild resurgence in the popularity of the music of the Doors, after the publication of a biography, long before any films had been produced. Since Bangs' question, a number of films, and hundreds of subsequent releases of material have emerged from the Doors vault, and the catalog of modern rock music celebrities mostly follow in Morrison's Dionysian footprints: from Kurt Cobain to the King of Pop, each a valued, electrified, dark and mystical, tragic minstrel.
Aristotle's Poetics (n.d.) provides a definition of tragedy that includes an individual's transformation through events arranged in a plot, and identifies traits of a character that may play a role in dramatic tragedy, including the potential for an individual to reside in inner conflict. As defining successful individuals working in the field of rock music, Jim Morrison's personal and creative transformations, and the lasting popularity of such, is likely to help continue a tragic disposition for rock musicians.
Aristotle. (n.d.). Poetics. The Internet Classics Archive. Retrieved from http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.mb.txt
Arnott, W. (1985). Aristotle on comedy [Review of Aristotle on Comedy: Towards a Reconstruction of Poetics II by R. Janko]. The New Classical Review, 2, 35. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxy.myunion.edu/stable/3063307?seq=2
Bangs, L. (2003). Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader. Ed. J. Morthland. Random House: New York.
Cooper, L. (1922). An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy. Harcourt, Brance and Company: New York. Retrieved from http://books.google.com.proxy.myunion.edu/books?id=hZZZAAAAMAAJ&ots=2eQBxrpfgJ&dq=Tractatus%20coislinianus&lr&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q=Tractatus%20coislinianus&f=false
“The Doors.” (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doors
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