Trey Walter - Art as Cognition: Aristotle

Reflection on, Art as Cognition: Aristotle, from "The Nature of Art"

In this week’s reading, a specific chapter of the Aristotle excerpt in “The Nature of Art” stood out to me amongst the rest.  In the sixth chapter of The Poetics, Aristotle addresses what defines a poem as a tragedy in comparison to other forms of poetry.  Aristotle believes that tragedies are the most critiqued form of poetry, and therefore follow specific guidelines to be classified as such. 

Aristotle discusses the six elements that make a tragedy what it is: plot structure, character, style, thought, spectacle, and lyric poetry.  These elements are important because it makes a tragedy into a story that depicts the character’s struggle against despair not just for himself but for the civilization itself in a very dramatized or extravagant way.  Another criterion that tragedies should follow is that the setting stays static, or changes very little.  Unlike epics that span over months/years and through many different scenes, tragedies remain in a relatively small location. 

My question for this post then is: What are some modern example from the twentieth and twenty-first century stories, real or fictional, that follow this same model structure that Greek tragedies originally pioneered?  The cases I considered are about very influential people, who were once greatly admired, but then whose popularity succumb to circumstances no imagined ensuing at the height of their careers. 

The example I could recall was Lance Armstrong.  Armstrong was admired by so many people because of his success story as a cancer survivor who went on to be a world champion cyclist.  After the allegations of his drug use to help him with his races, he was stripped of his merits, disowned by those who looked up to him, and has been almost all but forgotten by society.  A second figure who seemed to tragically fall from his praise was Bernie Madoff.  Madoff was the chairman of a financial firm that people looked to, trusted, and depended on.  Madoff ran an investment company for almost fifty years helping to common citizen build financial security until he was accused and convicted of managing a Ponzi scheme with his client’s money.  Now he is beginning to fulfill a 150-year sentence, owes $170 billion in restitution money, and will undoubtedly die in prison.  Lastly; David Petraeus, a distinguished army general, was stripped of his rank and authority amongst a scandal while he was the chairmen of the CIA.  Petraeus had an extremely successful career in every command he lead and was even briefly mentioned as a potential presidential candidate.   His potential and previous reputation were taken away because of careless acts that could have been entirely avoided if he had only considered the consequences beforehand and was more careful. 

What all three of these modern cases have in common are the tragic results for three men who were on the pedestal of their respective fields, only to be taken down by poor decisions they all premeditatedly made.  Their stories climax with the day of reckoning for premeditative actions that could have been avoided, had only considered the consequences of their scandalous actions before conducting themselves.  Their stories became highly publicized because they are shocking, disappointing, and have great impact on many people who relied on or idolized them.