52 pages • 1 hour read
Augusto BoalTheatre of the Oppressed
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Aristotle’s Coercive System of Tragedy”
Introduction Summary
Philosophers have debated the relationship between art and politics since the emergence of the disciplines themselves. Boal poses several questions about the nature of art and the way it interacts with and is influenced by the exterior world. Boal turns to Aristotle to find the origin of theater in the Western tradition, as the Greek philosopher had a profound impact on art and other disciplines. Boal explores and deconstructs Aristotle’s ideas, which portray art and politics as completely different fields with laws unique to their own purposes and meaning.
Boal argues that Aristotle’s construction is exactly what it says it is not: the birth of a poetic-political system. He believes that by establishing art as separate from politics, Aristotle created a framework within which art could not be analyzed with a political lens. The Brazilian director suggests that Western theater is designed to intimidate and subvert the audience members into accepting a political message. He adds that this format continues to be utilized in television and other forms of media in the contemporary age.
Art Imitates Nature
To understand Aristotle’s work, Boal digs into the Greek philosopher’s definition of art by applying a new translation to Aristotle’s assertion that art imitates nature, or more precisely, that “[a]rt re-creates the creative principle of created things” (1). This idea comes from a series of thinkers who preceded Aristotle and shaped his ideas. Between 640 and 548 B.C., Thales argued that things have an innate soul, which has the transformative property of water, and Zeno’s paradox challenged the notion of time itself. Aristotle drew from both of these philosophers to shape his understanding of art as something that is linear and marches toward an unattainable perfection. For the rest of the chapter, Boal examines Aristotle’s work in a traditional philosophical model, engaging in a series of questions and answers as though intellectually wrestling with Aristotle in the present tense.
What Is the Meaning of “Imitation”?
Aristotle rejects the ideas of many of those who precede him, yet he uses many of the traditionalized terms that such thinkers established. Concepts like substance, matter, and form—which find their roots in Plato’s ontological system—were conceived as separate entities, each of which remained subject to its own set of laws. Aristotle proposes that forms tend toward perfection, which is not to say that forms are perfect. Therefore, imitation through art is part of a natural propulsion toward perfection.
“What, Then, Is the Purpose of Art and Science?
Aristotle proposes that art picks up where nature leaves off in the eternal effort toward perfection, “correct[ing] nature where it has failed” (9). Art attempts to correct the flaws of nature.
Major Arts and Minor Arts
The arts are divided in Aristotle’s philosophy along two lines: major and minor. Both contribute to the overarching aim of sovereign art: politics. Major arts are those which are composed of a variety of minor arts, working together to create a more sophisticated and elevated work that comes closer to perfection than any individual minor art can.
What Does Tragedy Imitate?
Tragedy is the imitation of the three actions of a person’s rational soul: faculties, passions, and habits. An individual’s rational soul has a singular aim: to achieve happiness.
What Is Happiness?
Aristotle outlines the meaning of happiness in Nicomachean Ethics. He argues that happiness is the glory achieved by living a virtuous life.
And What Is Virtue?
Aristotle asserts that virtue is the moderated behavior between the extremes of vice. Therefore, Aristotle’s model of tragedy imitates the actions of a rational soul engaged in the struggle for happiness through virtue.
Necessary Characteristics of Virtue
A person who lives virtuously is not necessarily a virtuous person. Aristotle details four characteristics that are necessary to translate virtue from an act to a qualifier: willfulness, freedom, knowledge, and constancy. These concepts mean that a person must knowingly, actively, and consistently choose virtue within a system that provides them with the freedom to select an alternative if desired.
The Degrees of Virtue
Each type of art and science has its own corresponding virtue. While the virtue, or aim, of the doctor is to restore health to people, the virtue of art is to create perfect art. Aristotle establishes varying degrees of virtue with political good as the highest tier. Boal explains that Aristotle’s model exalts justice as the perfect expression of political good.
What Is Justice?
Aristotle sees justice as something that is already contained in the existing reality, but Boal challenges Aristotle’s assumption by showing the contradictions in the philosopher’s work, contending that what Aristotle describes is not fairness but proportionality—each person receiving no more than what is proportional to the station afforded by the social context. Aristotle’s structure of theater and art is that which aims toward the political good. However, Boal argues that when Aristotle refers to “political good,” he is describing that which moves the audience toward adherence to law.
In What Sense Can Theater Function as an Instrument for Purification and Intimidation?
Boal emphasizes that the function of theory is not only intimidation. It has many functions, but its fundamental function is to repress through the provocation of catharsis.
The Ultimate Aim of Tragedy
Boal criticizes the prevalence of Aristotle’s law of three unities within theater and other forms of art. Meanwhile, American artistic philosophy has prioritized popularity over all else, catering to audiences through box office hits that have little substance. However, like Aristotle’s view, American cinema utilizes the stimulation of catharsis. Boal explains that catharsis offers redemption and a correction of an individual’s action. In this model, the stage offers a safe and calm way of examining one’s emotions and purging the soul for the spectator. The viewers see themselves in the protagonist and experience a transformation through the growth or tragic ending of the hero.
A Short Glossary of Simple Words
Boal outlines a few words that are central to the study and critique of theater. The tragic hero is the individual whom the spectators should follow. However, an individual figure was not always seen as the protagonist. In early theater, the chorus—representing the common people—held the weight of the work. When theater became a mechanism for political power and repression, an individual character with whom spectators could relate replaced the chorus. The character performs actions, called “ethos,” that are justified through “dianoia.”
How Aristotle’s Coercive System of Tragedy Functions
Aristotle constructs his coercive system by forcing the tragic hero to confront a radical change called a “peripeteia.” The spectator, watching and relating to the protagonist, feels fearful. The hero experiences anagnorisis, the recognition of the fundamental flaw that has led to the character’s tragic experiences. The “wrong” actions of the hero lead to a “catastrophe” which in turn solidifies for the spectator the terrible consequences of wrongdoing.
Several types of conflict emerge in tragedies, but Boal explains that all of them focus on the interaction between the ethos of the individual character and society. The tragic hero must have only one flaw, which is acted out through wrongful ethos called “hamartia.” Spectators empathize with the hero by living vicariously through this figure’s experiences.
Conclusion
Boal explains that Aristotle’s construction of tragedy has had lasting power. Its function is to move spectators toward political good, but Boal explains that this model does not work during times of rebellion. When societies are less stable, traditional forms are abandoned or altered to reflect a challenge to the oppressive systems of Western ideologies.
Chapter 1 Analysis
Boal expands his ideologies through the format and structure of the text itself by utilizing Western philosophical methodologies to interrogate the most fundamental principles of art and theater. For example, traditional Greek philosophers began by employing three techniques that became the standard for future thinkers: define terms, follow the natural progression of questions to their logical conclusion, and acknowledge and/or reject the ideas of preceding thinkers. Boal utilizes this traditional format of Western philosophy by posing a series of questions and allowing those questions to lead to new ones. For example, the question “What is happiness?” and the tracing of Western thought leads to the question “What is virtue?” Many philosophers use this format to show how their work fits into and expands the broader canon of philosophical thought.
By temporarily adopting this format, Boal participates in the tradition while simultaneously challenging it from within. Using this structure functions as a poetic-political response to the history of Western approaches; Boal will later argue that these approaches create a structure of self-justification and self-denial. By blending philosophy, art, theater, and politics, Boal challenges the isolated nature of Western forms and the censorship of a militarized regime that sought to maintain division and segregation. He is not interested in expanding Western philosophical thought. Instead, he seeks to break it.
Boal also argues that The Interaction of Power and Art has been present since its earliest forms. He employs the work of Greek philosophers whose ideas became the foundation for contemporary theater and art, using their ideas to indicate that the rules to which artists adhere are rooted in repression and politics. Specifically, Boal uses Thales’s and Zeno’s contributions to establish the innate separateness of Western ideology, contending that Aristotle was influenced by these thinkers to conceptualize theater as something that remains separate from politics and power.
For example, Plato’s system, which separated forms from matter and substance, established the idea that systems and other aspects of reality could be separate from one another and were therefore subject to unique laws. Aristotle accepted these terms without interrogating whether these ideas should be separated in the first place. Western philosophy has a history of criticism for the practice of compartmentalizing ideas rather than understanding the world through a collectivist lens. Although Aristotle claims that the principle of Zeno’s paradox is incorrect, his concept of form as an unending drive toward perfection is a direct ancestor of the story of Achilles and the Tortoise.
Boal explains that this disparate thinking allows power to run rampant and unchecked, and he asserts that the belief that art is separate from power leaves little room for political criticism. In his view, Aristotle failed to see that his own ideologies were built upon the ideas of those who preceded him—either as extensions or rejections of earlier concepts. Boal shows that this misconception occurred at the beginning of Aristotle’s philosophical career. Even though he rejected the ideas of Plato and those who preceded him, he unthinkingly accepted the fundamental principles that these thinkers outlined, and this pattern had huge ramifications for his own theories.
Boal uses Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to show the trajectory of art toward an inflated and privileged sense of self that reflects a belief in sovereign and perfect form. Boal’s analysis reveals that Aristotle’s ideology is built upon the belief that justice already exists freely in his world. However, Boal challenges this idea, arguing that justice cannot exist unless it is actively sought. He criticizes Aristotle’s conceptual flaws again, showing that while the philosopher expounded upon liberty and freedom, he simultaneously upheld oppressive cultural and political structures that celebrated enslavement and demoted women to the status of animals.
Aristotle’s construction of theater as the catalyst for spectators’ catharsis enhances the work’s thematic focus on Theater as a Tool for Social and Political Change. This narrative outline creates space in which audience members can learn moral and political lessons from protagonists while living vicariously through the actions of the hero. Boal provides a comprehensive understanding of Aristotle’s framework for tragedy, stating:
Nature tends toward certain ends; when it fails to achieve those objectives, art and science intervene. Man, as part of nature, has certain ends in view […] When he fails in the achievement of those objectives, the art of tragedy intervenes (27).
Boal asserts that Aristotle and others organized the basic building blocks of meaning while simultaneously ignoring the impact of their own perceptions and biased thinking. Boal asks a powerful question: if the individuals who determined the models of modern theater and art did not understand the impact of their own context or the relationship between politics and privilege, then why do performers continue to uphold an inherently flawed tradition? By dismantling traditional structures of theater, Boal creates space for something new to replace them.
