18/11/2015

Tragedy: ‘Wreck on the Highway’

-‘Wreck on the Highway’ is the title of 2 songs. This lecture is in places about road traffic
accidents as examples of the everyday tragic.

-How do we prey/pray upon tragic deaths for what they mean for us. Is it in sympathy?
Or is it parasitic?

-There is a necessity to see tragic characters as ‘like us’ but also to respect their
uniqueness

-Pop songs on the tragedy reading list seems to tend to miniaturise ideas of tragic drama,
to reduce them to lyric shape. They are characterized by their ‘slightness’. This section of
the reading list tunes into voices of women in a way other bits of the tragedy reading list
does less well.

*PLAYS CLIP OF SPRINGSTEEN SONG FROM HANDOUT*

-The song turns inwards after a tragic sight. There is a spirit of ‘it could have been me’. Is
it a problem that the attention of the speaker turns back on himself?

-In parallel, there is the tragedy of the everyday

-Springsteen’s version is not the first with that title – see Dixon version on handout.

-The demeanour of the speakers in this version are strange in their explanation of the
event. What is the significance of the whiskey?

-See line ‘I wish I could change this sad story’ – desire to change the course of past
events.

-Interesting idea of ‘I didn’t hear nobody pray’ – did the speaker who came on this scene
imagine a piety in the victims? What is going on in the mind of someone who has
suffered disaster?

-Turn to theorization of how this might be incorporated into a history of tragedy.

Raymond Williams quote on handout:

-Williams argues against elitist segregation of tragedy into something that belongs to
‘kings and heroes’, and the past. Tragedy can change in relation to social change.

-Key argument – the academic tradition of tragedy perpetuates an ideology that it does
not recognise in itself

-Can the distinction between the everyday and the tragic be upheld?

-The historical formation in which one person (the king) could represent all can no
longer be upheld for Williams, but that it has an afterlife in literary criticism.
-Different social orders give different tragic figures the right to be the ‘general’. Think of
change through Ibsen to Beckett – bourgeois subject to extra-societal figures.

-Relation of audience is interesting – shift from watching those of higher status on stage
to watching those of lower status. There must have been some point of balance between
audience and performance.

-Role of cars – Williams talks of being ‘run over by a bus’ in 1966 – different eras of
traffic from Dorsey Dixon, and Springsteen. Think of the semiotics of transport at these
times – adventure, possibility, ecocide.

-Death of a Salesman on handout – how it weaves technology (including car) into the
tragic drama

-Miller plays on relation between tragedy and insurance. Taking out insurance on
Agamemnon/Coriolanus seems ridiculous, but in Miller’s era seems plausible.
Specifically modern aspect of tragedy.

-‘Evidence’ reported in witness statement, which she seems to quote verbatim.

-After the ‘crash’ of music in a stage direction, the cello string vibration sounds some
lasting note.

-Miller thinks about the ways in which a car as lethal weapon affords characters do things
to themselves, or let things be done to them.

SEE LONG MILLER BLOCK QUOTE ON HANDOUT

-Miller was outmanoeuvred by the reaction his paly caused. A consequence of

unexpected recognition of the audience in the fate of Willy Loman?

SEE 2nd LONG MILLER BLOCK QUOTE ON HANDOUT

-Insurance, cars are central to modern tragic in Miller.

-Changing nature of tragedy over time

ARISTOTLE POETICS ON HANDOUT

-Greatness of tragic characters, but he also has enough compensatory insistence that they
have to be ‘suitable’ in resembling life – they should be ‘life-like’.

-Gendered split in tragedy.

-Aristotle steers between tragic figures as ‘greater’ and ‘life-like’.

NICK HORNBY 1 ON HANDOUT

-Male characters measure everything in terms of ‘what it means to them’, rather than in
terms of others around them.

-Why does the Lear story have no bearing on him? He refuses to identify with Lear

-Puts pressure on idea of identifying with tragic characters.

NICK HORNBY 2 ON HANDOUT
-There was a time in his life when he needed songs about why life was tragic, but now he
has enough tragedy in his own.

-How do we balance sympathy for tragic characters with the risk of over-identification?

HAMLET ON HANDOUT
-Tragic drama performs these anxieties between identification and distance.

-Characters see themselves in what Hamlet is doing – Fortinbras is turning Hamlet into
Fortinbras. He turns Hamlet’s death into one that suits him, not Hamlet. He reinterprets
it as a war.

-Claudius recognizes Hamlet as like Claudius, while Polonius sees himself in Hamlet.
Both only recognise themselves.

-Is this both the problem and the only possibility of tragedy? In tragedy, it is this
precarious balance that is important.