Saturday, March 27, 2010

Plot (Life) as Failure

David Mamet's advice—the CAPS are all his—to the writers of his (typically American-fascist) TV action-drama, The Unit:
EVERY SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC. THAT MEANSTHE MAIN CHARACTER MUST HAVE SIMPLE, STRAIGHTFORWARD, PRESSING NEED WHICH IMPELS HIM OR HER TO SHOW UP IN THE SCENE.
THIS NEED IS WHY THEY CAME. IT IS WHAT THE SCENE IS ABOUT. THEIR ATTEMPT TO GET THIS NEED MET WILL LEAD, AT THE END OF THE SCENE, TO FAILURE - THIS IS HOW THE SCENE IS OVERIT, THIS FAILURE, WILL, THEN, OF NECESSITY, PROPEL US INTO THE NEXT SCENE.
ALL THESE ATTEMPTS, TAKEN TOGETHER, WILL, OVER THE COURSE OF THE EPISODE, CONSTITUTE THE PLOT.
Mamet was once a great playwright. (He's now an ideologue.) He knows drama—he knows how it works, structurally:

Need --> Action --> Failure --> Need --> Action --> Failure --> Need --> Action --> Failure -->

And so on, forever.

Art is ALWAYS about failure. It begins with failure; it ends in failure. Art teaches us that failure is the human condition. Any work that suggests otherwise is not art but propaganda.

If the work of art's last failure is terminal (Anna Karenina), the art is tragic.

If it's closing failure is merely the most recent of what we know to be a continuing series of failures (Tristram Shandy), or if it's but a brief reprieve in what will obviously be a life-long parade of subsequent failures (Twelfth Night), the art is comic.

The conviction that plot is structured upon failure points to the essential difference between the artistic temperament and the religious temperament.

The artistic temperament believes that life is failure. Depending upon circumstances beyond our individual control, the failure will be comic or tragic.

The religious temperament believes that life is salvation. What happens to us is entirely within our control. Since failure doesn't exist, comedy and tragedy don't exist. Only justice exists.

I leave it to you to consider which temperament you find more compelling. As for myself, you can can guess my view from a favorite quote:
Failure and failure alone remains the one single accomplishable experience. —Imre Kertesz, Kaddish for a Child Not Born
Here's the rest of Mamet's advice to his writers.

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