"It's not depressing, it's tragic."

[colliemommie]

I was watching "Brideshead Revisited" last night, much to the mystification of, well, everyone. The general refrain is "Why are you watching that again, it's so depressing." But I don't agree. Granted, this is not a happy story by any stretch. But there is a difference between depressing and tragic, and I think this falls firmly on the tragic side.

Now, these are completely my own thoughts, in a rather stream-of-consciousness sort of way. Please feel free to disregard...

Tragedy is important. Like religion, it's a way of making sense of what we cannot understand, the witting or unwitting evil, or sometimes just the plain old bad luck that is part of the human condition.  From the Greeks forward, tragedy has been a mainstay of dramatic and literary art. There seems to be a human propensity throughout time to acknowledge that sometimes bad things will just happen; suffering cannot be avoided. But the tragic tradition tries to show the dignity with which suffering can be endowed and how it is in fact a necessary part of being human. The ways in which we suffer matter, they have a purpose.

Again, like religion, tragedy affirms our sense that we are important, that our pain is not senseless or trivial. More than that, tragedy shows the beauty to which suffering can be turned simply because it is inexorable. Maybe that's what makes a truly successful tragedy--something that juxtaposes the pain of life that can encompass any person with the beauty (or grace, to put it religiously) that can encompass the pain. Suffering may be greater than a human, but humanity is greater than suffering.

Brideshead Revisited is I think both unusual for a modern work and compelling because it is a very pure tragedy in a way. There is never any feeling that any of these horrible, painful moments might have been avoided if only (enter condition here). The outcomes are inevitable. Even Sebastian's alcoholism is treated as a force of nature almost. No one can stop it, least of all Sebastian. Charles and Cordelia see the futility of trying to stop it, and instead just love him as much as they can as he is. Lady Marchmain fights it at first, but eventually admits to Charles that she can't stop her son leaving, just as she could not stop his father.

I think Brideshead also drives home the importance of this sufffering with the very frank recurring religious discussions that pop up, especially around Sebastian and Lady Marchmain. There is almost a fatalistic sense that things are as they are and will be as they will be.  Everyone is afflicted with a lack of effectiveness, but not a lack of agency. The measure of a man or woman in this, and I think any tragedy, is not what they make happen to them (or anyone else), but what one does when it happens.

Or maybe even that is too strong a phrase. The success or failure of these characters is whether they are able to find the grace in their situation. Cordelia describes Sebastian finding his beautiful or right or grace-filled place as one of those odd people who attach themselves to a religious community as doers of odd jobs. He'll disappear on a drunken binge every once in a while and reappear contrite, until one day they will find him to have quietly passed away in the night. It's sad, wasteful, but filled with that peculiar kind of beauty that only seems to come with accepting the painful inevitable with a deeply human resignation and peace. It's tragic.

Lady Marchmain puts everything in almost aggressively religious, more specifically Catholic, terms, but Catholicism lends itself surprisingly well to the partially fatalistic tragic approach. Unlike Protestantism, there is no sense of Social Gospel, or that Good People will have Good Things happen. In fact, the Good People often seem to have Really Bad Things happen. To quote a very funny religion book, someone "decides to press the 'Smite' button". While many Protestant sects have some concept of "the Elect," those favored by God, Catholics have this tacit assumption (never spoken, of course) that those whom God really loves get the short end of the stick.  (The only really big exception I can think of is Thomas Aquinas, but he's unique in so many ways.) It's an uncomfortable version of the idea that "Of those to whom much has been give, much will be expected".

So when did we get away from acknowledging that tragedy is important, that suffering is both unavoidable and necessary if we are to be fully human? Maybe when technology advanced enough that the majority of us no longer live with death on a daily basis. Death still happens, but we don't expect it really, it comes as a surprise. We've distanced ourselves from the process of suffering, of dying. Our dead are no longer kept at home for viewings, we don't bury them on the property. Similarly, a lot of the causes of everyday, always-present death have been eliminated or are avoided by the majority of the population in first-world countries. We have antibiotics, children don't regularly die of measles, many diseases that were formerly a death sentence are now completely curable. Hygienic developments have eliminated cholera and fever outbreaks. Life expectancies have skyrocketed. We feel that we are more in control of our world and our lives in every way. We are masters of our destiny instead of simply captains of our souls.

When death or unavoidable suffering does come it is not only painful, but a huge shock. And since we are not forced to acknowledge the inevitability of suffering in real life as frequently, since so much is now avoidable, we've ceased to confront it as regularly in a fictional or artistic sense as well. Western culture has abandoned tragedy for either unrelievedly happy endings (despite the contortions this sometimes takes) or senseless violence and destruction.  The one denies the pervasiveness of suffering in life, and the other trivializes pain or, worse, tries to pass it off as entertainment.  I don't know which is worse in the end. The latter is desensitizing, but the first trivializes everything about being human by denying at least half of it.

Being unwillingly confronted with tragedy tends to result in the "It's so depressing" response mentioned above. The tacit follow-up to that is "why should I make myself think about unhappy things when it's not happening to me?" It's a wish to avoid the unpleasant rather than to understand and move through, a prayer for protection rather than grace. But it seems to me to be a spiritual (in the most basic, non-religion or belief-specific sense) amputation or agoraphobia. "I don't want to go out there because I might get hurt."

I don't have any conclusion to draw, but there is a beauty in true tragedy, in finding the grace in pain, in being transcendent in a sense, and we seem far too willing to give that up for what we perceive as emotional safety.

AAACK! Why are they remaking Brideshead? I really don't think this is necessary...the 1981 production is so perfect. I honestly think it's the best book adaptation I've ever seen.

Dear Andrew Davies:

As much as I have enjoyed your adaptations in the past, especially "Vanity Fair" and "The Way We Live Now", please back away slowly from this proposed production of "Brideshead Revisited".  I understand you may still be flushed with a feeling of invincibility after the "Pride and Prejudice" incident (about which I will not speak...I have the 1980 production and David Rintoul to soothe my offended spirit), but leave this one lie. 

While the "comedic touches" your adaptations are known for may draw in the mainstream modern audience more reliably than a more nuanced script, any attempt to make Brideshead "fun" will destroy the tone which gives such poignancy to Waugh's novel and the '81 production. (You may have heard of it...Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Claire Bloom, Anthony Andrews...)

As a final warning and inducement to caution, remember the modernized "Othello".

Sincerely,

Me

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Very interesting comments, and I can't disagree with any of them, though it's a while since I've seriously pondered anything about Brideshead Revisited other than the interesting attractions of Sebastian and the quality of his teddy bear.

I do find that tragedy, rightly done, is not depressing. It's a revelation, maybe a catharsis. It's all part of a universal balance, perhaps.

Do it wrong and it's wallowing, but that's probaby more of a function of artistic quality than of philosophy - when wisdom misses the mark, it's trite and meaningless.

[filkferengi]

Cool insights, and very well-written.