The statue of Mitys incident is an example of "poetic justice"; a murderer gets killed by a statue of the man he killed. An irresistible plot payoff, no doubt, but Aristotle says it's a weak one if the event is merely coincidental. It needs to be planted, foreshadowed or prophesied if one is to evoke the maximum desired emotional impact as are the Big Reveals in the movies Scott cited. And if Aristotle kept harping on the point, it was probably because he saw so much of it in the plays of his day, authors throwing in plots twists because they were oh-so clever and surprising. I guess that either the tragic poets of his era didn't think they had to work out a chain of cause and effect or they thought that the cleverness and shock value of their idea was good enough.

What a nice surprise clip, "A Monumental Demise," and in classic black and white (and I liked that we're privy to the bloopers, in color, too)! And I enjoyed the other illustrative clips as well. For me, these highlighted the storyteller's need to have not only a tightly structured plot, but also, such a thorough knowledge of the characters that the moment of surprise also seems a moment of inevitability when one considers all the behaviors - cause and effect - that led these characters to this point of inevitability. And this deep knowledge of the characters, clearly conveyed, also allows the audience to at least empathize, if not sympathize, with them - the "fear and pity" Aristotle said must be inspired by the events being portrayed.(Much easier said than written, yipes.) Thank you, Scott, for providing these examples to ponder. . .

Melanie, a great point: ...a thorough knowledge of the characters that the moment of surprise also seems a moment of inevitability when one considers all the behaviors... It touches on one of my pet peeves. Time after time, I read scripts or view movies with strong, clever, fascinating plots -- but weak characters who just don't rise to the challenge of the plot, who just don't deliver on the potential of the premise.

Thanks, pgronk, and I know what you mean - weak characters, the kind that just sort of seem inserted to serve the plot, are hard to empathize/sympathize with, much less root for.

One of the cleverist films I've seen that is faithful to Aristotle's rule of cause and effect even as it seems to break the rule is "The Cooler" (2003), script by Frank Hannah and Wayne Kramer.(Spoiler alert!) In the very last minutes of the film, the protagonist and his girl friend are delivered from being executed on a dark highway outside Las Vegas by a random accident, the "dumb" luck of a car being driven by a drunken driver. My first reaction was to throw a flag on the play: Mitys at Argos, deus ex machina! But then I realized the story is about luck, about a sad sack who is bad luck incarnate, hopelessly jinxed -- until the jinx is broken by the love of a good woman. Then his luck turns for the better. The random, coincidental accident was not "dumb luck" -- it was "smart luck", the payoff of a well executed chain of cause and effect on that theme. The coincidental car accident passes Aristotelian muster.

I think we can translate Aristotle’s oft-repeated statement that a tragedy should “arouse pity and terror” as meaning that a drama should have an emotional impact of any sort since by now we know that the range of emotions that can be inspired by drama is far greater than simply those two. Here he is saying that the emotional impact of the work will be greater if it is arrived at through a logically unfolding sequence of events, even if they arrive wholly unexpectedly. Indeed, an incident that on the surface appears to be an accident can fit within a logical framework if there is at least some kind of suggestion of logical purpose. This is what he gives the Mitys story as an example of. Had the statue falling on Mitys’ killer been of someone else, it might have been just deserts for a murderer but it would have been rather arbitrary and, thus, a cheap way out. That the statue was of Mitys both places the event in a logical framework and gives it an emotional impact due to the specter of Mitys himself somehow pulling strings from the Great Beyond to get his revenge. That’s a scary thought.