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Interesting take on the modern application of the Greek Chorus. Can movies with an extensive V.O. be said to have a Chorus even if it's the main character doing the narration? (As in "The Wolf of Wall Street".) It seems to me that there is a modern version of the Chorus at work in movies that employ scenes of TV reporters narrating events, news headlines, interviews of the man/woman on the street -- the Vox Populi. An excellent example that comes to mind is the recent film "The Queen" (2006). Aristotle complained that Euripides was pushing the Greek Chorus to the sidelines in some of his plays, a bystander, instead of making it a central character (as did Sophocles and Aeschylus). I think Ari would have no such criticism for how the Chorus is used in "The Queen". The Chorus as Vox Populi is very much an active character driving the conflict of the story, not a mere a bystander to the tragedy of Diana's death. The Chorus 'besieges' the gates of Buckingham Palace with flowers. In TV interview clips, the Chorus complains how the royal family treated her while she was alive. The Chorus complains that there is not a flag flying at half-mast. That Queen Elizabeth will not come down to London and pay her respects. It is the crescendo of the outcry of the Chorus (and press headlines) that precipitate a PR and political crisis, that drive the conflict between the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the Queen. It is the Chorus that forces her to capitulate and pay respect to the woman she loathes in order to save "The Firm", the monarchy (the stakes). And it is the Chorus that gets in the last insult. The Queen must sit there in Westminster Abbey and listen to the crowd applaud the critical remarks of Diana's brother in his eulogy.

You know, pgronk, I wondered about that, too - the movie that I thought of was "Blade Runner." Or when it's a character who serves as the witness/narrator in a story like Nick in "The Great Gatsby." Love your example of the media as Vox Populi chorus, as well. And my favorite example from modern literature of the narrative voice as Greek chorus is the first person plural narrative "we" in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" - the "we" who sprinkled lime by night when her house began to smell, and who found that single long, iron-gray strand of hair on the unspeakable pillow. . .still gives me chills to think about that one.

Yes, I think the V.O. narration of Nick in "The Great Gatsby" is a good example of the modern day use of the role of the Chorus. And a Chorus-like role is SOP in sport movies, the crowd of fans, cheering, jeering and commenting on the "agon" (the struggle,the ordeal) on the field. Mutatis mutandis, I think the Chorus is alive and well in movies.

Where we were looking at Chapter 12, back on November 3rd, I talked about my theory that the reason why the chorus was kept around for another few centuries after individual actors started acting out the story is that there was still a prevalent belief that the audience from time to time needed a few things explained to them. When actors began stepping out of the chorus to dramatize the story, the new idea they brought with them was that a story could be understood by witnessing it represented in action, as opposed to simply being described in words. But the Greek dramatists still thought it necessary to step back from the action from time to time to have the chorus fill in a few details, or give some context or commentary because otherwise the audience would get confused or lost or not be able to figure out what’s going on. In this last paragraph of Chapter 18, Aristotle is helping to push the evolution of drama forward by insisting that the chorus, rather than being a detached narrator voice, should actually be brought into the action as another actor and actively contribute to the unfolding of the story. He then criticizes the practice among younger dramatists to have the chorus sing interludes that are mere diversionary entertainments without any particular connection to the plot at hand. Once dramatists gained confidence in their ability to tell stories through action alone and were able to finally let go of the chorus as required for explaining things, then the idea of a chorus-like element could be brought back in when it might enhance the story to add a commentary or more collective viewpoint. You give a nice example, pgronk, of a contemporary application of that in The Queen.

I would actually go further than narrative voice (genre + style) and identify the world of the story as the modern chorus. We rarely have literal choruses on-screen, but the settings surrounding the main characters and the people inhabiting those settings will be subtly commenting on everything your characters do. Let me whip some Nietzsche out on you: he identifies the Greek chorus with the Dionysian impulse in his very early work, The Birth of Tragedy. As actors stepped out of the chorus for their parts, they began to place what Nietzsche called an Apollonian order and control over the Dionysian call to drunkenness and revelry. But both were necessary in his view for the balanced drama that the Greeks developed. This may seem an odd proposition because the experience of being in a Greek chorus does not feel anything like what Nietzsche describes. You are part of a whole, not individualized. You move together in utter attention to form. You speak the same words with the same intonations and phrasing. But I think that an experienced chorus would move beyond this into the Dionysian experience: beyond the form into the joy of movement and speech into mutually supportive performance - like a Broadway musical's chorus in the big numbers. The form and function of these moments is not the effect it has on the performers, but on the audience. It gets their toes tapping and their blood pumping. This can be tied to Lindsay Doran's first principle of writing for the film - that the story be arresting and amusing to the drunk. Our characters step out of the worlds we (and they) build just as much as the Greek main characters stepped out of the chorus. It's our job to build and inspire interesting worlds and settings and crowds and scenes for our characters to play off of. Considering it all a choral statement on the story would fix a lot of problems currently called "tone problems," I bet.

Interesting, Joseph. If the modern day parallel to a Greek Chorus is a Broadway musical chorus / big number, I wonder if the equivalent in the hyper-visual era we seem to be entering in movies with the increased reliance on the international market would be big set pieces. Essentially where the movie steps everything up into a kind of meta experience (I'm thinking primarily of big action / science fiction movies). Greek Chorus as CGI?