Melanie McDonald at 2014-03-23 15:24:12:

Awesome film examples of how the emotional truth of the story supersedes any other requirements of logic. And along with the statement you pointed out, Scott, in reading through this section I also was struck by this statement: "Again, does the error touch the essentials of the poetic art, or some accident of it? For example, not to know that a hind has no horns is a less serious matter than to paint it inartistically." It seems to me that here, Aristotle is pointing out a privilege that is accorded to art just as long as the artist is a capable practitioner - the art itself may include logical flaws, but not artistic ones. The best example I can recall from the literary annals of error preserved in amber was when Keats, in his poem "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," accidentally attributed to the explorer Cortez a "discovery" (of the eastern coast of the Pacific)that actually was made by Balboa - but when a friend pointed out this factual error, Keats re-assessed the line, and decided to keep his error intact. The line as written spoke the emotional truth of his feelings upon the "discovery" of Chapman's translation of Homer - but also, importantly, it left his meter intact. Keats could live with a factual error, but sully the beauty of his line with an extra syllable? Never. And given how the alleged "facts" of such historical accounts are often later found to be subjective in and of themselves(after all, we moderns now realize the indigenous inhabitants of that coast surely side-eyed the European's claim to be "first" to "discover" their homeland), I think Keats made the right call in claiming his privilege as an artist to let emotional truth prevail over the reigning logic of his day.

pgronk at 2014-03-23 15:34:01:

Katniss Everdeen's feat of bringing down the game dome may seem impossible, but in the world of the "Hunger Games", the script does the necessary spade work to make her feat dramatically probable within the story context. 1] During training, the idea is planted through brainy Beetee that there is a flaw in the force field. "There is always a flaw in the system," he says. 2] Later, Katniss climbs the highest tree to get an overview and shoots an arrow high enough to hit the force field of the dome. NOTE: She has a considerable advantage of height in that scene she doesn't have at the story's climax when she shoots from ground level. But by "telling lies skillfully", with a variant of the logical error of affirming the consequent Aristotle discussed in Chapter 24, the audience buys that it is possible for her to do it again anyway. (And the action is so fast and furious at that moment who has the time to discern the logical sleight of hand and cease to suspend disbelief?) 3] Finally, we all know that in our world it is possible and probable for bolt of lightening to do serious damage. So we have no trouble believing likewise in the story world of " The Hunger Games". Combine all three elements and -- KABOOM, CRASH!

pgronk at 2014-03-23 16:04:58:

At the moment, I can't think of a movie with an egregious "improbable but possible" event, but one comes to mind that I initially thought was guilty of that error so it will have to do. At the end of "The Cooler", at night on a deserted stretch of highway outside Las Vegas, the progagonist, Bernie, and his cocktail waitress girlfriend are about to be killed by a corrupt cop. All is lost. And then at the very, very last second out of the dark comes a car that runs over and kills the cop, saving their lives. Now, it is quite POSSIBLE for that kind of highway accident to occur-- it happens all the time. But for a moment, I didn't buy it as PROBABLE within the context of the story. The event seemed to come out of nowhere dramatically. That is, it hadn't been set up with foreshadowing or any other dramatic device. It seemed like an deus ex machina -- a contrived ending. But then I realized the probability had been planted and re-inforced. In repeated scenes, the movie shows how Bernie's jinx, his string of bad luck, had been broken through the love of the cocktail waitress. And now redeeming and transforming love was working its magic again, saving their lives. Anyway, that's my take of what Ari meant by the "improbable but possible"

Jennine Lanouette at 2014-03-24 03:39:14:

What is a probable impossibility? I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a bad translation. Of my two preferred translators, Kenneth McLeish phrases this sentence as, “In artistic matters, what is plausible but impossible is preferable to what is possible but implausible,” and Richard Janko says, “a believable impossibility is preferable to an unbelievable possibility.” What Aristotle is concerned with in this chapter is nitpicky critics who go after writers for not staying true to literal reality. Who cares, says Aristotle, if the horse in a painting has both front legs off the ground as it gallops as long as it gives us an authentic feeling of being a horse. He relates this idea to drama by saying that when a writer describes action that is impossible in literal terms, the so-called error is justified if it contributes to the overall effect of the work. On the other hand, if the intended effect can be achieved without departing from literal reality, then the writer is in error to stretch the bounds of what is possible. Getting back to the translations, I would go with Janko’s “believable impossibility” as the most helpful in getting at Aristotle’s meaning. A dramatic event may be literally impossible while being believable within the context of the imagined story, and, thus, be necessary to achieve the effect of the story. I’ve been watching a lot of James Bond films lately for another study I’m working on and almost everything that happens to him is completely impossible for the average person to survive. But in the context of who Bond is and what we have come to expect of him, it’s all entirely believable for him. And the more fun because of it. But if those films were to stick to literal possibility that is nonetheless unbelievable for his character, the entire franchise would collapse. But my favorite passage in this chapter, indeed perhaps my favorite in the whole Poetics, is that bit at the beginning where he identifies three kinds of drama: “Things as they were or are; things as they are thought to be; and things as they ought to be.” He later explains “things as they are thought to be” as referring to stories about the gods. But it’s those other two that I find so fascinating – things as they are and things as they ought to be. The latter can refer either to idealized Hollywood fantasy giving us a version of life we’d like to believe is true or to stories taking a moral high ground showing us a more just social reality to which we can aspire. Then there’s the drama depicting “things as they are” to give us an unvarnished picture of certain brutal realities of our world and human nature. I find these distinctions very helpful as a place to start in looking at stories and their structures and knowing what to expect from them. This film is depicting “things as they ought to be,” so of course its going to have a goofy happy ending. But this other film is about things as they are, so to give it a contrived happy ending would be a disservice to it’s larger intentions. Then there’s Inglourious Basterds, which adds a fourth category: “Things as they might have been.” I wrote a bit about that film’s believable impossibility here: http://www.screentakes.com/inglourious-basterds/