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‘I'm Leavin’ On A Jet Plane, don't know when i'll be back again': Charlie Victor Romeo as Classical Tragedy

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 17; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10486800701234408

1477-2264

Matthew Gumpert,

Race, History, and American Society

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Jonathan Raban, ‘Pastor Bush’, Guardian (6 October 2004), available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk. 2. Hence the success of Christian sci-fi thrillers like Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins's Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1995). Meanwhile, the color-coded Homeland Security Warning System, implemented post-9/11, obliged Americans to live in a permanent state of vigilance, as if the apocalypse was always about to happen. 3. Created, directed, produced by Bob Berger, Patrick Daniels, Irving Gregory. Opened November 1999 at Collective: Unconscious Theater, New York City. This article is based on a performance at Performance Space 122, New York City, 2004, by the Collective: Unconscious; citations from Program Notes refer to the program for that performance. 4. That cockpit voice recordings could make for compelling literature was recognized long before Charlie Victor Romeo; most notably in Malcolm MacPherson (ed.), The Black Box: All-New Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts of In-Flight Accidents (New York: Quill, 1984, 1998). But Charlie Victor Romeo is, to my knowledge, the first effort to turn them into theater. 5. Citations from Poetics, unless otherwise stated, trans. Allan H. Gilbert, in Gilbert (ed.), Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1962), pp. 63–124. 6. Character, for Aristotle, is subordinate to plot and its effects (see 50a15): ‘The character of the ideal tragic hero … is deduced not from any ethical ideal of conduct but from the need of calling forth the blended emotions of pity and fear’ (Samuel H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Art[New York: Dover, 1907, 1951], p. 224). 7. L. Golden translates hamartia as ‘missing the mark’ (O. B. Hardison, Jr. [ed.], Aristotle's Poetics[Tallahassee: Florida SU, 1981]). For Martha Nussbaum, hamartia is ‘some error in action, sometimes blameworthy, and sometimes not’ (in Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (eds), Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], p. 169); S. Halliwell defines it as ‘a piece of profound ignorance,’ one ‘falling short of serious ethical culpability’ (Poetics, trans. Halliwell [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995], p. 16). 8. Butcher, who defines hamartia as an ‘error due to inadequate knowledge’ (Aristotle's Theory, p. 317), wants the notion to retain greater moral force, but the example of the Oedipus, Aristotle's ideal play in the Poetics, makes it difficult. Butcher concedes the question of blame is largely irrelevant: ‘Distinctions of motive – the moral guilt or purity of the agent – are not in question … in tragedy those are doomed who innocently err no less than those who sin consciously’ (p. 321). 9. Classical tragedy ‘is a collision of forces. Man is imprisoned within the limits of the actual. Outside is a necessity which restricts his freedom, a superior power with which his will … collides’ (Butcher, Aristotle's Theory, p. 349). In Charlie Victor Romeo this collision is no longer a figure of speech. 10. Hence the parallel with painting at 48a1. See Graham Zanker, ‘Aristotle's Poetics and the Painters’, American Journal of Philology, 121:2 (Summer 2000), 225–235. In short, Aristotle's tragic heroes are not necessarily better than us; but they must look better. 11. The hero, Butcher writes, ‘falls from a position of lofty eminence’ (Aristotle's Theory, p. 317). It is both the fact of that fall, and its height, that makes it spoudaios: ‘serious’ (Butcher, p. 317) or ‘elevated’ (Halliwell, p. 13): suffering, as it were, on a grand scale. 12. Raban, ‘Pastor Bush’. 13. The Sociology of Modern Drama, trans. Lee Baxandall, in Eric Bentley (ed.), The Theory of the Modern Stage (Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1968). 14. Modern Drama, p. 430. 15. Modern Drama, p. 427. 16. Modern Drama, p. 440. 17. CVR appears to challenge Brecht's claim that ‘present day subjects cannot be expressed in the old “major” form’ (i.e., Aristotelian tragedy). It may be that ‘a play that is set, say, in a wheat exchange isn't suited to major, dramatic form’ (Brecht on Theatre, trans. John Willett [New York: Hill & Wang, 1957], p. 25). But a play set in an airplane moments away from crashing? 18. Modern Drama, p. 447. 19. Modern Drama, p. 445. 20. Modern Drama, p. 427. 21. By Bille Ballou and Cecile Boucher, based on Patrick Daniels's design. 22. CVR has won awards for its sound effects (by Jamie Mereness). But note that of tragedy's six parts deduced at 49b31, ‘spectacle’ (performance, staging, lighting, etc.) is for Aristotle the least intrinsic to tragedy: ‘tragedy can produce its effect without performance and without actors’ (50b16). But spectacle may help make making tragedy ‘pleasing’. See 53b1 and 62a5. 23. This is Eco's realm of the hyperreal. See Travels in Hyperreality, trans. William Weaver (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1983), passim. D. Cote calls CVR a ‘documentary play’ (‘Theater Review: Charlie Victor Romeo’, NY1 News[9 July 2004], available at: http://www.charlievictorromeo.com/NYPress); Simon Houpt, ‘reality theatre’ (‘Reality theatre and real-life survivors’, Globeandmail.com[3 July 2004]); Victor Gluck, ‘docu-drama’ (‘Charlie Victor Romeo’, available at: http://www.charlievictorromeo.com/). 24. ‘Charlie Victor Romeo,’New York Times (18 July 2004), p. 4. For Cote, too, ‘this … ghoulish experiment turns out to be amazing theater’ (‘Theatre Review’). 25. For Aristotle, we have seen, economy is a virtue (51a6). Aristotle argues that tragedy is superior to epic, because in epic ‘the end of the imitation is achieved in less space’ (62a14). 26. It is thus not the case that CVR's ‘stories … are unshaped’ (Bruce Weber, ‘Oh, Forget the Money. Let's Dress Up and Play!’, available at: http://www.charlievictorromeo.com [26 August 2000]). 27. The ‘Black Box’ refers to two distinct devices (both of which are actually orange): the ‘flight data recorder’ and the ‘cockpit voice recorder’ (‘Plane Black Box and Cockpit Voice Recorder Legal Help’, aviation: attorneys.com, available at: http://www.aviationattorneys.com). 28. The ‘CVR from the JAL flight … lasts about 30 minutes, but in the show the crash is summed up in a four-minute scene’ (Yomiuri Shimbun, ‘US theater group reenacts the horror of plane crashes’, available at: http://www.charlievictorromeo.com/). This ratio of real to theatrical time is typical in CVR. 29. As Weber puts it: ‘waiting for the drama to end is the drama’ (‘Oh, Forget the Money’). 30. The fall of Icarus is another literal paradigm, in this sense, of catastrophe. 31. The same transcript is the first one in The Black Box. The play's structure owes much to the book: four of CVR's six accidents appear in The Black Box; the first and last are the same in both. 32. To be precise, Aristotle does not condemn the depiction of death on stage per se; he simply assigns it a relatively minor role in the construction of an ideal plot (52a11). 33. Aristotle groups such actions under the heading of ‘the irrational’, and declares: ‘if there is an irrationality, it should be outside the tragedy, as it is in the Oedipus of Sophocles’ (54b6). 34. Every plot has a ‘tying of the knot, or complication, and an untying of it, or solution’ (55b24). Tying may include ‘actions that took place before the beginning of the play’– as in CVR's disasters, all of which have causes that long precede the beginning of the plot per se. 35. If hamartia is understood as ‘a mere accident’, some argue it ‘leaves no room for a true tragic collision’ (Butcher, Aristotle's Theory, p. 323). Butcher counters: ‘even if the word … were so limited, a ‘collision’ of forces such as is essential to the drama would not be wanting. If a man is so placed that he is at war with the forces outside him …the result may be a tragic conflict. The ancient drama is chiefly … the representation of a conflict thus unwittingly begun’ (pp. 323–334). 36. When the first plane crashed into the WTC on 11 September 2001, many assumed it was an accident. With the advent of the second plane, it was clear a terrible causality was at work. In classical tragedy, too, the hero is brought low by events that appear to be accidental, and then prove to be planned (but by whom?). The encounter with Laius at the crossroads has the look and feel of this kind of accidentality. 37. So does epic; the Iliad is dominated by a temporality as tragic (that is, as telic) as the Oedipus. But tragedy depends on the compression of that temporality, epic on its extension (59b17: ‘With respect to extending its length, the epic has a capacity … peculiar to itself’). 38. Modern Drama, pp. 446–447. 39. The Boeing Awacs E-3 is commonly referred to by its ‘call sign’, ‘Yukla 27’. 40. Even in terms of its formal organization, CVR is a scrupulously Aristotelian tragedy. All of tragedy's constitutive formal features as understood by Aristotle –‘prologue, episode, exodos, choral part’ (Poetics, trans. M. E. Hubbard, in D. A. Russell and M. Winterbottom [eds], Ancient Literary Criticism: [New York: Oxford University Press, 1972]) (52b) – may be said to be present in CVR. 41. Is CVR one tragedy, or six? One might regard CVR as a single tragedy with six episodes. 42. For Halliwell, the ‘serious’ or ‘elevated’ (spoudaios) refers both to the ‘ethical intensity’ of an action, and the ‘gravity of tone’ in which it is related (p. 13). Both are visible in CVR. 43. Tragedy is a mimesis spoudaion (49b9–10): an ‘imitation’ of ‘serious actions’ (Gilbert), or ‘characters of a higher type’ (Butcher). Neoclassical dramaturgists took this to exclude all but noble characters as tragic protagonists. ‘Aristotle does undoubtedly hold that the chief actors in tragedy ought to be illustrious by birth and position. The … trivial life of obscure persons cannot give scope for a great … action, one of tragic consequence’ (Butcher, Aristotle's Theory, p. 237). Air travel is unquestionably one of modernity's ‘great’ actions, performed by agents who are ‘illustrious’, if not by birth, than by ‘position’. We may not know the name of our pilot, but for us he or she is unquestionably a ‘character of a higher type’. 44. That heroes in classical tragedy tend to serve as ‘representatives of principles or powers’ (Butcher, Aristotle's Theory, p. 360) (Creon as the State, etc.) helps give tragedy its universalizing force. In our era the airplane pilot is a familiar stock character. Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (DreamWorks, 2002) stars Leonard DiCaprio playing the role of an impostor playing the role of a pilot. The hero of Left Behind is 747 pilot Rayford Steele, a ‘straight-arrow captain’ known for ‘self-discipline and wisdom’ (pp. 2–3). See n2. 45. Regarding some of the technical jargon in the opening lines: to ‘rotate’ means to ‘lift the aircraft's nose off the runway during takeoff’ (Program Notes); ‘V1’ refers to the ‘speed at which takeoff is possible’; ‘V2’ to the ‘speed at which an aborted takeoff is no longer possible’. Somewhere between V1 and V2, as ‘rotation occurs’, the die is cast, as it were. 46. Note that the event we are watching reenacted actually took place on 22 September 1995. The omission of that information from the opening screen serves to de-historicize the event. 47. Zinoman, ‘Charlie Victor Romeo’. Cote, too, refers to CVR's ‘highly-specialized jargon’ (‘Theater Review’); Weber warns ‘the language is sometimes arcane’ (‘Forget the Money’). 48. For the original transcript of the Yukla 27 accident, see U. S. Air Force, Flight Safety Foundation – Accident Preventions, 53:11 (November 1996): it can be viewed online at: http://aviation-safety.net/investigation/cvr/transcripts/cvr_yukla27.php. 49. From aviation: attorneys.com. 50. Aristotle's Theory, n2, pp. 330–331. 51. Modern Drama, p. 449. 52. Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument, trans. Gerald F. Else (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957). 53. De Poetica, trans. Ingram Bywater, in McKeon (ed.), The Basic Works of Aristotle. 54. Who can forget Leslie Nielsen, as captain of a cruise ship in Ronald Neames's The Poseidon Adventure (20th Century Fox, 1972), famously exclaiming as the tsunami approaches: ‘Oh, my God’? 55. Houpt sees them as distinct: ‘the dialogue sources for CVR … are pure. The subjects never knew their words would end up spoken by actors, so they weren't moulding their words for posterity’ (‘Reality’). But ‘real life’ is always already scripted to one degree or another. 56. Zinoman: ‘[f]aced with certain death, the pilots maintain an almost delusional concentration’ (‘Charlie Victor Romeo’); like Oedipus, as he watches himself hurtling towards disaster. Houpt, too, admires the ‘equanimity’ of CVR's protagonists (‘Reality’). 57. Modern Drama, p. 433. 58. On the incidentality Aristotle ascribes to performance, see 50b16, 53b1, and 62a5. 59. Summary and script of the Yukla 27 disaster ares also based on a memorial website, In Memory of the Crew of Yukla 27 (Technical Sergeant Mark Smithers, USAF, Elmendorf AFB, available at: http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/5464/). 60. The same irony has been read into the events of ‘9/11’: the passenger jet, benevolent scion of a technological empire, becomes the agent of that empire's demise. Thus Baudrillard (Spirit of Terrorism, trans. Chris Turner [London: Verso, 2002], pp. 6–7) and Virilio (Paul Virilio and Sylvère Lotringer, Crepuscular Dawn, trans. Mike Taormina [New York: Semiotext(e), 2002], p. 178) read the destruction of the WTC as a suicide (that of the West itself). Something of that suicidal logic is intrinsic to Aristotelian tragedy, where the hero suffers not just a fall but a reversal, one he unwittingly helps to engineer himself. 61. There is another hidden chorus in CVR: the passengers behind the cockpit doors. If the chorus in classical tragedy is generally not dragged into catastrophe along with the hero, in the airplane disaster passengers and crew tend to share the same fate. That is part of what makes air travel so terrifying: the knowledge that, at any moment, we may become tragic protagonists, instead of innocent bystanders (or, rather, bysitters). 62. Trans. Luci Berkowitz and Theodore F. Brunner, in Maynard Mack (ed.), The Continental Edition of World Masterpieces, vol. 1 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), p. 372. 63. I conclude with a reference to the lyrics to that great American pop-tragic anthem as sung by that quintessentially modern tragic hero, the airplane traveler: John Denver's ‘Leaving On A Jet Plane’ (first recorded 1967 with the Mitchell Trio [later the Chad Mitchell Trio] on the album Alive!, popularized by Peter, Paul and Mary on Album 1700[1967], and by Chantal Kreviazuk on Under These Rocks and Stones[1998]). One last parting irony: John Denver's career was cut short (tragically, we might say) when his Long E-Z plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the California coast on 12 October 1997.