Ha HA!

Sorry this was a little late..it's just that...shit happens.
What is catharsis? It is a peak of emotion, the highest emotional charge generated in a context perhaps. With a tragedy there is probably one grand catharsis; the one that usually makes us cry. With a comedy, we are dealing with a completely different set of reactions- that of laughter. Of course, maybe laughter and weeping come from the same source. Either way they certainly are produced out of very different situations, usually. I’ll use a metaphor. Think of a teapot; can you imagine it with a bright color, cute, full of water in its fat stomach? Of course, maybe you’re teapot is skinny, either way, there it is on top of a fire; water is boiling. We are the water; we have been taken from the sink, the refrigerator, wherever we come from and we have been placed in a situation, a journey; we have been placed over fire to react. I like to think of humans as rubber tubes full of rumbling chemicals about to explode at any moment (this is paraphrased from Kurt Vonnegut’s wise words). Well the water boiling is a chemical reaction; it is placed over fire and the molecules start moving, increasing in rapidity until they create steam. This steam then starts to build up in the tea pot, then at bursting point it comes out through a little hole and creates a whistle to indicate that the water is ready. This whistle is the peak. It is the catharsis of boiling water. When we are placed in front of a play we go through very much the same process. However, in tragedy this happens once; of course, mini catharsis’s can occur, but only one great peak will. In comedy, it’s almost as though we have become addicted to boiling tea: we are repeatedly reaching the boiling point. In Lysistrata this happens; it happens in every scene. It actually happens in every joke. Except greater catharsis can be attained with the feeding of a joke until it is just too funny, and that usually produces a scene. At least, it seems this way to me; I could be wrong. Anyways, in Lysistrata, with each scene we reach a catharsis; in fact, we could reach several peaks of emotion. For example, the first scene where Lysistrata convenes all the women to talk about sex is ridiculous- there is joke upon joke, but they all follow the same idea, actually they all follow each other. One joke could not work necessarily if the joke before hand hadn’t been said. I must quote: “Women! Utter sluts, the entire sex! Will-power nil. We’re perfect raw material for Tragedy, the stuff of heroic lays. ‘Go to bed with a god and then get rid of the baby’- that sums us up” (26). Oh my god, this is hilarious, I reached a boiling point just now in fact. This is so funny on so many levels. First of all she says that women are perfect for tragedies, yet they are in a comedy; in fact, their low status makes them perfect for comedy. But her reasoning why they are made for tragedies is so tragic it’s funny. She is not covert about women’s’ sexual lust. They’ll even go to bed with a god, and here I think she is making a reference to a tragedy by implying that women will get rid of the baby. She is making fun of tragedies and of stupid decisions. She makes fun of all those tragic heroines; and although those heroines made us sad, they have made a complete turn around and made us laugh. And Lysistrata is a heroine, in the form of a tragic Greek female. And she’s making fun of them. I don’t know, I thought it was pretty hilarious. The scene between Myrhinne and Kinesias her husband is perfect to illustrate emotion building up, then bursting, just as the husband wishes he could. It is interesting though, because the catharsis is not reached with the development of the plot; in comedy, it is reached in spite of the plot. It is very dependent on spectacle; every character must make an absolute mockery of their self, it is with them that catharsis is reached. It almost doesn’t matter whether the women end up winning and manipulating the men; it matters how Myrhinne will keep up the oath while teasing her husband mercilessly. It matters how the chorus of old men show their bush, and in turn the chorus of old women show theirs. What does that have to do with winning the war?! It has nothing to do with it, yet is has everything to do with it. Oh man, my pot is boiling, gotta go.