The talk tonight by director Werner Herzog, titled "The Search for Ecstatic Truth," helped guide me to a greater understanding of what may be meant by sincerity in this context. At one point, Herzog explained that "Facts do not necessarily constitute truth." In fact, Herzog is willing to manipulate facts in order to achieve a form of audience-affecting Truth. He opens one of his films with a quote he attributed to Pascal, but that was actually his own: "Pascal couldn't have said it better," he contends. The point of manipulating facts to reach truth, according to Herzog, is that "invention and fabrication can lead to a deeper vision of truth . . . I've tried to elevate the audience . . . to a form of the sublime."
If I take sincerity to mean a form of hyper-Truth, how can I approach "The Exonerated"? The writers of the play insist that each line is taken from actual documents or transcripts (xiii). Does that make it sincere/True? No, not really; that just makes it factual. However, each line has been carefully mediated and crafted so as to "lead to a deeper vision of the truth" (Herzog). The actors overlap each other, tell reasonably flawed stories, are the focus of attention, are appealing and repelling; they are real people.
However, one may say, they are not the real people -- they are actors. And whether they are recognizable actors or not, the most relevant fact is that they are not the people who actually underwent this harrowing journey. This is not a speaking tour to support PACs against the death penalty. Rather the "actors playing exonerated people should avoid overemotionalizing...they are telling stories, not reliving them" (xvi). These notes are Brechtian - the actors are performing the duties of the person on a streetcorner. They are not stand-ins for the real people and, perhaps, by being so clearly not the real people (by being celebrities), they further underline the fact that this is not a flashback - it's a story being presented.
So, what then is sincerity here? I think the fact that the liner notes reiterate the need for humor shows a Truth. Each character is given some quality of lightness, and often that quality is humor: Delbert has a "substantial sense of humor," Robert is "not lacking in a sense of humor," and Gary is "good-natured." Whether one reads humor as Bakhtinian (a way to undermine those in power) or as a necessary tool to relieve stress, it is an undercurrent in this play. It relieves the darkness of the subject matter in a way that further emphasizes these people's horrifying experiences. To me, this is what moves the play from a theatrical documentary into a dramatic testimony, one that inspires an audience to consider as well as consume. An audience will feel the sincerity of the pain because of the humor that has to be used in order for that pain to be alleviated.
Bibliography:
Bob Plant, "On Testimony, Sincerity, and Truth." Project Muse. Paragraph, Volume 30, No. 1, March 2007. pp. 30-50. Web.
Jan Ruger, "Laughter and War in Berlin." Project Muse. History Journal Workshop. Issue 67, Spring 2008. Web.
No comments:
Post a Comment