Course Blog 5, The Exonerated, Jenna

Sincerity. According to our friend, the OED, sincerity is defined in the following way.

sincerity, n.

The character, quality, or state of being sincere.

1a.Freedom from falsification, adulteration, or alloy; purity, correctness

1b. Genuineness (of a passage)

2a. Freedom from dissimulation or duplicity; honesty, straightforwardness.

2b. Of feelings: Genuineness

2c. pl. Sincere feelings or actions

<http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.lib.indiana.edu/view/Entry/180056?redirectedFrom=sincerity&>

In this definition, the word “genuineness” is used twice, as is the word “feelings.” In viewing sincerity through a theatrical lens, these two words are appropriate ones to ascribe to sincerity and how sincerity may be crafted on stage—through the genuineness of feelings. Of course, assessing a play through the genuineness of its feelings assumes that there must be a judgment system in its audience through which feelings may or may not be perceived as genuine. I might propose that this judgment system is one of empathy, but I'm not sure that all moments of sincerity in The Exonerated are necessarily empathetic ones. Perhaps empathy is only a factor in this nebulous judgment system through which we intrinsically feel whether something is genuine or not.

After reading the introduction and notes on the performance of the play, it is evident that Blank and Jensen's project is one of sincerity. Through those two introductory sections to the play, the playwrights create the system through which we decide whether or not sentiment is sincere. This is done rather easily and ingenuously through the play's title and its introductory text. The characters are exonerated. Before the play begins, we are already aware of their innocence. Innocence then becomes the concept through which we may ascribe the genuineness of the play's feeling. We are told that, regardless of acting style, the performers usually channel the actual mannerisms and other characteristics of the six exonerated people. Blank and Jensen write, “It [actors unintentionally channeling the people they are playing] happens involuntarily and has nothing to do with mimicry or impersonation. It's all in the words, and in the stories” (xvii). Blank and Jensen present this play as a phenomenon. Because its dialogue comes almost exclusively from public documents and interviews, actors, seemingly inevitably, become vehicles of delivering the reality of the feeling behind the public statements made about the various murder cases presented in the play. Because the words are “true” Blank and Jensen invest them with magical qualities. Before the play even begins, these two playwrights manipulate us toward believing in the genuineness of feeling invested in the dialogue.

When reading the play, I found one of the most sincere moments on page 32 during Gary's tale of his “vision statement.” Near the middle of this story, when discussing investigators used the vision statement as a confession of how he might have killed his mother, Gary has the following line.

“Gary: [beat] I never would have hurt her.”

It is difficult to parse through exactly why this line has so much impact because it is tied into systems of feeling that I don't quite cognitively understand. Why do I judge the line to be genuine? I feel it to be true, but how does that feeling create belief? How exactly is this line using sincerity to create knowledge of innocence? I, alas, know little of the mechanisms of the brain. It may be, because I have been aware of Gary's innocence since the beginning of the play, that this line, strategically positioned against the incomprehension of Gary's investigators, makes me feel outraged that they cannot see the truth in front of their faces. In the presence of their disbelief, my belief becomes stronger. In its simplicity, Gary's line is incredibly powerful. It is only seven words and a beat, and yet underlines the emotional injustice intrinsic in The Exonerated's project. The mechanics of such emotional manipulation force one of the questions of the play—how could such apparently innocent people ever have been convicted of and almost killed for murders we know (or perhaps feel) they did not commit?