Course Blog 8 (Cody): Don Giovanni

Before discussing my reaction to my viewing of Don Giovanni, I would like to consider briefly the topic of transport,  especially in relation of Cavell's essay.  For Cavell, the emotions incited from viewing a tragedy are directly associated with our investment in the performance and our identification with characters or dramatic situations--identification and investment instigate our transport, our absorption into the present of the performance.  As such, transport, or the process of being transported, would seem to indicate our (implicit) surrender to the performance's artifice, that we are so captivated, even if momentarily, by the action and mise-en-scène that we lose ourselves within the performance's presence, effectively oblivious to its histrionics.  However, I question if transport or the overwhelmingly emotional response to a performance must inevitably necessitate a state of ontological stupefaction.  That is, can I be transported without losing myself, without entirely losing perspective, without forgetting that I'm watching the performance of pain and death rather than the actual transpiration of death?

In retrospect, while watching Don Giovanni, I found myself most transported, most emotionally invested when I, in fact, remained aware of my presence as a member of an audience and of the performance as representation.  During the opera's duration, I had to devote most of my attention to a continual back-and-forth between the stage action and the translations streaming above the stage--a process that effectively made moments of transport extremely sparse and transitory.  And still, the process of reading equally made me forget my presence, as is often the case when I read literature--though, I wouldn't describe this as transport since the act itself had its origins in a need to comprehend and discursively follow a plot as opposed to wholly investing myself in the transpiring stage action.  Nevertheless, moments did pass when I was able to stop following the translations and place my full attention on the stage, especially during the end of Act One, which I would retrospectively deem my first moment of transport.  This moment of transport was primarily incited by my disgust with the hypermasculinity that Don Giovanni embodies (and the actor's/singer's ability to perform well this embodiment) and the potential for his demise at the hands of Ottavio, Anna, and Elvira.  This reaction to Don Giovanni's character obviously represents my own gender politics, but, more importantly, this reaction was equally incited by a recognition of Don Giovanni's hypermasculinity and misogyny as specular of a comparable form of hypermasculinity and misogyny that I see everyday on a college campus.  So, at the end of Act One, I found myself emotionally invested in an anticipation for Don Giovanni's demise--a desire that was defeated by his unbelievably easy escape.  Yet, this transport didn't ineluctably preclude larger prespective or positionality.  I let myself watch the play--as opposed to reading the translations of the libretto--and I was emotionally invested in the scene, but my politics and ideologies (as they exist outside the theatre) and my recognition of Don Giovanni as mimetic of an extra-threatrical hypermasculinity, patriarchy, and misogyny ultimately aroused my transport, my temporary investment in anticipating his undoing.

Perhaps all the latter merely necessitates a more precise definition of transport as distinguished from emotional investment in and identification with a performance, that is, if we wish to keep transport strictly confined to an ontological understanding, like Cavell's, wherein we lose our sense of presence as audience within the performance's seemingly engrossing and exorbitant presence.