Sontag, "Happenings"

[Judith A. Panetta]

Help me out here. I'm struggling with Dave's post (as I do
with many plist). I believe my difficulty stems from my
relationship to "the work" (art in general-pynchon in
particular) that is visceral and the deconstructivist views
presented on the list. This particular post resonates with
me because of Sontag's definition of comedy. Please bear
with me as I try to stumble through this and forgive what
may appear to be ignorant or irreverent.

A little background. I was a theater director for oh over 20
odd years. As a youngster I went through phases-poking at
this and that-subjecting poor audiences to my intellectual
meandering. I came up with a few conclusions: Brecht was a
pompous ass and Artaud was mad, among other realizations.
This was a process, I guess. The discovery of what makes the
activity satisfying. For me it was an abandonment of the
intellectual and to react emotionally to the text. Like sex,
theater was  most successful when the satisfaction is shared
by both the presenters and the audience. This is where I
start to have problems with Sontag. Her explanations of the
"happening." I played that game. It was a superficial
experience. I would agree that there is a place for
"stir(ring) the modern audience from its cozy emotional
anesthesia." Although I would caution that this phrase
refers to a particular audience-a specific socioeconomic
group. I get peeved with these categorizations-they're
narrow, often bigoted.

We all seemed to be most gratified by emotional response to
the vagaries of life on a basic level, as compared to the
"happening" made manifest by arbitrary outbursts often
without context, let alone conflict. This wears thin and
becomes tiresome.

I'm not just talking about the traditional linear narrative
as being the be-all and end-all. (Found this tiresome as
well.) I'm speaking purely of emotion response to
conflict-in whatever genre. 

And finally let me get to the meat of all this prattle. I
take great exception to this:

[snip] "In the heart of comedy, there is emotional
anesthesia.  What permits us to laugh at painful and
grotesque events is that we observe that the people to whom
these events happen are really underreacting.  No matter how
much they scream or prance about or inveigh to heaven or
lament their misfortune, the audience knows they are really
not feeling very much.  The protagonists of great comedy all
have something of the automaton or robot in them."

This statement is so strange, so out of my experience.
Comedy is differentiated from tragedy by incongruity. If
anything it is the negation of invulnerability. A character
engages an audience by being sympathetic, offering resonance
on an emotional level. The conflict is presented and it is
the unexpected response or reaction that makes us laugh.
That this response may appear to be robotic does not
indicate lack of feeling. How many examples can we cite?
Roadrunner and Wile E.? (The incongruity lying in the
defiance of the physical world: you don't fall from the
precipice until you look down.) The Goon Show? (Ned's Atomic
Dustbin-one of my faves-the characters' "sensible" response
to nuclear war.) Lysistrata?

Sontag's explanation is frustrating, if not just sad. Like
many analytical texts, hers seems to lose the "heart" of the
issue as well as  missing (or a refusal to acknowledge) the
impulse that creates art. It doesn't come from the head, but
from another place. 

And so much for my own blah, blah, blah.

My fellow contributors...why does it seem that you seem to
be reacting to Mr. Pynchon's work vicariously through other
writers. I'd be much more interested in how you feel about
it. 

Am I missing the point?

Thanks, judy
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