Trayvon Williams tragedy(not)

[alice wellintown]

The hand need not turn the wheel of doom or catastrophe on an error or
failing of the tragic figure. The hamartia is far more complex than
modern interpretations of it. And, it is quite often the ironic
actions of the tragic figure, often motivated by simple virtues (the
Skittles), not mere destiny or fate or fatal flaw that makes a figure
tragic. And, it is on our seeing this moment, as when Oedipus knows
what we know, that the figure is made tragic. Our hooded boy's fall
was not from a high social status, but was a common citizen. In
America, as Mark intimated, the new meanings of words are a reflection
of our democratic impulses and our tendency to celebrate courage and
dignity in the face of defeat and to portray the dying humanistic
grandeur of the human spirit. But the Tube has made zombie rhetoric of
all our efforts to make tragic figures and all that remains is the
pleasure we take from viewing the spectacle of goats dancing as we
amuse ourselves to death with pixels from Bacchus.  Thanatoids may be
awakened and put on their hoodies, but these are but the self-pitying
whimpers of a dying drama.



> Not to argue with an egg, but I thought the defining part of tragedy was not simple suffering but instead entailed the victim in some way having a hand in their own downfall. Hard to argue a bag of Skittles as some kind of hubris.