Musing on my reaction to a contestant’s dramatic weeping in a recent episode of Love Island, I naturally turned to Book 3 of St. Augustine’s “Confessions”.
“Why is it”, wrote Augustine, “that people enjoy feeling sad at the pitiful and tragic events on the stage, when they would hate to endure them in real life? … How real is the pity evoked by the feigned sufferings on stage? The audience is not moved to help, but is merely invited to feel sorrow. … Can it be that, though no one likes to be sad, there is pleasure in pitying others?”.
Augustine’s criticisms of theatre (and I feel pretty sure he would have said similar things about reality TV) are based on two key arguments. The first – his “ontological” argument – concerns the idea that the soul should take pleasure only in what is real and what is true. Theatre, says Augustine, is neither real nor true. In fact, theatre is thrice removed from both: actors provide a simulation of truth and reality, and then an audience reacts to that simulation. Through exposure to theatre (and, despite the name, “reality” TV), the soul thus loses touch with truth and reality.
Augustine’s second criticism – his ethical argument – is focused on the effects of theatre (and, I guess, reality TV) on the soul. Augustine argues that suffering can be experienced in a variety of ways. When you face a personal calamity, you experience misery. When you see the real suffering of someone else, you experience sympathy or empathy. But the experience of seeing pain enacted on the stage (or the weeping of a contestant on Love Island) gives rise to a form of pleasure, an inauthentic suffering which is detrimental to the soul’s development.
I’m not going to stop watching Love Island, nor going to the theatre. But perhaps I’ll think a bit more carefully about how they affect my soul.
Duncan McCall
