I so enjoyed this article! I've read some of Seneca's philosophical works but haven't read any of his plays. I've had Dana Gioia's "Seneca: The Madness of Hercules" on my to--be-read shelf for some time so I'll have to break it open soon. I found especially interesting the commentary about the differences in how violence was portrayed by the Ancient Greeks and the Romans. It reminded me of an article I read awhile ago about how we consume tragic news. These days, it's very graphic and via a 24 hour news cycle. But before modern media, tragic news was often told by word-of-mouth, creating room for emotional distance. I sense a parallelism here. And I think, judging from the state of mental health in today's society, the Ancient Greeks got it right ;)
Yes, the 24/7 news cycle has had a huge impact - especially as historically we wouldn't have known EVERY tragedy that was going on in the world... internationalism and almost 8 billion people means something bad (something bad enough for a compelling headline) can be happening all the time.
I think it's fascinating to think about how there are such trends in acceptable violence... and what makes it 'popular' or not. I once went to see Titus Andronicus in the Globe and was shocked by the violence. It hadn't been performed much for hundreds of years because the violence was so extreme... but obviously recently it had been deemed 'acceptable' again (or are we now more numbed by movies and video games?)
I so enjoyed this article! I've read some of Seneca's philosophical works but haven't read any of his plays. I've had Dana Gioia's "Seneca: The Madness of Hercules" on my to--be-read shelf for some time so I'll have to break it open soon. I found especially interesting the commentary about the differences in how violence was portrayed by the Ancient Greeks and the Romans. It reminded me of an article I read awhile ago about how we consume tragic news. These days, it's very graphic and via a 24 hour news cycle. But before modern media, tragic news was often told by word-of-mouth, creating room for emotional distance. I sense a parallelism here. And I think, judging from the state of mental health in today's society, the Ancient Greeks got it right ;)
Yes, the 24/7 news cycle has had a huge impact - especially as historically we wouldn't have known EVERY tragedy that was going on in the world... internationalism and almost 8 billion people means something bad (something bad enough for a compelling headline) can be happening all the time.
I think it's fascinating to think about how there are such trends in acceptable violence... and what makes it 'popular' or not. I once went to see Titus Andronicus in the Globe and was shocked by the violence. It hadn't been performed much for hundreds of years because the violence was so extreme... but obviously recently it had been deemed 'acceptable' again (or are we now more numbed by movies and video games?)