Tragic Narrative Strategies in Contemporary American Cinema. Eastwood-Penn-Grey (1995-2001)
Tragic Narrative Strategies in Contemporary American Cinema. Eastwood-Penn-Grey (1995-2001)

Summary/Abstract: Tragedies were performed for the first time in ancient Greece between thesixth and fifth century BC. A century later, Aristotle in the Poetics gave hisfamous definition of tragedy, transforming it into a narrative genre. Our aimis primarily to introduce and analyse some characteristics of the tragic scheme.Three main elements will be taken into consideration. We will see that at thevery heart of the tragic narration there is “something” unrepresentable, unbearableand nameless that Lacan, in the VII seminar on ethics, names DasDing or La Chose, The Thing. After that, we will consider the representationof an ethical power which disputes the traditional and institutionalised order.Thirdly, the presence of sacred forces will be evoked to contextualise the ancientand contemporary tragic narrations in a mythical, pre-logical, pre-textualframework. However, in order to identify any forms of tragic narratives in thecontemporary era, a consideration of the medium itself cannot be avoided, astragedies were shown and affected large crowds of people and had a substantialpolitical role. Cinema is thus revealed to be the most privileged media deviceto present modern tragic narrations and their typical aesthetic solutions. In thisarticle, we will discuss three examples of tragic narratives in mainstream Americancinema from the last three decades. Works by Sean Penn (The Pledge, 2001),James Grey (Little Odessa, 1995) and Clint Eastwood (Midnight in the garden ofgood and evil, 1997) will be investigated.

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