Blog 5

The show that I have seen that struck me with an example of dark matter was Elephant’s Graveyard written by George Brant in 2008.  The play centers around a group of circus performers versus a group of townspeople. The circus performers loved their elephant, Mary. However, when someone rode Mary who wasn’t her trainer, she threw him off of her back and ended up killing the boy.  The play then goes as far as to explain how the elephant was executed in gruesome detail. 

Obviously, we cannot kill an elephant on stage. You can barely have an elephant on stage. Mary was the dark matter. Whenever they explained the death of Mary, the director decided to utilize red fabric to show her blood.  This paired with the details of her death lead to a really upsetting image.  This was very effective because you had no choice but to picture it. The script broke your heart because the words were so powerful and then the image that the director gave us just added to that effect. We created our own image of Mary.  And each character on stage had their version of Mary. To the townspeople, she was seen as a monster but to the ballerina, the strong man, and her trainer, she was family. 

This part of the prompt has had me thinking for days, which explains why I’m writing this so late.  I think the way to represent something so horrible is to keep it as true as possible.  There is not a single person on Earth who could understand how horrible these events were unless they were there.  Is it up to those who went through these horrors to portray them in art? Would that be too difficult? Would it be too real? Dr. Fletcher gave us an example of a man who did a documentary about living with bears and the bears ate him alive. His death was recorded and you could hear this man and his girlfriend dying. The guy who put the documentary together said that no one should ever be allowed to hear something so awful. It was at the filmmaker’s discretion at that point.   I believe Dr. Fletcher said that guy who put the documentary together gave it to his family and then it was destroyed.

Obviously there have been telling recollections of the holocaust. Books and films have given us a bit of an insight and, although entertaining, help us understand. I think it is possible to be entertained but still recognize that it’s a horrible event.  Maybe entertained isn’t the best word because when I think of entertained I think of pleased.  The word has a positive connotation to it and in this case it isn’t necessarily positive.

How do the possibilities of abstraction help us approach this question? I’m not sure. Does the Holocaust count as dark matter for us? It happened. It is a moment in history but we didn’t live through it and we surely didn’t experience it.  We have to picture it. Sure you can visit the sites of the horrific events but the events are abstract to us. The experience is abstract to us.