In ancient Greek drama, the "agon" was a formal debate between two characters in which their contrasting views of a current public issue were presented, judged by a chorus. We could still find use for the word to describe the main philosophical debate or clash of lifestyles in a play, novel, or film script. Movies like Wall Street and A Few Good Men and TV shows like The West Wing dramatize an agon, a kind of debate about a current social issue.
MODERN-DAY PUBLIC AGON
An "agon" among the Greeks and Romans also meant a formal competition to determine who was best at a given skill such as singing, composing plays or music, delivering speeches, etc. As in our modern star system of awards, prizes were given for the best performances of the year. These "agonic" competitions were organized like our sports leagues, with local and regional competitions leading to a national contest held at a great yearly festival in the capital. We still have a strong need to arrange this kind of agon each year to determine which team or performer is the best in the region, the country, and the world. Each stage of our athletic system pits pairs of teams and individuals against each other, recreating the polarized agon time after time until there are only two teams or people left for the final contest. Agon thrives in the eternally popular game shows and competitive "reality" programs of the day.
THE PERSONAL AGON
At the personal level, an agon was any challenge that pitted one side of a person's makeup against another. For example, the mind is always trying to master the lazy tendencies of the body. The struggle of the artist with her work is an agon, pitting her will to bring creativity into form against all the forces that make it difficult. Or the agon can be a person's struggle with some external condition that makes life challenging, such as a birth defect, an accident, or an injustice.
All the entertainment of the ancient world was based on the polarizing principle of the agon, and it seems to have an almost magnetic affect on us even today, in our sports, in politics, and in entertainment.
16. Polarity Gives Orientation
Magnets are widely used for purposes of orientation. A magnetic compass automatically orientates itself to point north, and from this we can determine south, east, west and all points in between. Polarity in a story serves a similar function, giving the audience orientation about the characters and situation, from the simplest level of white hats and black hats to represent good guys and bad guys, to the most sophisticated psychological dramas. Polarity lets us know who has the power and suggests how it might shift. It signals us who we are to be aligned with in the story and helps us understand how all the characters and situations are aligned with one force or the other.
Most of the time, you have to play fair with the audience and not make it difficult for them to get their bearings in a story. A polarized town, family, or society, a polarized agon between contrasting opponents, a polarized personality about to reverse itself, all these can help the audience determine what is up and down, right and wrong, in this story. They can quickly align themselves for or against characters depending on their choices about the polarized condition in the story. The writer can then start sending positive or negative energy into the scenes, bringing temporary victory or defeat to the characters until the final resolution.
Of course, some stories deal precisely with the grey areas, the kinds of characters and situations that are remarkable and interesting because they aren't obviously polarized. Some artists don't want to take sides or push their characters into simplistic categories. There is room for this artistic approach, but polarities will still naturally arise simply from having two characters in the same room at the same time.
CONCLUSION
As noted, polarities are useful tools in stories and are a practical way of organizing reality, but they can be misused to oversimplify situations that may actually be quite complex. Audiences are sophisticated these days and while they enjoy stories that are strongly polarized, they enjoy them more when they are also nuanced with small shadings and contradictions that make stories and characters seem realistic, even when dealing in worlds of pure fantasy. Like any technique, polarization in a story can be heavy-handed and too obvious. Polarization without shading or the possibility of change would quickly become boring, just two people shouting at each other. The fun is in seeing a tiny seed of the opposite quality coming to life in a polarized character or situation. It may only come to life for an instant, showing the possibility of reversal but then snatching it away forever, or it may work its way slowly until the character or situation reverses polarity dramatically.
Polarities in politics, sports, war, or relationships can divide us, but they also have the possibility of uniting us when we have been through a struggle together. An old soldier may have more in common with his former enemies than he does with his grandchildren. Polarized family feuds will sometimes dissolve when after many years neither party can remember what all the fighting was about.
Polarities in stories form a conceptual framework with which to organize ideas and energy, building up positive and negative charges around selected characters, words, and concepts. They may serve a survival function for us in dramatizing useful distinctions about behavior, and in identifying patterns in human relationships. They serve an essential dramatic function by stirring us up, triggering emotional involvement and physical reactions in the organs of our bodies. Words on a page, actors on a stage, images on a screen can pull us this way and that until we have a small but potentially significant emotional release, for when we laugh at the characters in a funny movie, we are laughing in part at ourselves. When we cry over the fate of the characters in a tragedy or a romance, we cry in part for ourselves. When we shudder in terror at the latest horror film or novel, we shudder for ourselves. We sense our part in the great polarities, spirit and matter, male and female, life and death, good and evil, and we find healthy release in stories that explore their workings.
QUESTIONS
1. "To be or not to be, that is the question." Shakespeare uses many dualities and polarities in his plays and sonnets, using twins, pairs of lovers, and contrasting ideas such as the relationship of Prince Hal and Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV parts one and two, where they are flip sides of the same coin of knighthood, Prince Hal representing honor and Sir John dishonor. Read a Shakespeare play and see how many polarities you can find in it. What is the effect of these polarities on the reader or audience?
2. Review a movie such as Pulp Fiction or The Fellowship oj the Ring from the Lord oj the Rings trilogy. How many dualities and polarized relationships can you detect? Do they add to the dramatic experience or are they just repetitious?
3. Compile your own list of polarities. Pick one at random and see if you can generate characters and a story from it.
4. "Agon" means contest or struggle but also can be a central challenge in someone's life, perhaps something temporary that comes up, or it could the one great thing he or she must wrestle with throughout life. What is the agon in your life, at the moment and over the long run? What is the agon of your character?
5. Agon can also be used to describe the central debate or issue of a drama. In this sense, what is the agon or main argument of your play, movie script, computer game, short story, or novel? What qualities are being contrasted, and what are the arguments for each side?
6. Here is the list of pairs of polarized opposites from this chapter. Can you think of a movie or story that uses each polarity as a plot device?