Hopefully you can see now why I had you read Socrates and then Aristophanes. Socrates even refers to Aristophanes as part of his defense. Of course the Aristophanes play came first, but you need a more serious sense of Socrates in order to understand the funny criticism that Aristophanes uses. So hopefully it’s a lot funnier now that you understand. This goes along with the Billy Collins poems— understanding sonnets and how they work makes Billy Collins’ version of the sonnet much funnier.
But you see that I put a question mark in the title here. It is funny to hear Aristophanes make fun of Socrates. And it’s interesting to hear Socrates make some of the same (possibly weak) arguments in his defense that we hear and Aristophanes. Aristophanes really does provide a brilliant and witty criticism of Socratic method. And all that is of course very funny. But at the end of the play, Strepsiades goes pretty crazy, destroys the Thinkery, and at least endangers the lives of many people. We can assume that this is just crazy, funny, comic violence. But at the end of The Apology, Socrates really does end up dead. And this opens up this question: did Aristophanes contribute to the death of Socrates? Socrates himself says that common rumors and ideas presented in plays have prejudice the jury against him. They have made it so that whenever Socrates speaks, the audience might hear the Socrates that they see in The Clouds. And the thing about comedy is that it is difficult to fight. If someone raises genuine arguments against what it saying, then other people just say that they’re taking it too seriously. But it could be that this comedy had some genuine, very serious consequences.
One way to think about this is to think about the homosexuality in the play. Homosexuality was common and largely accepted by the Greeks, but you can see from the play that certain homosexual activities were very much look down upon. To take the passive role was seen as being weak. So if you were a “loose-arsed bugger,” that meant that you have allowed yourself to be the object of someone else’s sexual use. Today I think that we would be largely offended by the sort of language. It perpetuates homophobic attitudes and actions which have real-world consequences.
So do you think that Aristophanes goes too far? Do you think that he is in some ways responsible for the death of Socrates? What elements of the comedy itself support or refute your ideas?
One Comment
It is very tough to argue comedy when it has a negative content associated with it. Many comedians and even political figures are guilty of taking their “freedom of speech” to far and not realizing their actions can have major consequences. Although, it’s not fair to blame the comedian or whomever made the remark or comical joke if someone who is their fan or listener elicits a behavior based on what he or she said saw or heard from that comedian. People are responsible for their own behavior and must be punished for what they did. I wouldn’t say that Aristophanes is to blame , however his words may have had a bigger impact than he expected.