Video+ClipExplicationMim

media type="custom" key="5667111" Meredith Andrew Joseph Brunson Honors English 10 18 March 2010 Definition of Mimesis Have you ever looked at a picture of a person and wished you were them? What you don’t know is that even though someone may seem to have the perfect life, according to Mimesis they might not have such a great life. What you are seeing in the picture is called history. History is misleading because it only tells what has happened not the events that lead up to that happening. There are many aspects of mimesis such as the laws of probability and necessity and cause and effect. In the movie the process of mimesis is used to show how the kid went from nothing to something and how if his parents weren’t so messed up he may have had a normal job. But because his parents were so messed up it drove him to discover his singing and the effect was that he is a famous musician. This is Aristotle’s Law of Cause and Effect. Along the cause and effect there is the laws of probability and necessity. The boy saw a picture of a musician and said, “Wow, when I look at your pictures, I think that you’re so lucky. But now I know that your life was so difficult.” The picture is an example of history; it gives the audience a point in history. But, actually taking to the musician and hearing his story gave the boy a chance to realize how he struggled and put emotion to the story. It made the boy realize that the life that he assumed that the musician had lived wasn’t at all true, and that Aristotle’s law of probability/necessity explains that many other options were possible and in fact, the musician had a rotten childhood. What Aristotle says about the difference between history and poetry is the difference between what did happen and what could have happened. He implies that because historians are merely reporters they are less imaginative and philosophical than poets. More, he says that poetry expresses all of the possible outcomes that could potentially happen and in that way they are more universal and deeper thinkers than historians. Tragedy, Aristotle says and as expressed in my video, relates to a particular individual. It causes the audience to empathize with the main character’s problem. Tragedy uses a sequence of cause and effect to take the audience off guard as to what is to be expected in order to create fear or pity. This is different than poetry and history. Aristotle says that the law of probability and necessity has to do with the “flow” of life and the causes and events that lead up to ones successes or failures. I showed this in my video by writing that the musician had grown up with such a horrid childhood where his parents couldn’t pay for school, which led to him dropping out and singing to make him self feel better, this led to his success as a musician. If he had not grown up with such a bad child hood he would not have had this specific chance to succeed. This related to my life in that I would never gotten to go to AASCA, to place second in the soccer tournament, if I would have not moved here to Costa Rica. Further, I would not have moved here to Costa Rica if my mom were not so successful. This relates also to the law of probability and necessity because we need goals to win soccer games, and since I, and others on my team, have scored before, it is probable that we will score again. Therefore, my team has a good chance of being successful competitors. In short, through the law of probability and necessity and series of causes and events, Mimesis allows you to really feel for the character that you are looking at. It expresses the fact that pictures depicting history can be misleading and sometimes false, and that we have a lot to consider in facing universal realities.