Modern Tragic Characters in The Banshees of Inisherin
Elif Taşdemir ŞanlıWhile tragic art creates the opportunity to reveal the contradictions and conflicts of the period in which it emerged in both social and individual contexts, it can also reveal a universal human condition. Just as wars, deaths, and natural and man-made disasters can be described as ‘tragic,’ individual situations such as separations, despair, and anxiety can also be tragic. The originally applied form of tragedies, which we know to have emerged in Ancient Greece in the fifth century BC, has changed over the centuries, as have the changing culture, society, and forms of government. In Ancient Greek tragedies, which generally take their subject from myths, the place of the noble hero who incurred the wrath of the gods, exceeded the boundaries beyond measure, and committed a tragic crime has been replaced by ordinary people who experience tragic situations, sometimes due to external reasons arising from the existing order, and sometimes due to the end of a friendship, in modern tragedies. This paper aims to discuss in which situations tragic patterns appear in Irish director and screenwriter Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) in the context of modern tragedy theory. The tragic situations of the characters Padraic Suilleabhain, Colm Doherty, and Dominic Kearney in the film were determined, and their inability to escape their current situation was examined using the interpretive content analysis method. This deadlock has created tragic patterns such as the pessimism and hopelessness that the war affects the people living on an island while the war continues, leading to separation, violence, and death.
The Banshees of Inisherin Filminde Modern Trajik Karakterler
Elif Taşdemir ŞanlıTrajik sanat, içinden çıktığı dönemin çelişkilerini ve çatışmalarını hem toplumsal hem bireysel bağlamda ortaya çıkarma imkânı yaratırken aynı zamanda da evrensel bir insanlık durumunu ortaya çıkarabilir. Nasıl savaşlar, ölümler, doğal ve insan eliyle çıkan felaketler ‘trajik’ olarak nitelendirilebilirse ayrılıklar, umutsuzluklar, kaygılar gibi bireysel durumlar da trajik olabilir. Milattan önce beşinci yüzyılda Antik Yunan’da ortaya çıktığını bildiğimiz tragedyaların başlangıçta uygulanan formu yüzyıllar içinde değişen kültür, toplum, yönetim biçimleri gibi değişime uğramıştır. Konusunu genellikle mitlerden alan Antik Yunan trajedilerinde tanrıların gazabına uğrayan, ölçüsüzce sınırları aşmış, trajik bir suç işlemiş soylu kahramanın yerini modern trajedilerde bazen mevcut düzenden kaynaklı dışsal nedenlerle bazen de yalnızca bir arkadaşlığın sona ermesiyle oluşan trajik durumlar yaşayan sıradan insanlar almıştır. Bu araştırmada İrlandalı yönetmen ve senarist Martin McDonagh’ın 2022 yapımı The Banshees of the Inisherin filmi modern trajedi teorisine başvurularak hangi durumlarda trajik örüntüler olabileceği anlaşılmaya çalışılmıştır. Filmde yer alan Padraic Suilleabhain, Colm Doherty ve Dominic Kearney karakterlerinin trajik durumları tespit edilmiş, mevcut durumlarından çıkışsızlıkları yorumlayıcı içerik analizi yöntemiyle ele alınarak incelenmiştir. Bu çıkışsızlık, bir yandan savaş devam ederken bir adada yaşayan halkın üzerinde savaşın tesir ettiği karamsarlık ve umutsuzluğun ayrılığı, şiddeti doğurması ve ölümle sonuçlanması gibi trajik örüntüler yaratmıştır.
Tragedy, in its most general definition, is the story of the fall of one or more heroes who suffer destruction as a result of events full of pity and fear. The subject of tragedies, which are known to have emerged in Ancient Greece in the late sixth and fifth centuries BC, is generally based on Greek myths and important historical battles. In this respect, tragedy, especially Ancient Greek tragedy, is an art that has a certain form and essentially depicts a certain type of theatre, although it has undergone much transformation in later periods.
A tragic hero may sometimes explain that the current order is becoming obsolete, and that he and what he represents in himself are disappearing with that order, as in Ancient Greek tragedy -perhaps King Oedipus. In another age, the tragic hero could only reveal the dilemmas of unadapted daily life practices. Whether we call it tragedy as an art form or ‘tragic’ to describe a ‘painful’ event, tragedies can, under all circumstances, guide us in today’s search for meaning. In its beginnings, it was essentially the tragic art performed on stage by actors in the theatre; it also included other fictional arts such as literature and cinema. A tragic event, the tragic hero and his actions, and the tragic situation that arises as a result of these actions constitute the general framework of tragic art. The form of tragedy mentioned by Aristotle in Poetics has transformed over time. Thanks to the rediscovery of Ancient Greek culture, especially with the Renaissance movements in Europe, myths and tragedies were rewritten and staged. Although some basic features such as themes involving pain and fear that come to mind when tragedy is mentioned remain the same, the tragic art form has changed throughout history. For example, Shakespeare, the most important tragedian writer of English literature, occupied a unique position all over the world with the plays he wrote and staged during his time. In the period known as Elizabethan tragedies, the subjects of the plays were political conflicts, wars, and emotions such as revenge. Especially brutality, blood, and death are the most basic elements of these plays. In this period, although writers wrote plays in accordance with the basic form of tragedy, they also went beyond the rules and created their own unique motifs (Nutku, 1990, pp. 54-55).
In dramas that can be considered modern tragedies or that are claimed to contain tragic elements, weak and “human beings who try to protect themselves and their values against the pressure of their environment and environmental conditions, who resist and even struggle for this purpose” are substituted for heroes with noble and superior characteristics. “Noble heroes have been replaced by incompetent victims. This person cannot see the truth, cannot change his situation, and cannot control his own weaknesses. He feels small, weak, abandoned, and sometimes guilty” (Şener, 2016, p. 115).
In this research, the characters in the movie The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), written and directed by Martin McDonagh, were examined using the interpretive content analysis method by applying modern tragedy theory. Interpretive content analysis is the method in which inferences are described by using the existing messages of the content in question as evidence (Erdoğan & Uyan-Semerci, 2023, p. 213). Explicit and implicit messages in the movie, which is the sample of the research, were interpreted by accepting them as the research object. In the literature part of the research, the basic characteristics of Ancient Greek tragedy, which is the starting point of the art of tragedy, were first examined, with the aim of understanding modern tragedy theory and revealing modern tragic character traits. Then, according to modern tragedy theory, the basic elements of the tragic character were reveale.
