Arcane vs. Aristotle: Parts I & II
How Arcane Illustrates Exceptional Writing According to Aristotle’s Poetics
SPOILER WARNING: Part I includes no significant spoilers for Arcane if you haven’t seen it and just want to learn more about Aristotle’s Poetics. However, Part II will be filled with spoilers discussing key plot points from the first three episodes of Arcane.
AUTHOR NOTE: The thoughts below are based purely on my own observations of the television show “Arcane: League of Legends” and the direct text of Aristotle’s “Poetics” based on the S.H. Butcher translation originally published in 1895. For this deep dive, I was too lazy to place footnotes on every quote, but any time you see quotations, know that the source is Aristotle’s words as translated by Butcher.
Introduction
When an ad for Arcane: League of Legends first appeared on Netflix last year, I knew nothing about the video game it was based on. In fact, had I known it was based on a video game, I may not have tried watching it at all just because shows and movies based on video games have been so notoriously bad in the past. However, I was taken with the character art and energetic animation seen in the ad, so I decided to give it a try. Little did I know the art design that drew me in was just the icing on the cake of Arcane’s true genius: the writing.
In a matter of minutes, the opening vignette on a bridge in Episode 1 manages to set up the core of themes of conflict that will affect the plot and characters for the rest of the series--all with no dialogue. Scene two shows a group of ragtag children jumping across rooftops in the city. Aside from its beautiful scenery, the scene quickly reveals four distinctive personalities and their relationships by showing how each one of them tackles a particularly daring leap from one roof to another.
Finally, when the kids reach their destination--a rich person’s lab they plan to loot--the inciting incident of the series occurs when the youngest, Powder, accidentally drops some mysterious crystals that create a massive explosion.
This incident is the moment that will set all the events of the plot into motion for the rest of the series. Even if it seems a little cliche that the inciting incident is an explosion, as I will discuss later, such ‘spectacle’ is a legitimate element of well written tragedy according to this deep dive’s star philosopher: John Aristotle.
(Okay, I made that first name up. It’s just Aristotle.)
Watching those first few scenes I was impressed, and I expected this could be an entertaining show worth my viewing time. What I did not expect was how quickly a scene that followed the explosion made me realize this show was not going to be just good--it was on course to be something truly exceptional.
The scene I am referring to is one of three scenes I am going to focus on in this deep dive to show how Arcane uses elements of Aristotle’s Poetics to lift the story above common tropes and pitfalls in modern entertainment writing and into the realm of history’s most well written tragedies.
My Focus for this Deep Dive
To limit the scope of this deep dive, I am focusing just on the first three episodes of this series. Even though I am only going to describe how the principles of Poetics apply to these early scenes, if one were to do a larger analysis of the entire series, you would find the same ideas apply just as well to the rest of the story.
I have chosen three scenes in particular to focus on, one at the beginning of episode 1, one in the middle of episode 2, and one at the end of episode 3. These three scenes illustrate how several different elements of Aristotle’s philosophies tie the plot together in logically satisfying and emotionally cathartic ways.
PART I: Explaining Aristotle’s Philosophies on Tragedy
Aristotle’s Definition of Tragedy
“All elements of an epic poem are found in Tragedy, but the elements of a Tragedy are not all found in an epic poem.” -Poetics, V
To begin understanding why the tragic writing in Arcane works where others fail, we should start with how Aristotle defines ‘Tragedy.’ In the beginning of Poetics, Aristotle goes into a series of arguments zeroing in on what separates ‘drama’ (“poems representing action”) from other distinctive forms of art and poetry. He does this by pointing out how various arts share some characteristics (i.e. both dance and song use rhythm, both epic poetry and satire may use iambic verse, etc.) Through this process of elimination, he begins to clarify what elements are unique to Tragedy alone.
In its simplest form, Aristotle defines Tragedy as an imitation of actions that produce pity or fear. “Imitation” is a key word here because it is more or less the distinguishing characteristic of all arts by Aristotle’s definition. As he puts it, poetry has its roots in two deep seated human instincts: a love for imitation and a love for rhythm and harmony.
The reason people love seeing life imitated in the arts is because imitation is the human’s earliest form of learning, and humans of all levels of intellectual capability are enamored with learning new information. In the case of drama, the imitation is of actions which is what Aristotle defines as ‘plot.’
Plot Driven vs. Character Driven
Here is an important point where Aristotle’s thinking differs from a lot of modern takes on writing--particularly in movies, television, and comics. Aristotle describes the plot as “the soul of tragedy.” He posits that plot is an imitation of action--a complete series of events with a distinct beginning, middle, and end. This action implies personal agents (persons and objects causing said action.) Finally, these persons possess distinctive qualities of character and thought, which he describes as “the two natural causes from which actions spring.”
What does all this mean?
The short answer is that in Aristotle’s philosophy, character is subsidiary to plot. This idea stands in sharp contrast to many college professors, books on writing, and Youtube writing vlogs who would argue that a script that is character driven is superior to a script that is driven by plot.
You may hear this argument coming from people watching and reading stories that feel as though they are all about action. Meanwhile, the characters in these stories feel like vapid cogs in the plot machine whom we as an audience could care less if they live or die. And these critics are not wrong in their assertion that weakly written characters are an error that causes many stories to fall flat.
However, to understand why Aristotle would place more importance on plot above character when writing a superior tragedy, it is important to understand his definitions of character and thought.
Character = the virtues we ascribe to certain agents (persons)
Thought = a statement that is proven or a truth revealed
‘Thought’ here is a little confusing, but essentially how I have come to understand his use of the word is that ‘thought’ is information key to the plot that is revealed through speech either from a character or the narrator rather than through action.
‘Character’ on the other hand, is what Aristotle describes as the “quality” of a person. This quality is best defined by what a person chooses or avoids and what said choices say about the character’s chosen morality. As he puts it, men must be of either a higher or lower type, and “moral character mainly answers to these divisions, goodness and badness being distinguishing marks of moral differences.” However, Aristotle goes a step further stating character determines men’s quality, “but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse.”
What this character definition is saying is that it is not whether a character is good or bad morally that determines their happiness. Rather, it is by their own actions or the actions of other agents in the plot that their feelings of happiness or the opposite occur. This is why Aristotle is arguing that the effect of pity or fear we feel for the characters in a tragedy is dependent on how the actions of the plot play out on the characters, not the characters themselves.
So, for example, despite Sophocles’ version of Oedipus being a good or bad person morally (his quality), the actions in the plot unfold naturally based upon Oedipus’ need to find the truth and learn that, in ignorance, he killed his own father and married his mother. Knowing those events alone, we are able to feel pity and fear for Oedipus despite not knowing much about his character. However, it is through the course of these events that Oedipus reveals his own moral qualities of honor and shame which show themselves distinctly in his response to the actions revealed in the plot.
Aristotle’s chief argument here is that for a tragedy to work properly, the events should unfold naturally and inevitably based on what he calls “the law of probability and necessity.” He uses a Latin term to describe this necessity: proctor hoc or post hoc (‘because of this or after this.’)
So, despite what moral qualities a character may show, it is more important that the actions occur logically based on truths revealed both about characters’ motivations and the world they live in. As such, tragedy results when the sequence of events in the plot fit together so naturally based on the expected reasoning of character choices that it would seem the results were nearly unavoidable.
It is important to note, though, that characters may not be the only cause of action in a plot. There can still be things such as acts of God or acts of politics that have a bearing on the action. As Aristotle puts it: “Without action there cannot be tragedy; there may be [tragedy] without character.”
(I’ll talk more about these causes later when I go over the four types of tragedy.)
Aristotle’s Do’s and Don’ts of Character in Tragedy
Even though I have just spent a long time describing why plot is more important than character, this by no means should suggest that character is unimportant. In fact, when Aristotle describes the elements that determine the quality of tragedy by order of importance, character is second among them:
Plot – series of actions that culminate in a completed action
Character – that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kinds of things a man chooses or avoids
Thought - something is proved to be or not to be, or a general maxim is enunciated through speech
Diction – the metrical arrangement of words
Song – harmony and rhythm
Spectacle - any element that adds excitement, beauty, ugliness, fear, or other embellishments that do not necessarily affect plot
Before moving on to how these elements of Tragedy apply to the scenes in Arcane, I think it is important to spend a little more time on the types of characters and relationships that Aristotle states work well in Tragedy versus the types that don’t. This is important because it is these definitions that are often the downfall of more pedestrian scripts being written in the entertainment industry, and I want to show how the writers of Arcane could easily have made choices considered poor by Poetics standards.
According to Aristotle, there are three types of characters who suffer misfortune that do not properly satisfy what would be considered superior tragic writing:
A virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity
This may sound tragic enough, but Aristotle would like to point out that such a story doesn’t move us to pity or fear; in his expert opinion, it just shocks us.
A bad man passing from adversity to prosperity
Okay, this one is pretty tragic, right? Wrong. Aristotle says this neither satisfies a moral sense nor evokes pity or fear. Fail.
An utter villain’s downfall
While this may be morally satisfying to see the villain lose, it does not produce pity or fear.
So, what sort of character qualifies for a proper tragedy? Aristotle tells us the winner falls somewhere between these extremes:
“A man who is not eminently good or just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty.” -Poetics, XIII
Aristotle (thankfully) gives some insight into what he means by “not eminently good or just” indirectly by telling us how misfortune should and should not be brought down on these unfortunate characters. Basically, he is describing characters who have flaws or flawed motivations. As he states:
“Pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune; fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves.” -Poetics, XIII
With this quote in mind, I have tried to break down how Aristotle might define the possible causes of this type of character’s misfortune. (There may be some gray areas here, but these definitions are meant to break these terms into their most basic usefulness):
Cause of Misfortune Should Nots:
Vice = weaknesses a person can control but does not (unlikeable)
Depravity = an immoral behavior (unlikeable/unrelatable)
These qualities do not produce pity (because we do not like him) or fear (because we do not identify with him)
Cause of Misfortune Shoulds:
Error = A poor choice made with good intentions or at least intentions based on character’s morality (evokes pity)
Frailty = An inability to affect change due to a weakness and/or despite best virtues (evokes fear)
Finally, let’s look at the types of relationships Aristotle states do not work versus those that do work for Tragedy. These relationships are the ones between whom the tragic incidents occur, and these definitions play an important role in how relationships are portrayed in Arcane. According to Aristotle:
Main characters should not be:
Enemies
Incidents between enemies will evoke neither pity or fear; except if there is suffering which is pitiful (We’ll talk about ‘Scenes of Suffering’ later.)
People indifferent to each other
Same as with enemies, there is no pity or fear evoked
Main characters should be:
Dear friends and family
Aristotle says incidents that happen between these relationships are the only ones through which fear and pity is produced
WARNING: There be spoilers beyond this point!
PART II: Breaking Down the Fight Scene in Episode One
The first scene that signaled to me that Arcane’s writing was going to be something special was the fight scene not long after the kids set off a massive explosion in Piltover. As Vi, Milo, Claggor, and Powder are on the home stretch with the loot they stole, they are ambushed and surrounded by a gang of tough kids in the street.
It is important to note that when I started watching this show, I knew little about what to expect from these characters or the story. Had I known more about League of Legends or the character Vi, I might have been clued in that Vi is portrayed as a fighter in the game who fights with her fists. Without that information, however, my expectations of what was about to happen in this scene were based on factual evidence (revealed through speech, actions, and visuals) and also assumptions based on information outside of the story itself. Let’s break down that information:
Facts:
Vi, Claggor, Milo, and Powder are all kids based on their behaviors and looks
We gather that with the exception of Powder who may still be pre-teen, the others are probably in their mid-to-late teens
These characters are poor
They come from the rough side of town
They’re scrappy based on how they escaped the police
Assumptions:
Being an animated show, this could easily be another coming of age story.
Also, as an animated show involving kids this age, there is a high likelihood when danger appears these kids are going to come out more or less okay.
When the gang of bullies surrounds our main characters, this is likely going to be the moment when all their hard-fought efforts to escape the police with their loot go down the drain.
After all, these are the geeky misfit kids facing off with some bigger, tougher bullies.
When the main bully, Deckard, tells the kids they should share some of their loot in exchange for him letting them get home safely through the streets, this is the moment when the writers were paying close attention to both the factual information they provided and also the assumptions they probably knew the audience would be making as they watched this scene.
Based on those assumptions, the writers play into those expectations with two cliche lines from Milo and Claggor:
Claggor: We don’t want any trouble, okay.
Deckard: There’s no reason this has to get ugly. How about you share a little taste of your treasure there, and we’ll call it even?
Milo: No, no, no. We worked too hard for this--
At this point, Vi, who has already established herself as the leader of the kids, steps forward to silence Milo and speak directly to Deckard. She lowers the bag as if to pay the dues they need to get out of this situation and delivers the line:
Vi: Just a taste?
After which, rather than opening the bag, she smashes it--with all its heavy metal contents--across Deckard’s face. Which brings us to a “Reversal of Situation”!
Aristotle’s Three Elements of Tragedy
Aristotle notes that in a ‘complex plot’ there are three important elements of Tragedy that need to always be present for the catharsis (emotional purging) created at the end of the plot to reach its maximum potential.
Reversal of Situation
Recognition
Scenes of Suffering
Note: A ‘simple plot’ would be when a change of fortune occurs without Reversal or Recognition. A ‘complex plot’ contains either or both.
Reversal of Situation is exactly what it sounds like: what started as a fortune becomes a misfortune, or the opposite. To quote Aristotle: “A change by which an action veers to its opposite, subject to our rule of probability and necessity.”
Recognition on the other hand, “is a change from ignorance to knowledge producing love or hate between persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune.” (We’ll talk more about this later.)
It is important to recognize that while Reversals of Situation and Recognition moments both affect the fortune of persons, they are both elements of plot, not character. So, a change of situation may change the fortunes of a character moving forward, but if a choice by the character is creating that change, that choice is a definition of character and is still considered different from the resulting incident (or action) which is plot.
Confusing? Yes, but this is where the effect of good tragic writing really comes into play. When the kids arrive in the street, they encounter the gang of bullies. When faced with that conflict we have a moment of choice which will define our characters moving forward. With the odds seemingly stacked against them, Vi’s choice to fight back reverses our expectations in that moment (at least from the perspective of someone who knows little about these characters), and suddenly, the plot is changed from bad fortune for our heroes to good fortune when it turns out they can actually fight.
I should also note that according the “law of probability and necessity,” the fact that these kids can fight is still believable based on their backgrounds knowing they probably live a rough life in the poor parts of town.
Which brings us to a Scene of Suffering. Aristotle calls this a moment when our characters face any sort of death, bodily agony, or wounds. In another move that defies the expectations of the genre tropes, the fight portrayed is not your typical 3D animation fight scene. It is visceral and violent. Fists make contact with faces causing them to contort and spew blood from their mouths. Vi at one point whacks a kid’s head with a piece of wood in a way that could easily cause death.
The point here being that the writers have changed the course of our viewer expectations, setting us up to understand our characters are going to face real suffering in this series. The effect is shocking (spectacle), but also, because the writers have done their work setting up relatable and likable characters, the scene also creates feelings of pity and fear for our characters and their safety.
What makes this scene special, however, is that the writers use it to accomplish even more with the plot they are building. Any average screenwriter in this moment could have easily made this fight scene all about how tough our heroes actually are, and they are going to fight back against bullies who stand in their way. That’s really all it needs to be to be an effective reversal of situation and character defining moment for Vi.
However, as soon as the fight starts, the focus shifts to Powder in the middle of the frame surrounded by the violence. Being the smallest member of the team, Vi immediately shoves her sister to the side with the bag of loot while she and the bigger boys take on the bullies. With that shift in focus, the scene becomes no longer about how tough Vi and the other boys are. Now, it goes back to the thread that the writers have been building up to: Powder’s insecurity about being the youngest, weakest link in the group and not being able to live up to her big sister’s expectations.
For a Thing Whose Presence or Absence Makes No Difference…
“As therefore in other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the object imitated is one; so the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed or disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no difference, is not an organic part of the whole.”
-Poetics, VIII
To back track just a little bit, every scene in the plot so far has portrayed Powder’s weaknesses as a detriment to the group. She can’t jump across rooftops as well as the others; she drops the crystals causing the massive explosion; Milo reveals through “speech” that she is always the jinx when she goes with them to gather loot.
In contrast, Vi is portrayed as the capable leader both by her physical prowess and her strength of character when she is sticking up for Powder to the others.
It is clear based on these previous scenes that the sisters are going to be a primary relationship driving the plot. With that in mind, every scene that includes Powder and Vi should further build on that relationship and how these characters play a role in the larger plot. If their presence does not illustrate one of these things, the scene will be extraneous to the plot and is “not an organic part of the whole.”
Therefore, the writers wisely chose to make the action in this fight scene serve as an obstacle to reveal qualities in both characters: it shows Vi’s courage and toughness, and it shows Powder’s weakness and insecurity.
When one of the bullies sees that Powder is holding the loot bag and is vulnerable, she takes off running with the bully chasing her. Separated from the group, Powder is left to her own devices to defend herself and the loot. She tosses a homemade grenade that fails to cause any damage to her pursuer, so in a last-ditch effort to escape, she tosses the loot bag into a nearby body of water to distract the bully while she runs.
Vi on the other hand shows her quality yet again when a defeated Deckard holds up a knife to threaten her. Vi stares him down without fear or a weapon until Deckard cowers away realizing even with a knife, he’s not going to win this fight. This might seem like a throwaway moment, but it is actually revealing important information about Deckard’s character that will play out in later episodes. (More on that later.)
Both of these incidents with the sisters illustrate sophisticated writing choices that advance plot and define character that may have been otherwise missed by less informed writers. This scene could have easily just become just an obstacle for the characters to overcome with no real connection to the larger plot at all.
Vi, Milo, and Claggor could have won the fight and left the bullies on the ground, but instead we have a moment that shows us character information about both Deckard and Vi that will play out in later scenes.
Powder could have just as easily been tackled by the bully chasing her, and he could have taken the loot and run away. Instead, by having Powder toss the loot to save herself, now the weight of losing the loot rests completely on her shoulders through an action (plot) of her own doing. Powder’s feelings of guilt and inadequacy are thus amplified because her homemade grenade failed (frailty), and she alone tossed the loot to save herself (error.) It becomes a perfect mini-tragedy for the kids on the road to larger tragedies to come….
NEXT TIME:
Part III: Major vs Minor Characters!
I was hoping to have finished the last part of this before I put out another newsletter, but I have run out of time this month with so many other projects demanding my attention. So, in the next newsletter, I will discuss how Arcane develops minor characters well to help create sophisticated and complex major characters.