Contemporary Tragedies: A Political Glance to the Cinematic Works of Farhadi and Lanthimos

Tragedy has been the oldest and arguably the most popular form of art work since its origins in the ancient Greek. Although we possess only a few examples of the original four forms, as Aristotle explained in the Poetics, tragedy’s political character, which is inherent in the question of justice, is still very much alive and as relevant as it was two thousand years ago. Thus, perhaps changed in its forms of presentation, tragedy and its narrative structure are yet to shed light on our contemporary political impasses. Following this line of thought this paper is based on the main argument that underlying the origin of tragedy is always a political crisis, rise of Peisistratus and his tyranny in Athens, which inevitably causes a radical social disruption. Thus, the basic purpose of the tragic narrative is to make the audience to confront the primary unjust actions of the authority by putting them into shoes of the wrong-doer. The purpose is simple; revealing the fine line between the personal benefit and the public good and warning about the disastrous results of mistaking the former’s immediacy for the latter’s communal achievement. Following this main argument, then, it is possible to claim that the function of tragedy is still valid if we are to understand our contemporary political crisis. With this thought in mind, the paper claims that the analysis of the movies, although not literary works in form, The Killing of a Sacred Deer of Yorgos Lanthimos and The Salesman of Asghar Farhadi, as two examples of contemporary tragedies are not only intriguing due to their cinematic form, but also critical to provide us a venue to explore today’s political and social tensions and conflicts as well as quests for justice.