Lars Von Trier as Tragedian

Abstract

Lars von Trier’s films have overarching metaphysical themes that are associated with Greek tragedy. German Idealist and Romantic philosophers from F.W.J. Schelling to Friedrich Nietzsche extracted key themes from Greek tragedy such as fate, freedom and nature; the very themes that form a coherent thread through von Trier’s oeuvre. This thesis explores von Trier’s films through the lens of the tragic for two reasons. First, the exploration contributes to an understanding of themes that run throughout von Trier’s oeuvre. Second, such an approach allows us to understand tragedy as having a contemporary relevance, viewing it as both a surviving and evolving art form. Such a position is controversial because many thinkers have long discussed the death of tragedy. According to some philosophers—the very philosophers that delineated tragedy’s themes—there has been a decline in metaphysical understandings of the human agent’s relationship to the world that has contributed to the decline of the tragic. There are also other reasons for the view that the creation of tragedies ceases in modernity. Christian metaphysics and ethics, secularised in the contemporary West, have been judged by the likes of Nietzsche to be incompatible with the tragic as tragedy takes us beyond moral frameworks. There are also artistic challenges to the tragic. After the horrors of the twentieth century’s genocides, tragedy seems inadequate as a means to examine human cruelty and suffering. Moreover, other modes of drama such as comedy and melodrama are genres that supposedly blunt tragedy and have come to replace tragedy. Von Trier’s films engage with these challenges to tragedy, his films explore the themes of the Holocaust, Christian ideals, comedy and melodrama. By showing that von Trier’s films manifest the tragic, tragedy is revealed to be able to engage with contemporary concerns.