he somehow makes sense…

Aristotle’s concept on imitation seems tempting to agree upon. Every point presented in his Poetics is backed up with examples, and what’s amazing is that my mind seems automatic in providing samples to concretize such points. What I mean by this is that every point to support such concept traces into a real experience in my past to serve as application or explanation. For example, the following lines of his seem realistic:

“… Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation…”

Such point can be grounded upon observing babies, as it is seemingly apparent on the last few words. Babies indeed learn their first gesture, their first word, and most “first” things that they do on their own by following the people around them – mother, father, siblings, etc. They learn their first “mama” by listening to and observing their surroundings refer the same word to the woman whom they are with most, if not, all of the time. They do their first “align” and “approve” hand gestures to follow the person in their front doing the same, so on, and so forth. And so the parents teach the babies how to spoon food, how to do “close-open” and “Twinkle, twinkle little star” actions, and other things. So basically, we learn at first by imitation.
By the time that these babies grow up and become us, right now, going to school, making friends, going out and watching movies or theater plays, we tend to like more of those things that are close to reality. Like in the movies or TV series that we watch, the most likeable character or the best actor or actress is the one who acts naturally, like how we, the viewers, would tend to act in a similar situations. At the moment, Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo is the most popular MMFF entry among my classmates. And as we know, Judy Ann Santos and Gina Pareño were hailed Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress respectively. For me, they received such distinguished awards because they all act naturally, as if putting themselves in the character’s shoes. You don’t notice awkward points in their acting, wherein there seem to be a barrier between them and their characters. In other words, we also like those that can imitate what is real and natural, or those things that are close to reality. Even in movies of fantasy, they still inject reality in their stories like the lines that the actors deliver or the lesson that emanates from it. Like Aristotle’s view on what is good plot, good character, good diction and thought – those that are close to reality.
It’s hard to put a boarder between this concept of imitation, as innate to humans, and my concept on humans as instruments of God to materialize His ideas rather than imitators of original idea which I raised in my previous article entitled “We’re no copycat”.
But I guess, they still do not meet. I just can’t draw the line between them. Perhaps that’s what I am to find out.