by Ben Spatz
By "cruelty" is meant the absolute sovereign power of matter and physics over energy and metaphysics (the "energy" of physics is meant to be included in the first category). Take an object, such as an apple. It is there. It is so THERE that its only/essential meaningful characteristic is its presence. Talking about the "meaning" or "spirit" or "future" of the apple is almost pathetically wistful, when contrasted with the power of its presence. This is true of all objects which we do not interpret. Once we think of the apple as a symbol, we cease to grok its presence.
We do this all the time, especially with other human beings. Common speech is one reason we often forget to think about the raw physical presence of our fellow humans. We think of our friends as personalities, ideas, and histories, but very rarely as bodies and raw physical desire. A good actor (or anyone disciplined in directing focus) can make the presence of an object instantly visible. "LOOK THERE!" And you look at the apple and forget about its symbolism and see its juicy physicality. A good director can make the contents of an entire play real on this level. This is called Cruelty because it is so mercilessly THERE and RAW and PRESENT compared with our common weak interpreted world.
I do not see why Artaud identifies this kind of Cruelty also with the ideal of evil, except that if you begin with the premise that the physical world is evil and the metaphysical world is good, then the cruelty of objects is the permanent triumph of evil over good. But this is an old Judeo-Christian view that obviously sucks.
In either case, he is certainly right about Cruelty being the thing
that can save theater. After all, Cruelty is the thing that only theater has. In the above example, when an actor makes you truly look at an apple, that is something only an actor can do. Everyone learns at the age of six or seven that Mister Rogers, along with everyone else on TV or in the movies, isn't really talking to you. After that, there is always a distance between you and the people onscreen. They can't affect you the way a real person can. The same is obviously true of the fine arts. Only the performance arts include the ability to have one person interact directly with another person, through the medium (ie across the actor/watcher border, the fourth wall). It is this immediacy that makes the theater unique, and this immediacy that guarantees that movies will never replace it. Even when the images are VR holograms, indistinguishable from real life, the *knowledge* that they are prerecorded (and therefore not interactive) will make them less effective.