RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

drama. The ”story” or ”plot” in the Aristotelean sense, has undergone a lot of changes. The subject of a television drama is no longer the analysis of high flown ideas, characters and their tragic guilt The subject of a television drama now is an event of small scope and importance and a hero deprived of heroic premises. In Aristotelean drama ”heroes аге lead to the very nadir of man’s destiny, we watch them being quite alienated from other people and the world. The final agony is that of the hero”. 3 In a television drama such a hero gjves way to a hero who is recognizable, fo the man in the street, the man next door whose microcomos is everyday life. In order to characterize a television hero we can apply a definition given by Sergio Turconi referring to surrealism; Turconi thinks that the "essential aim of surrealism is the need to examine and discover everyday life, the everyday problems and worries of various classes of people and the need to express a moral judgement on a way of life” 4 Certainly, the essential characteristic of new television drama cannot be found only in reduced forms of classical drama; it is not justifiable to take the stories and destinies of so-called little people as the main subject for television drama, although it seems that this was the tendency of writers and television at one time. As far as subject matter is concerned, a television drama cannot possess and inaugurate a radically new and non-existent form of dramatic events, as the subject of a dramatic story was and still is Man, from ancient times up to the present day, but Man subject to vital, universal problems. However, television allows a different and as yet unachieved approach. Television requires a new form of expression within the existing laws of drama. Therefore, a new "television approach to old dramatic subjects is involved”. 5 It is obvious that this basic assumption about a television approach to drama can

3 Jan Kott, Jedzenje bogozv / Jedenje bogova, Serbo-Croattrans./, „Nolit”, 1974, p. 45, Beograd. 4 Sergio Turconi, A forevvord to the book Nadrealizam u italijanskom filmu, Beograd, "Kultura”, 1961, p. 6. 5 Vasilije Popovič, "Televizijska drama - kratak uvod” ("Television drama - Ashortforeword”), to Antoiogija TV-drame, (An Anthoiogr of TV drama), I, Beograd, RTB, 1969. p. 12.

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