Dissertation Jaye Hannah for Learnzone

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The Theatre of Political Discourse: Performance,
Melodrama and Spectacle in a Postnormal Society
Jaye Hannah
Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
BA Drama, Applied Theatre and Education DE16
Dissertation Supervisor: Sylvan Baker
Student number: 134909
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I hereby declare that this work is my own and free from plagiarism and
collusion
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Table of Contents
Introduction Page 3
Chapter 1: Framing the Postnormal Society
1.1 Complexity Page 8
1.2 Chaos Page 10
1.3 Contradictions Page 11
1.4 Concepts of Performance in the Postnormal Society Page 13
Chapter 2: Performance, Audience and Spectacle in Postnormal Times
2.1 Audience Page 15
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2.2 Media Page 16
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2.3 Governments Page 18
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Chapter 3: The War on Terror as a Melodrama
3.1 War on a noun Page 23
3.2 The spectacle of terror Page 26
Conclusion Page 31
Bibliography Page 34

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Introduction
On September 11 2001, two hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Centre
in New York City, killing 2,996 people. This atrocious spectacle marked a
defining moment in modern history and subsequently resulted in what George
W Bush named a global ‘war on terror’. Although the attacks are widely
considered to have merely inflamed what was undoubtedly already a tense
relationship between the western superpowers and the middle east, the sheer
scale and unexpected nature of the attacks - and the announcement of this
new ‘war’ - propelled the world into a rapid and irreversible state of panic that
has significantly shaped life in the 21st century. The atrocities of 9/11 marked
the start of an era of uncertainty and chaos which has been accelerating at an
unprecedented rate, within an increasingly unstable and precarious global
political climate. This is a time unlike any other. In 2010, British Pakistani
intellectual Ziauddin Sardar published an article entitled ‘Welcome to
postnormal times.’ In his opening statement, he writes;
“All that was ‘normal’ has now evaporated; we have entered postnormal times, the
in between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have not yet
emerged, and nothing really makes sense” (Sardar 2010)
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Sardar’s article identifies the 21st century as an era in which multiple and
simultaneous calamities have taken place. Key indicators of postnormal times
include numerous disasters; from terrorist acts, to super bug epidemics, the
ever-growing gap between economic classes, crippling global recession,
global warming and a refugee crisis on a scale comparable to WW2. Sardar
suggests that these simultaneously occurring calamities are interlinked and
are a direct result of increasingly emphasised social and political complexities
on a global level. As UN secretary Ban Ki Moon states;
“It is not just that things are going wrong; they are going wrong spectacularly, on a global
scale, and in multiple and concurrent ways. We thus find ourselves in a situation that is far

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from normal, and have entered the domain of the post normal.” (Moon in O’Conner &
Anderson 2015: 8)
Understanding how we have arrived in a postnormal world requires a
retrospective look at the Post War years. Globally, this was an era in which
society felt safe and stable. Post-war modernity was a time of optimism and
growth in the realms of science and economics. Respected and trusted
institutions such as democratically elected government, the welfare state and
the United Nations kept us safe and healthy. Freedom of speech and
secularism were held in high esteem. Modernity held it’s own belief system
that regarded itself above religion and ethics - it was a philosophy of
pragmatism and optimism that was based on scientific fact. However Sardar
explores the dangers of the breakdown of ethics, even taboos, during post-
war modernity in his 2011 article ‘Terminator 2: Modernity, Postmodernism
and the ‘Other’ ‘. This period was followed by the Postmodernism of the late
20th century, a time that is ‘much more difficult to pin down’ (Sardar: 2011) as
it was a period hindered by a lack of defining objectives or characteristics.
The last century has also seen the rise of Neoliberalism (Monbiot: 2016), a
capitalist philosophy that emphasises the importance of consumerism,
competition and trickle down economics that has dominated UK and US
politics since Thatcher and Reagan were in power. Sardar argues that the
orthodoxies of Modernism, Postmodernism and Neoliberalism have all shared
a belief in the ‘normal’ social and political structures. But we are now seeing
the contrary, that Sardar’s theory of the postnormal contends that 21st
century society exhibits a distinct lack of trusted approaches or solutions to
global issues, on the grounds that the systems we have relied upon for so
long are actually letting us (as world citizens) down time and time again and
are an intrinsic part of the problems of the post normal. Sardar states that;
“In normal times, when things go wrong, as they so often have, we know what to do. We
identify and isolate the problem and apply our physical and intellectual resources to come
up with a viable answer…..Little of this now holds true. Much of what we have taken as

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normal, conventional and orthodox just does not work anymore. Indeed, normality itself is
revealed to be the root of all our ills.” (Sardar 2010)
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At this point it is relevant that I discuss the intersection of postnormal theory
with performance studies. One key dynamic of the postnormal society is that
it is highly mediatised, and this essay will argue that this has made our lives
highly performative - from the use of technology and social media, to the way
that we engage in politics. The catastrophes and spectacles which are key
dynamics in the postnormal world have become a form of performance in and
of themselves. British cultural studies researcher John Jervis explores the
effect of spectacle and the re-emergence of melodrama in postnormal times
in his 2015 book ‘Sensational Subjects’. In it he examines the spectacle and
how our responses to and experience of the spectacle is sensationalist to the
point of becoming a new, media driven form of melodrama. He argues that
the narrative of the melodrama is one of good verses evil, and we are seeing
increasingly how this narrative permeates public opinion and politics. Jervis
examines how the spectacle of catastrophe grows, is fed, reproduced and re-
watched multiple times by the media with this narrative running through it.
Jervis makes the point that;
“Catastrophe is the ultimate sensation; and, in an age of mass media spectacle, sensation
drives towards catastrophe, feeds on it, just as such catastrophe is always reproducible,
whether in the real, or in media representation.” (Jervis 2015: 35)
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For a catastrophe to become a spectacle and to grow ultimately into a
melodramatic performance, it requires an audience. Throughout this essay, I
will be referring to and examining the experiences and responses of the
citizen-audience, made up of world citizens who are spectators to the
constantly unfolding drama of the postnormal world. This act of ‘watching’ by
the audience is not necessarily passive, and I will also be exploring how and
when we participate in the spectacle to become citizen-performers, or how we
experience the drama both viscerally and vicariously. In a mediatised society,

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lines between performance and reality often blur, as Jervis demonstrates in
the following example;
“From within the 2003 gulf war, the reporter Sarah Boxer wrote that ‘with the war rolling
ahead on television, you the viewer are made a part of the invading army,’ and ‘Meanwhile,
just as the audience feels part of the army, the army become part of the audience.
American troops on an aircraft watch CNN to see how the war is playing and progressing.
Soldiers are watching other soldiers on television.’ Hence, she adds, there is ‘general
confusion as to who is acting and who is watching.’ She asks ‘Are the television cameras
witnesses to war, or are they part of the weaponry.’” (Jervis 2015: 140)"
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This study sets out to analyse and examine how spectacle, melodrama and
performance define the postnormal political landscape. The definition of
spectacle is ‘an event or scene regarded in terms of its visual impact’ . It is1
normally experienced on a large scale and has a dynamic of shock and awe.
Spectacle is becoming more commonplace with the rise of terrorism, and
then the media feeds us a continuous stream of repeated images and news,
meaning the performance and melodrama of the spectacle never ends. For
the purposes of this study, my working definition of performance is an act of
showing or doing with purpose in front of an audience. I will be arguing that
the spectacle of war, terrorist act or political protest is a performance. The
media layers on a narrative of melodrama, with the stereotypical
characteristics of ‘good’ verses ‘evil’.
In order to paint a picture the political and social landscape of the postnormal,
the first chapter of this essay will provide a framing of the postnormal society
and establish it’s defining characteristics. I will examine the three key
dynamics as outlined by Sardar; complexity, chaos and contradictions. While
Sardar does not provide a specific date in which we entered postnormal
times, for the efficacy of this study I will argue that the era began from 9/11
and continues to present day. I intend to reflect on how these dynamics
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/deﬁnition/english/spectacle1

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impact on world politics, and to explore how the media influences our reading
of catastrophic spectacles. I will also be exploring how postnormal society
has increased channels of performance, and arguing that performance in the
political sphere has a very specific narrative.
The second chapter of this essay will explore notions of performance,
spectacle and melodrama through what I feel are three key aspects of a
postnormal society; audience, media and government. I will be asking; what
is our experience as a citizen-audience? This chapter will also take a closer
look at the mediatisation of society and the impact this has on world politics
and daily life. What narratives are we being fed by the media? Who benefits
politically from these narratives? How has living in a mediatised society, with
its dynamics of spectacle and melodrama impacted on our ability to build
knowledge and understand the world around us? I will then go on to explore
how governments benefit from the dynamics of the postnormal and how
catastrophe, the media and the citizen audience relate on the global political
stage.
Finally, chapter three will identify terrorism as one of the defining dynamics of
the postnormal world and investigate the performance of terrorism. What
performance techniques are utilised by terrorists and what impact do these
performances have? What is our reading of this performance as a citizen-
audience?
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Chapter 1: Framing the Postnormal Society
Indisputably, every century has seen its fair share of brutal political and social
conflicts. However, so far this century has seen some horrific catastrophes
which seem to be occurring at an alarming rate within a very short period of
time. Politically speaking, there is one word that succinctly describes 21st
century life; chaos. This new dynamic is outlined by political unrest,
environmental disaster, economic crashes, terrorism and fear. All this is set
against the backdrop of a technological revolution which offers new ways of
sharing information, meaning we can watch these catastrophes unravel in
real-time via the media. What is particularly unsettling about these times in
which we live is the frequency and scale of catastrophe that we are
experiencing globally, and the lack of positive solutions for anyone other than
the super rich elite. Peter O'Connor, and Michael Anderson propose in their
book Applied Theatre Research: Radical Departures (2015);
“It is perhaps because of the confluence of these multiple, compounding and
complementary crises that we believe that humanity exists in murderously dangerous
times….. global capitalism has wreaked havoc environmentally, culturally and
economically……rampant and unchecked greed has fuelled a system that threatens now
to destroy itself….The globalised economy and spectacular rising income inequality
throughout many industrialised nations, with obscene levels of wealth captures by a tiny
international elite.” (O’Connor & Anderson 2015: 8-9)
Sardar considers our global society is so archaic in nature, and the political
responses to these social and economic calamities are so absurd in their
extremity, that they only allude to normality. To illustrate this he uses the
‘three c’s’ as criteria of the postnormal society: complexity, chaos and
contradictions.
1.1 Complexity
Sardar states that everything is complex in the postnormal paradigm. The
scientific methodology and liberalism of Modernity and the consumerist

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individualism of Neoliberalism no longer offer solutions in our globalised
world. Politics and economics take place on a vast, worldwide platform where
everything is interlinked in a highly complex manner. With all areas of global
society interdependent, finding solutions to problems is difficult. Nothing is
certain any more, there is no controlled and secure approach to problem
solving the complex issues we face as a global society. And the rate at which
these complex crises occur is alarming. Sardar writes;
“The world has long been a complex place, always interconnected. The era of
globalisation we are living through, however, differs in scale, depth of interconnections and
immediacy of consequences and reactions. In our time we no longer have the luxury of
time to reflect, to observe and respond to undesired outcomes, to debate and manage with
some semblance of order.” (Sardar 2010)
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This state of complexity and uncertainty have given fertile ground to the
growth of extremism in the 21st Century. Since 2001 we in the West have
been been engaged in a ‘war on terror’. The global scale of this war means
that fear, grievance and mistrust become an everyday experience, along with
the juxtaposition of moral extremism and moral indifference. This climate of
fear has wormed its way into all spheres of life. Civil liberties are being
compromised by authorities in the name of security. Any protest, regardless of
it’s nature or message is being sanctioned and controlled. Former CIA
employee Edward Snowden shocked the world when he blew the whistle on
the extent of government surveillance of social media (public conversations)
email, SMS, phone calls (private communication) and location tracking via
GPS. This fuels a feeling of paranoia, that we as citizens are being monitored
en masse. It’s a very confusing message. This isn’t just ‘us and them’,
everyone is a potential suspect.
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1.2 Chaos
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This is perhaps the most dominant identifying dynamic of the postnormal
society. Sardar states that we are living in a time when change is rapid and
unpredictable. The dynamic of chaos is directly related to one of the most
prominent features of our society; technology. We are all now connected and
interconnected in a way that has never occurred before in human history.
Communication is instantaneous and all encompassing. Not only are
individuals connected, but all major institutions across the entire globe are
too. This means that any problem or break down in the network, no matter
how small, can cause the whole network to collapse. Being constantly
connected creates continual opportunity for chaos on an individual to a global
scale. According Sardar;
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“Thanks to mobile phones, e-mails, blogs, tweets and 24-h news media, we are constantly
in the know. We are thus primed to react instantly, equipped with the means to set off new
patterns of chain reactions. The more communications technology expands to make
communication easier, faster, instant and reflexive—the more we are likely to cause self-
organised panics and live life at the edge of chaos. Self-organised panics, like self-
organising popular revolutions, are increasingly potential phenomena that cannot be
predicted.” (Sardar 2010)
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As we see from this quote, constant connection to technology is pushing us to
our limits. The chaos is magnified by consumerism, which means that levels
of poverty and global warming continue to accelerate at an alarming speed.
The gap between rich and poor is ever growing, even in the so called
developed world. Perhaps part of the problem is that while everything is
interconnected on a global scale, there is no agreed upon ‘common good’.
Therefore the ability to take any action or make decisions is severely
disabled. Regarding climate change, it is arguably too late for significant
change and it is now an unstoppable force. Sardar warns against the ‘cult of

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individualism’ that dominates the Neoliberalist West. Social media permeates
our lives and encourages the growth of ‘brand me’. Individualism feeds the
chaos of power hierarchies. We need to develop a sense of social
responsibility to counter this. Sardar expresses this concern when he writes;
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“Individualism empowers the powerful, those most adept at utilising the levers of power
and can deliver power to self selecting groups. There is no necessity or inevitable rule that
such individual empowerment will be inclusive, extensive and equitably distributed or
dedicated to collective benefit. Notice that it took the actions of relatively small numbers of
greedy bankers to bring down the economy of the whole world. An even smaller bunch of
9/11 terrorists triggered a chain reaction that led to the ascendance of neo-conservative
ideology in the US and Europe, changed the course of Iraqi, Afghani and Pakistani history,
redefined the notion of security, revealed the limits of American power, and galvanised
mass protests and dissent throughout the world, not to mention the millions who have
been killed, maimed or been made homeless. In postnormal times, the world can really be
laid to waste by the actions of a few toxic individuals.” (Sardar 2010)
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1.3 Contradictions
Sardar states that contradiction “…is the natural product of numerous
antagonistic social and cultural networks jostling for dominance.” (Sardar
2010). With so many competing and opposing beliefs, ideologies and desires
within our society, it is of little surprise that contradictions are such a dominant
presence. As Sardar points out, these contradictions can balance the
equilibrium of opposing forces, or can be creative. But all too often,
contradictions are destructive. Sardar goes on to outline two key types of
contradiction that are most prominent in the Postnormal Society.
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The first discusses change and the manner in which we are experiencing in
the 21st century a rapid rate of advancing technological knowledge and
power that far surpasses even the extraordinary growth of the industrial
revolution. What is contradictory about this, is that we are also living in a

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society where certain systems that do little to benefit our society or in fact
constrain our growth. For example the lack of equality between men and
women, or the right to bear arms in the USA which leads to countless
unnecessary deaths each year. In many ways we can see an even more
contradictory backward trajectory happening alongside exponential growth.
Levels of poverty are rising and class differences even more pronounced. As
Sardar argues;
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“Things have always changed but they have not changed with the accelerating pace we
are witnessing nowadays. In particular we are experiencing rapid technological power
growth and advancement. So it is ironic and contradictory that in many ways so little has
changed. We are still restricted by a class system which keep the elite few in positions of
power. We are seeing poverty across the world that is getting worse instead of
better.” (Sardar 2010)
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The second key contradiction concerns knowledge. Sardar refers to the huge
gaps in our knowledge, despite the rapid advancements in technology and
our ability to quickly and easily share knowledge. Xenophobia seems to be on
the rise, feeding into extremism and polarity across the global community. It is
a time John Jervis describes as a ‘post enlightenment era’ (Jervis 2015). We
are actually moving away from a time of exploration, knowledge,
understanding and ultimately enlightenment and further into crude ignorance.
Sardar states;
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“While our knowledge has increased, and is increasing, by leaps and bounds in almost all
spheres, we also seem to be more ignorant than ever. Notice how limited is our knowledge
of other cultures—Islam, for example…….While we are bombarded with information on
almost all and every subject, we have very limited capability to actually discern what is
important and what is trivial.” (Sardar 2010)
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1.4 Concepts of Performance in the Postnormal Society
The postnormal represents a highly mediatised time, one in which the culture
of celebrity and social media dominates. John Jervis believes that this is
creating a blurred of the lines between fantasy and reality. He argues that real
experience is often interpreted as performance, and vice versa. We are
seeing an increase in performance, in particular an increase in the use of
melodrama. Catastrophes and spectacles are being turned into a postnormal
battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, cheered on on the sidelines by the media.
Jervis states that the spectacle contains what he calls the ‘circuit of sensation’
(Jervis 2015) because it has (i) characters who are ‘good’ or ‘evil’, (ii) has an
audience of spectators to watch and respond, and finally (iii) has the mass
appeal to guarantee the spectacle is acknowledged and remembered and
then recreated again and again by the media. Jervis says of our current
times;
“Rationalist ideologies and social transformation have fallen away, we are left with media
inﬂuenced hunts for scapegoats, for someone or some group to blame; and we can see,
looming into view, another mode of presenting, experiencing and reacting to these events
that has actually been around since the early nineteenth century- namely,
melodrama.” (Jervis 2015: 6-7)"
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Melodrama has it’s roots in late 18th century popular culture, it was utilised on
stage and in novels as entertainment for the masses, and reflected
obsessions with moral polarity and absolutes. In the 21st century, the use of
the melodramatic narrative reflects the dynamic of contradictions in
postnormal society. We are living in an age of advancement, but we are
looking backwards in popular culture trends, searching for heroes and villains
to help us make sense of a chaotic and confusing world. However, the
melodrama we experience now is intensified, as we are constantly fed a plot
line of ‘us’ and ‘them’ via the media. So why melodrama? Jervis argues that
melodrama attempts to rationalise while being moral, it wants to make a

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whole narrative with a happy ending, offering ‘closure’ in place of confusion
and questions. He points out;
“Melodrama reacts to the profound contingency of the world by attempting to render it
intelligible as drama, as cosmic struggle and resolution. It’s ‘over the top’ quality both
reinforces it’s impact, helps to hold it together, and papers over the instability of it’s own
fusion of forms.” (Jervis 2015: 7)"
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This melodramatic narrative is filled with frantic and excessive action to hide
gaps in knowledge,narrative and conclusions. As a whole it produces intense
feeling and sensation and makes us feel emotionally connected. Postnormal
society is a time of fertile ground for melodrama. Chaos and unpredictability
mean that we are desperate for answers and conclusions, and melodrama
gives us a narrative we can comprehend. The frequency of spectacle, in
particular the terrorist act, is creating a new kind of entertainment. Jervis
argues that these spectacles are open pages, and the narrative of the
melodrama is layered on. He states;
“The spectacle ‘represents itself’ as the endlessly empty sign, empty in the inﬁnite
possibility of it’s meaning, it’s content, available to be anything for anyone, and therefor
nothing” (Jervis 2015: 138)"
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Chapter 2: Performance, Audience and Spectacle in Postnormal Times
2.1 Audience
In this chapter I will explore how melodrama and spectacle are experienced
by the citizen-audience. The experience offered by technology and the media
means that the exposure to spectacle and melodramatic narratives are
constant and can happen on and offline. To quote Jervis;
“The bombardment of stimuli, now reconfigured as the reception of currents and waves in
the form of messages and images, offers possibilities for proactive response, for degrees
of involvement and choice by the experiencing subject.” (Jervis 2015: 6)
When discussing the experience of the audience, Jervis refers to the 3 types
of pleasure as outlined by RL Hart in 1907. When watching a spectacle or
melodrama, the audience experiences (i) wonder and a sense of awe, (ii) a
vicarious terror that can be witnessed from a place of safety and and (iii) the
close shave, which leads to the audience member feeling more alive. The
spectacle of the terrorist act in particular allows the audience to experience
the sensation of suffering and outrage as our lives and liberties are
threatened, although for most of us the threat and the suffering is vicarious,
we watch from afar and feel the relief of the ‘close shave’. The experience is
then intensiﬁed by 24 hour exposure to the media, where the story is re-
enacted for the audience and the sensations are re-experienced over and
over. From this develops an inner theatre, where we replay the melodrama
repeatedly with no need whatsoever to be present in the real spacial location
of the spectacle. We can create an imaginary space within, and the lines
between performer and spectator become extensively blurred in the
melodrama which inﬁltrates and drives our reality. Jervis says;"
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“As we move away from classic face to face scenario, as experience becomes mediated,
so the representational forms become more trans-contextual, and the potential of the
vicarious as the mediated experience of otherness intensiﬁes” (Jervis 2015: 178)"
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Conversely, it can also be argued that our mediatised society offers increased
empowerment, giving the citizen-audience multiple channels on which to
interact with politics. Social media can be utilised as a fast and efficient
method to rally support or opposition in relation to the actions of politicians
both online and publicly and as a result citizen-audiences can be increasingly
critical and involved. Let’s take the example of the recent Panama Papers
incident, which exposed the use of offshore tax evasion by the global elite.
Multiple world leaders were found to be involved, including the Prime Minister
of Iceland Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson. Having just recovered from a
major economic crisis, the citizens of Iceland were justifiably outraged. Over
10,000 people, in a country of just 330,000, took to the streets of Reykjavik
with drums, whistles and chants to create a theatrical protest against
corruption and to call for the resignation of the PM. (Henley 2016) Becoming
citizen-performers, they were able to rally huge support and influence which
quickly spread across the country and the world, ultimately resulting in the
desired resignation. This is an example of how the dynamic of chaos in the
postnormal society can be used positively, using social media to instigate self
organised protest to create social change, as opposed to self organised panic
that maintains the status quo.
2.2 Media
In this section I will be arguing that the media helps turn the multiple
catastrophes and spectacles of our times into a melodrama that feeds into
every aspect of our lives, to the point that almost everything has become a
performance. We experience an continual overload of stimulation; messages
and images which inﬂuence the way we interpret the world. Jervis states that

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we are living in a ‘zone of confusion’ (Jervis 2015) where the boundaries of
public/ private, and real/ unreal are blurred. The spectacular and the
sensational can be reproduced and simulated through media. Jervis
suggests;"
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“First and foremost, then, melodrama embodies a dramatisation of the public sphere in the
era of mass media sensation and spectacle, always liable to be traversed by ‘currents of
feeling’, transformations of popular emotion, unpredictable in both origin and outcome. We
thereby encounter the distinctive late modern mix of the dramas of media dissemination,
political manipulation, and varying degrees of public involvement, with individuals and
issues subject to the vagaries of fashion, the rise and fall of celebrities, heroes and villains,
and the sentimentalisation of suffering” (Jervis 2015: 173) "
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It could be argued that we are being manipulated by the media, who are
fuelling the narrative of the melodrama, sentimentalising suffering, and
exhibiting binary representations that encourage xenophobia. With
mainstream media so dominated by right wing mogul Rupert Murdoch, it is
clear the media is a far from neutral entity. Jervis refers a ‘life as special
effects’, where this private and public life merges fantasy with reality into a
feast of sensory overload. For the media to grab our attention in a landscape
of constant noise and distraction, it is necessary to be excessive in it’s
storytelling, to create a ‘media spectacle’ on top of the actual spectacle.
Everything has to be elevated to the level of spectacular. It must be
melodramatic. He states;"
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“to gain attention, it is necessary to be sensational. to be heard above the hubbub, hold
the attention despite all the distractions, even just to convey information in a world of ever-
present excess noise, one has to resort to further excess, to eye-catching intensity, or to
transgression. This is effect rather than teleology, more like a survival of the ﬁttest, of the
sensation with the greatest attention-grabbing power, a response enforced by the
exigencies of the modern environment of rapid change and media-inﬂected experience - in

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short, life as ‘special effects’ more. In a culture of hyperbole, everything has to be hyped
up, sensationalised.” (Jervis 2015: 179)"
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With news media and social media so interconnected, anyone who has an
opinion can participate in the spectacle, and become active players in the
drama. Social media platforms such as Facebook, twitter, youtube and
Instagram offer the citizen- audience a sense of agency and in turn we have
seen a growth of citizen journalism where the public use technology such as
smart phones to report on current affairs and tell the stories often untold in
mainstream media or when not all perspectives are represented. Bloggers
such as Tim Pool who broadcast stories from the Occupy New York
demonstrations can be detailed in their reporting (Kate Bulkley: 2012).
Although this form of street journalism does give a voice to the general public,
we can also see it increasingly intersecting with mainstream media, with
footage captured by the public often broadcast on news channels (Kate
Bulkley: 2012). It could be argued that this merging with the mainstream is
feeding back into the storytelling of media moguls such as Rupert Murdoch.
Mark Zuckerberg now owns not only Facebook but also Instagram and what’s
app, and so the powerful elite still have the ability to censure and control. "
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2.3 Governments
It could be argued that the chaotic spectacle is being harnessed by those in
power in this postnormal society to profit, control and influence the citizen
audience. The media storm of melodrama with its cast of ‘goodies’ and
‘baddies’ helps to project some meaning onto an often confusing global
political stage. Our democratically elected governments place themselves
firmly and morally on the side of good, even though the morals are actions
are dubious and the outcomes are inconclusive. Social commentator Naomi
Klein refers to ‘shock therapy’ in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of

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Disaster Capitalism (2008), suggesting that Neoliberal governments and the
elite 1% are profiting from catastrophe, both financially and in terms of world
power play. She argues that governments exploit crises to push through
controversial and exploitative policies while citizens are emotionally distracted
and confused by the chaos. She says of the ‘war on terror’ and the 2003 Iraq
war; "
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“Amid the weapons trade, the private soldiers, for-profit reconstruction and the homeland
security industry, what has emerged as a result of the Bush administration’s particular
brand of post-September 11 shock therapy is a fully articulated new economy. It was built
in the Bush era, but it now exists quite apart from any one administration and will remain
entrenched until the corporate supremacist ideology that underpins it is identified, isolated
and challenged.” (Klein, 2008: 33)"
"
As with any performer, politicians strive for their efforts to be validated by an
audience. Politicians use performance to influence the citizen-audience into
taking political action, i.e. to vote for them or advocate on their behalf. They
want to persuade in a way that allows them to maintain or gain power. We
are increasing seeing party politics being taken to the extreme, with
politicians using divisive policy making to recreate the ‘us’ and ‘them’
melodrama to build support. This could be in relation to the ‘other’; foreigners,
refugees, muslims, extremists all get bundled into one dangerous enemy. Or
it could be a left/ right or a class divide. Every action and interaction is
explicitly political and is seeking to influence the citizen-audience. Politicians
deploy a mixture of traditional rehearsed performance such as the speech,
alongside a performative representation of their real selves. The performed
identity that is presented is crucial in gaining power. As Jeffery C Alexander
points out, it is how quality of the politician’s performance that counts;
“Truth, honesty, and fairness do matter, but it is less a matter of being those qualities than
of seeming to be them, of embodying truth, narrating honesty, projecting fairness, and

Page of20 36
doing so in a persuasive way. Being truthful, honest, and fair are discursive claims;
whether these claims take root is a matter of performative success.” (Alexander, 2010: 12)

As a case in point, let’s consider the 2016 leadership race in the USA. Donald
Trump is a prime example of a postnormal politician. In the chaos of the
postnormal world, extremism proliferates. Trump is leading a campaign that
harnesses hatred, condones violence and illustrates the contradictory gaps in
knowledge and understanding in our times. It is a campaign that thrives on
the ignorance seen as a dynamic of postnormal society. Trump is described
as a ‘demagogue’, the definition of which is a “political leader who seeks
support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using
rational argument.” Trump re-tells the melodramatic narrative of ‘us’ and2
‘them’ repeatedly. And like the classic melodrama, he knows how to appeal to
the masses with clear slogans and an over the top personality. Trump has
long been utilising the performative aspects of social media and reality TV to
imbed his caricatured personality into the hearts and minds of Americans. In a
celebrity driven culture, the citizen-audience are more than comfortable with a
celebrity politician. Ironically, in the year 2000, an episode of the Simpsons
was aired (Bart to the Future: 2000) which showed a dystopian future in
which Trump is President. Sixteen years later, the lines between performance
and reality have blurred irreversibly. As David Remnick says in his article on
Trump in The New Yorker;
“And now here we are. Trump is no longer hustling golf courses, fake “universities,” or
reality TV. He means to command the United States armed forces and control its nuclear
codes. He intends to propose legislation, conduct America’s global affairs, preside over its
national-intelligence apparatus, and make the innumerable moral and political decisions
required of a President. This is not a Seth Rogen movie; this is as real as mud.” (Remnick
2016)
With such an extreme Republican front runner, it is of little surprise that we
see further extremism within the Democratic party candidates. Alongside
Dictionary Deﬁnition http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/deﬁnition/english/demagogue2

Page of21 36
Trump, Bernie Sanders also serves as an apt example of postnormal
leadership, having emerged out of a need to counter the extremes of
capitalism. This pattern is mirrored in the UK, where we have a Conservative
government that has introduced austerity measures which heighten the gap
between rich and poor and created a need for a left wing leader in the more
traditional sense (as opposed to the Neoliberal approach of New Labour).
Enter; Jeremy Corbyn. It is interesting to note that both Sanders and Corbyn
are late in their political careers and may well have never anticipated taking
on such a powerful role. The extremities and contradictions of the postnormal
have allowed them to gain traction in the political arena. This is highlighted
here by journalist Freddie Sayers;
“Two grumpy old socialists from the sidelines of politics who have been saying the same
thing since the 1980s have suddenly found that, like the decade itself, they’ve come back
into fashion. To their delight and surprise they find themselves being idolised as the
standard-bearers of a new leftwing movement.” (Sayers 2016)
As a key dynamic in the postnormal, a sense of chaos dominates the political
landscapes across the globe and we have already discussed how this time of
chaos and calamity is being harnessed by those in power with support from
the media, through the creation of melodramatic narratives to create
meaning. However there is also another performative approach used by
governments to maintain power. This is the technique of creating more
confusion within the chaos so that asking questions or rebelling against the
status quo becomes increasingly difficult. In 2015, film maker Adam Curtis
produced a documentary called Bitter Lake (2015) which discussed how we
cannot make sense of the messages we receive from our governments. He
talks about one of Russian President Putin’s aides, Vladislav Surkov who has
a background in conceptual art. Curtis argues that Surkov has used his
experience with the avant-garde to stage multiple protests that purposely
blurred the line between reality and performance. Curtis states;

Page of22 36
“Surkov turned Russian politics into a bewildering, constantly changing piece of Theatre.
He sponsored all kinds of groups; from Neo-Nazi skin heads, to liberal human rights
groups. He even backed parties that were opposed to President Putin. But the key thing
was, Surkov then let it be known this was what he was doing - which meant that no one
was sure what was real or fake. As one journalist put it, it’s a strategy of power that keeps
any opposition constantly confused. a ceaseless shapeshifting that is unstoppable,
because it’s indefinable” (Curtis 2015)
Despite this seeming foreign, Curtis suggests an uncanny resemblance
between Surkov’s methods and our own government in the UK. He illustrates
this by drawing a chilling parallel between Surkov’s methods of power and our
own government in the UK. In his documentary he argues;
“Everything we’re told by journalists and politicians is confusing and contradictory….it’s an
odd, non linear world, that plays into the hands of those in power. British troops have come
home from Afghanistan, but nobody seems to know whether it was a victory, or whether it
was defeat…In Syria, we are told that president Assad is the evil enemy, but then his
enemies turn out to be even more evil than him, so we bomb them, and by doing that we
help keep Assad in power…We live with a constant vaudeville of contradictory stories that
makes it impossible for any real opposition to emerge because they can’t counter it with a
coherent narrative of their own, and it means that we as individuals become ever more
powerless, unable to challenge anything, because we live in a state of confusion and
uncertainty.” (Curtis 2015)
Considering Curtis’s view that Surkov’s methods and policies are are, in fact,
theatre, it could be argued that governments ‘perform’ calamities and
spectacles. They use fear tactics, they define a boogeyman but we cannot be
sure who the boogeyman actually is. To echo this, Sardar suggests that:
“Discretionary power is bled out of the system in favour of instant, inevitable reaction, even
when this is entirely counterproductive. We do not always know which small change is
significant, exactly what local conditions far away made it happen, or where it will
lead.” (Sardar, 2010)
"

Page of23 36
Chapter 3: The War on Terror as a Melodrama
3.1 The War on a noun
"
Terror is perhaps the most defining phenomenon of the 21st century.
Terrorism, and the ‘war on terror’ is arguably the most apt example of all three
defining aspects of the postnormal; chaos, complexity and contradiction.
Since it is a war on a concept rather than a clearly defined enemy; the goals,
victories and morality of the war against terror are as unclear as those of the
terrorists themselves. Terrorist acts such as 9/11 are complexly entangled in a
long standing involvement of the West in the political affairs of the Middle
East. The moral stance against terrorism is full of contradictions, as O’Conner
and Anderson express;
"
“The so-called war on terror, with it’s theatres in New York, London, Bali, Afghanistan and
Iraq, has taken an enormous toll on human life and on human hope. It is a war that was
not against a standing army but against a Neo-Political force of guerrillas who belonged to
no nation state but mobilised the West’s military industrial force in ‘pursuit of freedom.’ This
remains a complex war that was, and to a certain extent still is, about international esteem,
community confidence, energy supply and the place of the United States within
international power plays. Politicians have of course attempted to present the war in
simple terms: Good versus evil, democracy versus the jealous.” (O’Conner & Anderson
2015: 10-11)
Our governments have presented the ‘war on terror’ as a clear battle
between, as O’Conner and Anderson suggest, good vs evil. Jervis also
argues that the spectacle of the terrorist act has in turn made a spectacle of
demonising the ‘other’. This has become a whole new beast, or as Jervis puts
it, has created it’s own ‘cosmos’ (Jervis 2015) where we are living in a
constant ‘us and them’ or ‘East verses West’ dynamic. The war on terror plays
out like a melodrama, however the reasons behind this war remain painfully
ambiguous and the outcomes are unclear. Are we winning or losing? Because
of the complexities of the postnormal society, political representation is global,

Page of24 36
and decision making crosses over many governments, meaning it has to
negotiate differing opinion. It creates an ever growing polarisation in which
extremism proliferates on both sides.This ‘cosmos’ has forces driving it that
can’t be completely understood or explained. As Judith Butler states;
“Various terror alerts that go out over the media authorise and heighten racial hysteria in
which fear is directed anywhere and nowhere, in which individuals are asked to be on
guard but not told what to be on guard against; so everyone is free to imagine and identify
the source of terror.” (Butler 2004: 39)
To mirror Curtis’ sentiments in the previous chapter, this is a non-linear war
where the enemy is unclear and the complexity of the situation is kept at
distance to us as citizens. In his film Bitter Lake (2015), Curtis introduces the
notion of non-linear war as defined by Surkov, who uses the term ‘non- linear
war’ in a short story published under his pseudonym of Natan Dubovitsky. He
writes;
"
‘This was the first non-linear war. In the primitive wars of the nineteenth, twentieth, and
other middle centuries, the fight was usually between two sides: two nations or two
temporary alliances. But now, four coalitions collided, and it wasn’t two against two, or
three against one. It was all against all.”. (Dubovitsky 2014)
It can be argued that this chilling work of fiction mirrors the reality of the
postnormal world, with all its multiple complexities. According to Curtis,
Surkov actually deployed these tactics in Russia’s war in the Ukraine “not to
win the war but to use the conflict to create a constant state of de stabilised
perception in order to manage and control.” (Curtis 2015) The aim of a non
linear war is therefore to create confusion, uncertainty and anxiety so that no
clear or considered view about the conflict can be reached. The ‘war on
terror’ displays the characteristics of a non-linear war. It is a new form of
conflict, fighting against a concept rather than a clearly identified enemy. We
see this concern expressed by O’Conner and Anderson when they say;

Page of25 36
“The never-ending nature of the war, centred within the antagonisms and hurts of
generations of mistrust and accelerating grievance, presage an age where notions of
‘mission accomplished’ are mirages…. The world seems to be too complex for even
complex solutions. Instead, a sense of ennui, of paralysing ineptitude and moral
indifference, of populations rendered as mere spectators of and on the world, is not some
temporary phase rather it is an entropic version of the postnormal world.” (O’Conner &
Anderson 2015: 12)
In the confused and anxious climate of the postnormal, the government
imposes ever more restrictive policies that often undermine democracy.
Extremism flourishes both in its Islamic and conservative forms and complex
issues are presented in ever more binary ways. To make sense of the
confusion the notion of ‘us and ‘them’ is highlighted. As Judith Butler argues;
“The derealisation of the “Other” means that it is neither alive nor dead, but interminably
spectral. The infinite paranoia that imagines the war against terror as a war without end
will be one that justifies itself endlessly in relation to the spectral infinity of its enemy,
regardless of whether or not there are established grounds to suspect the continuing
operation of terror cells with violent aims.” (Butler 2004: 33-34)
While governments and the media feed us the narrative of good verses evil,
the actions of ‘counter terrorism’ seem to go unchecked. Following the
terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13th 2015, President Hollande stated
that; “Terrorism will not destroy France because France will destroy
it.” (Hollande 2015). Despite being France and Britain being democracies, the
subsequent bombings of Syria by France and Britain was not a
democratically decided course of action, and the results and consequences of
these raids have never been made clear to us as citizens. Homeland security
efforts across Europe and the US create theatre out of carrying AK-47’s in
public places, but this seems to do very little to stop actual terror attacks. Our
civil liberties are compromised and our lives are under surveillance, instead of
making us feel safe we feel constantly ill at ease.
"

Page of26 36
3.2 The spectacle of Terror
"
In this section I will be exploring the key ways in which terrorism intersects
with performance studies. It is indisputable that terrorism is a governing
aspect of 21st century life, and perhaps arguably the most grotesque
performative tool utilised amidst the political chaos of postnormal society.
A terrorist act is the ultimate mass spectacle and has all the dynamics that the
performance of the spectacle hopes to achieve; visual impact, shock, awe
which holds the attention of its audience not just during the spectacle but for
repeated viewings after the event. Jervis argues that terrorist acts are
sublime; they are spectacular, awesome, terrible and have the ability to
transmit subconscious moral messages. He likens 9/11 to a spectacle that
echoes the melodrama of hollywood movies, a fear inducing battle of good
and evil that most of us witnessed from safe place. Why is this melodramatic
narrative now so intrinsic to postnormal life? Jervis writes;"
"
“[Melodrama is] a culminating form of the ‘spectacle of sensation’, engaging the audience’s
sympathetic response to the necessarily innocent victim, together with anger at the villain,
but in a context of sensationalism the spectacular: it is about moral absolutes, battles of
good and evil, in an arena of ‘special effects’ that incorporates the full resources of
technology.” (Jervis 2015: 7)"
"
It could be argued that the preceding period of modernity, with it’s secular
outlook and rejection of moral and religious judgement has resulted in
‘badness is falling away from goodness’ (Jervis 2015), and as a result evil
needs to be ‘called up’ so as to establish a clear value system that is simple
and easy to comprehend. The result is a fear of ‘the other’. It is one of the
many complex and contradictory paradoxes of the post modern existence. An
advanced society that engages in a relentless pursuit of evil, a melodramatic
‘war on terror’. As Jervis says;"

Page of27 36
"
“Melodrama seems to have become a crucial factor in shaping our contemporary
perceptions, corresponding as it does to the sense of diffuse threats and conspiracies, the
imperative to blame, the escalation of moral dilemmas to simpliﬁed moral absolutes, the
stigmatisation of unacceptable otherness, and the sense of excess that have become
central to mediated culture.” (Jervis 2015: 7) "
"
Let us now delve deeper into how terrorism intersects with performance. As
with any performance, there must be an audience or spectators to view and
interpret what’s happening and to enable the feeling of fear and terror on a
large scale. Terrorists do not intended solely to kill, but also to make a
spectacle. Terrorist groups work with minimal resources to create a
performance that has the maximum impact. Their goals have little or no
widespread support and they work without a large budget or access to
expertise or media coverage (Hill 2010). Despite these limited resources,
their goal is to propel their message onto the global stage and capture the
attention of a worldwide audience. They do this through death and destruction
and they aim to evoke a response of fear in their audience. They want the
scale of the spectacle to be as large as possible so that the fear of the
audience manifests quickly and has scale to grow. For example with 9/11, the
planes could have been blown up earlier in the flight. However by crashing
the planes into the World Trade Centre, they created an iconic moment of
‘perverse beauty’. The following description and analysis of being a spectator/
audience member of the 9/11 performance by photographer Justin Beal
illustrates this point;
"
“What I remember most vividly was a feeling of excitement. This may sound perverse, but
it was the most beautiful thing i had ever seen. The sky that morning was bluer and clearer
than I had ever seen it before and the explosion was a brilliant cadmiun orange; two fields
of colour- spectral opposites- interrupted by the hard metallic verticals of the building. The
composition of the visual image coupled with the sound, vibration, smell, and heat was an
overwhelmingly sensual experience. It was precisely the terror/ ecstasy phenomenon that

Page of28 36
Burke and Kant employed to explain the sublime. It was sublime in the sense of Burke’s
definition…’the experience of the sublime is so overwhelming it makes reasoning
impossible.’ ” (Beal, 2002; 26)
"
This is exactly the response the performance aims to elicit. The theatre of the
terrorist act can even be likened to the Theatre of Cruelty movement, which
has its origins in the avant-garde and surrealism. It was developed by Antonin
Artaud, who’s book The Theatre and its Double (1938) laid out the Theatre of
Cruelty as a manifesto. He wanted to create theatre that would be felt by all
the senses of the audience, as well as on a conscious and subconscious
level. Artaud was responding to deep feelings of scepticism towards society’s
structures and felt a need to break away from tradition. He wanted theatre
that would allow the audience to experience an “immediate violent
action” (Artaud 1938). These motivations are not far removed from those of
terrorists. They want to make a statement against the dominant global
systems, and they want the violence the citizen-audience experience to be
visceral and disturbing. However where Artaud’s cruelty was ritualised, the
cruelty of terrorism is horrifically real.
"
The immediate audience, or those who are present during the terrorist act,
are kept entirely in the dark about how, when or where the performance is to
take place (Hill 2010). The action is therefore very immediate, unexpected
and all consuming. With terrorism so widespread and fuelled by a seemingly
never ending stream of conflicting information about past, present and future
acts of terrorism, everyday life is now veiled with uncertainly. The possibility
of witnessing a terrorist act as an audience member is ever present. It is
interesting that this form of immediate and unexpected theatre with an
unknown goal has become increasingly common in popular culture. The ‘flash
mob’ shares some of the theatrical components of terrorism and is a common
form of street theatre in the postnormal world. However the similarities end
there. Terrorist acts seek to cause irreversible damage on the immediate

Page of29 36
surroundings, on the audience and often on the terrorists themselves, who
are willing to perform the greatest sacrifice. The ‘stage’ is usually a busy city
centre where maximum disruption is guaranteed. The choice is usually
somewhere globally known, somewhere iconic; Paris, London, New York.
This provides a global stage and audience for the terrorists. During the
performance audience members can unwittingly become what Dr Sarah Hill
refers to in her thesis -Performing Politics: Representation and Deliberation in
the Public Sphere -as “victims-as-props” who, like the terrorists themselves,
often lose their lives as part of the terrorism act. She goes on to argue that
those victims are give a level of anonymity which then allows the greater
citizen- audience to transpose ourselves into the role, telling ourselves ‘it
could have been me’. With the city centre location, daily life itself in attacked.
Hill states;
"
‘The performing bodies of the victim-performers were thus used as props to represent not
only the political dissent of the terrorists but their government and the citizens that elected
it. By killing them in this way, the terrorist-performers objectified the performing bodies of
the victims and used them as platforms to communicate symbolically to the
audience.” (Hill, 2010: 332)
"
This larger citizen- audience aids the spreading of the terror to all mediums -
TV, news media, social media, film, making every aspect of the terrorist act
accessible to almost anyone. The attacks usually take place in the morning,
which means that news of the attack is streamed throughout the day (Hill
2010). While the performance itself may be relatively short, perhaps one or
two hours long, the duration of the act is replayed and elaborated with
additional layers of context across the day and following days via the media.
At this point the traditional media begins to support their cause by repeating
images of the performance on news feeds and in newspapers, thereby
fuelling the fear. For example, after the Paris attacks, key cities across the
west showed their solidarity by projecting the french flag onto significant

Page of30 36
buildings. It’s interesting how quickly this was orchestrated as a public
spectacle that fuelled the message of ‘us vs them’. Just as Jervis states, the
media transpose the narrative of the melodrama. Social media feeds become
filled with messages of horror and terror and are shared across the world
instantaneously. What Sardar calls a ‘self organised panic’ is created and the
world is thrown into the dynamic of chaos. As Anderson sums up so
succinctly;
"
“There is no doubt that mobile technology and the Internet are driving much of this new
performance terrorism.” (Anderson 2014)
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"

Page of31 36
Conclusion
"
Throughout this enquiry I have portrayed a convergence between Sardar’s
theory of postnormal times and the prominence of performance techniques
which aid the political and social discourse of ‘us verse them’ that frames
society in the 21st Century. We saw how Jervis’s theory of the dramatisation
of the modern world frequently overlapped with Sardar’s philosophy of the
postnormal. I have demonstrated that the precarious and chaotic political
climate of the times that we live in not only play into the hands of those in
power, but in fact are, in themselves, a performance tool implemented to
secure power in the precarious political landscape which acts as a framework
of the postnormal society.
We can see evidence of this particularly in the second chapter, where I
explored how the media is continually performing a melodramatic narrative to
the citizen- audience, who have a desire to hear the story of good verses evil
to feel safe in uncertain times. The spectacle is becoming an increasingly
commonplace performance in postnormal times, particularly the terrorist act.
It provides a framework for melodrama and is experienced by the citizen-
audience on many levels that are both sensory and emotional. The action is
then replayed multiple times to reinforce the storytelling. Neoliberal
governments use the performance of the spectacle to their continual
advantage. There are glimmers of political empowerment and sense of
agency amongst the citizen- audience who become citizen-performers
through engagement with activism online and via the theatre of the protest.
However overall it can be argued that postnormal politics have been reduced
to a pantomime with a plot line of fear and hatred of the ‘other’ perpetuated by
the bombardment of media which is streamed continually into our lives in this
technological age.

Page of32 36
Finally, in chapter 3, I have presented the paradox that the ‘war on terror’ is
portrayed as a linear war where the forces of good vs evil are at play, where
as in reality it is a non-linear war that makes little sense. Melodrama has
become the narrative of terrorism, it attempts to offer clear answers and
conclusions but in actual fact feeds into a climate of fear and chaos in the
postnormal world. To revisit my opening reference to 9/11, this spectacle was
the catalyst used to justify the ‘war on terror’, and subsequently the narrative
of good verses bad - a narrative communicated by governments and
reinforced by the media. Neoliberal governments use the narrative of
melodrama to tell us this is a justified war. Sardar and Curtis challenge these
beliefs. War should be a case of victory and defeat; this is the narrative of the
melodrama which we have been fed. However this war on a noun has no
clear winners or losers, the ‘us and them’ is confusing, we are never sure who
is who. We are in a cloud somewhere between reality and narrative, where
our private lives are made public, and where we are all ‘the other’, being
constantly monitored for dissent or radicalisation. Governments condone
these compromises on our civil liberties because they are protecting us from
evil of terrorism. But who’s narrative is correct? Both government and terrorist
feel that they are vindicated in their opinion and are performing their opposing
sides in this melodrama that we, as the audience, are spectating.
These are difficult times in which to live and we do not yet have the benefit of
retrospection. On reflection, it would be fair to conclude that the postnormal
society in which we live is bewildering in its complexity, and it would be
tempting to complete this piece of work with a feeling of hopelessness.
However, Sardar does offer some constructive suggestions on how we can
progress as a global society. Instead of blindly following the narrative of the
melodrama, and putting all our ills of the shoulders of the ‘other’ so that we
can race towards a conclusive and rational ending, we need to accept the
complications and confusions of our times. Sardar argues that, in fact, we
need ethics and morality just as much as logic and reasoning. But we need to

Page of33 36
be modest, and acknowledge that there are multiple, complex belief systems
in this world that should be heard. There is no single right answer to the
world’s problems, there is no ‘monopoly on truth’ as Sardar says. Humility and
modesty will help us to accept that and to listen to others. Finally we must be
held accountable for the world in which we live, and take responsibility for
caring for this world, with all it’s diversity and complexity.
"
"
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"
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