Act 1
Scene 7 Enron & The Septet
In this section varieties of Enron spectacles are analyzed using the dramatistic
elements. For Aristotle (350 BCE) spectacle was the least important of six dramatic
elements (plot, character, theme, dialog, rhythm, & spectacle). Kenneth Burke (1945:
231) aligns Aristotle’s (350BCE) six Poetics elements with the five dramatistic terms of
the Pentad. Burke’s “plot would correspond to act,” “character would correspond to
agent,” theme to purpose, dialog and rhythm combine in agency, and spectacle is classed
under scene. In short, Burke redesigned Aristotle’s six elements into the now famous
Pentad of dramatist elements (act, agent, agency, scene & purpose). I would like to
follow a different approach, keeping part of Aristotle and Burke, but putting them into a
more postmodern template, I call the “Septet.” In this chapter, I develop a Septet
dramatism to decode spectacle theatrics (plots, characters, themes, dialogs, rhythms,
spectacles, & frames) of Enron.
Septet - I propose a 7-element model for studying spectacles using dramaturgical
methods. The model contextualizes spectacles within the dramatist elements of plots,
characterizations, themes, dialogs, rhythms, and frames (but defines them differently than
Aristotle or Burke). I restore several Aristotelian elements, such as plot, character, dialog,
and rhythm that Burke’s Pentad (act, agent, purpose, agency, and scene) combined or
disregarded. I intend a more critical postmodern dramaturgy that can contrast spectacles
of corporate theatrics. Besides Burke and Aristotle, I look to Boal and Debord to derive
seven elements of dramatist in capitalism, or the Septet. Table 1 summaries the terms of
Aristotle, Burke, and my proposal.
Table 1: Poetic, Pentad, and Septet Grammars
Poetic (Aristotle)
1. Plot
2. Character
3. Theme
4. Dialog
5. Rhythm
6. Spectacle
* Frame of Mind of
spectator
Pentad (Burke)
1. Act
2. Agent
3. Purpose
4. Agency
4. Agency
5. Scene
* Frame
Septet
1. Plots
2. Characterizations
3. Themes
4. Dialogs
5. Rhythms
6. Spectacles
7. Frames
Key: * = Discussed, but not one of their main dramaturgical elements (Source of
Table, Boje, 2002c).
Boal (1979), bends Aristotle's Poetics, but takes it along a much more critical postmodern
turn, while integrating Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed with Poetics into a Poetics of
the Oppressed. We will look at this turn in subsequent chapters. Boal suggests that
spectators can be invited to become actors on the stage, or actors can invade the audience.
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In Boal’s (1991) terms spectators become actors critically reflecting upon their
complicity in situations of oppression as spect-actors.
I add an element that Burke (1972: 23) says; "many times on later occasions” he
"regretted" not including Fame to his Pentad. Aristotle (350 BCE: 1356a: 2) in Rhetoric
also addresses the concept of Frame (defined differently), but also does not list it as one
of the Poetic elements. For Aristotle frame is “putting the audience into a certain frame of
mind” (Rhetoric, 1356a: 2). Burke (1937 Attitudes Toward History), on the other hand,
views frame as a more macro viewpoint, as dialectic between "Frames of
Acceptance" and "Frames of Rejection."
In Table 3 I derive each term in Aristotle, then show how it is revised in Burke,
and how it could be resituated for contemporary use in our study of Enron leaders and
other characters whose various plots, themes, dialogs, and rhythms interact with the
spectacles we will explore. Terms in parentheses (such as Fable, Agent, Thought, Diction
& Melody) are alternative terms used by Aristotle. It is important to note that the
meaning of terms in Table 1 has changed across the centuries. The Septet terms form, I
hope, a grammar of corporate theatre as well as a grammar that can be applied to
situations of oppression. Table 2 offers a more detailed derivation and definition of the 7
elements of the Septet. For the first element, I prefer Plots to Burke’s Acts since plot is
constituted by the incidents in the story. For Aristotle these incidents arouse pity and fear
in spectators, and in contemporary leadership studies, would constitute a form of control.
Characters, to me, has more utility than Agents, since characters can change their
personages or masks during dramatic performance. Themes and Purposes are used by
Burke and Aristotle in similar ways. For me Themes get at cartharsis and theme analysis
is worked out by Freire (1970) in ways that are dramaturgical, and useful to the present
study. Dialogs and Rhythms are both aspects of Agency for Burke. I prefer to treat them
separately. Dialogs can be scripted and used to persuade and to control. Rhythms were
too obvious for Aristotle to comment upon, but I propose that there is more going on than
just patterned speech or melody. Rather, rhythm is part of self-organizing processes that
affect the emergence and demise of spectacles. Spectacles, for me, has more to offer to
the present analysis, than Scenes. Spectacles have scenes, but there is more to spectacle
than what the costumier does, or the situational backdrop to characters, plots, and other
elements. Finally, Frames, is for Aristotle the “frames of mind” of spectators, and for
Burke, the worldviews, that constitute the dialectic trajectory of social and dramatic
action. Aristotle and Burke have different theories of dialectic. For Aristotle, the dialectic
worked toward progress. For Burke, the dialectic is Frames of Acceptance opposed by
Frames of Rejection. In sum, I believe that the seven elements in Table 2 provide a way
to more fully analyze spectacles.
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Table 2: The Septet Grammar
SEPTET
1. Plots – (or Fable) - to “act” says Aristotle is “dran” (1448b: 35).i[i] Plot is “the incidents
of the story” (1450a: 15) and the “construction of a story” (1450a: 36); the “combination of
the incidents, or things done in the story” (1450a: 4-4). Plot is the way stories are framed
(1449b: 5). In tragedy, included incidents arouse pity and fear in the spectators (1453b: 1),
who then purge themselves of tragic flaws viewed in the play (e.g. seeing the suffering by
some deed of horror or error of judgment). In comedy, the bitterest enemies walk off good
friends at the end of their conflict. Episodic plots are not as tightly wound.
2. Characters – (or Agent) - “agents” says Aristotle, are “either good men or bad – the
diversities of human character being nearly always derivative from this primary distinction,
since the line between virtue and vice is one dividing the whole of mankind” (1448a: 1).
Agents are the “personages” [that] act the story” (1448b: 30). Agents are the actors who “act
the stories” (1449b: 31). “Character is what makes us ascribe certain moral qualities to the
agents” (1450a: 5). “Character in a play is that which reveals the moral purpose of the
agents, i.e. the sort of thing they seek or avoid…” (1450b: 8; also 1454a: 18).
3. Themes – (or Thought) – Like purpose for Burke, “Thought is shown in all they [agents]
say when proving a particular point” (1450a: 6, bracketed additions mine). “Thought, i.e. the
power of saying whatever can be said, or what is appropriate to the occasion” (1450b: 5). A
tragic theme is a catharsis of the emotions of pity and fear in the spectators (1449b: 25).
Thought (theme) says Aristotle is already developed elsewhere in “Art of Rhetoric” (1456a:
35). Freire (1970) develops thematic analyses of oppression.
4. Dialogs – (or Diction) – Dialog is the “means of their [i.e. stories’] imitation” (1449b:
31, bracketed addition mine). Dialog (and Rhythm) for Burke are agency. Dialog means
“merely this, the composition of the verses” (1449b: 34), the “expression of their [agent’s]
thoughts in words” (1450b: 14, bracketed additions, mine). Dialog for Aristotle is the
Rhetoric of persuasion.
5. Rhythms – (or Melody) is “what is too completely understood to require explanation:
(1449b: 35). Rhythm is the “means of their [i.e. stories’] imitation” (1449b: 31, bracketed
addition mine); i.e. it is agency. It is the “greatest of pleasurable accessories of Tragedy”
(1450b: 15). We know rhythm now as self-organizing, as chaotic perturbations, or repetitive
cycles.
6. Spectacles – “stage appearance of the actors” (1449b: 31). It is “an attraction, is the least
artistic of all the parts, and has least to do with the art of poetry… the getting-up of the
Spectacle is more a matter for the costumier than the poet” (1450b: 16-20). “The tragic fear
and pity may be aroused by Spectacle…” (1453b: 1) but producing the effect by Spectacle
rather than choice of acts in a plot, “is less artistic, and requires extraneous aid” (1453b: 6).
Once the least important, it is now the most important. For Debord (1967) spectacle is the
basis of capitalism. Types of spectacle include concentrated, diffuse, integrated and mega
(Best & Kellner, 1997, 2001).
7. Frames - For Aristotle, the spectators have "frames of mind" that characters and plots
seek to persuade through dialog and rhythm. For Burke (1937) Frame is a worldview, what
we now call grand narratives. For Burke the Frames of Acceptance and Frames of Rejection
are in dialectic interaction.
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-Source, Boje, 2002c, d for derivation of the Septet.
Freire and Boal have expanded upon Aristotle in ways that are different from Burke. For
example, for Freire and Boal, the (Frames) dialectic is a thesis of oppression opposed by
the antithesis of resistance to oppression. In dialog, people can improve their
consciousness of material conditions of situations of oppression (Freire, 1970; Boal,
1979). The bureaucratic leader, for example, seeks to change the situation of oppression
mechanistically by coming up with rules and procedures. The dialogic leader seeks to
raise questions about false consciousness of reality, or the necessity of transformation of
dramatic action. Both types of leaders revise and direct scripts of organizational theatre.
Boal builds upon Aristotle’s poetics to craft a Poetics of the Oppressed:
In order to understand this poetics of the oppressed one must keep in mind
its main objective: to change the people – “spectators,” passive being(s) in
the theatrical phenomenon – into subjects, into actors, transformers of the
dramatic action (Boal, 1979: 122).
I submit that Enron’s rise and collapse transformed the dramatic action, if not the plot of
the NewFree Market Economy. In this section varieties of Enron spectacles are analyzed
using the dramatistic elements in Table 2, the Septet. The Septet is a grammar for looking
at how elements of plots, characters, themes, dialogs, rhythms, and frames constitute
spectacle dynamics. We have already examined how concentrated and diffuse spectacles
can emerge into megaspectacles. Here we look at the Septet dramatist elements of that
process.
Plots – Spectacle plots are antenarrative and intertextual. Each plot is an arbitrary
choice from a spectrum of possible emplotments. Enron has all the plots of an episode of
"Dallas" with tragedy, comedy, satire, and occasional romantic triumph. In fact, due to
the cultural megaspectacle status of Enron, at least one studio is planning a made-for-TV
movie about Enron (Mullen, 2002: 10). They there is Hollywood: “Would-be
moviemakers still have their pick of potential plots: Is it a hubris-driven business tragedy,
a morality play, a presidential scandal? Or is it a Sept. 11-calibre wake-up call for
capitalism itself?” (Williamson, 2002: 20). A key tragedy is the suicide of former Enron
vice-chairman J. Clifford Baxter. Enron’s partnerships have been a comedy of errors.
Enron is the reversal of fortune plot line. At some point, the market goddess Fortuna, stop
letting Enron win every spin of her wheel of fortune. Enron’s alchemy failed, and gold
turned into lead. Enron plots range from romantic, tragic, and comedic to satiric and
ironic. The plot is expressed in spectacles in the dialog, in the assemblage of characters,
and in the acts that constitute the story. The acts of the plot would include creative
accounting, insider trading, political influence-buying that reached far into Republican
and Democratic parties, shredding documents, and the aftermath of new rules and
regulations in an post-Enron era. The plot is also express in the hubris of the characters.
Characters - Rounding up the usual suspects includes such characters as
Chairman Kenneth L. Lay, former CEO Jeffrey Skilling, former Chief Financial Officer
Andrew Fastow, members of Enron's audit committee, Board of Directors of Enron, and
the partners at Arthur Andersen and the Vinson & Elkins law firm. Some emplotments
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include President George W. Bush, White House Economic Adviser Lawrence B.
Lindsey, and Vice-President Dick Cheney. As we saw characters in concentrated and
diffuse spectacles are straight out of Star Wars. Enron formed a partnership called
Chewco Investments, named after the woolly Star Wars character. In antenarrative
fashion, spectacle characters morph. President Bush's description of embattled Enron
CEO Kenneth Lay went from "Kenny Boy" to "Mr. Lay" to "a supporter" (Britt, 2002).
Skilling once the hero of the New economy is now the villain.
Themes – Themes in Enron spectacles focus around hubris, greed (even fraud),
and reversal of fortunes. Freire proposes a thematic methodology that future studies can
adapt to the investigation of Enron spectacles. Each spectacle is a “thematic universe” in
what Freire (1970: 86) defines as a complex of “generative themes.” To the participants
in Enron Spectacles, the thematic universe is “dense, impenetrable, and enveloping”
(Freire, 1970: 94-95). Spectacles are an antenarrative plurality, where themes are
generated, transformed, and dissolved (Boje, 2001a). From a critical postmodern view,
‘Reality’ and ‘Spectacle’ co-evolve in dialectic interaction and co-emergence, but they
can get out of step. The antenarrative quality of themes is that they are not isolated, but
are intertextually connected, dynamic, interpenetrating and rich in dialectic contradiction.
The thematic fan of Enron spectacles range from greed, deception, arrogance, cronyism,
influence-peddling, insider trading to whistle blowing and current reforms to the game of
capitalism. There are tax reforms: Enron paid only $17 million in taxes in 1998, nothing
in 1999 or in 2000. There is insider trading: Former PGE executives Ken Harrison and
Joseph Hirko cashed in more than $110 million in Enron stock options before the
collapse, while hundreds of PGE employees lost their life savings while locked into a 401
(k) plan that consisted of 58 percent Enron stock, now essentially worthless (Bourdieu,
2002). A highly significant theme is Enron 401 (k) pensions: Enron and many State
pension employees had a preponderance of Enron stock in their 401(k) retirement plans.
At Enron, employees under 50 were unable to sell stock given them at a time when Enron
stock plummeted, reducing large retirement funds to nothing. Enron employees “who
thought they were millionaires, and that they could get another million by putting 10% of
their pay into company stock, quickly were parted from their delusion” (Donlon, 2002:
39. Each limit-situation of spectacle is a socially constructed reality where people
fragment into different areas (and sub-areas), and can engage quite opposite themes and
tasks without awareness of the contradictions and situation limits of oppression.
Dialog - For Aristotle, dialog was rhetoric, and was the means for expressing
themes and plots. Business Week (March 4, 2002: 18) put it this way, “There'll be a flurry
of rhetoric about tighter accounting rules and more responsible corporate boards. And
then a long silence until the next time.” Dialogic codes (situated language categories)
accomplish participants’ state of submersion into Spectacle Sometimes rhetoric and
wanton arrogance backfires:
Former Enron chief Kenneth Lay, having cleverly (as he thought) tasked
his wife to reform his public image on national television, apparently
reached the conclusion that simply declining invitations to appear before
congressional committees (and blaming the rough rhetoric of lawmakers
appearing on the Sunday talk shows for his having done so) sounded like a
fine idea. The resulting subpoenas quickly issued from House and Senate
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committees indicated it was not such a fine idea after all (Hickey, 2002:
10).
Aristotle includes the use of metaphor, “giving the thing a name that belongs to
something else; the transference being either from genus to species, or from species to
genus, or from species to species, or on ground of analogy” (1457b: 6) and “a good
metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars” (1549a: 5).
The dialog of Enron is also about naming its adventures. Enron financial techie's,
for example, had a fondness for Star Wars and Jurassic Park lingo. JEDI, as in Jedi
knight, stands for Joint Energy Development Investments. JEDI prospered-the Force
must have been with it-as Enron deftly bought and sold energy stocks, power plants and
other investments, earning a 23 percent annual return (Sloan, 2002). Like the movie,
JEDI had a sequel, JEDI II. The problem for Enron was to keep JEDI I off the balance
sheets while it ramped up JEDI II. “Making JEDI I part of Enron would have cut the
company's reported profits sharply, and increased its reported debt by more than $500
million” (Sloan, 2002). To solve this problem, Enron ginned up Chewco Investments-as
in Chewbacca the Wookiee, a partnership of Enron executives and some undisclosed
outsiders. Condor and Raptor are deal names inspired by Jurassic Park. “Enron had
booked huge profits from these entities while its stock price soared in 2000, despite the
fact that neither Condor nor Raptor had any hard assets” (Duffy, 2002).
Executives may create spectacles that fill passive consciousness with slogans, like
“loose-tight.” Jeffrey Skilling, for example, was recruited from McKinsey consulting,
and named the world of Enron in the “loose-tight” managerial language expounded by
other McKinsey alums, such as Tom Peters and Bob Waterman (London & McNulty,
2001).
Political dialog appropriates Enron rhetorical devices. For example, Daschle, last
January is quoted as saying Bush was trying to "Enron" Social Security and leave seniors
without retirement savings. Enronites, Enronitis, and being En-roned are part of the
popular discourse. To “Enronize” means to hide fiscal shortcomings with creative
accounting. An “Enronic” is a seemingly invincible person who goes down in flames.
“Enronica” is the name given to E-bay items being sold as souvenirs. “Enrontia” is a
burning desire to shred things. “Enronomania” is political scandal and economic fallout.
“Enrontropy” is the principle that a corporation's greed is directly proportional to how
many lives its failure would ruin (items adapted from Zielbauer, 2002).
Rhythm – I am most excited about resituating Aristotle’s rhythm for
contemporary spectacle analysis. Aristotle thought rhythm (melody, harmony) to be too
self-evident to merit explanation (1449b: 35). What is rhythm? Rhythm is defined here,
as the interaction of order and chaos, flowing, symmetry and asymmetry, improvisation
and repetitive recurring patterns. Rhythm can be (1) seasonal, cyclical, periodic; (2)
linear, with sequential alterations and durations; (3) display patterns that are more
chaotic. The study of rhythm would now include self-organizing systems, improv, chaos,
and complexity theories of spectacle organizing. Spectacle rhythm can be the selforganizing urge of nature and its rhythm manifest through the motion, interaction and
evolutionary potential; it can also be a self-organizing motion of organizing and
emergence of inter-spectacle complexity. Spectacles and “campaigns unfold over time
with a rhythm that slowly builds a foundation, gathers gradual momentum with
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preliminary peaks, culminates in a climax when the campaign is won or lost, and then
achieves resolution” (Ganz, 2000).
Rhythm can mean providing space for improvisation, experimentation with
alternative rhythms (Barrett, 1998; Hatch, 1998; Peplowski, 1998; Weick, 1998; Zack,
2000). The rise of Enron was an experimentation of alternative rhythms. And there was a
good deal of improvisation by Enron, Anderson, and entities such as Raptor and Condor.
Enron can be said to possess a rhythmic profile, a hybridity of repetitive, complex, and
chaotic rhythms. There is also rhythmic succession, moving from simple to more
complex rhythmic profiles (morphing from utility company to energy trader). My
proposition, then, is rhythm, then, in contemporary times is much more important than
fifth place in Aristotle’s hierarchy of importance. There is a rhythmic construction to
organizations, organizing, emergence, and change that is difficult to manage.
The rise, collapse, and aftermath of Enron spectacles has its own rhythm. Enron
and Arthur Anderson shook the reputation of Wall Street, the accounting profession,
deregulation in the energy industry, Whitehouse and Congress, if not the entire discourse
of American capitalism. On January 10, when Bush officials revealed that Enron had
sought its help, Philip M. Schiliro, top aide to Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-CA, is quoted
as saying, "This is the perfect storm," something the democrats need to counter Bush
administration popularity (Cohen, Victor, & Baumann, 2002).
The rhythm of capitalism relies on the covering rhetoric of self-regulation.
However, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), for example,
seldom expels members for malpractice or incompetence. “For years, the independent
Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has been deliberating changes that would
have disallowed some of Enron's more controversial practices” (McTague, 2002: 16).
The SEC is too under-budget and under staffed to regulate complex Raptor, Condor, and
JEDI I and II transactions.
Frames – Frames are ideological perspectives expressed through dramatics.
Concentrated and diffuse spectacles become limit-situations or frames uncritical thinking
and untested feasibility. Enron's damage to individual lives, to the national well being, to
confidence in the economy, and the stock market is tragic, but not necessarily criminal.
For Burke, Frames of Acceptance (comedic and tragic) are in dialectic relation to Frames
of rejection (grotesque and burlesque). The Grotesque is "something like humor-with-thelaughter-omitted" (Burke, 1937: cf p. 76). Marx and critical theorists set about
debunking and de-veiling the capitalist Frame to expose the Grotesque and Burlesque. As
we have seen, Enron spectacles exhibit all this. There is a frame of acceptance of the
tragic greed that led to the collapse of Enron and the tragic consequences of investors and
employees. The tragic Frame of Acceptance is that the system of checks and balances
that would control the gap between rhetoric and reality is unfixable; Enron collapse
reveals grotesque flaws in the way American capitalism circumvents its won checks and
balances. Burke (1937) sought to overcome the one-sidedness of tragic frames with more
comedic ones he saw in Nietzsche’s writing. It is comic the way politicians are returning
Enron contributions, giving them to Arthur Andersen who is setting up relief funds for
former Enron employees who lost on the Enron Wheel of Fortune. Comedic frames look
at how accountants, brokers, the media, and government officials pass the bock for the
collapse of Enron.
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Spectacles - Concentrated and diffuse spectacles can become integrated.
Antenarratively, a few can emerge into megaspectacles. But, once the fetish for scandal is
quenched, the megaspectacle devolves into just more concentrated and diffuse ones. As
in Nietzsche’s Eternal Return, the history of capitalism is a recurrence of megaspectacles,
followed by promised reforms, then business-as-usual.
The Septet elements constitute a critical postmodern dramaturgical perspective.
Each element has antenarrative flight. Plots are intertextual, characters are multiple,
dialogs are persuasive, rhythms have a self-organizing pace, frames are dialectic, and
spectacles are dynamic occurrences in the Theatrics of Capitalism.
The Septet of dramatist elements morphs along antenarrative trajectories. For
example, the greed spectacle changes its plot, incorporates and rejects characters, themes,
with shifts in dialog, rhythm, and ideological framing. What begins as executive greed
becomes linked to political influence spectacles, and is reframed as a collapse of
professional accounting standards, and then reframed as proof that free market
capitalism’s invisible hand is a charade.
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