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Essay on Drama

Drama in itself is a true reflection of society and is used to display and teach morals as well as highlight and warn of vices among people in the community. This is one of its core importance is to question the validity of norms that are easily accepted by persons in society. Other functions of drama include educating and recreation. Ages ago, drama presented itself in the form of narratives and musical dramatizations. In present day, drama has evolved, both in form of presentation and content as times change. With technology, drama has adopted images and films for purposes of presentation.

The myths presented in the earlier day dramas were secure, reliable and easily followed the common laws in most cases. These however have lost most of their appeal to the modern day man. The contemporary man and woman, especially in the Western World have become disillusioned and have modified the myths. Man’s capacity for evil and cruelty has been refined to the extreme by the technology.

Modernity, in a way, goes contrary to the ancient societal beliefs and is gaining popularity at a high rate. This is due to its appeal to the youth, who make up a larger number of the population. It offers an open challenge to the mythologies presented and some of the moral presented largely go against the norms. These changes have occurred across all drama age brackets and other fields too, with children’s and adult-social morals being the most corrupted. This is as a result of the concept of change, open-mindedness and twisting of ideologies to come up with something new for a given audience.

In the modern world now, the environment within which children are being brought up differs completing with that which those in the past grew in. It is an ancient myth that children where to learn morals and tradition through local dramas and other form of art. Things the kids learn include responsibility, socializing, respect, duty among many other admirable traits. Taking the Cinderella production, children learn that they ought to be active around the household, all other factors of the mistreatment withdrawn.

This mythology has been challenged largely in what can be termed as urban mythology. Modern drama presents a picture of all fun for the kids, and more often than not, with a lot of mischief. It focuses less on the child’s growth and experiences and is not advantageous. Such are largely less involving for adults and other caretakers which are a bit less hectic for them. A television series like ‘Kid Nation’ seems to create an adult set-up for kids by inter-twining risks, adventures and discoveries.

The element of duty has been completely overthrown in the new kid drama. This makes it hard for any kid to take responsibility. Worse, there is a certain perspective that seems to come out, that giving house chores counts as child labor which is not the case at all.

The Ancient stories of kings, queens, heroes and demons had plain aspect in olden times, but now, they can be presented with the element of more eloquence for an audience. The storytellers had the task to create imaginary worlds in the minds of the audience using words and sounds and appeals to all other senses with the exception of sight. The landscape, the physique of the creatures, their demeanor and character had to be envisioned in the mind of the person in the audience.

But with the digital age, an audience seated in front of a screen, watching a moving has the visual element is fully implemented with the help of technology. The mythical heroes and demons come to life right in front of the eyes of the audience. The sped and the flow of the story are far much intrusting and appealing. Technological developments have brought mythical stories to the silver screen, much better with color and clarity making it very existing to be part of the urban mythology. This new art that is a form of pleasure is important in our lives in this postmodern world and in a way helps people to understand their past in a way and know how to live.

All the dramatic techniques that are applied in urban mythology either involve a change in the content of the original drama or application of technology to attract more people to the arts and drama. It is important though to hold on to the original dramatic techniques for preservation of culture. In cases where content is modified to suit certain age groups, attention has to be taken so as not to deform the original piece.

Certainly, modernity changed the face of drama and mythology completely. In many part of the world that have been influenced by modernity and western civilization myths are no longer an integral part of drama. The ancient myths which are some time used to create modern dram through cinematic such the tales Achilles, Hercules and other are only used to spice up the story lines and make them interesting. In other word myths have been commoditized and are used to make money through movies and comics. Children can no longer draw meaningful lessons from myths. Notably, technology has been the greatest single source of influence on mythology and drama. When movies started being produced in mass for the ever increasing audience mythology alone could not provide adequate stories for movie production. And with the change in human values over time significance of myths in drama is bound to continue changing.