Graduation Speeches And Greek Tragedies
Cathartic Endings in "Bye Bye Baby" and "The Hollow Men"
T.S. Eliot once noted that, “It is a time-honored custom, at every Commencement everywhere, for somebody to make a speech addressed to the Graduating Class.” Last month, as part of that time-honored custom, Taylor Swift gave the commencement address to NYU’s graduating class of 2022. As fans scrambled to attend, Swift’s profile lent new interest to the topic of graduations– and raised the question of what makes a good commencement speaker. Some celebrated the fact that Swift would speak– for example, the New York Times analyzed a series of interviews with NYU 2022 grads claiming, “all the students interviewed for this article thought that having Ms. Swift as their commencement speaker brought cachet to their school and graduating class, and radiated joy into collegiate careers convulsed by the pandemic” – while others sneered at the idea of a pop star receiving an honorary doctorate – with one commentator admitting that she initially rolled her eyes at the news. Taken together, the focus on Swift’s appearance at NYU’s commencement asks us to consider what makes for a good graduation speech – and whether the pop star could deliver.
As I’ve noted here before, graduations are a lot like break ups; Often intense, both are moments of goodbyes, while also opportunities to pave a new path forward. Eliot jokes about the nature of graduation speeches that “My own belief is that the Graduating Class are usually the ones who don’t listen to it… The Graduating Class usually has too much on its mind: It may be thinking of the past, and is certainly thinking of the future; but not of what a man they have never seen before may be saying to them on a hot June day.” No graduate will remember the advice in any speech – even Swift’s – because the whirl of emotions – exhaustion from years of the academic grind, nostalgia for a way of life that will soon be past, and anxiety and excitement about what’s next– are overwhelming at graduation.
That’s why usually the function of graduation speeches is to offer catharsis. A Greek term used to describe the medical process of purgation (usually the practice of draining reproductive material), catharsis came to describe how art can be a vehicle for an audience to express and purge intense emotions. As Aristotle articulated in Poetics, tragic plays have a way of “in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.” Though Aristotle was talking about how well-done tragedy provides a way for the audience to vicariously express (and thereby get rid of) intense emotions, the principle that good art– including songs and speeches – can serve as a vehicle for emotional release applies across forms. Like Greek tragedies, commencement speeches can offer a way for graduates to purge the complicated web of emotions that graduation entails. So who better positioned to write a graduation speech than a songwriter famous for her self-described “intensely cathartic bridge sections?”
But not all graduations are intense moments that require catharsis. When I think of my own graduation – not when I walked across the stage last week as part of a two-year-covid-delayed ceremony, but when in May 2020 I “graduated” online from the claustrophobia of my childhood bedroom after half a semester of zoom fatigue – my commencement was best characterized by Eliot’s famous description in “The Hollow Men” that “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.” An underwhelming transitional moment, where the intense exhaustion, excitement, or heartbreak were noticeably absent, 2020 commencements were not an occasion for intense catharsis, as the formal ending of school was nowhere near as intense as the rushed endings to our patterns of life that occurred just months earlier when the pandemic set in.
Thankfully, Taylor Swift is not just queen of catharsis. She also tackles what non-cathartic endings are like, describing breakups that are emotionally empty. For example, “Bye Bye Baby,” a “From The Vault” track on the Fearless re-released album, reflects on break ups that feel hollow. Despite the expectation that break ups should be emotionally intense, Swift describes how “It wasn’t just like a movie/ The rain didn’t soak through my clothes/ Down to my skin/ I’m driving away and/ I guess you could say/ This is the last time/ I’ll drive this way again.” Explaining underwhelming breakups– relationships that end with a whimper not a bang– without movie-scene rainswept goodbyes, the song doesn’t agonize or offer catharsis, but instead feels empty, with Swift merely acknowledging that this is the last time she’ll drive away.
Thus, both Swift and Eliot offer a way to think about underwhelming endings, ones that don’t require catharsis. Though “Bye Bye Baby” might not capture the ethos of traditional graduation speeches, Swift’s NYU commencement speech knocked it out of the park, encouraging all the excitement and joy that comes with graduation, and demonstrating her range and capacity to give meaning to different types of endings.