Filed by Lance at 2:53 pm under Fightin' Words, General, Pop Culture, Stuff to Read, The Arts

This is, of course, the only appropriate music to accompany this post:

Thanks to all the time I have riding the ‘L,’ I recently finished Homer’s Illiad for the first time (I didn’t actually read it in high school when I was supposed to… did you?) I kept being impressed by Diomedes’ epithet: “Diomedes of the great war-cry.” In ancient warfare, when it wasn’t just click-and-dead, you had to really want to kill the other guy, that is, had to really want to take a piece of bronze or iron and cut the other guy’s skin off his bones. A war-cry was an essential part of keeping the veterans focused, and the young guys from wetting themselves and running. Or at least from running.

I was reading the bulk of the Epic as Wimbledon was going on, and this year, more than in years past, the focus was on women’s grunting. I have to admit that when it comes to tennis, I consider being able to keep the score straight a victory. Love, match, set, point, Federer, I get them mixed up. I also have to admit, the sudden interest in women’s constant screaming caught my eye. Apparently, Portugal’s Micaela Larcher de Brito a.k.a. Michelle Larcher de Brito, alias Michelle Brito and Russia’s Maria Yuryevna Sharapova are among the loudest, Sharapova weighing in at 101 decibels. A lion’s roar comes in at 110 dB or so. If the Beatles are finished, here’s some more twisting and shouting — Sharapova v. Larcher de Brito:

Although women wincing at superhuman levels is interesting enough, the BBC’s published comments by highly regarded tennis coach Nick Bollettieri is really fascinating. Instead of calling it “grunting,” he prefers

to use the word ‘exhaling’. I think that if you look at other sports, weightlifting or doing squats or a golfer when he executes the shot or a hockey player, the exhaling is a release of energy in a constructive way…

A scream, a shout, or a cry as a “release of energy in a constructive way” is really interesting. One of the quick and dirty ways I was taught to get emotion out of an actor was to give them something to manipulate and telling them to “allow sound.” Giving someone a rod and letting them hit it against a table while they just let whatever cry comes out come out gets “anger” out without having to somehow psychologically, internally whip up an actor’s emotions. This approach, sometimes called “Bioenergetics,” gets at the meat of what you want from a performance without going through all of the psychobabble to get there. There’s all sorts of interesting things that can happen when you just tell an actor to “allow sound.” Like Coach Bollettieri says, it’s a constructive but harmless release of energy.

So the next time you’re in a jam, don’t fret. Just let a mighty battle cry fly to get you through.