Questioning Aristotle's Poetics: Spectacle

 Aristotle's downplaying of the worth of spectacle, as compared to poetry, suggests that there is a difference between the two--that the spectacular can't have its own poetry, and that poetry can't be a linguistic spectacle.  Is this a false binary?

Looking at it in terms that might make sense both to him and contemporary readers, it could be said that the most spectacular event in classical theater might have been the Deus ex machina--least true to the writing or poetry of the play, most dependent on mechanical effects, maybe most potentially pandering to an audience he doesn't see as part of the poetry.  But for Deleuze and Guattari, the machine of language is not dissimilar to the machines they understand each member of the audience to be, or the machine the gods have sent down--all of them acting automatically.

To move up a lot of centuries, to Shakespeare's maybe most famous piece of stage direction, "Exit pursued by bear," the question becomes which is more worthy--the stage direction, or how it's acted out.  The writing of it may have happened relatively quickly.  The staging of it could not be worked out quickly or easily no matter how it was done.  It would require the concerted, as in strenuous and also together, work of two communities at least: that of the theater company and that of the audience.  And has that less poetry than writing four words?

To move forward into today, I just watched a movie, Rebel Moon: Child of Fire, that included a weapon made of some form of fire, that inflicted a wound with fire at its edges.  Was that not poetry?  Seen online, on my phone, I understand it literally to be language--lines of computer code that create a moving image.  That's one way it could be seen as poetry.  Then there's the argument that if could be seen as verbal art, poetry to Jacobsen, simply of a system of verbage that includes a script, visual effects, direction and more.  Finally, the movie's auteur lost his daughter tragically several years ago.  Might that moment of spectacle express his pain more clearly than traditional words can?