Take It From Aristotle: ‘Don’t Touch That Dial!’ : Simpson trial: Why are we so fascinated with watching this case on TV? A 2,400-year-old book may explain it best.

In the book that best explains television, --Aristotle’s “Rhetoric,” written 2,400 years ago, the first media expert explained that three ingredients are needed for any situation really to move an audience. Aristotle called them pathos, logos and ethos, which loosely might translate to hearts, smarts and sparkle. He meant the emotional appeal, the intellectual appeal and the harder-to-quantify appeal of charisma or authority. You could even call it celebrity. Hearts, smarts and sparkle.

The phenomenal attention-holding power of the Nicole Brown Simpson-Ronald Goldman murder case starts to make sense when we note that this event goes off the charts in all three of Aristotle’s categories. The story is full of the passion that inevitably surrounds a murder, particularly one where the elements of sex and race seem to play a strong role. The case rates high on the level of smarts: It has become a murder mystery, and the technicalities of the law, the intricacies of DNA analysis and all the questions about why--why did O.J. Simpson go on that drive on the freeway--offer enigmas for people to mull. As for the third category, sparkle, we have a suspect who was a great celebrity known by everyone, if not for his football accomplishments then from his movie or advertising careers.

Never before has there been a case that was so strong in all three of these categories.

The Simpson saga was virtually made to order according to a recipe written in ancient Greece. It was in that classical period, after all, that our notions of justice and trial by jury had their start. It was also there, not coincidentally, that oratory and rhetoric--the arts of public persuasion--had their beginnings. We’re rediscovering, in a sense, the experience of being in a classical society.

Aristotle thought of the audience as those lucky few who could find a seat in the public square or agora. He had no way of knowing that television would turn the planet into a public square, where we all virtually fit into the same courtroom and see and hear who’s talking at the very instant of their speech. What held true of the oratory of the agora is suddenly acutely relevant again here in the global village.

The irony, of course, is that what’s consuming everyone’s attention today is the worst of human behavior. We all feel sullied and a little bit guilty following this story--and for good reason.

The Greeks loved their domestic tragedies too--Oedipus and Medea, both accused of murdering their intimates, spring to mind. But however prophetic Aristotle may have been as an analyst of current media trends, our culture differs in a crucial way from his. In contrast to today’s ratings-driven electronic media, the classical artists had as their goal not the titillation, but the uplift of their fortunate audience.