> Despite the prevailing notion that movies with sad endings are unquestionably good, and the more tragic they are the better they are, (except for bittersweet endings, which are even better yet provided they don't have a modern setting) I wonder sometimes whether catharsis is real. And I guess that someone here has thought about it decently and come to some sort of conclusion.
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> As for myself, tragedy doesn't feel like it's purging harmful emotions. It feels like it's producing them.
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Well, if you read my previous post about the theatre of vicarious experience, I have to say I agree that "tragic movies produce emotions" is exactly what happens. I believe sad novels and movies produce a emotional discharge which brings 'relief' from the overarching tension that had been built up, artfully, through the power of dramatic suspense. When many people are deeply touched by this sense of "cathartic epiphany," then these kinds of tragic dramas often enjoy critical popularity.

So like you, I have to wonder sometimes whether Hollywood-derived catharsis is for real.


> Perhaps this helps to desensitize a person to sadness, which could, I suppose, be helpful later on.
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> gabby

The desensitization bit is exactly what Aristotle meant, when he first coined the aesthetic concept of 'catharsis' in his work, Poetics. He argued, "The feeling of being possessed by some sort of inspiration, is one to which a number of persons are particularly liable ... and when they come under the influence of melodies which fill the soul with religious excitement, they are calmed and restored as if they had undergone a medical cleansing and purging [katharsis]." Aristotle likened the process to one whereby the body is restored to health and balance, through the power of music and art to purge pathological excesses of certain emotions which he considered 'base'.

Of course, given the 4th century culture that he lived in, the kind of pathological excesses which Aristotle considered "base and weak" were emotions like pity, mercy, and fear. One could say that he approved of certain aesthetics, such as tragedy and the comedic arts, to be useful in concentrating and purging these "spurious sentiments" from the body... that is, to be helpful in excreting pity and mercy away from the flesh, as if one were simply evacuating the bowels.

This sounds horribly callous to our modern sensibilities, of course. But he lived in a world where people kept slaves, if you'll recall. He lived in a time where showing mercy to one's social inferior would be considered a contemptible sign of personal weakness. In that epoch, this frame of thought was pretty well the accepted standard all over the Western civilized world. :-(

Wolf "Life as brutal, nasty, and short. And we choose to idolize it in memory as a golden age" spirit