The Paradox of Tragedy

    You’ve probably watched a sad movie before.  Titanic, Grave of The Fireflies, Good Will Hunting. All three are some of the saddest movies to exist, but they
are also known as some of the best movies as well.  But why?  These movies portray war, death, and sacrifice, and make us cry.  But they’re somehow also amazing movies.  That’s exactly what the paradox of tragedy is.

    The connection between feelings of distress and pleasure was first made by Aristotle.  In his book titled Poetics, he states that Tragedy is “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; 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; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish a catharsis of these emotions.”  To put it simply, tragedy makes the audience experience pity or fear for the characters, leading to a release, or a catharsis of intense emotions.

    “The Paradox of Tragedy”, was coined by philosopher David Hume in his essay, Of Tragedy.  He defines it as, “an unaccountable pleasure, which the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions, that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy,” saying that we are pleased by human misery in art but repulsed by it in real life.

    Hume describes 2 resolutions for this paradox.  The first is based on Jean Baptise Dubos, a french art critic, who wrote that we chase drama to have relief from the boredom of everyday life. He believes that humans are desperate for something that is out of the ordinary to happen, so we can escape from this boredom.  Hume, in part, agrees with this idea.  He believes that his idea would work in theory, in the same way humans are drawn to dramatic, controversial, or dark news, but he argues that we wouldn’t enjoy it in real life, even if it meant escaping boredom.  This is where he brings Fontenelle, a French Enlightenment author, as his second reference.  Fontenelle states that we enjoy tragedy BECAUSE it is fiction. We feel the negative emotion, but without real life stress, it allows room for pleasure.  But what happens to all of our negative emotions when we are pleased?  While Hume later argues that the negative emotions are simply overpowered by the pleasure and passion of the beauty of the Tragedy, modern philosophy and psychology states that it more has to do with our empathy, adding a third resolution to the paradox of tragedy.

    Philosopher Susan Feagin stated in her article, The Pleasure of Tragedy, that we experience pleasure from what she calls a “meta-response” or after response.  She states that this meta response is our response to reflecting on our initial response.  She states that as we reflect on our initial response to the melancholy of the art, we realize that we cared for the characters and felt genuine hope for their destinies and compassion for their stories.  And ultimately, this compassion is what made us shed tears.

    From a psychological perspective, tragedy makes our brains release hormones that make us empathetic and understanding of others, further proving Feagin’s point.

    According to the National Institute of Health and the Frontiers of Human Neuroscience, a hormone called prolactin is released when we interact with sad

media. Prolactin is released to regulate
anxiety and depression and comfort us by encouraging our body to seek connection with others.  

    In a study done by the Frontiers of Human Neuroscience in 2020, it was revealed that watching sad movies activate parts of the limbic system like the amygdala, associated with giving us negative emotions, but also releasing hormones like oxytocin, associated with making us feel empathy and the feeling of having a deep emotional bond with others.

    Piggybacking off of that, in March of last year, the Journal of Positive Psychology published a research paper on the effect of tragic art on empathy.  In the experiment, 150 politically conservative people from the United States, who supported Donald Trump and were therefore extremely apathetic towards undocumented immigrants, were shown videos and pictures of art depicting suffering refugees and immigrants.  After viewing these artworks, the subjects had a shift in attitude.  Whether they liked the art or not, they all reported that the videos made them think and feel deeply.  The study also detected that the participants felt more sympathetic towards undocumented immigrants after viewing the art, suggesting that tragic art has the ability to evoke meaningful and moving experiences that could help foster empathy for marginalized groups.

    From 330 BCE, when Aristotle first connected the feeling of pity, fear, and

distress to pleasure, it took until the 21st century for us to find a scientifically and philosophically supported resolution for the paradox of tragedy.  We derive pleasure from tragedy because it reminds us of our common humanity.  It subconsciously helps us recognize that there are people out there who are just like us, even helping the most apathetic people to have sympathy, and realize that we care for the general wellbeing of other human beings.  

    This is why tragedy, as an art form, is seen as the king or pinnacle of art because of how moving and raw it is.  Think about it.  What is the first William Shakespeare play that comes to mind?  Despite writing King Lear and a bunch of other light hearted plays, his tragedies are what most people remember and regard as some of the best plays to ever be written. 

    Tragedy helps us become more empathetic and be better people and help us not feel alone in the world.  This is why we keep watching Titanic, why Grave of the Fireflies still devastates us, and why Shakespeare’s tragedies endure—because through them, we find empathy, connection, and what it means to be human.