Society's Obsession with Tragedy
Tragedy has been a major theme of our literature since ancient times — in fact it is probably the most antiquated form of fiction in human history. Contemporarily, we watch MTV soap operas and other forms of “reality tragedy” in order to fend off our desire to see the most dire conditions. We have transcended the age-old method of showing tragedy through plays and literature into real situations and books with people’s trials and tribulations are lining The New York Times’ bestseller list.
We are all obsessed with hardship. But why? Doesn’t it make us depressed or feel as though there isn’t anything to live for? In fact, it does the complete opposite. It’s almost as if society is using other people’s tragedies as a coping mechanism for their own problems and issues. In my opinion, the reasons for this obsession is dependent on the viewer’s situation.
For most people, the desire is a result of wanting to believe that individuals have the capacity to bring themselves out of hardship. For the millions of people that live without health care, get addicted to drugs, contemplate suicide, etcetera, there are a small percentage that do correct their situation and find a way to rise to the top. While the number is small, the fact that people do find ways to resolve their problems transforms hope into a human virtue rather than just another form of denial. An example of this transformation occured with the release of A Million Little Pieces. The Oprah scandal that followed the release of this novel devastated most people and the majority of the population that fell in love with the book felt cheated by falsity of Frey’s story. Frey instilled hope in the eyes of his millions of readers and the realization that his biography was merely a story caused the readers to proclaim Frey a “liar”.
I don’t believe that people admonished Frey because they felt like lying about a story was bad, I believe that people were furious because they had given so much power to hope and Frey shattered that hope. I still think its a great story. However, for most, Frey’s dishonesty scared people — it caused them to question whether hope was a virtue or a form of denial (sorry, I know its awkward to use a negative retort to prove a claim).
For others, tragedy is a litmus test for innate human good. People are reduced under tragedy — they feel helpless and we see their true character. Idealists have a strong affinity for tragedy because it shows that humans are capable of being altruistic and generally good to each other. Anger and rage are common forms of masking pain and suffering, but under the condition of having “lost everything”, people are seen for who they truly are. I think that under tragic conditions, people are once again reduced to the state of tabula rasa. I recommend reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa to learn more about the origination of the term and the theory. Locke is a major advocate of tabula rasa and he argues that people are empty minds when they are born or “blank slates” and that impressions are how people acquire their character. Human behavior, according to Locke, is a function of their environment and upbringing. A few theorists behind tabula rasa have also argued that negative impressions have more of an affect on people than position impressions — i.e. sexual or physical abuse. I want to make clear that substantive knowledge is different than psychological behavior: our ability to communicate in language is a substantive skill, but our ability to talk about our emotions is not substantive.
In the case of tragedy, humans can be reduced back to their tabula rasa form. While their substantive abilities, language, motor function, etcetera are in tact, their psychological behavior is completely altered. The warrant for this argument is that people who are subjugated to tragic conditions have almost nothing to gain from being ingenuine. When I talk of “tragic conditions”, I’m referring to people who have lost almost everything — they feel as though society is purposely pushing them down and that instead of continuing to fight, they have chosen to give up. Humans decide to act in their own interest when they have something personally to gain by doing so — in the event that they feel as though they have lost, they are reduced to the sympathetic beings that search for ways out of their situation by asking for help from others and simultaneously supporting others in similar situations. To the viewer, this is attractive because it shows the ideal human. This case is prevalent in the end of Shakespeare’s Othello and contemporarily in Celebrity Rehabilitation with Dr. Drew.
How does this apply to connection building? It has quite a bit to do with connection building. In fact, most human interaction is a result of tragedy. When people decide to find friends or build new connections for social reasons, they generally seek people with similar tragic situations or people who are willing to talk about their tragic situations. Interest in the tragedies of other people is the reason why we read books or novels — have you ever heard of a novel/memoir that did not deal with some level or hardship or conflict? As people are more willing to reveal their history and the hardship they’ve had to undergo, the stronger the connection between the two confessors becomes. It is through the act of conversing about our tragedies that we actually begin to understand people’s behavior patterns. The fact that people who watch tragedy reality shows or read fictitious stories about tragedy become close to the characters in those stories without actually meeting them makes this all the more true.
So do I think hope is a human virtue or a form of denial? If you know me, you know the answer to that question.