I make no secret of my contempt for the twenty-something headcases who have been allowed to inflate average abilities into grandiose fantasies about their
talents. I have to admit, however, that if you haven't seen them carry on when the fantasy bubble bursts, then you haven't seen Shakespeare the way it
was meant to be played. Seriously, if you think "foaming at the mouth" and "until her head spun around like in the exorcist" are figures of
speech, well… just check out this little lady.
There is no shortage of these gals in entertainment. My experience was only with the would-be actresses until I started working with a music producer, and whew, baby! They have it worse-or better, depending on your taste for such things. Week before last saw the spectacularly self-destructive exit of one such drama queen, and it was some damn good dinner theatre. "Which rings us to tonight's word," as Colbert would say-the best damn word ever mistranslated by The Simpsons: Schadenfreude.
Schadenfreude isn't nice, but we all do it at some point. Our Teutonic friends are just honest enough about it to give it a name: schadenfreude translates literally as "harm joy". Sorry, Lisa fans, it isn't "shameful joy". The term is descriptive, not judgmental. Harm joy is simply the good feeling you get when something bad happens to somebody else.
There are a lot of explanations for it. Some fairly benign: there's a sense that there is a finite amount of grief in the world, and the more that lands on Joe from accounting, the less there is roaming free out there, potentially to bite us in the ass when we're innocently strolling down the street to put coins in the meter. Of course it's not logical, feelings generally aren't. If you flip a coin 20 times and it comes up heads each and every time, you feel a tails is "due." No understanding of mathematics and probability will hold out forever if that coin keeps coming up heads. Logic be damned, you KNOW a tails is due. The finite-grief theory is sort of like that. So is the bell curve theory. We've all got shit in our lives, and unless we a) think we deserve it or b) suffer from Munchausen syndrome, most of us want to feel we're in the middle of the bell curve on misery. If everybody has it worse, then see-above, it's just a matter of time until Fate finds our new number and makes up for lost time. But if everybody has it BETTER, who the fuck needs that? This view of schadenfreude says we find it comforting to see that someone has it as bad or worse than us.
Then there's the less sunshine-and-pixie-dust view that gets real and allows us a less-than-noble reason: maybe the son of a bitch deserves it. The guy who treated women like shit in his twenties now having a grown daughter out there making all the wrong choices with guys just like him, that is exquisite karma.
That's three. There are a thousand other explanations for why schadenfreude exists, and each and every one of them is an indispensible tool in writer's toolbox. No matter how much we love our characters, we have to arrange for terrible things to happen to them. We do it for no other reason than because our audience will enjoy it.
Cosider Peter Parker, a bell curve if ever there was one. No matter how bad your day was, Peter's got it worse-99% of the time, anyway. And that's why his 1% is the sweetest of victories (and the curse of a thousand scorpions on the editorial directive that takes it away from us).
A lot of villains technically qualify for the "deserved it" treatment, but contrary to the wisdom of Batman Begins, it is more what they say or how they behave than what they do that sets them up for it. Joker has done worse things than Ra's or Luthor, but the latter are so full of themselves it's far more enjoyable seeing them hoist on their own petards. In literature if not in life hubris is the great sin and marks out the great sinner.
Anyway… Schadenfreude. Don't forget it when shopping for plot seasoning.
There is no shortage of these gals in entertainment. My experience was only with the would-be actresses until I started working with a music producer, and whew, baby! They have it worse-or better, depending on your taste for such things. Week before last saw the spectacularly self-destructive exit of one such drama queen, and it was some damn good dinner theatre. "Which rings us to tonight's word," as Colbert would say-the best damn word ever mistranslated by The Simpsons: Schadenfreude.
Schadenfreude isn't nice, but we all do it at some point. Our Teutonic friends are just honest enough about it to give it a name: schadenfreude translates literally as "harm joy". Sorry, Lisa fans, it isn't "shameful joy". The term is descriptive, not judgmental. Harm joy is simply the good feeling you get when something bad happens to somebody else.
There are a lot of explanations for it. Some fairly benign: there's a sense that there is a finite amount of grief in the world, and the more that lands on Joe from accounting, the less there is roaming free out there, potentially to bite us in the ass when we're innocently strolling down the street to put coins in the meter. Of course it's not logical, feelings generally aren't. If you flip a coin 20 times and it comes up heads each and every time, you feel a tails is "due." No understanding of mathematics and probability will hold out forever if that coin keeps coming up heads. Logic be damned, you KNOW a tails is due. The finite-grief theory is sort of like that. So is the bell curve theory. We've all got shit in our lives, and unless we a) think we deserve it or b) suffer from Munchausen syndrome, most of us want to feel we're in the middle of the bell curve on misery. If everybody has it worse, then see-above, it's just a matter of time until Fate finds our new number and makes up for lost time. But if everybody has it BETTER, who the fuck needs that? This view of schadenfreude says we find it comforting to see that someone has it as bad or worse than us.
Then there's the less sunshine-and-pixie-dust view that gets real and allows us a less-than-noble reason: maybe the son of a bitch deserves it. The guy who treated women like shit in his twenties now having a grown daughter out there making all the wrong choices with guys just like him, that is exquisite karma.
That's three. There are a thousand other explanations for why schadenfreude exists, and each and every one of them is an indispensible tool in writer's toolbox. No matter how much we love our characters, we have to arrange for terrible things to happen to them. We do it for no other reason than because our audience will enjoy it.
Cosider Peter Parker, a bell curve if ever there was one. No matter how bad your day was, Peter's got it worse-99% of the time, anyway. And that's why his 1% is the sweetest of victories (and the curse of a thousand scorpions on the editorial directive that takes it away from us).
A lot of villains technically qualify for the "deserved it" treatment, but contrary to the wisdom of Batman Begins, it is more what they say or how they behave than what they do that sets them up for it. Joker has done worse things than Ra's or Luthor, but the latter are so full of themselves it's far more enjoyable seeing them hoist on their own petards. In literature if not in life hubris is the great sin and marks out the great sinner.
Anyway… Schadenfreude. Don't forget it when shopping for plot seasoning.
