We have all seen America's Funniest Videos or watched funny videos of people doing stupid things, and ending up hurting themselves, sometimes very seriously. The very sentence I just wrote conveys my point exactly. We find these videos funny. Why?
In this video, "Scarlet Takes a Tumble," we see a woman, who decides to climb up onto a structurally unsound table, and proceed to dance and move her body in motions that do not equally distribute her weight along all support structures of the table. Scarlet proceeds to dance, proceeds to sing, proceeds to fall, as the table flies out from under her when she unfortunately walks too far forward, thereby unevenly distributing her weight to the front part of the table, causing said tumble.
Just while typing this description of this video, I am struggling to contain my laughter. But why? Why do we laugh at the pain of others? Why does the pain of others seem to amuse us to no end? When we see others, such as Scarlet, in unfortunate situations of unexpected pain and trauma, a number of things go through our minds. First off, humans have the innate, and not always becoming trait of finding cruel humor amusing. Secondly, and primarily, we have the urge to laugh at others pain because when we see someone else in an unfortunate situation, we have the "funny feeling" of relief that we are not in that situation. We are looking at Scarlet take her "tumble" and we say to ourselves "Wow... Glad that wasn't me." We then proceed to laugh because we know that she is alright, or the video wouldn't be online, and also because we have something that we are able to look at and be grateful we aren't in that persons shoes.
3 comments:
Schadenfreude. This is a German word that literally means taking pleasure in another's pain or misfortune. It's a natural human trait, however unbecoming it may be. Part of the reason we do it is because we are wired as humans to compete with other humans. When we see someone do something stupid and hurt themselves, we get pleasure and amusemnet because their is less of a chance that this person will be a threat to us. Schadenfreude and Social Darwinism. Maybe that answers your question.
Our tendency toward cruel mockery is unfortunate. CLockaby makes an interesting point. Is there any hope of overcoming or conquering this "Schadenfreude"? It seems one of the primary culprits in bullying--when we take our mockery too far.
Wow... That's definitely something to hang your hat on. The question is, how do we draw the line, and where should that line be?
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