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SCHADENFREUDE

Unhappy about the contempt and anger I felt toward the singer of a cruel, “humorous” song and toward the audience laughing at it, which I wrote about last night, I continue to mull, try to figure why I got mad.

Cruelty and humor have always gone together.  The German word is Schadenfreude -- joy in the sorrow of others.

People used to go to public executions for entertainment.  The clown tradition has roots in the tarring and feathering of social outcasts and criminals.

Part of the story told in the cruel, “humorous” song: someone was injured in an accident and taken away by ambulance; a train hit the ambulance and killed the EMT workers but left the originally injured man still alive and brain damaged. I can imagine myself reacting to this narrative with a rueful grim irony grin.

The anxiety of suffering, the guilt and anxiety and relief of not being the one suffering -- maybe that’s a source of the laughter.  I consider that maybe I have my own anxiety about being cruel – knowing that I can be cruel – tonight I don’t feel so angry at schadenfreude anxious humor. 

Circumstances: I heard the song while still winding down from my own performance. I was still in a state of emotional binge. 

Complicated questions of manipulation and rhetoric in the song.  The heroic melodic rhetoric of the chorus, “crazy crazy Davey” – the deliberate emotional out-of-scaleness being a source of the humor.  Catchy tune.  But an emotionally superficial way to tell the story.  How to tell the story?  Heck if I know.  The emotions are complex, and finding a workable musical and verbal rhetoric – or tone – to tell it in a way that did it justice would be difficult.  Sorrow, fear, shock, guilt, loathing --