Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [35]
These dynamics result in a fantastically satisfying song. But if you listen to what Yorke’s saying, the lyrics are anything but “happy” or “uplifting.” He sings of people in desperation (“am I really sinking this low?”), in isolation (“we don’t have any real friends”), or feeling abandoned (“where are you now, when I need you?”), even feeling less than human (“I wanna be a part of the human race”).
Dark images such as these abound in Radiohead’s music, which is why you would not reach for words like “cheerful” or “upbeat” to describe the band. The music is far from dull, but its energy is saturated with “negative” emotions like sadness, anger and fear. So you might ask, “Why would I want to listen to that? Why would I want to listen to music that makes me feel bad?” To someone who appreciates Radiohead, of course, these questions are missing the point, and they suggest that you are expecting the wrong thing from this music. Still, the questions point to a real puzzle about our enjoyment of Radiohead, and of “darker” forms of art in general: As a rule, we don’t like to feel sad or lonely or depressed. So why do we like music (or books or movies) that evoke in us those same negative emotions? Why do we choose to experience in art the very feelings we avoid in real life?
OK Catharsis
Aristotle deals with a similar question in his analysis of tragedy. Tragedy, after all, is pretty gruesome. In Euripides’s Bacchae, for example, Agave murders her son Pentheus and then carries his severed head to the stage. And of course there’s Sophocles’s Oedipus, who blinds himself after learning that he has killed his father and slept with his mother. Why would anyone watch this stuff? Wouldn’t it be sick to enjoy watching it? This is the question Augustine wonders about in quotation at the beginning of this chapter.
But Aristotle insists that there’s a reason we’re drawn to tragedy, and why viewing tragedy has its own proper pleasure. This is not the kind of pleasure that is proper to comedy, nor some sadistic delight in the suffering of others. In fact, tragedy’s pleasure doesn’t make us feel “good” in any straightforward sense. On the contrary, Aristotle says, the real goal of tragedy is to evoke pity and fear in the audience. Now, to speak of the pleasure of pity and fear is almost oxymoronic. But the point of bringing about these emotions is to achieve a catharsis of them—a cleansing, a purification, a purging, or release. Catharsis is at the core of tragedy’s appeal.
Radiohead often achieves a catharsis of negative emotions. Songs like “Karma Police” and “Exit Music” function as mini-tragedies: both lyrically and musically, they present images of human vulnerability and failure, snapshots of characters in the midst of breakdown and loss. And they present these images in a way that engages both our cognitive and affective capacities. We recognize in them something true about human life and human weakness. At the same time, we also feel the associated emotions—sadness, anger, and fear. And through our engagement with the songs we can achieve the kind of catharsis Aristotle is talking about, that strange but familiar gratification and pleasure of tragedy.
Exit Music for a Story
When Aristotle discusses tragedy he’s thinking specifically of Greek theater. His official definition of a tragedy is this: “Tragedy, then, is a mimesis of an action; in language embellished by distinct forms in its sections; employing the mode of enactment, not narrative; and through pity and fear accomplishing the catharsis of such emotions.”14
To call tragedy a “mimesis” is to say that it represents something. Whereas a painting represents its object in one way, and a novel in another, a tragic drama represents its subject matter by the actors’ portrayal. A tragedy will of course have a cast of characters, but the soul of tragedy, Aristotle says,