Aristotle described catharsis as the purging of emotions of pity and fear that are aroused in the viewer of tragedy. Now, Aristotle’s use of the word is not a literal reference to the purgation of emotions that we see in cathartic acts, but the peculiar tragic pleasure. In tragedy, a happy ending does not make us, the audience, happy. Think of the last piece of media that you’ve seen that has left a lasting impression: was it particularly happy? Audiences have been brought to tears and fallen in love with stories for millennia with a narrative that – more often than not -ends with a beloved protagonist dead. I remember my first time watching Romeo and Juliet at merely twelve years old, feeling shaken and overwhelmed. Safe to say, I cried for many nights after. We wallow and mourn tragedies and make peace with the nature of suffering. Although Greek tragedies have not constituted the mainstream media, we see the same concept every day.
There is an odd satisfaction to watching something be depicted on screen that we would hate to see in reality. For example, Oedipus Rex, where Oedipus kills his father, marries his motherx, and proceeds to die in an awfully graphic way. Was this a happy ending? Did we laugh- or were we, the audience, disturbed? Why do we pay to watch a disturbing piece that leaves the theatre echoing in eeriness? Do people have a grotesque fascination with seeing others suffer? I wouldn’t say so. Oedipus Rex depicts events that exude pity and fear, but we go into the theatre with the preconceived notion that this isn’t real. In a sense, the audience purges negative emotions without explicitly doing so. A thriller can help us release anxiety and give our brains something novel to think about without exposing ourselves to real horrors. However, we don’t leave the theatre feeling particularly relieved – I personally feel a bit uneasy after watching A24 films like Midsommar or Saltburn. It takes a few hours, or sometimes a few days for the feeling of catharsis to kick in and it can become addicting.
Art is often times uncomfortable, but the reason why art will never vanish is because humans, including myself, love emotion, even if it happens to be negative. Too much of anything can be counteractive, but the occasional unsettling plotline will exert the most emotion out of an audience. Some filmmakers believe that this concept is the key to influential art: how much emotion can be felt in the theatre. Whether that be watching Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho continue with his violent ways or Florence Pugh joining a Swedish cult in Midsommar, watching such a plot twist is cathartic.
Then a question arises: can disturbing media have a positive impact? We must consider that in this context, gore and troubled media are a source of release among viewers. I, like many others, had a true-crime docuseries phase where I was infatuated with the analysis of every inhumane crime committed on Netflix. There came a point where I was disgusted, but not flinching at a deeply disturbing crime, and that’s the issue. Human emotions are there to serve a purpose, but the constant portrayal of inhumane acts can numb people. So how far is too far? Directors often justify objectively gruesome work in defence of the name of true art. I believe that the true message of a film gets side-tracked when there are many disturbing scenes, making it hard to even feel cathartic. For example, The Girl Next Door is objectively one of the most unsettling films in the last two decades, with scenes of torture so explicit most of us had to turn away. Then there is Saltburn. Although not a true thriller like The Girl Next Door, the ending was quite grotesque, yet I found it much easier to walk out of the theatre and say that I enjoyed it. So where is the line? Perhaps there is none, since film is art, and the beauty of art is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps every individual needs a different amount of emotion for their cathartic experience to be fulfilled.
But we will never truly know, and the concept of violence going too far in the media is one for lawyers and politicians to debate. The Greeks implemented democracy into modern society, so who’s to say catharsis can’t be?