Millennials are elated and excited to watch their all-time favorite cartoon Tom and Jerry step foot in the urbanized world. It is quite surprising to come to the realization that this upswing of the excitement stems from a kid’s show. This leaves many to cogitate the appeal of this cartoon. After speculating on this issue, I realized that the content of this burlesque exhibits malicious enjoyment at the expense of another individual’s mishap or what is popularly termed as “Schadenfreude.”
It is rather difficult for most people to accept that they often resort to the dark side of humor when enjoying pranks played on others. Many famous shows such as Impractical Jokers, stand up comedies, science-themed shows like Big Bang Theory, or Tom and Jerry contain instances of individual suffering that in fact appeals to viewers. F. H. Buckley (2003) explained the morality of this malicious laughter. He posited in his “Positive thesis” that people often laugh at another individual to express their better standing or superiority over the person who is subjected to laughter. This person he termed to be “the butt” and furthermore, in his normative thesis, he stated that people who take fun in the misery of “the butt” are entitled to feel superior. While watching cartoons such as Tom and Jerry we often see the characters putting each other in incongruent situations only to laugh and feel that they have an upper hand over the other. This feeling is shared by the viewers, whose moods get influenced by the thrill of the character thus, making them feel superior while watching the show.
Research shows that there are three types of schadenfreude: relief, dislike, and fairness. An individual would engage in schadenfreude if they experience either higher dislike for another person, or are relieved that they are not subjected to schadenfreude, or when they believe that the person subjected to it rightfully deserves it. In Tom and Jerry, very often, we see the fairness type of schadenfreude where each character is plotting to embarrass and seek revenge on the other for the wrong that is done to them. This justification makes most viewers not guilty of being involved in the gimmick and rather seek pleasure in it.
Psychologist Dr. Lea Boecker states that in spite of nominal research, schadenfreude is a universal emotion. This emotion is too complex to be called either positive or negative emotion. Furthermore, the valence of this emotion should be gauged based on the kind of relationship the individual displaying schadenfreude has with the individual who is subjected to it. This complicated emotion is passive and indirect and hence the individual engaging in schadenfreude is a mere spectator who is seeking pleasure out of someone’s misery. For instance, if an individual falls in muck while walking on the road and people laugh at them, then they are engaging in schadenfreude; but if the person sustaining the fall laughs then it is not schadenfreude, but simply a defence to cope with embarrassment.
Neuropsychological studies have also tried to shed light on why people engage in schadenfreude at the expense of others. Brain imaging shows the downregulation of activity in insular regions, which are involved in empathy and increased activity in the striatal regions, i.e. the reward the centre of the brain. This involvement of the reward centre during schadenfreude makes the feeling similar to when one expresses pure happiness. This pleasure contributes to the increased viewership of cartoons such as Tom and Jerry.
Further proof about the evolution of this emotion through the life span comes from an experiment conducted on young children at the Max Planck Institute of Cognitive and Neurosciences from the Department of Social Neuroscience, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. This experiment traced the development of schadenfreude in children using puppet theatre with three characters that were assigned different roles. The puppets contained a friendly doll, a malicious doll, and an animal who was given the responsibility of punishing the dolls. Results showed that the children aged 6 preferred to watch the beating for the malicious doll and seek pleasure in it, whereas when it came to the friendly doll, they chose to get some stickers instead of watching the doll suffer. Kids younger than 6 years were indifferent towards both characters. Similarly, in Tom and Jerry, when the protagonist is punished for their past evil deeds, it leaves the viewers with dark laughter and schadenfreude.
Researchers Jens Lange and Lea Boecker, involved in understanding the functionality of schadenfreude in social contexts, identify the lack of literature and propose the importance of conducting further research. This complex and universal emotion is very essential as it guides human behaviours in many social interactions. The lack of literature often confuses people with regards to how to deal with this misunderstood emotion leading to moral dilemmas. This ambivalent emotion has been shown to be positively related to dark personality characteristics and a better understanding of it would aid in deciding the exact role of this emotion in facilitating social interactions and avoiding the ill effects of the darker side of this emotion.
Urvi Mange
