Why do we enjoy watching films that make us feel negative emotions like sadness and fear?
Because it’s not happening to us.
I think some animals are attracted to screams of pain or sadness as part of their altruistic instincts. Empathy is a vital characteristic for group survival. Maybe you can consider this a form of curiosity, or rather curiosity is a part of the instinct.
I don’t think that fear is a wholly unpleasant emotion for that reason. At least a small part of fear must be attraction. It’s similar to the way people overcome fear of danger and rush into a fight. They have a particle of self-destruction in their instinct for survival. This inconsistency or “flaw” also helps preserve the group.
Because the emotions of fear and sadness are vital to our nature it is natural to want to experience them, to stimulate them occasionally. But it is especially pleasurable when deep down we know we are safe.
I was just reading about “keeners” or professional mourners in a vocabulary book. Somehow I think there is a connection.
I have never heard the word “keener” What is a professional mourner? Why would someone mourn “professionally?”
Thanks for explaining.
Isabelle
The funeral director would hire professional mourners to fill out the funeral procession. Makes the guest of honor look like a big shot, impresses the neighbours who all thought he was a bum.
This site will explain about the tradition of “keening”.
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5567/keening.html
Apparently there was “competitive keening”.
Relating this to the OP, it shows one way that death became an opportunity for entertainment.
The Greeks were definitely into tragedies and had the concept of catharsis, or emotional release. I checked that word and it was described as “a purifying or figurative cleansing of the emotions, especially pity and fear, described by Aristotle as an effect of tragic drama on its audience.”
So you cry over a play and feel better afterward.
As Stephen King put it in the Green Mile:It always feels so good when someone is caught with his pants down and his dick up and it isn’t you.
Some of the earliest printed ephemera are the handouts and broadsides regarding crime: confessions of people being hanged at Tyburn, along with gory woodcuts and descriptions of their crimes.
“That’s just the kinda hairpin we are,” as Jimmy Cagney would say.
I think there is another reason.
You see artists, painters, writers, actors ect., are better at portraying emotions then we are. We have the same emotions but have a hard time expressing it.
For instance when my brother passed away I didn’t really know what to say.
But someone else did.
Of course I disagree with you assessment that sadness and grief are negative emotions. I don’t break emotions into those catagories. We also like ot watch people fall in love for the same reason I stated above. I can’t really express how much I love my wife as well as an artist. So we watch a romantic film.