The Joy of Pain (2 page)

I am blessed with a family who has remained loving, patient, and optimistic as I worked to complete the book. My younger daughter, Caroline Smith, who shares my proclivity for punning, rather than groaning at them, simply came up with reciprocal puns of her own. This pun-upmanship was a sure energy boost when my vigor lagged. My older daughter, Rosanna Smith, despite her many other activities, did the drawings for the book. Working with her on ideas for these drawings was by far the most fun part of this project. My wife, Sung Hee Kim, painstakingly read the book at least five times at critical junctures. So gladly forbearing, she also created guilt-free conditions in our home to make it easier to complete it. More than anyone, by a country mile, she is the reason this thing got done. Finally, I thank my parents. I owe my love of reading and of scholarly pursuits to both. My mother, Hilary Smith, spent many years as an editorial assistant in the English Department at Duke University, and, during that time, helped edit the collected letters of Thomas and Jane Carlyle. She is still quick with an adapted line of poetry for any occasion. With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes. My late father, Peter Smith, who was a professor of chemistry at Duke for several decades and the son of a flower and seed shop owner in Manchester, England, knew and valued his Shakespeare, and this rubbed off on me as well. “Lay on, Macduff, and damn'd be him that first cries, ‘Hold! enough!'”

H
omer Simpson's neighbor, Ned Flanders, announces during a backyard barbecue that he will quit his sales job to start a business called the “Leftorium,” catering to left-handed people. Ned and Homer break the wishbone from a turkey carcass, and Homer gets the bigger piece and the right to make a wish. “Read it and weep!!” he exclaims, imagining a scene of the business failing. It turns out that it does start poorly, as Homer discovers when he passes by the store some weeks later. It is “deeeserted,” he happily reports to the family at dinner. Lisa Simpson, ever the erudite daughter, labels and defines the emotion he is feeling.

LISA SIMPSON
: Dad, do you know what
schadenfreude
is?

HOMER SIMPSON
: No, I do not know what
schadenfreude
is. Please tell me because I'm dying to know.

LISA
: It's a German word for shameful joy, taking pleasure in the suffering of others.
¹

There is no English word for what Homer's feeling, but as Lisa tells him, there is one in German:
schadenfreude.
It comes from the joining of two words, “
schaden
” meaning “harm” and “
freude
” meaning “joy,” and it indeed refers to the pleasure derived from another person's misfortune.
²
This book is about
schadenfreude
, an emotion that most of us can feel despite its shameful associations.

Although most of us feel uncomfortable admitting it, we often feel
schadenfreude
because we can gain from another person's misfortune. What does Homer gain from the failure of Ned Flanders's business? Actually, quite a lot. Homer envies Ned. Although Ned is a good neighbor, he still has it better than Homer in just about every way, from his well-equipped recreation room with foreign beers on tap to his superior family bliss. The envy Homer feels runs deep and takes its typical inferiority-tinged and hostile form. When Ned fails, Homer feels less inferior. Ned's failure also satisfies Homer's hostile feelings. These are heady psychological dividends and should make Homer feel pretty good as a result. What better tranquilizer for Homer's inadequacy and ill will than Ned's failure?

Perhaps you have heard this joke: two campers come across a grizzly bear while hiking in the forest. One immediately drops to the ground, takes off his hiking boots, and starts putting on his running shoes. The other says, “What are you doing? You can't outrun a bear!” His friend replies, “I don't have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you!” While this example is cartoonish, similar but lower-stakes scenarios like this one play out in relationships every day. In
Chapters 1
and
2
, I examine the link between
schadenfreude
and personal gain and show that a large part of our emotional life results from how we compare with others. We gain from another person's misfortune when this “downward comparison” boosts our rank and self-worth. We shall see that this is no small benefit.

The benefits to Homer from Ned's failing are largely intangible, but
schadenfreude
also results from tangible things. As I will stress in
Chapter 3
, much of life involves competition. One side must lose for the other to win. This is captured well in
Apollo 13
, the film based on the near-fatal NASA lunar mission. In this film version of events, Jim Lovell is unhappy because fellow astronaut Alan Shepard and the others on Shepard's crew have the latest coveted opportunity to travel to the moon. But Shepard develops an ear problem, and his crew is replaced by Lovell's. This is painful for Shepard, but Lovell's reaction is exuberant when he rushes home to give the news to his family. Lovell shows no hint of sympathy for Shepard as he tells his wife what has happened.
³

As viewers of
Apollo 13,
we are watching from Lovell's perspective and, with him, we experience the good news. We see that when an outcome is so desired, its value for ourselves eclipses other factors. The extra detail that our gain comes at another person's expense recedes in relevance and does little to reduce the pleasure involved. Notice, however, that Lovell would have had no reason to delight in Shepard's ear infection had it not furthered his own goals. He was not happy “in” Shepard's misfortune, but rather “because of” it. Does this mean his joy was not
schadenfreude
at all? In this book, I take a broad definition of
schadenfreude
. The distinction between types of gain is easily blurred in our experience. For example, Lovell may well have envied Shepard. As I will explore later in the book, Homer Simpson is an exaggerated version of all of us. Envy can produce deep satisfaction in another's misfortune, especially in competitive situations, and there may be few pure cases of gain uncontaminated by such features. Plus, would we see Lovell showing his joy outside the family? Taking any pleasure from another's misfortune simply because we are gaining from it seems illicit and shameful. This gives it the clear stamp of
schadenfreude
.

If
schadenfreude
arises to the extent that we gain from another person's misfortune, then any natural tendencies we have to favor our own self-interests should further this pleasure. In
Chapter 4
, I address how human nature pulls us in at least two directions, one toward narrow self-interest and the other toward concern for others. Our capacity to feel
schadenfreude
highlights the self-interested, darker side of human nature. Without ignoring
our compassionate instincts, I consider some of the evidence for our self-interested side and suggest that this evidence indeed reveals our capacity for
schadenfreude
.

How about deservingness? Sometimes misfortunes suffered by others satisfy our sense of justice. In
Chapters 5
and
6
, I shift to this important reason why we can feel
schadenfreude.
Examples are everywhere. Take the case of Baptist minister and clinical psychologist, George Rekers. He made headlines in May of 2010 for using a Web site, Rentboy.com, to hire a 20-year-old male to accompany him on a short trip to Europe.
⁴
On the surface, this doesn't sound like news, but Rekers quickly became the focus of jokes on the internet and on late-night TV.
⁵
Rekers, as
The New York Times
columnist Frank Rich argued, is “the Zelig of homophobia, having played a significant role in many of the ugliest assaults on gay people and their civil rights over the last three decades.”
⁶
His hiring of the Rentboy.com employee was viewed as a case of pure hypocrisy when the hired man claimed that he had given Rekers intimate massages during the trip. As Joe Coscarelli noted in his blog for
The Village Voice
soon after the event made news: “Please excuse most of the forward-thinking, tolerant world for being a bit excited and snide about the news. … ”
⁷

As shameful as
schadenfreude
can be, the more a misfortune seems deserved, the more likely
schadenfreude
is out in the open, free of shame. This is true especially if the standards for judging deservingness are clear cut—for instance, if someone has committed crimes—or has behaved so hypocritically, as with George Rekers. The pleasure is collective and free-flowing.

I will emphasize that the desire for justice is a strong human motive, so strong that we are
biased
in our perceptions of deservingness. We are particularly biased in our reactions to being personally wronged. Our pleasure in a wrongdoer's misfortune is sweet indeed if we are lucky enough to have this
hoped-for
event occur. Here, the desire for justice merges with a desire for revenge against someone we dislike, even hate.

Are we living in the age of
schadenfreude
? Just glance at the checkout lanes in the grocery store: some of the best-selling magazines will have break-ups, scandals, and other personal tragedies emblazoned on their colorful covers. The reality TV industry flourishes by developing programs that pit people against each other in difficult situations; ratings and advertising spending speak for themselves. Of course, the internet multiplies these trends many times over, which is why we speak of information going “viral.” I was not surprised to find out what happens if you insert the word “
schadenfreude
” in the search tool Google NGram Viewer.
Figure I.1
shows the percentage of times that
schadenfreude
is used among all words in books published in English from 1800 to 2008. Starting in the late 1980s, its use begins to increase and then rockets upward by the mid-1990s. An analysis of the use of the word in
The New York Times
nicely mirrors this pattern: in 1980, there were no instances; in 1985, only one; three in 1990; seven in 1995; twenty-eight in 2000; and sixty-two in 2008.
⁸
Perhaps this upsurge in usage comes as trends in media also shift toward a focus on people suffering all variety of misfortunes.

In
Chapter 7
, I examine two distinctive examples of reality TV,
American Idol
and
To Catch a Predator.
Both shows, in memorable ways, pioneered the pleasures of humiliation as entertainment—or “humilitainment,” a term coined by media researchers Brad Waite and Sarah Booker.
⁹
Why are these shows so popular? We shall see that humilitainment, when heightened by the way a show is edited and structured, often arises within narratives of deservingness. These shows provide a steady diet of pleasing downward comparisons for viewers.

Figure I.1. Google NGram for usage of “
schadenfreude
” in thousands of books published from 1800 to 2008.