AMERICANIZED SCHADENFREUDE – FURTHER DISCUSSION ABOUT WORDS
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© September 5, 2011
A READER WRITES:
Jim,
There is much to "say" about this topic, but it would be inadequate to "write.”
.
However, one comment: Viewed from the outside the U.S. has long lost its innocence and justice in the world!
Concerning "schadenfreude" - words from a foreign language are often used in a different way rendering a different meaning. In German, it has nothing to do with gossip. It perhaps might best be translated "malicious joy" (one rejoices in the mishaps of somebody else).
Be always well and please continue to be the critical spirit that nowadays you commonly cannot find anymore.
Manfred
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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Thank you for your response. I share your sensitivity for this word given its history and its usage, not only in your language, which is its origin, but in ours as well.
The American use of the word "Schadenfreude" is not too far a field from its German meaning of "malicious joy," sad to say, when it comes to gossip.
Gossip is an American sport. Like all sports, it can have intended as well as unintended consequences. Stated bluntly, it can injure and damage irreparably.
The seed that cultivates this possibility is often, but not always, the malicious joy derived from penetrating the patina of another person’s vulnerability, and then exploiting it to some advantage. What is unfortunate the person in question may not know of this skullduggery until it is too late, as the damage is done.
Successful people are often generous. Unsuccessful people are often not. Rather then take a page from the book of the successful person; too often jealousy, envy, and false pride take over. Pleasure is found in discovering some weakness or rumored weakness in the successful person. The irony, even if the rumor is not true, the gossiper won’t want for an obliging audience as we are tantalized with the idea of clay feet.
Americans, it would seem, given our cultural predilection for soap operas, sex scandals, and innuendo sexual comedies on television, delight in people acting irresponsibly. At the same time, expose books turn our heroes inside out and become national bestsellers, while headline stories in newspapers and magazines look little different than scandal rags at supermarket counters as they are filled with Schadenfreude’s “malicious joy.”
Sometimes this works in reverse. In that sense, it is not Schadenfreude. I am thinking of the film BB and I saw this past weekend titled, “The Help.” It was a film about African American women working as servants for middle class white families in the Deep South during the 1960’s, when one of the white privileged women got together with these black ladies, and collected their stories of how they were treated, and published it as a book. The book has been a national best seller for most of the year, and the film has been a box office success.
The audience clapped when the film was over, but I noticed as people were leaving the theatre that women outnumbered men ten to one. The women, however, were equally white and black. I was one of the few white men.
The film resonated with me because it recalled my days in South Africa, when I as a lower middle class white, was treated like royalty by Bantu when I felt how ludicrous that was. It caused me pain then, as did this film, now. I thank BB for persuading me to see it.
Schadenfreude, when practiced, is driven by an escape from reality. This film was reality as I have witnessed in my own experience. Privileged class is an oxymoron to me.
We all live secret lives, and those secrets, usually quite banal, belong to us and need not be justified or exposed at the pleasure of others.
Unfortunately, there is a capacity, should I say inclination, to believe the worse rather than to give people the benefit of the doubt. Malicious joy is always ready to step into the void, and no better vehicle provides that in this nation than that of gossip.
It has been the nature of my career that I have been privy to the confidences of many people. Likewise, I have seen people encouraged by their managers, on the one hand to grow, while on the other, seeing that they did not. Moreover, I have seen mendacity used with cruel proficiency to sabotage the efforts of the innocent; careers derailed and spirits broken when the object of the attention has done nothing wrong. Schadenfreude was often in the mix.
It is not only the petty or the lazy or the malicious that are guilty of this miscarriage of justice. Sir Cyril Burt, a professor of psychology at the University of London, and considered an expert on IQ, doctored his data to conform to his biases. This included seeing men of color having IQ deficiencies compared to whites when no such data existed. He was playing the cultural bias card that considered whites superior simply because they were white.
The nation is currently smoldering with the scent of Schadenfreude in the air. We have an African American as President of the United States. Innuendo, rumor, and slanderous gossip follow him wherever he goes.
It was equally true of Abraham Lincoln. So much so that he had to be surreptitiously ushered across the American plains to the Capital of the United States in Washington, DC for fear he would be assassinated on his journey to the White House.
Lincoln symbolized the new wave from a country of slavery to a country of free men of all colors.
Personality assassination is par for the course when fear of crushing reality does not compute with comfortable complacent biases.
Political assassination is the vehicle of a mind sullied with this bias as in the case of John Wilkes Booth. He actually thought the nation would rally around the assassination of the president. Cognitive dissonance in psychology means we make what we observe, experience, see and think fit with what we already believe to be true. There is no place for reality. It is our cultural blind spot susceptible to misinformation that fits our preconceived notions. The mind protects itself from the disruption of reality, indeed, from change. Unhappily, Schadenfreude cannot be disabused to its role in this.
Likewise, President Barak Obama is part of the new wave of men and women of color assuming prominent roles of leadership and power in a world no longer dominated by Northern Europeans and American descendants of the same. Whether President Obama will enjoy a second term should be a judgment made on the basis of his fitfulness for the office and not dark unsubstantiated rumors of malicious joy.
My sense is that America and its people are still great. I am writing about this elsewhere. Suffice it to say here that a strong America would seem pivotal not only to the survival of Western Civilization but also to the world. Bringing attention to our weaknesses does not diminish our strengths, but gives them breathing room.
Be always well, and thank you for your sensitive reply,
Jim
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