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| Ilustration: fineartamerica.com |
Written by Muhammad Natsir Tahar
What can make us laugh, tragedy or comedy? All of people –except they connoisseurs
of suffering or massochist- will choose comedy. Tragedy and comedy are two huge
dichotomously theme on canvas of our live.
Tragedy and comedy, Aristotle said are shape of emulate way to their
nature. We seem to be forbidden from laughing, because Aristotle has sided with
tragedy.
Western Philosophy heightens the tragedy of comedy. But Eastern
Philosophy such as Buddhism or Zen
nullify it: break away from letting go of tragedy and comedy. To distinguise
between Eastern Philosophy and Nihilsm
of Nietzsche is, Nietzsche ’s denial of the ultimate purposes of life.
So how about mystics and sufism, both have declared themselves
to be out of philosophy, or actually had moved to Eastern Philosophy.
Eastern Philosophy is heavy, need particular practice, and its
followers are few, because human always wanting become part of tragedy.
Century by century world history is written in gold ink to gild the blood
red tragedy.
Heroes and saints are drawn by history from the battlefield and
sorrow. History doesn't write silly people, so history might be not write comedy.
Etymologically, tragedy comes from Greek tragoidia, divided from the word tragos, which means goat and aeidein,
which means singing. Depicts the song that accompanies the fate of a sacrificed
goat at a ritual event in ancient Greek culture.
The tragedy symbolizes the seriousness of a character as a
protagonist, who seeks to examine human existential questions. Tragedy is
intended to trigger cartarsis with a paradoxical response.
While comedy comes from the Greek kōmōidía
meaning a funny work that is merely intended to entertain and cause laughter.
In Poetics, Aristotle called tragedy as kindness and dignity, while
comedy as something inferior and contemptible. Tragedy and comedy are two big
genres of performance at ancient greek.
Behind the tragedy there are mimesis of learning and thinking, whereas
in comedy there is only logic bending, even cuteness must be present from
something inferior or physically and mentally disabled.
Its’s really strange, about human phenomena that amuse themselves by watching
the stage of tragedy. Enjoy the sorrow
and fear experienced by the protagonist, who at the end of the story succeeds
in transferring the pain to antagonist player. We wait for suffering to
move, we follow that suffering.
The world has filled with tragedy rather than comedy because humankind
absorb sorrow of every single phenomenon they experience and always want to be
involved in it.
Wallace D Wattres in his book The Science of Getting Rich was
published in 1910 said, thought about war would attract much more war, as well
as for plague, natural disaster, and starving. Similarity attracts similarity. This
ide was popularized by Rhonda Byrne with the term Law Of Attraction (LOA).
To get rid of tragedy is to forget it at all. This planet is only a
joke. Abundance could only be drawn by gratitude and joy. And happiness always
comes from laughter, which has abundant source of comedy. How many people are addicted
to drugs to find happiness, or having alcohol by deliberately get drunk and
then forget the tragedy.
Between us ever heard about laughing gas tragedy wich recovered by Joseph
Priestley in Europe (1793). People inhale the anesthetic namely Nitrous Oxide
to make them laugh. They failed to find
it in comedy. But how come to be? Are we really
a kind of sadistic creatures: entertaining ourselves with tragedy.
The news that we follow the most is tragedy. The movie that we want to
watch the most is violence or horror. Love and betrayal novels are always best
seller. Sophocles and Shakespeare everlasting because of they wrote tragedies.
The millenials children enjoy tragedies in the form of Mobile Legends
or Clash of Clans. People with low sense of humor were huffed to see the tragedy of a bicycle
sliding into a drain. Smart people criticize tragedy in a satire way like Voltaire.
Returning to Aristotle, if comedy is considered inferior, so can
tragedy be called superior? While there are parts of tragedies by people with masochist. They enjoy themselves
when they are tortured, while sadist enjoy the torture they do, so both work together
in sadomasochists.
Even those who always been victim of tragedy are inferior person, not
because they get a test of their wisdom, but a result of their naivete and
sovereignty.
Revers comedy in this century is a smart industry than can packaged with
elegan way and few technics to manipulate audienses. That is we can see at
stand up comedy show that discussed by experts. Comedian can be called genius if they are able to spend an absurd and
irrational premise to blow up laughter without the need to show faces or
strange movements.
If we fail to pick the excitement from comedy, shoud we laugh at
tragedies like Joker in Batman? It could, if not today maybe later. Like
director Woody Allen’s formula, comedy = tragedy + time.
This quote appeared in
one of the dialogues in the movie called Crime and Misdeamanor, that what we
cry and make us angry now, will make us laugh next time. Tragic?~MNT
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