Schadenfreude

[Captrek]

Schadenfreude. The joy we receive from seeing the villain get his comeuppance.

In cinema, it is almost de rigueur. Thus we have Kruge screaming as he falls to his death, Chang saying “To be, or not to be” as he sees a photon torpedo homing in on his ship, similar “Oh shit, I lost and am about to die” moments from Soran, the Borg Queen, Ru’afo, Shinzon, and Nero, and Klaa being forced to eat crow and apologize. (Thankfully, TWOK spares us the gratuitous shot of Khan watching the Enterprise go into warp and screaming “NOOOO!!!!!!!” just before blowing up.)

It is common in television as well. For example, witness Q’s misery at being defeated in Encounter at Farpoint and Hide and Q. Or the reveling in Cyrus Redblock’s undoing as he steps outside the holodeck and throws a tantrum when he begins to disintegrate, and Data (after receiving the captain’s permission) has some fun punching Redblock’s henchman in the face.

I am struck by the almost complete absence of this from TOS and TAS. Where it does exist it’s usually as a joke, as when Harry Mudd is left in the hands of 500 robotic Stellas, Cyrano Jones has to pick up all the tribbles, and Koloth is faced with the same predicament in the animated followup. Otherwise, there is almost always sympathy for the defeated. When the Talosians fail in their quest to find suitable subjects, and when Gary Mitchell is killed, nobody draws any satisfaction from their fates, but tears are shed for them. When the magnetic entity is stranded at the climax of Beyond the Farthest Star and pitifully pleads, “Don’t leave me, so lonely, so lonely…” it rips my heart out every single time. (Amazing how this Saturday morning children’s cartoon packs more emotional wallop than most entertainment aimed at adult audiences.) Compare this to the handling of a very similar situation in Skin of Evil when Picard taunts and gloats over what is presented as Armus’ well-deserved fate. Nobody sheds a tear for Armus.

I’m not suggesting that the films and 24th-century Trek overuse the device. I think they use it about as much as is typical for the genre. I just think the rarity of the device in TOS and TAS is remarkable.

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

I think that's one of the things that makes TOS so charming. We mourn for Lazarus, we mourn for Apollo, we learn the killer is actually a momma protecting her eggs. That's what makes TOS so much more special for me. We become allies with Kang, we regret having tricked the Romulan Commander, we wish we'd become friends with the other. The "villains" of TOS are far more complicated than the writers of the murderous tar baby of "Skin of Evil" could have ever conceived.

 

[Christopher]

^For what it's worth, the writer of "Skin of Evil" was Joseph Stefano, best known for his work on The Outer Limits, which is right up there with TOS and The Twilight Zone as the smartest SF shows of the '60s. There were plenty of TOL episodes that portrayed the "monsters" as sympathetic or misunderstood, and there were some that treated them simply as monsters. Who knows? If Stefano had done more TNG episodes, his subsequent "monsters" might've been sympathetic too.

For that matter, I think there was an attempt to make Armus at least slightly sympathetic. He felt betrayed and abandoned, was angry that his people had rejected him rather than trying to reconcile with him.

 

[Forbin]

^For what it's worth, the writer of "Skin of Evil" was Joseph Stefano, best known for his work on The Outer Limits, which is right up there with TOS and The Twilight Zone as the smartest SF shows of the '60s. There were plenty of TOL episodes that portrayed the "monsters" as sympathetic or misunderstood...

Including the very first one (the Galaxy Being), which I watched the other day!

 

[Captrek]

For what it’s worth, SOE is my favorite TNG Season 1 episode, and one of my favorite TNG episodes overall. Major props to Stefano for writing it.

I agree with your assessment that there was an attempt to make Armus at least slightly sympathetic. I’m not saying TNG is all the way at the opposite end of the spectrum from TOS. The character’s backstory is deserving of some sympathy, and the episode even invites viewers to feel some sympathy at certain moments, particularly during his conversations with Troi.

The big difference between BTFS and SOE in this respect is the tone of the climax and end of the episode. When the magnetic entity is stranded and pleads in vain for mercy, the viewer is invited to weep for it. When Picard taunts Armus, Armus screams in rage, and the good guys beam away and leave Armus to his fate, the viewer is invited to cheer.

After watching SOE, if you’re inclined to look back on it and evaluate it intellectually without actors, music, and other cues influencing your emotional response, you can see things differently. You can see Armus as a helpless victim of the giants who created him, abandoned him, and condemned him to a terrible fate. You can see him as every bit as deserving of sympathy as is the magnetic entity. That, however, is an after-the-fact intellectual assessment, and I’m talking about the emotions the episode is designed to elicit. During the episode, SOE asks you to indulge in schadenfreude, but BTFS never even gives you a chance to so indulge.

Many antagonists don’t even get the little amount of sympathy Armus gets. There is no sympathy for Q in these early episodes. There is no sympathy for Damon Bok, Cyrus Redblock, Lore, the drug peddling Brekkians, or the neural parasites. All that in just the first season!

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

For what it’s worth, SOE is my favorite TNG Season 1 episode, and one of my favorite TNG episodes overall. Major props to Stefano for writing it.

Have to disagree with you. Stefano is one of my favorite sf anthology writers, but I think the execution of this story is its greatest flaw. Of course, the thing was probably vastly revised and rewritten by GR's lawyer.

I agree with your assessment that there was an attempt to make Armus at least slightly sympathetic. I’m not saying TNG is all the way at the opposite end of the spectrum from TOS. The character’s backstory is deserving of some sympathy, and the episode even invites viewers to feel some sympathy at certain moments, particularly during his conversations with Troi.

The death of Tasha Yar (a character who I detested from the beginning) extinguishes any sympathy for the villain the audience may have had.

The big difference between BTFS and SOE in this respect is the tone of the climax and end of the episode. When the magnetic entity is stranded and pleads in vain for mercy, the viewer is invited to weep for it. When Picard taunts Armus, Armus screams in rage, and the good guys beam away and leave Armus to his fate, the viewer is invited to cheer.

Exactly.

After watching SOE, if you’re inclined to look back on it and evaluate it intellectually without actors, music, and other cues influencing your emotional response, you can see things differently. You can see Armus as a helpless victim of the giants who created him, abandoned him, and condemned him to a terrible fate. You can see him as every bit as deserving of sympathy as is the magnetic entity. That, however, is an after-the-fact intellectual assessment, and I’m talking about the emotions the episode is designed to elicit.

The magnetic entity tortured Kirk, but at the end cries pathetically and we all feel sorry for it. The tar baby screams in rage and after its murder of Tasha Yar, we think it gets its just rewards. I don't think they're even closely parallel. I think Armus is actually more akin to Kruge from TSfS. Both kill without passion, and both illicit schadenfreude.

During the episode, SOE asks you to indulge in schadenfreude, but BTFS never even gives you a chance to so indulge.

Quite so.

Many antagonists don’t even get the little amount of sympathy Armus gets. There is no sympathy for Q in these early episodes. There is no sympathy for Damon Bok, Cyrus Redblock, Lore, the drug peddling Brekkians, or the neural parasites. All that in just the first season!

Quite correct. TNG is a different critter than TOS. And perhaps its why TOS is still so popular.

 

[Destructor]

Schadenfreude. The joy we receive from seeing the villain get his comeuppance.

That's a limited interpretation of the word. You can feel schadenfreude when bad things happen to good people, too.

 

[Captrek]

The death of Tasha Yar (a character who I detested from the beginning) extinguishes any sympathy for the villain the audience may have had.

[...]

The magnetic entity tortured Kirk, but at the end cries pathetically and we all feel sorry for it. The tar baby screams in rage and after its murder of Tasha Yar, we think it gets its just rewards. I don't think they're even closely parallel. I think Armus is actually more akin to Kruge from TSfS. Both kill without passion, and both illicit schadenfreude.

Tortured Kirk? I think that’s an overstatement. Yes, it does hurt Kirk — and Spock — but I don’t think it rises to the level of torture. Kirk and Spock both shake it off pretty quickly.

Even granting that the pain may be very intense, it lasts only a few seconds. The entity has been stuck in hell for THREE HUNDRED MILLION YEARS. If it doesn’t get away, it could be another three hundred million years — or billions, or trillions, or eternity. If it doesn’t think that hurting somebody else for a few seconds to facilitate its escape is a horrible thing to do, well, duh. Considering the enormous stakes in play — if the entity doesn’t escape it faces a fate too horrible to imagine, but if it does escape it endangers the whole galaxy — zapping Kirk and Spock seems like a non-issue.

Any schadenfreude felt at the entity’s fate strikes me as astonishingly callous. It would essentially assert that when faced with a choice between enduring hundreds of millions of years of suffering or making somebody else endure a few seconds of suffering you should choose the former, which isn’t a realistic standard, and that failure to live up to that unrealistic standard earns this horrible fate.

Armus is a somewhat different kettle of fish. Killing Yar is certainly a bigger deal than what the entity does to Kirk and Spock. I wouldn’t expect Tasha’s friends and crewmates to feel sorry for the creature, and the episode doesn’t really ask the audience to feel sorry for it either. However, in my detached “after-the-fact intellectual evaluation,” I can see that the manner of Armus’s creation makes it impossible for him to act any other way and that at the end of the day I’d rather suffer Yar’s fate than Armus’s.

Schadenfreude. The joy we receive from seeing the villain get his comeuppance.

That's a limited interpretation of the word. You can feel schadenfreude when bad things happen to good people, too.

True. I’m discussing the term as it relates to Star Trek and similar entertainment. When these programs aim for schadenfreude, it’s generally at the expense of villains, or at least unlikable people. Mr. “Don’t get smart, Tiny” isn’t a villain — he’s just kind of a jerk — but it’s fun to seem him get his ass kicked. Likewise Captain Styles, who’s no villain, but is so annoying and arrogant that he needs to get taken down a peg or three. On the rare occasion that the audience is asked to laugh at the good guys, like Worf bumping his head in Insurrection, it generally falls flat.

Wikipedia’s article on the subject is interesting. It says that scientific studies have determined a few things about schadenfreude:

• Schadenfreude is correlated with envy. I.e., we enjoy seeing misfortune befall people we envy.
  
  
• People with low self-esteem are more prone to feel schadenfreude than people with high self-esteem. (This strikes me as a corollary of the previous point, as people with low self-esteem are more prone to envy than people with high self-esteem.)
  
  
• This is the point that surprised me: men enjoy seeing misfortune befall “bad people” who deserve it, but women don’t react that way. Does this mean that women are more likely to prefer TOS/TAS and men are more likely to prefer TNG/DS9/VOY? Does empathy for the magnetic entity indicate some female psychological attributes?

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Tortured Kirk? I think that’s an overstatement. Yes, it does hurt Kirk — and Spock — but I don’t think it rises to the level of torture. Kirk and Spock both shake it off pretty quickly.

Actually, I would suggest you go back and watch again. Kirk is subjected to agony when he drops the ship out of orbit. It's screaming "Obey me! OBEY ME!! OBEY ME!!!" all the while blasting him with a beam from the Intuder Defense System . Afterwards, Kirk is actually quite shaken up, to the point that he has to ask Spock, "Did it work?" in a very weak voice.

Even so, I don't think anyone suggested that they didn't feel sorry for the magnetic energy being. If you think I did, then you misread my post. Perhaps if it had been screaming at the Enterprise crew in anger as the tarbaby did, things would be different.