Aestheticising sadness and mental Illness

Have you ever wondered why most people listen to sad music even though they are already upset? Why in films or series, antagonists with traumatising past are often glorified? The obsession with social media and standard black and white images with sad quotes are often considered ‘relatable’ among the recent generation? Have you wondered why romanticising sadness is even a thing now?

Friedrich Nietzsche, a German Philosopher, in his book ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’ said, “The carnal delight de faire le mal pour le plaisir de le faire.” Or ‘To act wicked for the pleasure of being wicked.’

Nietzsche argues that the origin of punishment is rooted in ‘the contractual relationship’ among people. Think of it as, if you hurt someone, them hurting you back is equivalent to it. That means, the concept of punishment was basically imposing the suffering on someone else for personal satisfaction. Nietzsche describes many cruel punishment methods and these torture and execution were displayed at royal events for entertainment.

As humanity started becoming civilized, it was important to modulate their cruel pleasures. As people could no longer practice those instincts, pleasure in cruelty became a famous concept of mainstream culture. People started taking pleasure from watching horror movies, crime documentaries and violent scenes. Thus now, people can take pleasure from cruelty from a distance. Yet, bad conscience developed on people from the guilt or technically from ‘doing something immoral.’ So, the pleasure in cruelty imposed on others, people started to get the same pleasure causing that suffering to themselves.

Now the pain was definitely not for nothing. People needed and had reasons for causing the pain. It has to do a lot with the term, ‘Good vs Evil’. Back in aristocratic society, ‘Good’ was defined first referring to wealth, power, ambition, pleasure and in common folk, were defined as ‘Evil’. So, to them ‘Good’ was considered a virtue of not imposing our powers on others, sacrifice earthly pleasures etc. We can see that in religions. To Nietzsche, we subject our pain intentionally for the sake of being good person.

But sadness, general pain, these terms are genuine and natural, that we all know. But the question is, our pain may have reasons, but why do people necessarily need a purpose of suffering? Especially in modern days?

First, the depression and the depressed generation is not a matter to be handled lightly. In 1994, a study by Post, assessed 291 biographies of eminent males in music, art, writing, science and political leadership. He also found high rates of psychiatric disorders in writers and artists. He also found high rates of both depression and alcoholism. This is where art and mental illness intertwine.

Art is an expression platform for the ones who hold strong passionate emotions. In recent studies, it has been suggested that mentally ill people are more drawn to art, mental illness has to do nothing with it but different types of art have different types of audience, or we may say targeted audience. Naturally, sad art attracts sad people. In recent generation, people don’t usually try to find depth in a context, so they tend to create their own depth. Often, something sad is often considered having depth. Teenagers will take pleasure in listening to Billie Eilish, Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, or dive into a fictional character with a traumatizing past to feel relatable, to find themselves through these art. They need to disperse their emotions and emotions through something, that’s where social media comes.

People can often be sad and blue. But Tumblr, Instagram and other apps where sadness and depression are highly romanticised make them sadder. At times, people may desire sadness for the sake of being sad with no outer audience, but they can resonate their sadness with a black and white picture and quotes in it containing little to no depth but mostly negative. Social media platforms highlight being sad as interesting and for the sake of being relatable and ‘interesting’, people desire intense sadness. To put it simply, it became their coping mechanism to deal with their sadness. The fact that depression and mental health is so stigmatized in recent world specially among the parents with common mindset or in society that people dealing with depression needed an avenue to let it out, surprisingly, social media became a relatable platform for expressing these emotions for the young people.

Now, younger people mostly, need a meaning to their sadness, they masochistically indulge in self pain, thinking this will make their existence and their sadness interesting and unique. They create a point of view, or a tragic daydream starring themselves where they are in constant pain, antagonise others for putting them in that situation. Also, their thoughts and emotions are often beautifully put making suicide and depression sound so poetic, as their sadness will be considered by the society only when it is delivered in an aesthetic form of art. The influence of sad art, and social media aestheticisng sadness fuel their sadness to intense depression, from where they are led to the point, where getting healed scares them. Being common and leading a standard happy life is stupid and boring to them. In order to cope with sadness, now they build a personality based on their depression. They fear at one point if they lose their unique personality and being relatable once they are healed.

Is it art’s fault for leading a generation to depression? The answer can be neutral. Modern art can be held responsible to some extent as in recent times, modern art sometimes used as a business to draw a crowd being relatable by romanticising mental illness. But the negative perception that people select for themselves can be responsible as well.

How our mind works might be a mystery at times. But being sad and depressed is as natural as being happy no matter how society stigmatises it. But what is not natural and unhealthy is, glorifying depression in recent times to fit in social standards. Also how social media is being responsible for the growing rate of depression and suicide rate should be a serious concern. The younger generation has already misinterpreted ‘It’s okay not to be okay’. They are forgetting that it is okay to be okay as well.

* Ayesha Humayra Waresa is a student of Dhaka University