Why is TRAGEDY Beautiful? (2 Theories)

Tamar’s full answer (transcript of her voice note, more or less) (Schnee: hey! random question related to a video i'm making: how would you describe what beauty means in math? what type of idea/scenario in math would you call beautiful? what's beautiful about it?) Tamar: Hey this is a good question! Let me tell you some things that are not quite it, but are qualities of what’s a beautiful idea in math. I think that this is something anyone would agree with and then i’ll tell you something that's a little more like my personal take. I think that for an idea to be beautiful in math it has to be simple and surprising. Maybe this is not a shocking list of qualities, but if something is a very complicated idea,it's not really gonna strike people as beautiful. And if something is just sort of obvious deductive steps, that’s also not beautiful. It’s sort of like some sort of creative route to an idea or a surprising conclusion that comes about from something that’s simple to follow in some way. Like maybe soe sort of unexpected maneuver where someone spells out the steps, you can see it, and see how it works. I don’t think that’s the whole picture, but I think the reason those things are necessary is that it’s something that’s sort of perspective expanding. I guess that gets to what i think is beautiful in math, which are the ideas where you get a new perspective on the same idea. Like you have different paradigms in math, different ways that you can build up different kinds of mathematical objects and ways of thinking mathematically, and when someone can build a bridge where you can see that there’s these two different perspectives or these two different frameworks are actually different lenses on the same idea or or comparable lenses on the same idea, then that can be a really beautiful thing. Let me think of an analogy. Ok, this is not a great example, but imagine you were thinking about food and you were thinking about how certain cultures -- this is made up -- but like certain cultures use mushrooms in a certain way, and certain cultures use soy sauce, and some people use fish sauce, and some people use like, I don’t know, some kind of cheese, and you realize that there’s some sort of unifying idea that showed that these were all different approaches to the same achieving a certain kind of punch in your food. So certain ideas in math are like that where there's sort of some sort of like a unifying idea that brings together different kinds of ideas. And that's,I think, a really classic type of beautiful idea. And that's one of my favorite things. I don't think it's the only thing that people call beautiful in math, so I'll think about it a little bit more. Maybe there's something that could be a little bit more summarizable, but those are the thoughts off the top of my head.

Maybe the real tragedy is the friends we didn't make along the way

I think what made Jinx's rocket so powerful was that it was the most Devastating moment of her life. but simultaneously the most triumphant. the rocket is shot out of anger, regret, and sorrow. but also out empowerment, Pride, and Love. It's a beautiful moment for that reason. All of her emotions, anger, and Trauma all culminate into a missile of mass destruction. it's like the world will finally know and feel what she's experienced all her life. and will know that she's now truly become jinx.

I found beauty in episode 3 of Arcane in that we had always seen Silco as this emotionless and cruel warlord, yet he sat down in the rain and comforted this little girl in front of all his troops. He took a chance to seem weak in front of his men, which in turn showed strength.

Beauty in a tragedy, to me, is a feeling: either “It didn’t have to end this way” or “it could only ever have ended this way.” And it was enhanced in arcane by Ella Purnell’s perfect delivery

Schnee, you have a way of breaking down these extremely complex topics, in very accessible manners - which is not something everyone can do Keep it up!

Strangely enough, I find Chernobyl to have some very beautiful scenes and most come from essentially honor in a corrupt world. For example, when the general says he'll go there himself or when the workers decide to volunteer.

Great analysis as always, but I was missing something that I'd like to contribute: the mention of the positive function of pain. No one will probably see this comment burried under the others, but let's try it anyways. So, what is pain? We like to think that pain is the cornerstone of suffering, it's something bad and something we need to avoid. But pain is actually the blessing of evolution. The feeling of pain signals us that we are about the lose something that is important to our survival in the most basic sense of the word. You cut your foot? If you live as an early hunter gatherer human, you might not be able to keep up with others and will be hunted down by predators or just die of thirst or hunger. Emotional pain is almost the same, even the brain areas involved are overlaping. When you lose something or are about to lose something you NEED, you feel pain. This is evolution's way of trying to nudge you to avoid the loss. But it's not always possible. So you lose someone in a tragic way, what happens? Pain comes to remind you that you are injured, something you NEEDED is lost. And at those dark and sad moments you are deeply and profoundly CONNECTED TO the VALUES you've just lost. When your garden is burnt down, you can't stop and smell the rose anymore, but suddenly you are FORCED to remember the smell, and it's not something you can ever forget. In those infinitely long and still so evanescent moments people are broken or remade. And sometimes it depens on whether or not you can realize THE REASON WHY you NEEDED those VALUES.

In Iron Man, Yinsin telling Tony not to waste his second chance and that he was going to be with his dead family, that was pretty beautifully tragic.

I think most of us will agree that ep 3 of TLOU is beautiful. I also love how it’s a summary of the entire season. It foreshadows everything and preps us for what’s to come.

I don't think the beauty of anger and fear should be set aside here. The scene you're talking about with Joel is inherently one of anger, no just sadness. I think I would define beauty in storytelling is an emotion being VISCERALLY VALIDATED. For example, the core urge/base of anger is justice. Joel is sad, but he's also angry, seeking to get justice for Ellie's death. Jinx is seeking justice for how the people of Zaun had been wronged, and how she had been wronged. I think fear is a little more complicated... What comes to mind first is that there are somethings that one may fear, but another find beautiful.

For me, beauty in storytelling comes from contrast. It’s one of the reasons why bittersweet tends to hit stronger than fluff or angst separately. And even in your answers you kind of hint to it in a sense: - Tenderness in strife - Simplicity from chaos Etc.

For me, one of the most tragically beautiful scenes in all of media is the discussion between Kiritsugu and the holy grail about not being able to save all of humanity in Fate/Zero. The scene, of course, is very tragic and bitter, because we know that our hero essentially failed. But that's not all there is to it. The beauty COMES through the quiet island and contemplation that make up the scene. The palm trees and stars somehow also give us a sense of the unnatural and we stand before it in awe. My personal favorite anime for sure.

6:23 I think both Tamar's and Ben's explonation fits why that scene is beutiful. Not just because of the tenderness, but because of how we see Rue pass away (in peace, tenderness again). But we experience it as her. From her point of view. We hear Katniss sing, we see the trees and the sky, and how they slowly shift out from focus. And presenting her death this way is surprising and novel. Also ties back to the first comment from how we REALLY see something. We saw characters die and pass away, but not like this. What I'm trying to say is, that overall, there can be more than one reason that makes something beautiful.

That is exactly what I felt towards the "Dark era" part of Bungo stray dogs. It's full of these tender moments of such extreme emotion to me. It's like characters are not speaking with a calm and somber tone in these moments, but screaming their lungs out: "I am in pain! Help me! Save me!" How perfect every little moment of it is, be it simple, like a character playing with children or eating curry or somebody dropping a depressing statement in the middle of a casual conversation, especially in retrospect, when you know how and when and why everything's going to go to shit, it's just... perfect. It doesn't help that one of the characters is an uncommon archetype I happened to relate to since childhood. It pains me just how underrated BSD is.

This essay is beautiful. At the beginning we are haphazardly dealing with a lot of definitions of beauty. We want to find it. We want to define it. Chaos. So schnee answers the call and begins on a quest. With the entire schnee patreon disc to back him up, he gathers opinions and knowledge from many other brilliant minds. With a canvas schnee brushes the first strokes: 4 ideas. Slowly but surely it formulates. Using the expanse of already amazing stories like Arcane, Last of Us, etc. we finally find it. From there we can define the power of tragedy. I don't know about others, but the sense of epiphany and "Yes! that's it!" connects to me on a deep level; since I can more fully define the beauty of the best stories I've seen/read (per animation, Bluey's Sleepytime, Flat Pack, Space, and Baby Race, and Hilda's The Witch, Fifty Year Night, and Deerfox come to mind). Thank you schnee and community, we need people like ya'll

Part of it might be inevitability, too (if this is already mentioned my bad). But in tragic stories, it feels like there’s always a hope that things could have gone another way, either because of ignorance or circumstance, but from the very beginning of the story, it is clear that the “happy ending” that we may hope for the characters in the end is not, in some way, possible. Realistically, it never was and in some way the audience is subconsciously aware of it, too. On “Death of a Salesman”, Arthur Miller mentions how the only certain thing in his play was Willy’s undoing of himself, despite all else, for instance, which makes the ending dialogue from the characters have this sort of “beauty” effect. The “beauty” then may be a newer manifestation of that hope. It is not necessarily a spectacle of the actions/emotions by themselves that does this (although these are invaluable for resonating). The hope becomes a tainted hope that has adapted to the world around it, but it refuses to die, even if it must loose sight of itself in order to do so. edit; might also be that a character fulfills a part of themselves despite the consequences (Jinx coming into her own person / growing —> giant explosion, Joel showing he has finally connected to Ellie / found love and fulfillment —> murder hospital), maybe? Like a be careful what you wish for situation, almost

Beauty is heavily, heavily subjective but it really can just be described as awe and wonder that is so overwhelming you’re at a loss for words while having so many feelings about it. It’s captivating, off guard, and near a perfection we crave because it feels so powerful. Regardless of how imperfect it actually is it leaves the impression of something whole, deep, and nuanced. This nuance doesn’t have to be comfortable in order to leave an impact which is why so many people debate on what beauty is.

Such an amazing video. My thoughts is that tragedy is a way to make the characters feel human and like you said sad and emotional. Psychologically, tragedy draws us to what is itself tragic. Things that are beautiful because they are human or relatable, Thanks for listening to my TED talk.

Beauty is too broad for me, but in terms of tragedy I think you clicked into the overall feeling but it's made up of two actually conflicting ideas 1 - This was inevitable (Emphasis on causality) 2 - This could have been avoided (Still emphasis on causality) So ultimately, whether it's me trying to make these two completely paradoxical ideas mesh together or it's a real thing going on here, I think tragedy often has this hyper focus on the causal chain of events leading up to whatever the moment is that causes the tragedy