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[Ne] Is sadness beautiful to any of you?

Rail Tracer

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It depends on what the component of sadness is. Anyhow, I think the first and second images are just creepy.
 

KDude

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^Agreed! I don't embrace joyfully swinging around dead people. How that's associated with NFP, I have no clue.
 

auriel

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I prefer the bittersweet to the sad (those pictures just unsettle me). I'm not a big fan of the grotesque in art, though I appreciate dark romanticism.

I also find it particularly poignant in storytelling when the protagonist "loses" but goodness triumphs. Far more touching (and potentially life-changing, if done well) than a feel-good happy ending.
 

Vamp

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^Agreed! I don't embrace joyfully swinging around dead people. How that's associated with NFP, I have no clue.

I'unno. I want to visit the museum of death. I've never liked horror movies, especially the modern ones, but I have a fascination with real gore. I think La Carmina is INFP.
 

KDude

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I feel like vomiting around real gore. I admire people who can stomach it enough to help and be EMTs or to be the guy that picks up roadkill, but I couldn't do it.

Morbidity/movie wise, Tim Burton is my limit.. and I imagine he's NFP too. Ultimately he's pretty upbeat though, right? (except for Sweeney Todd..)
 

Devil Flamingo

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I think sadness is very beautiful, which is why I love tragedies, and most of my favourite stories and such don't have a happy ending (or at least ones with a relatively happy ending after lots of strife and misery). Sadness in real life is beautiful too, though the difference is we can do something about it, unlike in works of fiction.

I hate horror, gore and such things, though. o_o Not the fictional kind - I find myself laughing at movies like The Grudge, and most forms of horror in fiction is honestly quite laughable and not scary at all (because I can't disassociate it with it being fictional), but the real kind. Films with the Holocaust as its subject, for example? Yeah, I can't really handle those.

So I guess you could say it depends on the kind of sadness; the sadness of two lovers when dying, that's beautiful. The misery of the people who lived (and/or survived) the Holocaust, that's not beautiful, that's horrible. :sadbanana:
 

Moiety

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Sadness is ugly and I'm forever the ugly duckling. Does that make me paradoxically beautiful?
 

Vamp

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I think sadness is very beautiful, which is why I love tragedies, and most of my favourite stories and such don't have a happy ending (or at least ones with a relatively happy ending after lots of strife and misery). Sadness in real life is beautiful too, though the difference is we can do something about it, unlike in works of fiction.

I hate horror, gore and such things, though. o_o Not the fictional kind - I find myself laughing at movies like The Grudge, and most forms of horror in fiction is honestly quite laughable and not scary at all (because I can't disassociate it with it being fictional), but the real kind. Films with the Holocaust as its subject, for example? Yeah, I can't really handle those.

So I guess you could say it depends on the kind of sadness; the sadness of two lovers when dying, that's beautiful. The misery of the people who lived (and/or survived) the Holocaust, that's not beautiful, that's horrible. :sadbanana:

Finding sadness/tragedy/pain beautiful does not equal to being immune to or able to make light of the pain and suffering. I think the use of the word "beautiful" is confusing people about how others can find beauty in pain and suffering. Beauty does not have to be pleasant. Beauty can be ugly and unpleasant.

In school, the picture of the Holocaust victims or the butchered face of Emitt Till make me physically ill but for some reason I cannot turn away. The same thing with the written format- historical slave narratives are hard to read and an emotional overload but I'd never throw any of it out or remove it from my studies and collection just because it's unpleasant or physically/emotionally painful.
 
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wolfy

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Sadness can be beautiful when it is presented artistically and speaks to the human spirit. You can say that a sad song is beautiful. Or that a sad poem is beautiful.
 

Devil Flamingo

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Hmmm, I think I'm beginning to understand what you mean, though for me beauty almost always has an element of pleasantness or some such? Or rather, no, what I want to say is that I prefer the kind that has some element of pleasantness to it rather than one that's ugly and unpleasant and discomforting. To continue with my Holocaust example, a lot of movies with such themes are masterpieces of American and European cinema, so in that sense they're beautiful, I guess. I agree with the last bit (about not throwing out or dismissing this type of things because it's painful to deal with), though I nevertheless avoid that sort of thing because it's too painful for me and I know how I'm going to react (in other words, badly). In high school every time the topic of the Holocaust came up (wether in history class, or the couple films we watched a this one semester or the other) I always got very uncomfortable and squirmy and stuff.

But yeah... :unsure:
 

KDude

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I always thought the image of Heathcliff banging his head against a tree is kind of beautiful... But I don't know, it's not exactly the sadness, but the devotion there.

Also, the Count of Monte Cristo.. talk about majorly screwed. He's beyond cool though. I'm not sure who I like better actually.. the young, naive, good-natured Edmond Dantes or the Count.
 

Rebe

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That first pic was immensely disturbing.

I find emotional vibrancy touching but that includes the collision of immense happiness and immense sadness. The emotional spectrum is cool. Loneliness protrayed deeply in novels coupled with quirkiness, humor and simple beauty like walking on grass makes the loneliness more bearable to read. A combination of emotions is more enchanting to me.

Sadness by itself is not beautiful to me simply. It's a hard thing to say firmly ... what exactly is sadness? Sadness by itself? Sadness with other emotions? Sadness without a past or future? You know?

I like stories with ambiguous endings rather than happy endings. I don't want people to die or be heartbroken - I like it to be open-ended so it's half happy, half sad (to put it simply). Like it could go both ways. What is beautiful to me is subtlety hinting at possibilities.
 

Salomé

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I think the use of the word "beautiful" is confusing people about how others can find beauty in pain and suffering. Beauty does not have to be pleasant. Beauty can be ugly and unpleasant.

No. It really can't.
I think people are confusing "being moved" with finding something beautiful. Beauty moves us, but so do other things, many of them not at all beautiful. To suggest that images of the Holocaust are in any way beautiful is seriously fucked up.

There are tears of joy as well as of sorrow. Tears are just the body's way of releasing strong emotion - quite literally expelling the chemical byproducts of said emotion.
I sometimes think that it is people who have not really suffered much personal tragedy or horror who romanticise/delight in the suffering of others in artistic works. A kind of vicarious way of mining the depths of human emotion. I read recently that the heart has to fall in love once just to understand its emotional limits - the parameters of its being. People who have experienced true horror are not titillated by the simulated kind. Ask a Holocaust survivor what they think of pictures of emaciated mounds of bodies and I guarantee the last thing they say will be "Beautiful".
 

Vamp

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No. It really can't.
I think people are confusing "being moved" with finding something beautiful. Beauty moves us, but so do other things, many of them not at all beautiful. To suggest that images of the Holocaust are in any way beautiful is seriously fucked up.

There are tears of joy as well as of sorrow. Tears are just the body's way of releasing strong emotion - quite literally expelling the chemical byproducts of said emotion.
I sometimes think that it is people who have not really suffered much personal tragedy or horror who romanticise/delight in the suffering of others in artistic works. A kind of vicarious way of mining the depths of human emotion. I read recently that the heart has to fall in love once just to understand its emotional limits - the parameters of its being. People who have experienced true horror are not titillated by the simulated kind. Ask a Holocaust survivor what they think of pictures of emaciated mounds of bodies and I guarantee the last thing they say will be "Beautiful".

Or if they have suffered they could be seeing their reflection. And want other people to see that too.

Everyone has their own view of beauty. It's not a "no it isn't" or "yes it is" situation.
 

Eckhart

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I find it pretty arrogant to assume that just because you are of another opinion when it comes to beauty etc. that other people just didn't suffer any noteworthy and therefore respectable sadness in life. Ok, chances are here is no one who had to survive the Holocaust, but is that really the standard about that we are talking when we talk about sadness? The Holocaust?
 

onemoretime

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I find it pretty arrogant to assume that just because you are of another opinion when it comes to beauty etc. that other people just didn't suffer any noteworthy and therefore respectable sadness in life. Ok, chances are here is no one who had to survive the Holocaust, but is that really the standard about that we are talking when we talk about sadness? The Holocaust?

Of course, the beauty there could be in the ability of the Jewish people and other survivors to withstand the worst calamity in their history and persist through even the worst of human suffering.

It's all about perspective.
 

Vamp

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Of course, the beauty there could be in the ability of the Jewish people and other survivors to withstand the worst calamity in their history and persist through even the worst of human suffering.

It's all about perspective.

That's pretty close to my perspective. And also that the world can be a nightmare if we don't watch our intentions.
And in terms of other deep wells of despair like slavery, segregation etc., the social problems that plague those less fortunate is that the utopia of American life is really just revisionist history. Not that America isn't great, just that it's not perfect. People who honestly believe the forefathers really did mean "all men are created equal" irk me, reading between the lines instead of just accepting face values is all too common with history and society. People close themselves off because they don't want to hear it. Or maybe because they can't change it, fix it and make it "better". Sometimes you have to look at things whether they can be made "better" or not.

I find it pretty arrogant to assume that just because you are of another opinion when it comes to beauty etc. that other people just didn't suffer any noteworthy and therefore respectable sadness in life.

Which is why I brought up that whole "reflection" thing. One of the biggest turning points in my life is realizing suffering is a shared human experience. Most of my life I'd been taught that things are the way they are because "we're black" but things had been that way for other people for all throughout time because of the negative potential that exists in all life. That was a unifying moment for me.
 

Salomé

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I find it pretty arrogant to assume that just because you are of another opinion when it comes to beauty etc. that other people just didn't suffer any noteworthy and therefore respectable sadness in life. Ok, chances are here is no one who had to survive the Holocaust, but is that really the standard about that we are talking when we talk about sadness? The Holocaust?
That's not what I said. It's just a pattern I've noticed. :shrug: It makes sense to me. I haven't seen any other explanations that do, so I'm sticking with it until someone comes up with one.

Of course, the beauty there could be in the ability of the Jewish people and other survivors to withstand the worst calamity in their history and persist through even the worst of human suffering.

It's all about perspective.
Then it's not in the sadness, it's in the triumph - no great surprises that people find the triumph of the human spirit a beautiful thing.
When one starts saying stuff like "beauty can be ugly" it might sound profound but in reality it's completely meaningless.
 

Betty Blue

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There can be beauty in sadness but it's not exclusive.
Some things are just too sad to find beautiful and you (or rather I) have to turn away...like the child forced into prostitution and forcibily given drugs so that they become dependant, i can't find that beautiful.
But much art can be beautiful which is an expression of sadness made into something beautiful. One of my favourite songs is "these arms of mine" and it is very beautiful to me.
I also often find tradegy, and unrequited love expressed in a romantic way quite beautiful and moving. Gone with the wind being a classic example.
 

Vamp

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That's not what I said. It's just a pattern I've noticed. :shrug: It makes sense to me. I haven't seen any other explanations that do, so I'm sticking with it until someone comes up with one.


Then it's not in the sadness, it's in the triumph - no great surprises that people find the triumph of the human spirit a beautiful thing.
When one starts saying stuff like "beauty can be ugly" it might sound profound but in reality it's completely meaningless.

I completely forgot that your opinion is truth. Forgive me.
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I have an odd fixation on something most people spit on. A grown man/woman bleeding buckets in the fight of their lives (such as in MMA) is beautiful to me. Grotesque and horrifying to others.

There can be beauty in sadness but it's not exclusive.
Some things are just too sad to find beautiful and you (or rather I) have to turn away...like the child forced into prostitution and forcibily given drugs so that they become dependant, i can't find that beautiful.
But much art can be beautiful which is an expression of sadness made into something beautiful. One of my favourite songs is "these arms of mine" and it is very beautiful to me.
I also often find tradegy, and unrequited love expressed in a romantic way quite beautiful and moving. Gone with the wind being a classic example.

That's definitely not beautiful but I can't just turn away. I have to figure out some way to fight it or "reverse it" by donating or volunteering and correcting others when they spout ignorance about such things.
 
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