A Fascination with Tragedy.

Tragedy. A set of events that has an immese potential to capture the attention of a fairly superficial being called man.

It is a real mystery as to why man has such a fascination with anything that is tragic. Our life is filled with tragedies... if not ours then of random people who has nothing to do with us. Open a newspaper and all you will see is dramatic versions of incidents which occured in some corner of the world. A photograph of a mother crying over her slain son... a daughter weeping for her murdered family.Go for a movie and again you see a million drops of tear shedding. Take a book and start reading and again we find ourself crying with the fictional calamities happening. Why is it that sadness, death and torture manage to affect the human phsyche so much while joy, birth and pleasure of life seemingly goes without much of an impact?

Is our life so depressing that we need to channelise the sorrow burried deep inside through the tragedy of others? Or rather is our life so blissful and happy that we need to know about the sorrows of others,so that we realise how blessed we are? Maybe it has to do with seasoning of our mind so that we can handle ourself effectively when calamities come knocking on our door.

Whatever, the reason for this fascination ; one thing is for sure: Tragedy is a billion dollar industry. The entire media industry thrives on it. News channels, movie makers, soap operas and authors; all use this human physche to the fullest. We cant blame them because business is after all business. They are only feeding to the demand of people.

The demand of people to see more and more of the greyer side of human existance. Who can deny the fact that the gruesome death of a character in a film did not influence his regard for the movie? For being more precise, let me take the movie "Munich" by Steven Spielberg. Would we all see the movie in same light if so much of death wasnt involved. I have to be frank here... the movie is where it is for its frank portrayal of the immensely gross tortureous death of the characters. We as humans somehow connect with tragedy. We are deeply disturbed by it and this disturbance makes us think. We think about ourself and start questioning our existence. We are reminded about the fears and uncertainity of life. We cry, shout and try to take out the frustration. And then we find an inner peace... if not for a life time, for a few seconds.

Man has a fascination for tragedy for it helps in keeping things in perspective.