Why tragedies are alluring - David E. Rivas
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- čas přidán 13. 09. 2024
- View full lesson: ed.ted.com/less...
The story goes something like this: A royal, rich, or righteous individual - who is otherwise a lot like us - makes a mistake that sends his or her life spiraling into ruin. It's the classic story arc for a Greek tragedy, and we love it so much that we continue to use it today. David E. Rivas shares three critical story components, influenced by Aristotle’s “Poetics,” to help illustrate the allure.
Lesson by David E. Rivas, animation by Globizco.
Whoever does the animations for these deserves mad props
MrOnairos I think it's different animators/studios each video :)
MrOnairos Yeah! Cool, simple, and professional.
MrOnairos well in this video its a guy or a team called "Globizco"... as seen in the little very useful thing called "credits"
MrOnairos Yeah, they move very nicely and are creative and fluid. Nice job, unknown person! :)
***** He wasn't asking for his name,, he was just giving praise even though he didn't know who it was.
"I am not in danger, I am the danger" - Aristotle
Say my name
You're Aristotle
You're goddamn right!
What a badass
Call an ambulance!
But not for me
One of the best of Aristotle's quotes!
lmao💀
I like how he assumed that I neither killed my father nor married my mother.
...Good point.
Exactly what I was wondering...
Assumed that I had a father
Same 😌
Jaden...
One reason we might love it is that they have a seed of hope at the very end, a little tiny sign that all is not lost and that things will get better, like in breaking bad when Walter releases Jesse and Jesse drives away
+mbanana23456 Like Buddha said: 'Nothing is too late, as a bad day always be followed by a good day.'
+mbanana23456 While many modern tragedies do have a seed of hope at the end, most of the classic tragedies like the ones mentioned in this video didn't have any bit of hope at the end, and people still enjoyed them.
TED-Ed, like, for real... How do you keep making these beautiful animations 3-4 times a week? They are wonderful--Kudos to everyone involved!
They hire different studios. You can check it out in the credits!
Sweatshops in Africa probably.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the downfall of Michael Corleone. A classic example of a tragic character and their downfall. All he wanted to do was protect his family (or at least that's what he said) but he ended up destroying it
I agree
Breaking Aristotle
Ha ha ha ha ha...
i love this guy's voice. i can only watch videos narrated by him.
Me too
Personal favorite tragedy;
The story of Anakin Skywalker.
Have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Plaguis the wise. I thought so. It is not a story the Jedi would tell you.
It was the tragedy that was the most exemplified in clone wars. We see the hero turning into the villain while we watch helplessly
Ngl I didn't know Anakin turned till like sczn 4 of clone wars...in my childhood I enjoyed Hero Anakin... I'm happy I had that ignorance at that time
"Oedipus's tragic flaw is hubris or excessive pride, and it attempt to avoid the fate prophesied for him, which is exactly what makes it happen" somehow reminds me of tom riddle
artsyme Tom riddle was obviously based on Oedipus because JK Rowling is a fan of Greek/Roman mythology.
That's because both rely upon the self fulfilling prophecy trope. Voldemort learns about the prophecy: that someone will gain the power to defeat him one day. So, Voldemort takes the action that hand picks the specific child and gives baby Harry all of the tools he will eventually need to emerge victorious. If Voldemort had simply ignored the prophecy, then Harry wouldn't have gained the tools he needed to defeat Voldemort, and Voldemort honestly could have won the war easily.
I like tragedies because I can't cry for myself or release my emotions. They're buried like a mile under the earth.
But when I watch such stories or read them, I can imagine myself in the character and cry for them.
It gives me release.
Also, tragedies seem realistic to me. I want someone else to suffer too. Happy and fantastical stories are good and nice but at the end of the day, I want a story in which the protagonist suffers as much as I do.
Agreed
That sounds waful but also is very human.
3000 years and Oedipus is still the twistiest story ever!!
Oldboy is modern story for this
Hamartia isn't a fatal flaw of character. It's a mistake the tragic hero makes. The ancient Greek word refers to missing your archery shot. Now, the mistake may arise from a flaw in character, or it can be a temporary lapse of judgement. The point is that the hero makes a mistake and in this way brings his reversal of fortune upon himself.
Like in Romeo and Juliet, Tybalt's hamartia is when he kills Mercutio.
비극의 내용을 담고 있는 이야기가 어떻게 쓰이는지에 대한 내용 잘 봤습니다. 생각해 보니까 지금까지 별 생각 없이 읽었던 비극 이야기들은 대부분 이런 동선을 따라갔던 것 같네요. 흥미로운 영상 감사합니다!
“At least you didn’t kill your father and marry your mother”*
*may be void in the states of Florida, Arkansas, and Mississippi
I like tragedies just because I love seeing people suffering the consequences of their mistakes and love those 'everybody dies' type of endings. Also very educative, because I'll take great care of not repeating their mistakes.
To me, it's not that I love seeing failure and despair. But I like knowing that mistakes have consequences, and sometimes bad mistakes come back to bite the main character. It's kinda a sense of ... relief, ya know? It wouldn't be quite as fun to watch/read something where someone constantly does bad things and gets away Scott free forever. The consequences make it feel justified or cathartic.
I'm gonna name my cat Oedipuss
You must like the feline of cat-tharsis
Sick bruh.
What about Bellepawn?
"I'm not the protagonist of a novel or anything. I'm just a college student who likes to read, like you could find anywhere. But... if, for argument's sake, you were to write a story with me in the lead role, it would certainly be... a tragedy."
- Ken Kaneki
Which book is that?
@@SharkSalesman90 It is an anime called 'tokyo ghoul'
1:30 he is like "wtf did u say ?"
I've always liked the cautionary tale of the self fulfilling prophecy. Oedipus is a great example. A more modern example would be in Harry Potter, with Voldemort. That's because both rely upon the self fulfilling prophecy trope to establish their "downfall"
Voldemort learns about the prophecy: that someone will gain the power to defeat him one day. So, Voldemort takes the action that hand picks the specific child and gives baby Harry all of the tools he will eventually need to emerge victorious. If Voldemort had simply ignored the prophecy, then Harry wouldn't have gained the tools he needed to defeat Voldemort, and Voldemort honestly could have won the war easily.
DON'T SAY HIS ****ING NAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you mean YOU KNOW WHO.
Thanks for this well-written wonderful video.
Agreed
Greek tragedy, despite what Aristotle said (he was wrong about most things), lies in the fact the world itself is doomed. Tragedy is the natural state of man, and wisdom lies in facing this fact with courage , even wisdom. The "tragic flaw" is a somewhat simplistic view of tragedy.
Been reading a certain German philosopher with a distinct moustache?
"Hamartia" is αμαρτία in Greek and translates to sin.
+Not Talos but in ancient greek hamartia is a term used to describe missing your target. it is not sin with the christian meaning.
Well, yes, but, missing your target as a virtuous individual is, in fact, a sin.
+AbbeyRoadResident Exactly! with one word;failure or even...fault. But in Poetica is often translated as misjudgement. In modern Greek means sin.
Not Talos Αμαρτία means missing the mark... Missing the mark as in targeting something in life but missing the mark and go through a bad and destructive way... Its not sin in the christian way of original sin or whatever... Its the ancient Greek logical version.
Have been watching TED-ed for like ever, but found the animation in this episode to be particularly fascinating.
Agreed
Jesse, we need have a Ted Talk.
I understood Oedipus' complete lore today - with the proper background provided by this video. Thanks.
OMG what a beautiful animation!
Dunno, Light was pretty evil, and he's one of my favorite characters.
True, but his reasoning for the evil he does is relatable. When we first meet Light, he's just your average high school student. Extremely intelligent, but otherwise just a normal teenager. The first thing he does with his newly attained power of inflicting instant death is saving a girl from being molested. The people he kills are all criminals. It's easy to root for him the same way we do any vigilante, even if we recognize what they're doing is wrong. His fall to evil may not be very gradual, but we still get hints of the moral Light throughout the series. For instance, the convoluted scheme that necessitated him forgetting the Death Note. Once he went back to his old self for a bit, he was a genuinely good, moral, just young man who immediately turned around and used his intelligence to help L stop the murders. The moment he touches that page from the Death Note after all that is extremely jarring, leaving us as an audience unsure whether to mourn or rejoice for the loss of that version of Light.
It's a great bit of storytelling and I think it still very easily fits the classical mold. His downfall is, after all, his hubris.
Mary Whipple Yeah, he's a sociopath. Anyone who believes massacring people for the lightest of crime s is twisted somewhere.
He essentially made himself into a moral human being knowing he would come out immoral again in order to fool L.
Sure, we might all wish for less crime, but is inducing fear by mass death really the way to go about doing so? I don't agree.
Act Free yes. That's the way to go. I don't see the problem in using fear to deter humans from commiting violent crimes.
@@actfree6897 the only thing that stops commoners from committing crimes is the fear of consequences that may follow. Criminals are usually confident that they can escape these consequences. If Light stopped them by invoking fear and making it known that they will NOT escape, I don't see how it's any different from what the government or any other justice system does.
@@kanishmaray the difference is that government can be good or bad. It's up to us to change it.
While kira? It's just 1 person giving out justice from his perspective
Never liked tragedies, personally. I do love a good tearjerker every now and then though.
Same here
Love the Breaking Bad animations, lol.
really beautifully animated
There's a powerful aspect to Oedipus Rex as a tragedy that's hard to convey as an example. The play does not follow Oedipus's life chronologically. He is already king of Thebes, and is trying to discover who murdered the previous king, Laius, so this criminal can be cast out to end a plague. His people beg him for relief and he feels dutybound to answer, he is a good king.
The prophecy has already come about. Laius was his father. He is warned by the blind prophet Tiresias that the truth is horrible, eventually his wife Jocasta realizes what the truth must be and begs Oedipus to stop - but Oedipus stubbornly seeks the real answer, refusing to be swayed by rumors or doubt because he is a hero, a king, the one clever enough to outwit the sphinx, he needs to and only he can save his people by finding this awful man... until he realizes who he truly is and what he has done.
Seeking the truth is a noble goal, but by such a righteous action he doomed himself. In ending his blindness to the truth, he blinds himself. He created his own tragedy twice over.
Yep, exactly. This video misses the mark, so to speak, of hamartia, as does the typical English translation as 'tragic flaw'. A defect of character isn't necessarily tragic, because it can be viewed as reaping what you sow. The tragedy is when there is no defect of character, but rather a careless mistake (of the amoral variety) or even just a perfectly reasonable action with an unlucky result that could not possibly be foreseen. Oedipus's hamartia wasn't hubris, because it's expected that hubris leads to negative consequences, and then there would be a lesson for the viewer -- don't be too proud or it could come back to bite you. Much of the appeal of classical tragedy is that there's no way to avoid it. You could fall victim to it just because the world is a place where terrible things can happen to people through no fault of their own. The character made no moral failure but still suffered, invoking pity and fear -- pity due to the undeservedness of the character's fate, and fear that it might happen to the viewer as well due to the unavoidability of it.
A real tradegy that is dark and gory is the manga Berserk. Read it, it's a tradegy where the main character, Guts is born from a corpse and how his life goes downhill. Then later on he wants to get revenge in Griffith and has to kill demons as he struggles to keep his humanity. A real tragic story.
That story is a materpiece
RIP KENTARO MIURA
If you also look for an anime that is in the vein of a classic greek tragedy, look up Fate/Zero!
If you also look for an anime that is in the vein of a classic greek tragedy, look up Fate/Zero!
i think we really need more Tragedies in cinema and TV nowadays, most movies nowadays just follow a generic, uninteresting and bland hero who has one goal from the very start of the movie and the fulfillment of this goal is pretty much guaranteed
this is true from Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter... ,Matrix... the list goes on
and yes their heroes are bland, or have you ever hear anyone say "Frodo is my favorite LOTR character"
i want more movies that are unpredictable, with flawed heroes who are not invulnerable and have a personalities beyond "i have to stop the bad guy"... heroes who arent comically good and fight bad guys who are comically evil... and stop with the fucking "super duper happy no one important died" endings
***** I agree that stories should be less bland by incorporating more deaths and deeper character but Greek tragedies are on the other end of the spectrum which is even worse in my view.
Peleg Tsadok yeah, but I would already be happy if the heroes had personalities and didn't just run through fucking machine gunfire without taking a single bullet, and if they do take a bullet it bleeds a little... You bandage it up and you're good to go *because that's totally* *how bullets wounds work*
I think the mad max trilogy is one of the few movies who got that right, the hero takes a bullet in the leg in the first movie and he wears a leg brace and walks with a limp for the rest of the Trilogy
And i really enjoyed watching hamlet decending into complete insanity when I watched the play... I would love to see that in more modern stories, the hero just giving up and embracing grief or insanity, or the hero just losing his humanity and completely losing any kind of moral compass
But no... You get only like 5 movies per decade that touch something like that
***** There already a lot of movies, and even more TV shows with a flawed hero uncomical villain. And a lot of the media today don't have happy endings. If you're not watching them, then then it just means you're deliberately watching happy comedies.
TheMightyWill yeah but they are still vastly outnumbered by movies and shows that are about as deep as saturday morning cartoons... not to mention all the fanboys of star wars and other such "good always wins" stories who claim that stuff like Harry Potter or LOTR is the best stuff ever written
also can you recommend a few tragic Movies ? its getting harder to find good ones
TheMightyWill
***** There Will Be Blood is a perfect example of a tragic movie done right, it's not happy ending yet it still has a point and makes sense.
IMO Breaking Bad did it wrong.
We all have free will and these stories show how we can feck up our own lives because of that.
It's also worth mentioning that not all tragic flaws elicit the same sympathetic (and eventually cathartic) response. Sometimes, you get a downright violent or aggressive response, like me when reading Macbeth.
Honestly, the only sensible characters in that play were the witches. Idiots, the other lot of them.
But the language in Macbeth is just awesome. Especially that Tomorrow and tomorrow soliloquy. Macbeth had a nice way with words for a guy this twisted.
Tbh same. I never understood the appeal of Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet. But I loved Hamlet and Julius Caesar.
The Red Wedding, Tyrion's trials, Jon Snow....I feel cathartic right now!
A needed hero vs a deserved hero, which would you choose?
that beginning was WILD
Agreed
what an amazing story with punches of insights
Tragedy is reality too!
You forget to mention that its the success of people who developed and adopted these ideas that helped make them so popular.
Greek tragedies use techniques that are still essential for storytelling today
03:10 where can i get that image in high resolution? say for a wallpaper! i absolutely am in love with the minimal animation.
I was wondering why I love Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
My name is Alexander Hamilton....
@@justanotherbohemian3827 And there's a million things I haven't done...
@@cherubiqueenergy4486 But just you wait, just you wait...
@@justanotherbohemian3827 My name is Alexander Hamilton
YOOOO BREAKING BAD REFERENCE IN A TED-ED VIDEO
1:26 oedipus's story reminded me of minority report ..
best among what I am finding
Animation is amazing. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
but I did kill my father and marry my mother, you lied, you said "at least you didn't kill your father and marry your mother".
Well, at least you have a story that shows you aren't necessarily a bad guy.
Joey Fogarty But at least you didnt blind yourself and go to the wilderness. And dont try to fool me, there is no internet in the wilderness:D
Viktor6665 And he couldn't use the computer neither because he's blind
+Nicolás Hurtado You could use a braille computer, duhhh
You don’t really need a Braille keyboard anymore, you can use Alexa or Siri, on the phone you brought with you into the woods
I see Waltuh, I click.
Thank you for this
Great Video!
percy jackson fans where u at ?
I feel like it’s more so that we’re interested because we’ll learn what to avoid doing by watching the consequences of others
Or it makes us feel better about our own simple lives, to know we'll never have to endure the life of a Greek tragedy.
@@l.n.3372 ¿por qué no los dos?
My dreams already mastered this concept
found this after aot is over. such a good tragedy
“A royal, rich, or righteous individual - who is otherwise a lot like us - makes a mistake that sends his or her life spiraling into ruin.”
Me: Oh, ok, its real life.
Ted-ed: Its the classic story arc for a Greek tragedy-
Me: *my entire life has been a Greek tragedy*
beautiful presentation!!!
3:33 I just feel really sad and/or angry and annoyed (because tragic mistakes are sooo annoying when they could've been avoided). I think it's because I end up caring too much for the characters, since I prefer stories with happy endings.
Perhaps this wasn't the video for me to watch, as I despise tragedies, but I cannot help but disagree about the part where the narrator said that we feel 'relief and emotional purification' after reading a tragedy, because I just feel a gaping hole in my heart and depressed.
I keep thinking about the Cyberpunk Edgerunners show and how it's almost a perfect tragedy: The Tragedy of David Martinez. A kid with ambitions who, after the death of his mother and being kicked out of school, joins with a mercenary group using tech his mom stole and was going to sell for David's own benefit. He looks up to their leader, Maine, and follows his lessons; views him as a father figure. When Maine's illness gets the better of him, David doesn't heed the warning. He continues down Maine's path before succumbing to the same thing. Tho he dies by the hand of Adam Smasher, a fight he stood no chance of winning even in great health, David's tragedy comes from following the same lessons that killed Maine. David never dechromed to help his cyberpsychosis, and he knew the kind of trickster Maine worked for previously yet goes to work for the same man. The combination of these is what gets David killed ultimately, though he will always be known as a Legend in the Afterlife.
The animation is sick!!!!
stunning animation
brilliant vid, thank you!
"light yagami was the first person to die by the death note and kira was the last" is just a great example of a greek tragedy
Shoutouts to anyone who has to do this for school
Ye
Has this anything to do with what's going on today in Greece?
Mohamed Farouk "An old and mighty empire became the precursor of many states and nations, so even the landmass on which they were fighting against each other for over two thousand years was named in honor of this empires mythology. After said nations nearly destroyed mankind, the mightiest of which formed an new empire, without borders on the inside, without an army to the outside, but with the biggest economy the world had ever seen. And with the values, the old empire had tought them. When the young empire was growing and growing, it swallowed the old one. Not because of economic sense, or any kind of sense expect the pride for the old values. But when the old empire was attacked by a new enemy, with a new kind of weaponry, all the values were revealed to be dusty for a long time now. The only values left were the ones of the enemy, greed and egoism, and so every nation tried the best for themselves, but the old empire had not this possibility anymore. And so the nations tried to do the best they could, not to help, but to mitigate their own losses. But they failed thanks to their own pride, greed and egoism and so the prospect of war built up once again on the small landmass called Europe."
the ending 😂😫
I'm starting to think my literature teacher teaches off of these videos, one class of his was basically this
Tool - Vicarious, this song also explains some of that
+Lalo710 Cavazos
thanks
Oldboy (2003) directed by Park Chan-wook.
I believe the reason we like to watch a tragedy is the same reason we like to watch celebrities or the wealthy having a huge public downfall. I don't know the reason, just that they're the same.
I'm using all the Ted Shakespeare and Literature videos to help with my english essays! Cheers
Huh at the school Oedipus Rex ending did not include him gauging out his eyes and retreating in to the wilderness I wonder why?
You're god damn right
4:02 well......
beautiful
Oh the humanity
“At least you didn’t kill your father and marry your mother”
Wise words, thanks
2:52 Nooo, don't turn me into a marketable grave!
Thanks for explaining this to me, now I don't feel so bad about not being Batman.
That was dark
He is stopping me from falling asleep at work.
"At least you didn't killed your father and married your mother" You don't know me. You don't know my life.
Why Walter White on the cover
wait... having ambition is a terrible thing??? killing some random person on the street is not evil?? what the fuck?
First of all ambition is two way knife. And yeah its greek dude murder is smallest crime you can do in that time
Watching
I feel catharsis whenever I finish a movie. Maybe it really is because I didn't kill my father and marry my mother.
I just recently re-watched Breaking Bad, it always reminded me of the classic structure of a Greek tragedy.
But what it made me realize is that the problem for me with these kind of stories is that the tragic hero is never admirable, I can always admire the people around him and pity them for the suffering they received because of the tragic hero but I always hate the tragic hero, he keeps being an asshole and nothing happens.
The feeling of relief you mentioned in the video, I never felt, after I watched Breaking Bad or read Greek tragedies it just made me feel uneasy and bad, I hated that feeling, I only enjoyed the parts in the story where there is something good happening.
Everything else is just not enjoyable to me.
I believe this model of the Greek tragedy is broken and outdated, instead of being entertaining they just fill you up with bad feelings.
In modern fiction(novels, films and TV shows) the hero is heroic, not tragic, he is admirable and relatable, but still does mistakes that you can understand.
Characters like Walter White, Oedipus or Antigone are unrealistic, they present a "what if" situation that has no point, it doesn't have a practical moral lesson - the mistakes are very easy to avoid in real life.
In my view, a talented writer is one that can create realistic characters that make sensible decisions(not necessarily correct ones) and creating a tragic hero is the opposite of that - a character that makes all the wrong decisions and a world with no justice - the innocent die all the time.
I disagree with you. Maybe perspectives vary. I too recently watched Breaking Bad and am in absolute love with all the characters especially Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. I do agree that the protagonist is only the antagonist but that doesn't take away from the fact that his underlying intention was good. And ultimately his actions did have consequences and he died.
hapsanks
"his underlying intention was good"
Walter admits at the end of the show he didn't really do it all for his family, he did it for himself.
He did die, but his death didn't matter anymore, he already ruined Jesse's life, killed Hank, Gale and a bunch of other innocent people.
Andrea and Jane were also killed and Brock(Andrea's son) has to live without a mother.
Andrea's other son, Thomas was also killed for no reason.
It's all about of meaning-less deaths to fill you up with fake emotion, it has no basis on reality, it teaches nothing.
hapsanks jeez, spoilers guys. I've watched the show from beginning to end, but I imagine you just absolutely ruined the whole thing for someone.
"Smile, kids, because no matter how bad things get, they can always get worse! :)"
The tittle really reminds me of a certain author of Tokyo Ghoul
Didn’t quite catch the third story component can someone recap?
That one person who both killed their father and married their mother: 👁👄👁 nO mAtTeR hOw BaD tHiNgS gEt...
I love this video but there's one flaw it only talks about Greek tragedy but not so much on the other varieties of tragedy like Shakespearean tragedy, revenge tragedy, domestic tragedy, etc.
King Lear. One of the greatest (Greek) tragedies ever.
But Shakespeare wrote it.
@pillypuppy666 ahaha yh I know. Idk really what I was trying to say I'm ngl. It's Greek influenced I guess. But yh..
What is the music in this called?
The best tragedy is the one the Jedi would not tell you. The one about Darth Plagueis the Wise.
God of War and PRIMAL are my top favorite tragedies.
please make a video on agamemnon by aeschylus
우리가 비극을 보았을 때 카타르시스를 느낀다는것을 배웠습니다. 비극을 보았을 때 안도와 정서 정화의 감정을 느낀다는 것이 놀라웠습니다. 정말 재미있는 시간이 되었습니다. 감사합니다.