Laughing at the World: Schadenfreude, Social Identity, and American Media Culture

Historically, schadenfreude has been condemned by scholars and thinkers as a "base" emotion, while reality television is often dismissed as lowly "trash" television. However, the use of real individuals' televised trauma has larger cultural, sociological, and ethical significance beyond the texts themselves. Much like literary and stage melodrama in the nineteenth century, contemporary media's exploitation of actual is closely tied to negotiations of status and justice---a means of working through issues of morality an ethics on a national scale.