Thesis–Bagel&Coffee

Dark media is better than happy media at making sad people happy!

I was chatting online with two randomly assigned teammates in a Space Marine 2 lobby. All of us knew the overarching story of the franchise and were “nerding out” discussing how elements in the story were depicted in this game. Then someone said something in conversation that immediately caught my attention! The conversation went something like this:
“This game is super dark!”
“It’s awesome right?”
“Yea, I mean Warhammer 40,000 has been exploding in popularity recently.”
“Yea it has, I feel like people like dark stuff like this more as the world around them feel darker!”
“Wow, that was deep!” I said in response before filling in the rest of his implications in my head: What if people really are attracted to darker stories when they feel like the world around them is getting worse? Could people really be happier with darker stories?

For those of you who don’t know, Warhammer 40,000 is a multimedia franchise spanning over 300 novels (and still going), a table-top wargame, multiple genres of video games, CG movie animations and one showing up on Amazon Prime Video this year on December 10th, as well as crossover events in the past with Call of Duty and Magic the Gathering. To underline, its parent company Games Workshop is very profitable from this IP.

It is also one of the darkest universes ever committed to paper. Games Workshop proudly touts that they pioneered a new genre they call grim-dark. However, we will come back to flesh this out this universe later. If I were to make a formal hypothesis from this brief conversation with a stranger I would say:

Dark media is better than happy media at making sad people happy.

That sounds a bit counterintuitive off the cusp, but it is something that makes a little sense in what I have seen in my experience. Now for the next part, to investigate this claim. So, what do I mean by happy or dark media?

Happy media in this particular usage is referring to normal media, the kinds of stories with happy endings. It can include both adult and children’s shows. It can also refer to music that is upbeat and the lyrics are positive. If I were to take a random song on the radio and guess what is about, I would guess “having a good time”, and I would be right most of the time. Other good examples of what I mean would be TV series from those golden years of the 1960s and 1970s. Shows like I Dream of Jeanine (1965), Batman (1966), Star Trek(1966), The Carol Burnett Show(1967) The Brady Bunch (1969), Mary Tyler Moore Show(1970), All in The Family (1971), The Bob Newhart Show(1972), Happy Days (1974), Taxi (1978) were all great entertainment that embodies this happy media style. The characters that despite their shortcomings sometimes, always did the right thing in the end!

There was never any grey areas questions of morality or pragmatism. Most fights were resolved with words and great points, even when tackling progressive topics for their time in small part to great writers! If there was a scene with a physical fight such as in the more action-oriented shows such as Batman or Star Trek, it would end in just in one punch and unusually reasonable bad guys that often see the folly of their ways afterwards.

Dark media refers to movies, music, or art of the dark genre. It’s a genre that usually involves the themes of loss, misfortune, death, suffering, or apathy. It may also involve themes of revenge or justice involving morally gray areas, and sometimes the enjoyment of the suffering or misfortune of others. A tragic song about breaking up with a lover is a common theme in music, after all the happy songs about finding love that is.

Tragedy specifically is nothing new and dates back to “ancient Greece from the late 6th century BCE” (World History, Greek Tragedy). Dark is nothing new and can be found in popular classic literature!

Before the American Civil War, the optimism of Ralph Waldo Emerson who started the Transcendentalism movement made its way into American literature, the most famous of these writers was arguably Walt Whitman. We can look at his famous poem Song of Myself where he displays such a zest for life and a hopefulness for all of humanity.

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
…
“Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness.”
-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

He believes in a spirit that we are all a part of and that we can be happy just stopping to smell the roses and become more integrated with nature. He believes we are all good, that goodness lies within us all already, and that happiness awaits us. This is from a larger inspiration and shared by many that were transcendentalist. This happiness directly conflicted with darker works, like The Raven by Edger Allen Poe which we can see after the publishing of The Raven.

“The Raven” brought Poe instant fame, although not the financial security he was looking for. Critical reception was mixed, with some famous writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Butler Yeats expressing their dislike for the poem.” (Christine Sarikas, Prep Scholar)

“Gonne shared Yeats’s interest in occultism and spiritualism. Yeats had been a theosophist, but in 1890 he turned from its sweeping mystical insights and joined the Golden Dawn, a secret society that practiced ritual magic.” (Poetry Foundation)

Both the father of the optimistic Transcendentalism and William Butler Yeats who was interested in the occult both did not approve of this dark poem by Poe!

After the Civil war we can see the proliferation of dark literature becoming more common place from this point of history onward. We see the emergence of writers like Emily Dickerson and Robert Frost. Robert Frost was more into Naturalism, though with an existentialist twist. Robert Frost does explore other themes in his works such as the barriers men create in “Mending Wall”, however when you read his works you feel alone in the world though his imagery of empty nature. There is very much a darkness that can be extrapolated from his poetry. Whether it is loneliness in Desert Places:

“They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars–on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.” (Desert Places, Robert Frost)
Or the suggestion that one might even stop in a forest in inclement winter weather that would assure death:
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.” (Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost)

Dr. Oliver Tearle of Loughborough University points out “Frost wrote ‘Fire and Ice’ in 1920. This is just two years after the end of the First World War, and a time when revolution, apocalypse, and social and political chaos were on many people’s minds.” (10 of the Best Robert Frost Poems Everyone Should Read)

Once again, we see an implied connection with war and dark literature! One of the scariest wars mankind has waged against itself.

We can also see more examples of classic literature featuring dark stories with the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Grimms’ fairy tales

As time progressed, we can see more pop culture landmarks that show darker tones due to war.

Godzilla was the anthropomorphization of the Atom bomb and the horrors inflicted upon Japan in World War II. Godzilla features giant lizard monster destroys Tokyo. The monster is often referred to as sin or retribution, as it became a monster due to nuclear exposure. It is a way to personify the horror of pandora’s box that has been opened thanks to nuclear weapons. The most recent reboot, titled Godzilla Minus One, won an Oscar in the United States, and 90+ additional awards and accolades after being shown internationally. Godzilla Minus One features a protagonist suffering from PTSD after World War II, and how people in general deal with dark or grim situations. Based off of the positive reviews this dark story has clearly resonated with people!

M.A.S.H. was groundbreaking and was well received during its airing from 1972 – 1983. Rather than a rallying trumpet to charge, it was more reserved, a cautionary series about war, specifically the war in Vietnam going on at the time. It featured a commentary on the war as the characters deal with the situation they are stuck in and dark sense of humor to go with it. “It’s just a war, it is nothing to die over”- Captain B.J. Hunnicutt

Even children’s shows such as Gundam got darker thanks to war. Guman’s creator Yoshiyuki Tomino was given no further instructions then to make cartoon featuring a giant robot so toys of it can be sold. Tomino was heavily influenced by World War II when writing, and therefore unlike other giant robot shows of the time that featured battles of good versus evil and happy endings, Gundam instead featured a daker war story. It stars a teen named Amero Ray who lived in a neutral space colony until it gets attacked and destroyed. Amaro is only able to survive the attack by finding a secret prototype weapon, the giant robot called Gundam. However by taking this new piece of hardware intended to finally break the gridlock of an ongoing war, Amaro is sucked into a war he wants nothing to do with, fighting not for ideology but for his friends’ and his own survival. What is interesting about this show is that it was a slow burn to mainstream popularity. The show’s dark war story did not resonate when it aired at its timeslot intended for children but came into its own much later after being rediscovered by an older crowd. This is an interesting piece to bring to the table, as to what it may further imply that dark stories resonate with adults but not children.

And finally we make our way back to the example of Warhammer 40,000. The setting is bleak, mostly revolving around mankind in the far future of the 41st millennium. Mankind worships a corpse on a throne that they believe to be their god-emperor. To live in this time is to live amongst one of the cruelest authoritarian regimes ever. Forget progress and understanding, knowledge from the golden age of technology has been lost. Everyone is some flavor of xenophobic religious zealot. War rages across the galaxy resulting in the deaths of untold billions. Mankind is assaulted on all sides by mutants, xenos, daemons, and worse. Barely hanging on thanks to the might of the Emperor’s armies and his super soldiers the Space Marines.

“Planets are deemed unrecoverable and are completely destroyed on a whim. Everything sucks, but that’s like the charm of it!” -Bricky

I should mention that there is a good helping of irony and dark humor to balance out such a horrible universe because it would not be “So stereotypical British” otherwise. Everything is so ridiculous, destructive, or horrible, the stories sometimes end up being a metaphorical dark Monty Python skit of jumping over on a nuclear bomb just to land on a banana peel and hit your head on the bomb anyway. Mankind as a result often up killing each other as much as they kill their enemies.

On the other side of the coin, having a grim universe naturally leads to characters performing heroic deeds or just trying to make the best of bad circumstances. There are sacred people of course, but they are used to contrast the people who spit in the face of unwinnable circumstances.

Did I get into Warhammer 40,000 because it was dark or heroic? No, but I could see how others may have. I got into it because it is one of the cleverest pieces of literature I have ever read, that not only inspires the imagination, but is written sort of like a puzzle. Embedded in each book is a bit of lore that when connected to other pieces, recontextualizes entire stories and character decisions!

What if we personify America as a person? One of the most defining movie trilogies of the 2000’s in America was The Dark Knight Trilogy. Recognized inside of theaters for its darker depiction of Gotham, Batman, and the Joker, while being recognized outside of theatres for the tragedy surrounding Heath Ledger’s death and the Oscar he would win posthumously for his performance as the Joker (Express, Heath Ledger’s Oscars). This newer interpretation by Christopher Nolan was not the “Adam West Batman” for general audiences, but instead a darker, morally grayer, and realistic imagining of what Batman would like in our modern world. The interesting part is this trilogy started playing in theatres right around the America was fighting its “War on Terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan (History Channel, War on Terror Timeline). The finally of the trilogy literally involved terrorism, which Batman had to fight against.

Dark is found in our own lives though we do not see it the way we literature. In our own lives we just see it as scary, sad, or as an existential crisis. We see dark when we see politicians or judges make regrettable decisions, but we call it disappointment or outrage. We see dark when we lose hope, but we just call that hopelessness. Perhaps it is because we are unable to see it in our own world that we wish to live it out in a song or movie. And this is where the hypothesis comes into play. What are we looking for in dark media when there are plenty of problems around us already?