On Bathos

 @rebel yell

I would be interested in any further insight you have or better words to describe this business of crocodile tears or fake suffering.

Sure, I would be happy to help. The subject is a rather important one, as I will attempt to show later. It seems you have a few different thoughts and concepts mixed together in your mind, so lets start with some explanations and definitions.

This subject interests me, since I think the Greeks were on to something in contrasting bathos with pathos.

The Greeks never contrasted bathos with pathos; the word “bathos” was not used in a literary sense until it appeared in an essay by Alexander Pope in 1727. I believe you may be thinking instead of the three modes of persuasion, viz. ethos, pathos, and logos. The point is worthy of some attention.

Ethos: Refers to ethics, character, action, i.e. the habits conducive to virtue. As a mode of rhetoric or persuasion, ethos means an appeal to authority, to the high standing, dignity, and experience of the person making the claim. In the dramatic/tragic sense, ethos refers to the character of the hero as he meets his fate, hopefully without falling into fear and vice. The dramatic sense leads up to the ultimate metaphysical sense of the word, i.e. ethics as right action in conformity with the laws of the universe.

Pathos: Means “that which happens to one.” It is not limited to what we call “suffering,” although it does include it. In the Greek drama, some twist of fate or circumstance besets the hero like a calamity, and this sets the stage for his response, which is supposed to induce a state of catharsis in the audience. What ever happens to you, for good or ill, is your pathos, your “passion” (from whence we derive the Passion of the Christ, passion plays, etc.). The opposite of pathos is not “bathos” but act, i.e. one’s own proper power of existence expressed as ethos. As a mode of rhetoric or persuasion, pathos means an emotional appeal to the listener. In the dramatic/tragic sense, it refers to the twists of fate that befall the hero undeservedly. The dramatic sense leads up to the ultimate metaphysical sense of the word, i.e. pathos as the recognition that man is neither perfect nor omnipotent nor immortal and therefore must carry out his existence amidst ambiguous situations that seem to contradict and nullify him.

Logos: Refers to the cognizable structure and order of reality, which is one and the same thing both in the world and in the mind. The logos is the Divine Word which makes, out of the chaotic archae, a universe of form and meaning. The Greeks knew it as a power above the gods of Olympus, and it was identified as early as the St. John Gospel with Jesus Christ, the second person of the trinity who is himself the word of God. As a mode of rhetoric or persuasion it refers to arguments using facts and reason concerning things that can be demonstrated. In the dramatic/tragic sense it means the order by which the drama unfolds toward catharsis. The dramatic sense leads up to the ultimate metaphysical sense of the word, viz. the transcendent rational ground of reality.

Let’s pause here a moment to visit the subject of “crocodile tears.”

I always thought bathos meant false or inauthentic suffering, as compared to pathos, true suffering. Bathos would be crocodile tears and soap opera.

This isn’t quite correct. “Crocodile tears” does not mean merely false or inauthentic suffering. There are many ways of being false and inauthentic, most of which are not comprised in its definition. “Crocodile tears” refers specifically to a ruse, to a malicious deception and act of hypocrisy by which someone affects to feel sympathy with the sufferings of another but really wants only to exploit them. An example would be Bill Clinton’s famous line, “I feel your pain.” Phariseeism, tubthumping, and virtue signaling are more cognate with “crocodile tears” than is melodrama or what you’ve called “soap opera.”

Melodrama means only a simple drama, i.e. one in which none of the characters undergo any change of state. Saturday morning cartoons are the perfect example of melodrama: Batman is always the good guy, Joker is always the bad guy, and we don’t see any of their internal contradictions or ambiguities. This, again, is something different from sentimentality or mawkishness, although the two are often found together. Sentimentality, i.e. an overweening or excessive appeal to emotion, need not be “inauthentic or false,” except in the sense that anything out of proportion must have something unreal at the bottom of it. Sentimentality is not so much insincerity as it is immaturity, childishness, womanishness, foolishness, and silliness. It only becomes insincere when it is affected by somebody who knows better (enter here the critiques of Friedrich Nietzsche).

But none of this has anything to do with bathos, to which we now turn.

Bathos: Means the breaking of dramatic tension by an abrupt descent into absurdity. It is the “descent” which is emphasized here and it is from this quality that the word draws its meaning (bathos is the Greek word for “deep,” as in the depths of the sea, the abyss). It is, in essence, an ironic revelation that makes a farce out of everything that preceded it.

If I wanted to present to a beginner the perfect example of bathos in cinema, I could do no better than to point to the ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This is the bathetic belly flop par excellence: The final battle for the grail—which, in the original Arthur legends, would have been a matter of world-transcending significance—ends, not with victory or defeat, but with the combatants being broken up by police and hauled off in paddy wagons. By concluding thus, the implication is that the grand tragedy we thought we were seeing up until the very last moment, was really just a farce all along and that all the characters were insane. They were not knights in 12th century England but lunatics in the modern world.

My interest in this subject derives from this very important observation: Is this not the very world we are living in today? Is not the bathetic belly flop the actual fate of the tragic sufferer in the modern world? Would not anyone of high chivalric feeling, or deep religious feeling, or a lofty sense of destiny, be likely to meet his end, not in a consuming battle with gods and monsters, but a farcical run-in with dull police officers and dimwitted psychiatrists?

Since the modern world has no understanding of greatness and no place for it, it forces the bathetic end upon all true heroes. This is the situation that needs to be combatted. The modern hero faces what is perhaps the blackest and most hopeless battle of all: He must fight, not for his own greatness, but for the very existence of greatness itself. He has the grim task of fighting the Nothing, with nothing. The Nothing we fight against is the absence of any grand task or high standard or tragic fate in the world around us. All gods are dead and the world has become brittle and unreal. There is no traction, no impetus to even get going on an important mission. The nothing we fight with is the radical nullification of any sense of meaning or direction that such a world imposes upon the soul of the hero. Only the most pure and unsullied conscience can give birth once again to the gods and allow tragedy, once more, to exist.

Our Hero’s Journey takes place in the most absolute terms. We fight against the radical ending of all things.