Schadenfreude E-Book

Tim Lihoreau

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 219

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

We might not like to admit to it, but everyone -even the gentlest of souls -derives a secret guilty satisfaction from the misfortune of others. Tim Lihoreau has made it his business to uncover the myriad ways in which schadenfreude rears its wicked head, including: Turparphilia: To delight in the less than aesthetically beautiful nature of a friend's offspring. Nimbuphilia: To delight in driving wildly through a kerb-side puddle which you know to be too close to a pedestrian. Famaphilia: To delight in witnessing a celebrity in an everyday pickle. Schadenfreude: The Little Book of Black Delights uncovers the shady details of our darkest pleasures. Naming, defining and explaining each one in turn with fascinating insights and erudite wit, it drives at the heart of what it is we find so irresistibly delightful when faced with the other people's discomfort. Whether you actively pursue them, only think of them or even try and deny them, your blackest delights are in here somewhere...

Leseprobe

First published in 2011 by

Elliott and Thompson Ltd

27 John Street, London WC1N 2BX

www.eandtbooks.com

This electronic edition published in 2011

978-1-907642-38-8 (epub)

978-1-907642-83-8 (mobi)

978-1-907642-84-5 (PDF)

Printed edition ISBN

978-1-907642-37-1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may bereproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without theprior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does anyunauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable tocriminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available fromthe British Library.

Cover design by James Collins.

For Suzanne and Pete - and the Moulinde Roche, the perfect writing place.

Contents

Foreword

How to use this book

Chapter01: Schadenfreude

Chapter02: Schadenfreude

Index

Foreword

To paraphrase an old line, I still don’t quite know why my mother didn’t make me a mornuntiaphiliac. Perhaps she didn’t have the wool, so made me a purple tank top instead.

I am only partially joking. My mum always used to be an inveterate mornuntiaphiliac, a supreme mistress of this particularly dark art. Her skill with the extended, tortuously tantalizing, almost labyrinthine lead in, sometimes lasting several minutes and always culminating in the totally expected but somehow nevertheless shocking revelation of a friend’s mortality, was second to none. As a party piece, it wasn’t quite up there with playing the accordion or telling gags, but it formed a crucial part of my growing years.

Perhaps she would still be a mornuntiaphiliac today, if her mind didn’t play such tricks on her. As to why she didn’t pass this trait down to me, that got me thinking: we must all have our own Schadenfreude palette, a blotchy, mottled board which we use to occasionally dab our souls, not with vivid, fluorescent colours but with a scale of blacks and charcoals, sables and jets. On it, too, would be a wash of greys and slates: battleship grey, gunmetal grey, quartz grey and even the truly pit-dwelling arsenic grey.

So I decided to collect them. To admit to some of them, perhaps, but mainly to collate and christen them - each ambrosial bliss, each nectarious relish, each ravishing indulgence. Some, as you will see, are darker than others - fully-blown Schadenfreude, delighting in every nuance of another’s precise misfortune. Others, though, are hardly dictionary-definition Schadenfreude at all but simply wicked pleasures. Yes, there is always some offshoot agony somewhere down the line, but it might be a distant by-product of what is merely a more personal, secret sin.

When scrambling around for a name, a little inky ribbon to bind them, I first thought it should be a Tao – a little ‘Tao of Schadenfreude’, if you like. After all, it could be said that these are the unacknowledged, private yins that sit beside our colourful, public yangs. We all occupy both of these spaces, but perhaps we don’t always admit so readily to the yin’s shade alongside the yang’s light.

Admit to some, I said. So here goes. While in my youth there may certainly have been some self-preserving resistance to Mornuntiaphilia, I am pretty sure that one of my earliest childhood recollections is of a turpaphiliac neighbour, who took one look at me – despite being the shape of a space hopper now, back then I think I was already lanky while still in the cot – and said ‘Lovely pram. Is that the Silver Cross Viceroy?’ It may be a trick of the memory. Perhaps she was comparing me to some former colonial type she knew but I doubt it. Very few ever passed by our particular neck of Leeds.

As a student, I began to work at the local opera house, checking the tickets of the rich, the famous and the corporate. Call me a benedixophile if you like (and I will certainly admit to Eboracophilia since birth) but it was here that I first encountered Priplaudophilia. Set in the literal darkness of the orchestra, stalls were a seedbed of priplaudophiliac males (it always seemed to be men), each of them almost spring-loaded, baying to be the first to be able to ruin the moment.

Now? Now I am but a verophiliac, nothesophiliac libresophile with ruberinophiliac tendencies – but my deepest darkest joy, my most schaden of Freudes, has got to be Mendicaphilia.

And so.

How to use this book

I do love seeing that line in the front of books, today. Perhaps here it should say 1) open, 2) read, 3) laugh occasionally? and 4) simply delight. For this reason, I have not separated the book into its main genres (see below) but I have provided an index in order that you might dip in and delight. Perhaps even self-diagnose.

As far as suggestions go, had I organised this into sections, it would have almost certainly been in four:

the lavorophilias – the work delights

the vitaphilias – the daily life delights

the fornophilias – the sexual delights

the miscellophilias – the rest, including those concerned with recreation and entertainment

Lavorophilias are those most commonly observed or practised in the workplace, particularly the larger, more corporate arenas: try starting with common ones like the rather tart Nodonophilia. Vitaphilias are those for which we can probably all hold our hands up and embarrassingly try to ‘high five’ to: Callidinfanophilia is very common now, for example, as are Nothesophilia and Infrenophilia.

For those of a more stable disposition, the fornophilias offer up such pearls as Maximentophilia or Coclearophilia. There are more, but I am far too polite to point them out here. I’m sure you will find them if you seek them.

Finally, the miscellophilias. The rest, so to speak. Where to start here? Well, you could do worse than try the increasingly common Vinoptophilia; the childish delight of even Nimbuphilia; and who but a saint can resist Tefamaphilia?

However you light your way through the murky pages of this book, I do recommend you embrace your ebony raptures, your sooty spoils, your Schadenfreudes. We will all be the better for it.

Tim Lihoreau

Accugeophilia:delight in‘outing’ a fake residential area.

To be fair to accugeophiles, quite how dark their philia is depends on how militant they choose to be when it comes to outing their victims. At its gentlest, this is hardly a philia at all and merely an attempt to prevent the spread of tosh, said to have started in the bowels of the 1980s. Back in those dark days, Streatham became St. Reatham and Battersea morphed into Lower Chelsea, so the accugeophile’s work was much appreciated by all, not just themselves. Nowadays, however, like many things, its origins have become muddied and its methods argued over by ever more disparate branches of the same root cause. For most, though, this is a harmless, if a little shady, recreation, usually enjoyed verbally among friends who will recover. For example, ‘I’m so sorry we’re late. I set the sat nav for Hampstead borders, like you said, and it took us miles away. It was ages before we realised you meant Kentish town!’

[accuratus, accurate; geographia, geography]

Adverursophilia:delight in notknowing the answer to a question.

Very high up on the list of workplace delights is Adverursophilia. If all the dark circumstances that can fall into place do, this can not only prove one of the most piquant delicacies available to the lower office orders – the Production Plankton –in their daily pursuit of transient delights, but also bring some temporary sense of social justice. The subject, the adverursophiliac, often has to put in a substantial amount of groundwork for maximum joy. Key to their pleasure is the temporary amnesia, a general understanding by all involved that, at some point in the past, they did indeed know the answer to the question at the heart of the matter. Then, at the point of maximum potential embarrassment – The Golden Point* – when asked to supply a key piece of path-critical information, they simply utter the trigger phrase, which has brought down many a previously great middle manager: ‘I’m sorry… I’m not with you?’

And so the game commences, with a phrase as deadly as it is telling: on one level it simply displays an apparent lack of understanding, but on another it implicitly says ‘I am no longer on your side’. Lethal. Very often, the ‘question’ at the heart is not a question at all. It can be a call to verify, a signal to commence a pre-planned mini-presentation, or even the chance to demonstrate ‘succession planning’. Most frequently, though, it is a simple question: ‘Isn’t that right, Ashley?’ Cue a few seconds silence. ‘Ashley?’ More silence, then that trigger phrase: ‘I’m sorry. I’m not with you?’ BOOM! There it is. The beginning of the end. If the adverursophiliac has done enough groundwork – and let’s be under no delusions, this is a risky business – then a boardroom coup may well be underway and one’s boss has taken the first steps pell-mell down the emergency exit on the way to becoming one’s former boss. As they say in the workplace, revenge is a dish best kept out of the minutes.

On a more everyday level, the adverursophile has merely won himself some much needed office comfort: it may be temporary, it may even be ultimately holing themselves below the water line, but it is joy in its truest sense. It might earn them some finite respect in terms of toilet graffiti or even a deliberately mismatched newspaper headline, extracted and mounted on the kitchen pinboard: ‘I’d do the same all over again, says Ashley!’ ripped from the Daily Star. A gem.

*see How to Survive Your Boss, work in progress, Tim Lihoreau

[adversus rursus, volte-face]

Adverviriophilia:delight innot recycling.

With a name deriving from the diametric opposite of green on the standard colour wheel, adverviriophiles are not, by any measure, anti-green. At least, not for 98 per cent of the time. They are not global-warming deniers nor shirkers of responsibility, either. It is just that, once in a while, as a treat for being so good, they award themselves this inky, honeyed pleasure, that of shoving everything in together. They allow themselves not to recycle. For one moment, as the planet sinks to new depths, they are walking on sunshine and, in the words of a certain 1980s popstar, don’t it feel good! The sheer, albeit temporary, titillation of not having to separate their rubbish feels, for a moment, simply succulent and any thoughts of the Earth are limited to seeing it from space as they float in high orbit.

On the other hand, Adverviriophilia luxa – a delight in leaving the light on – can hit people when they are least expecting it, leaving them with a sneaking suspicion that, deep down, they are genuinely unreconstructed about this whole issue and that, maybe, they don’t buy all this green stuff, after all. Why, for example, would they have had their hand poised easily over the light switch, their TV dinner in the other hand, only to find themselves smiling and choosing to leave the light on. Of course, there are simply people who do not ‘do de simia” as the visionary Pliny once said.

One further strain exists – namely Adverviriophilia otia. This shady indulgence is enjoyed while on holiday – it can be in a villa, in a hotel, or simply while in another person’s home, however temporarily – and one allows oneself the orgasmic delight of leaving everything on: TV, aircon, lights, as many items on charge as you could find plugs.

[adversus, opposite; viridis, green; do de simia, give a monkey’s; otium, holiday]

Alavellophilia:delight inspoiling a child’s game when unseen.

The name of this philia reveals everything you need to know. It is derived from ala and vello: wings and pulling. Alavellophiliacs do exist, they are out there and they know who they are. As their name suggests, they were the ones who pulled the wings off insects when they were young. A tiny percentage of them do what they do to get their own back on a particularly irritating kid. Sadly, 99.9 per cent do not. If you know your partner is an alavellophiliac, you should take steps. Perhaps join a large number of time-consuming unpaid organisations (the chair of governors in a school is ideal). Also, try not to breed.

[ala, wings; vello, pull]

Aldarophilia:delight inputting it on expenses.

Britain’s MPs have been responsible for giving the word ‘expenses’ a bad name. It should be noted that Aldarophilia is in no way associated with fiddling expenses. It is merely the animal delight in buying something in the knowledge that someone else is paying. No further twist need be added. One needn’t buy a better model than one would have done. One needn’t buy several at once. No, this is simply the dark delight in knowing that when it comes to the ultimate reckoning for this chicken in a basket and two glasses of Chianti enjoyed in the Leicester Premier Inn one sad November night, the personal fortune which you are able to bequest to your offspring will not be affected. As definitions of L’heure exquise go, it’s pretty damn close. Can a delight such as this ever pale with the knowledge that another person’s loss (as in profit & loss) will be increased?

As with every yin, there is a yang. This is known as Aldarophilia spirilia and occurs when a lax attitude is adopted with regard to the filling in of one’s expenses forms. Again, nothing sinister is at play here. It is merely the nature of modern work, in which 15-hour days are the norm and the time to complete expenses forms is redefined as ‘free time’. Here, Aldarophilia spirilia sufferers find themselves so behind in their claims that they often find they are diverting money from their subsistence essentials simply in order to maintain their working lifestyle. In this instance, it is their bosses who enjoy the delights, treating them as akin to a monthly overdraft which bosses, if they are lucky, may never even have to pay off. This can happen with tax returns, too, in which case it is known as ‘time in jail’.

[alius, other; dare, pay]

Amgaulophilia:delight in alove of French films, laboriously worn.

Amgaulophiliacs are not hard to spot. They are generally male, heavily into men’s grooming products and don’t first think of motorbikes whenyou say Kurosawa. If you want to self-diagnose, then for a clinching, almost medical, decider question, ask yourself if you are just as agitated about whether they will ever make another series of the Swedish version of Wallander as you are about the amount of media time given to global warming deniers. If the answer is yes, then you may unwittingly be an amgaulophiliac. In a world where Newsnight Review is not yet available on the National Health, ‘amgaulos’ tend to wear their love of French film much as a cricket umpire wears jerseys. They delight in dropping French names the way others might drop Hs, and entire scene references which go so far over others’ heads they need a flight plan. If you think Pagnol is what Parisians take for their migraine, then you are not a sufferer.

Amgaulophilia tempesta is a subsidiary condition where the subject waits in silence as you discuss the latest Harry Potter film, only to strike – eyes heavenwards and a rictus grin contorting their features – with the casual observation that the final scene in the Hogwarts entrance hall ‘…was clearly referencing La Double Vie de Veronique, and, incidentally, there’s a season of Truffaut on at the Screen in the Spleen* at the moment’. Definitely someone who delights in only enjoying their films in seasons.

*Hampstead’s trendiest cinema built from a refurbished hospital operating theatre.

[amo, love; gaul, France; tempesta, season]

Ampropaquophilia:delight inabstaining from something.

This is less dark and certainly less sinister than Tudolophilia (qv); ampropaquophiles would, in less enlightened times, simply have been labelled ‘smug’ and conveniently locked away from the general public. With what some might see as the unfortunate lack of a suitable substitute for Bedlam, today ampropaquophiles are encouraged to assimilate into most areas of polite society (some working men’s clubs still refuse them entry), and their smugness is tolerated by most.

The ampropaquophile’s pleasure is derived from accumulating self-righteousness, an ironic black delight based on the denial of delight itself. Each new relinquished recreation is greeted as a sacrifice to be savoured, as if they are members of the Opus Dei branch of life itself. The mantra will be familiar to all. Sugar doughnut? ‘Not for me.’ Glass of wine? ‘Not for me.’ Songs of love? ‘Not for me.’ (A related but wholly separate strain is that of Tudolophilia curratomba, which is the delight in witnessing someone fall off the wagon and ‘give up their giving up’, as it were.) This is a delicious philia, made all the more delectable if it was something you would have loved to have given up yourself.

[amo, love; pro, before; pascha, Easter]

Antevoluptophilia:delight in‘inadvertently’ revealing the plot of a film.

The inverted commas should be noted. This is obviously a bit of a misnomer and not inadvertent at all. Most antevoluptophiliacs just want to spoil the fun. It’s that simple. It may seem like an accident on so many occasions but it rarely is. Antevoluptophilia continua sufferers do it in stages, as each section of the film unfurls, to maximise their own pleasure. Usually, they give morsels of plot away with lines like ‘Oh, and see what he does with that key, because it’s important when they find Carlo’s body, later’. Of course, as they sink back into their popcorn-strewn seat, they know all too well that Carlo is alive and well and wandering around the screen. This can happen up to a further five times during an average movie. Up to ten in Le Chagrin et le Pitié. There is only one way to spoil an antevoluptophile’s fun and that is to take them to a Jean-Luc Godard movie (or any film that has ever kicked off the Venice Biennale), where there is too little plot to reveal.

[ante, before; voluptas, delight; continua, continuous]

Aviaphiliadelight in windingup friends’ children before leaving.

Along with gin and Grandad, this is sometimes referred to as ‘grandma’s delight’, due to the high number of sufferers in this category. Nevertheless, it is practised by many other demographics, including the childless, the homosexual and the middle-management virgin. Similar in outlook to chaophiliacs (qv), aviaphiliacs tend to treat children as if they are a set of those walking teeth toys: simply wind them up, put them down and laugh your head off as they annoy the hell out of everybody. Grandmas take a further strange view. When they themselves were young, the rules were there to be obeyed. Now, along with the world records for earliest drink of the day and most insensitive personal comment, they are there to be broken. With Saint Jenny of Joseph as their patron, they spit, wear purple and take an ageing delight in encouraging their grandchildren to simply let go. Then they leave their offspring behind to cope with a smiling, screaming, shouting, giant E number. Which, in a parallel reality, is a line from a Cliff Richard song.

[avia, grandmother]

Benedixophilia:delight inbaiting a posh person.

Interestingly enough, the bene dix of this philia is not the ‘well-spoken’ posh person you might think in the definition. It in fact refers to the act of posh-person baiting itself, an act historically thought to involve some very ‘well-said’ phrases by dint of nature. Benedixophilia goes far beyond simple mockery and repeated phrases. Most experts in this dark art thrive on the subliminal reference, hoping for at least the silver-standard goal of the quizzical look, denoting an uncertainty in the victim about whether a dig has just been made or not. ‘Do you ever watch The One Show? was one I noted down in the field recently, a gentle sideswipe at how often the word ‘one’ was used instead of ‘I’. Other methods include what Arthur Mullard called ‘crunching juxtapositions’* when one deliberately butts up a slice of ‘us’ against a slice of ‘them’ in conversation. Thus:

‘My driver tells me that petrol has gone through the roof!’

‘Really? My driver tells me it’s now £1.70 to go just one stop!’

Eventually, many chronic benedixophiliacs find that the simple pleasures become bland all too soon, and one seeks what Mullard terms ‘posh spice’ – a famous posh person or one who has presented a nature programme at the very least. Ben Fogle is often seen as a target, but the jewel in the crown would be a ‘Bullingdon’ MP. ‘Everybody likes a bit o’ Bully’, as famous benedixophile Jim Bowen was wont to say.

*‘living the Lie – Humble Essays on the Essential Tortures of High Birth by Baron Arthur de la Mullarde of Ravenshall, Ravenshall Manor Press. If you have never read this book, let me recommend it. It is the seminal book in which ‘Arfur Mullard’ as his public knew him, essentially ‘came out’ and revealed his previously hidden, privileged background. The chapters detailing his beatings at Uppingham – and how he administered them – are beyond powerful.

[bene, well, dicere to speak]

Boretophilia:delight inhaving a good memory.

Just to explain, the full definition should read ‘delight in having a good memory when all around you are losing theirs’. Boretophiliacs take their pleasures from sourcing, from within their own age group,* those who simply can’t remember things as well as themselves. They will delight in filling in words in conversational gaps that even Just a Minute wouldn’t have buzzed for. Their standard joy, though, is to demonstrate great memory immediately after their friend’s demonstration of bad or perhaps, for greater discomfort, when the subject of ‘bad memory’ has just been humbly confessed. Some veterans will even walk a few paces behind friends who wander into other rooms, in order to stop behind them when they pause and say ‘Your glasses, you came in here for your glasses!’ The main thing to remember about Boretophilia is… [Note to self: Remember to finish this before going to publication.]

*It has to be from the same age group or lower. The working title for the game show ‘Are you smarter than a ten year old?’ was allegedly ‘Would a ten year old know what I did with my keys?’

[bonum, good; retinentia, memory]

Caetumalbophilia:delight inchecking that another team lost before you check your own team won.

This is a delight that will usually show itself between the ages of five and 18, and the cases of late-onset Caetumalbophilia are few and far between. Named after the author’s personal delight in checking that Chelsea have lost prior to checking that Leeds have won, it is often an irrational joy in which the original parameters of the pleasure have changed and yet the delight still lingers. Nothing, for example, can prevent the author raising a smile when the pricy team of Russian-funded foreigners go down (the lowlier the conquerors, of course, the greater the joy) despite the fact that the team he learnt to truly despise as an impressionable, Chopper-loving Spacehopper owner were a world apart. Nevertheless, the philia is still there. When he checks in 2012 to find that Chelsea have lost and Leeds have won, in his heart he feels the Freude of Bremner, Giles, Lorimer et al trouncing Osgood and Bonetti. It’s like Skywalker destroying the Death Star.

[caerulus, blue: albus, white]

Cadangliophilia:delight ata British sporting defeat.

A hardy perennial delight on these shores, Cadangliophilia is most common in its ‘trophy’ strain, Cadangliophilia wynma (delight at a tennis defeat). This is seasonal, occurring around June each year at the first sight of what are perversely called ‘British hopefuls’ lining up for their first matches at Wimbledon. Other strains exist, however, such as Cadangliophilia globa (football), Candangliophilia scortea-salix (cricket) and even the acute Cadangliophilia scortea-salix ‘Cinis’, a specific ‘Ashes’ sub-strain. Overall, this delight is generally led from the press box but it can enter the workplace too. Pre-Wimbledon, amidst the traditional public bout of amnesia, before full failure has become apparent, a cruel belief sets in. Maybe this time? Before the anglus pignus (token Brit) has met their Dunkirk, newspapers lead the frenzy with suggestions to rename the hill at Wimbledon; Henman Hill becomes Murray Mount and so forth. The cadangliophile might publicly consider suggesting Everest, seeing as most Britons’ journey to the top is usually followed by a swift descent before ending up in the dead zone.

Catchphrases include: ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’d LOVE him to win this year, I genuinely would!’

[cado, failure; Anglia, Brit.; wynma, Wimbledon; globus, ball; scorteus, leather; salix, willow; cinis, ashes]

Calicurrophilia:delight in the teamthat knocked you out being beaten.

Etymologists, looking at this one in the future, might try to tie its meaning to some sort of excess of delight, in which ‘the cup runneth over’. Sadly, the truth behind this philia is much more mundane. This is the pleasure taken when the party that conquered you is finally conquered themselves and derives from the annual popular debacle that is the FA Cup. Many a supporter has found themselves in the car at 4.45 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, punching the air at Final Score, as they become calicurrophiles for the first time on hearing that their nemesis was hammered four-nil. At home. Psychologists have also adopted the etymology for Calicurrophilia amora, in which the subject delights in finding out that their former lover, who dumped them by phone, has been dumped themselves. On Facebook. Ambrosial!

[calix, cup: curro, run]

Callidinfanophilia:delight inthe possession of a bright child.

Not to be confused with – because it is totally different from – Stultinfanophilia (qv). Callidinfanophiles delight in simple pleasures: intelligence, talent and a rigorous hothouse system that has been in place since before their children were born. It comes in three distinct hues: Callidinfanophilia vicaria, Callidinfanophilia nova pecunia and Callidinfanophilia traditus. It is interesting to note that, were three pleasure-seekers from each strain to meet, they would find that their delight paths rarely crossed. Callidinfanophilia traditus is the oldest delight, affecting mainly the landed gentry. Practitioners tend to delight less in the brightness of the child and more in the continuation of a tradition of brightness stemming back to their ancestors, who helped Noah with the finer engineering details for