CULTURAL EXPRESSION AND SUPPRESSION OF THE UNDESIRABLE AND UNBEARABLE IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Abstract

Contemporaries willing to posit that “rage brings forth good stuff” are rare. Austrian author Peter Handke, considered an enfant terrible by many, finds “wrath even better.” Without spelling it out, Handke evokes the physical dimensions entailed in rage, which generate energies transformable also in creative work embedded in and appreciated as art (Bauer & Reinke 2012). Anger, wrath, and rage are terms with different if in part overlapping semantics, which one does expect to be part of the range of, for instance, good acting. Indeed, one might argue that the stage is one of the few places where embodying and expressing such emotions is socially – and aesthetically – acceptable and even praiseworthy: They are viewed as masterful evocations of actual experiences, opening them up for inspection and reflection while, as William O. Beeman has observed (2007), affording audiences and performers alike an opportunity to experience emotions in a protected frame. Powerful emotions also figure in a great deal of fiction, starting most prominently with sacred, foundational texts. Humans are struck with the fear of gods not for naught (Lehmann 2012).4 Fiction and film also regale us with evocations of frustrated characters, individuals wallowing in their own sorrow and self-pity or lashing out at no one in particular. One of the most potent vehicles for fictional emotional excess of both exuberant and, even more pronounced, negative emotions is the comic: comic drawings, be they of Superman or Asterix, need not describe but simply show how someone explodes from anger, goes through the ceiling with pent-up fury, or is catapulted out of his shoes with the mobilizing forth of wrath. Onomatopoetic sounds rendered in capital letters may underline the visuals of rage, much as does another kind of typeface; coupled with a few strokes around a character’s eye and mouth, they evoke a droopy, displeased or obstreperous emotion. Perhaps particularly appealing for young audiences, comics split apart emotional aspects of an individual into additional figures. Marvel Comics’ placid physicist Bruce Banner, for instance, turns into the incredible Hulk, a green and humanoid superhero, all the stronger the angrier he gets.5 In everyday life, however, the emotional repertoire reaching from rage to frustration is not, generally, condoned, although there is plenty of awareness and even understanding of individually different temperaments and dispositions. A good deal of the work of enculturation today consists of mastering