According to my New Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus, "catharsis" means "purgation; (the Aristotelian) purification or relief of the emotions through art, esp. tragedy". In other words, "catharsis" is the good feeling you experience after you have closely followed the tragic downfall and often death of a person.

Catharsis: the idea that watching and vicariously experiencing the tragedy of others is something that makes you feel good. People, I have never understood it.

How about this old Greek tragedy? A father kills his daughter and sacrifices her to the gods, because he needs a fair wind since he's off to Troy, where he is going to kill and murder and slaughter the inhabitants. Having accomplished his mass murder mission in Troy, he returns home, only to be killed by his wife, who is extremely upset with her husband for killing their daughter. The couple's dutiful son now recognizes that it is his filial duty to kill his mother to avenge his father, and he does so. The godesses of vengeance start hounding the son, demanding that he be killed, until the godess Athena intervenes. She explains that every child has only one true parent, namely the father, because the mother is really only a sort of oven where the already fully formed baby in the father's sperm grows to the proper size. Since the mother isn't her son's true parent, the son didn't commit a crime when he killed her, and he mustn't be punished. The end. This story was one of the most admired of the classic Greek tragedies, one of those supposed to make you feel the greatest amount of purification and relief. So, people, did it make you feel good?

The above tragedy was written down circa 2,400 years ago. Perhaps we shouldn't discuss such very old stories? How about something slightly more recent, such as the 400-year-old tragedies by Shakespeare? Personally I admire several of his tragedies, especially Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. These plays are so relentlessly logical. If two families are mortal enemies, and a young man from one of the families falls in love with and secretly marries a young girl from the other family, what can you expect but tragedy and death? And if a father summons his son to carry out a mission of vengeance and death, how can you be surprised if the son is turned into an angel of death, so that every important character in "Hamlet" is dead by the end of the last act? I admire Shakespeare's tragedies, because they work so extremely well as cautionary tales, and they are, in their own way, so realistic. That does not mean that they make me feel good.

How about something still more recent? I read a crime-fic (is that what you call it?) about a world-class javelin thrower, who lost his right arm as he was rescuing some children from a burning car. The one-armed ex-athlete became his country's most popular TV show host, someone like Johnny Carson or possibly Oprah Winfrey, loved and trusted by everyone. What no one knew was that this one-armed, beloved TV host was a serial killer, who got his kicks out of torturing young girls to death, keeping them prisoners as he slowly crushed their right arm and let them bleed to death. Killing girls this way is what gave him his sexual kicks. To hide his horrible perversion, he entered into a sham marriage with a well-known woman, who wanted her own homosexual proclivities to be kept a secret from the public. So while this man and this woman were supposedly sharing a matrimonial bed, she was out sleeping with women and he was out killing young girls. In this book, we were introduced to the TV host's latest victim, a 15-year-old girl. We followed her as she tried to get the famous man's autograph, as she went to an out-of-the-way spot where he had promised to meet her, as she was taken to an unremarkable cottage which was in fact a sophisticated torture-chamber. We followed her as he turned on her and expertly caught her arm in a vice, where it was slowly crushed over the course of several days. We followed the police as they desperately tried to find the girl, and we were with them when they actually found her... about fifteen minutes too late. We followed the police when they seized the TV host and arrested him, but even as they did so, they knew they would never get this man convicted. Because there was no hard evidence against him, and there was no way a court would find such a famous and beloved person guilty of such utterly gruesome crimes, unless the evidence was overwhelming. He would be set free again, and eventually, he would start torturing and killing girls again. The end.

When I started reading this book, I had absolutely no idea it was going to turn out like this. The story was very well written and I was caught up in it. Almost up to the very end, I was sure the girl would be saved, although her arm would obviously have to be amputated. I was extremely horrified at the ending. And guess what? Very soon after I had finished reading it, ex-Beatle Paul McCartney married a moderately famous British model and amputee. People, does this ring a bell? Two famous people marry, one of them is a very beloved celebrity, and one of them is an amputee? It is all a sham marriage, so that the two newlyweds will be free to pursue their own quite different sexual agendas... such as murdering young girls? People, can you believe that when I heard of Paul McCartney's marriage, my first thought was that Paul McCartney was perhaps a mass murderer? Reading that book didn't make me feel good, but instead it made me sufficiently paranoid to think, however briefly, that Paul McCartney was perhaps a dangerous person because he had married a one-legged woman?

When I was twelve, my parents took me to see a performance of Rigoletto. In this opera, Rigoletto is a relatively disagreeable person, as far as I can remember. At the end of the last act, Rigoletto is punished. Guess how? His daughter is killed. And we, the audience, are treated to Rigoletto's grief and remorse, expressed in his splendid arias. I remembered that the audience was mesmerized, and afterwards, they broke into thunderous applause. But I was totally, totally horrified. I was twelve years old, just like Rigoletto's daughter. And I imagined that some people might perhaps want to punish my dad for one reason or another. To do that, they would kill me, just like Rigoletto's daughter was killed. My father would grieve, cry and complain as he cradled my dead body in his arms, just like Rigoletto. And around us, interested onlookers would gather. After a sufficient time, after my father was done with his public grieving, the onlookers would start applauding, just like the audience at the opera. They would feel so strangely moved. So sad, and yet so happy. They would be so happy that I was dead. Because thanks to my death, all those other people could get to watch my father's fine display of emotion. How uplifting that really was, in the midst of all sorrow!

I can't tell you how totally horrified I was, after seeing that performance of Rigoletto. Even today, 38 years later, the very name of Rigoletto makes me cringe. So tell me, people, because I don't understand. What is good about deathfic? How does it make you feel good to read about people's death? How does it make you interested to see a character sacrificed like a pawn, just so that you get to admire another character's reaction to her death?

Personally, I'm able to appreciate deathfic only, and only, if it is very realistic and sheds some very interesting light on the reality we all live in. Deathfic about unrealistic characters does nothing for me, except that it makes me feel sad and bad.

Lois and Clark are unrealistic characters, or at least Clark most certainly is. You don't shed any light on the world we live in by telling a deathfic about Lois and Clark. As for Catherine's story, which I admittedly only skimmed, i believe Lois was sentenced to death for one reason or another. But Lois and Clark live in Metropolis, which has long been established as being close to New York. To my knowledge, neither New York State nor New York City has capital punishment. Why would Metropolis have it? Because if it doesn't, we can't execute Lois, which was the whole point of this story anyway?

Would Clark support the death penalty, by the way? Would he bring criminals to justice so that they could be executed, even though he must know there would always be a chance that he might be mistaken about at least one of those he brought to their death? The way I think of Clark and Metropolis, Metropolis doesn't have capital punishment and Clark doesn't support it.

I dislike almost all kinds of deathfic, and I dislike Lois and Clark deathfic even more. Because, like Jenni said, Superman as well as Lois and Clark has always been about the triumph of good over evil. Literally. Also, Lois and Clark are in their own way immortal. They have been around since 1938, and they haven't aged a day since that time. The decades have rushed past, and Lois and Clark have evolved and adapted, but stayed young. This makes them a sort of fairy-tale characters. What's the point in murdering one of them? What could anyone want to prove? That it's fun to kill and break such characters, just to prove that you can? That Lois doesn't matter too much, so that we can kill her in order explore Clark's emotions, just like Rigoletto's daughter was killed so that we could enjoy Rigoletto's fine display of grief? That it would be fun to see Superman defeated and see evil prevail over good? Where is the catharsis in this? Where is the purification or relief? Tell me, people, because I don't understand.

Ann