akirlu | Schadenfreude or Mittleid? (Reply)

We watched several episodes of the second season of Coupling last night. Doing it so soon after we watched the final two Christmas specials of The Office made me think the British have made a sort of comedic speciality out of embarrassment and humiliation. What I can't work out is whether they laugh out of malice (schadenfreude) or sympathy (mittleid), or whether it's a mix. With me it's the laughter of profoundly discomfitted sympathy. There but for the grace... Even in the case of the exquisitely awful David Brent, my fascination lies in the embarrassment I feel on his behalf, for all that he's too oblivious to feel it himself, or at least too bluff and clumsy to show it. But perhaps I'm strangely soft-hearted. I always wanted Wile E. Coyote to win, too.