Why do we enjoy painful experience in art but try by all means to avoid it occurs in reality?

Have you ever heard of Catharsis? You should maybe check out the concept, which derives from ancient Greek theatre. You seem to have read Aristotle so maybe you have read about it? Catharsis is the experience of going through an event vicariously and thus purging the terror that you feel for it in your everyday life. Naturally most people would suffer terrible angst and terror if they actually went through some of the events that they happily watch other people go through in a movie! But by seeing it happen at a remove from their own reality, they are able to feel the fear in safety and it has (supposedly) a purgative effect. I don't know how true this is of the kinds of movies we see today, which are extremely violent and gory. Some people even contend that they have the opposite effect and make us actually want to go out and be violent instead of feeling purged of our violence! But what we do know from experience is that it is fun to feel scared as long as you know there is no real danger, and we can see this from a very young age in children's games. So maybe it is innately human, maybe it is some kind of practice run for when we need to be scared for real and our survival may depend upon it. No one likes to see the same horrors when they know it is real - that is too close for comfort. It is no longer removed reality, no longer safe. Real horrific events feel threatening and shocking and the natural responses of shock, anxiety and fear are not pleasant feelings at all. Enough blurb from me! Hope it was interesting.

Because god & devil both exists together in the mind. devil part enjoys the things, at the same time god part condemns it. Perhaps animal in us like those things and our education,believes,religions or ideas about good and bad or a fear wants to repress it. perhaps a fight between our true nature and the imposed nature. we can look around us, many people has one character of being loving & compassionate and suddenly they got in power and they change completely.what it shows it was already there repressed some where. we are ignorant most of the time about ourselves. Many times we see people doing things and we think, how come people can do that. perhaps we never had the chance to be in the same kind of circumstances. I think because we have both good & evil inside. I don't know if this is the right answer, but I felt to share something because its good question. thx

in reality it actually does hurt, and can sometimes be fatal. so we avoid it because we're intelligent. yet, mankind has grown up with fear, pain, violence and suffering, generation after generation, and it's still part of our make up. it made us who we are, survivors. it's our heritage.

first,being a philosopher,the right question would be: ,"why do I enjoy painf.....etcetc",cps some enjoy real pain,and not look 4 it in "ART"......and then go into long expensive therapy if it constitutes a prob 4 u ...a possible ANSWER to ur question would lie in the basic cowardice of most people..... : )

In art, we know it will end somewhere, and the whole process is within control to slow , hasten or abort. Not so with reality ! So makes sense avoiding it !

I believe it's called catharsis.

we try to avoid it, yes. I, honestly, sometimes think that it will make my life more interesting if movie like things happen in my life... cause, mostly, everything ends happily. that's why it's art.

I think as humans we enjoy feeling the whole spectrum of emotion, but since we also have feelings: to be disgusted, afraid or abhorred at the expense of another person, it is easier if we know that it is fiction, but we still like to see carnage, thus the term rubber necking if there is an accident everybody has to look at it, if someone gets hurt or killed everybody around want to check it out, humans like to be put out of their comfort zone, but to repeat myself, if it is fiction we are able to aviod the underlying sense of sorrow or guilt associated with it

Only Romantics feel 'pain' in Art. The rest of us just feel pain.