Nowadays, we may not be aware that there is a differentiation between the word “sad” and “melancholy”. From the Rose-Becker Cafe on February 17th, we explored the actual meaning of “melancholy”. Interestingly, Sarah explained to us the root meaning of “melancholy”. Turns out, by splitting the word “melancholy” into “mela” and “choly”, it literally means “bad yellow bile”. But what exactly is that? De facto, Hippocrates suggested that emotions and behaviors were caused by an excess or lack of body fluids, which are blood, yellow biles, black bile, and phem. Based on this, we can already scrutinize that the fundamental differences between “sad” and “melancholy” lie under that “melancholy” is not just a reflection of emotion, but also has a biological connection.

With that definition in mind we started watching some video clips and understand how the concept of melancholy can be accentuated in different types of arts. In one of the clips we saw, the protagonist looks at a painting that gives him the nostalgic, melancholic feeling. When we were watching the clip, we also got the intense emotional feeling from the art. The painting in the video clip has a woman standing in the center with her hair style pertaining to a swirl. The swirling hair style, in fact, is what has stirred the feeling in us. The portrayal of her hair has the effect of drawing us into the dark color element and make people feel lost in the painting, and essentially feel sadden. However, what is important is to note that the protagonist, unlike us, are not just sad but melancholic because he had recalled some tragic memory that he had and he was trapped in his terrible thought in his head. Ultimately, the painting because of his biological acceptance of the negative impacts of his past trauma, he ultimately had a much more intense feeling towards the painting than the viewers.