Why the Tragicomic Feels Like the Most Honest Aesthetic Now

If it is true that every historical era gives rise to the aesthetic sensibility most perfectly calibrated to its moral and spiritual essence, one wonders what truth is revealed by the fact that all of a sudden, the tragicomic is back.This cockroach of forms—adaptive, resilient, unkillable—was named by the Roman dramatist Plautus in the second century BC, enjoyed its heyday in 17th-century Renaissance theater, and was revived in the 20th century to describe a slurry of existential des