The Brangelina bust: 'Is this really the time for schadenfreude?'

I learned of the news in a rather unconventional way: scanning my Facebook feed. Someone had posted an image of Jennifer Aniston, laughing at what seemed to be the funniest joke ever.

The image had collected plenty of likes and laugh emojis, so I wondered what all the fuss was about. Had she won an Emmy the other night that I had somehow missed?

Then I saw the news — though I'm not sure this really qualifies as news so much as pure undiluted celebrity gossip — that Angelina Jolie had filed for divorce with Brad Pitt. Two of the biggest movie stars in the world were calling it quits. Aside from the end of their marriage, it also presumably means some upheaval for their well-known family, made up of biological and adopted children.

The stories around the split appeared to be attracting the kind of attention that a terrorist attack would, with plenty of sharing, much of it with some kind of a humorous angle. But it raised a question: is this really the time for schadenfreude? That's the German word for taking pleasure in someone else's misery.

When Rob Ford was in trouble someone called it schadenford. Some popular online stories involve hunters who get killed by the animals they are trying to bag as trophies.

But I was having trouble connecting the dots: I know we're titillated by celebrity, and by celebrity match-up romances. The Hollywood Gossip site summed it up beautifully with their hastily tossed together list of 27 Most Shocking Hollywood Divorces, including Bennifer, providing a number of additional hits of dopamine (and clicks for the site). But why would this break-up provide us with any remote sense of happiness or pleasure?

I don't know Jolie or Pitt personally. (Though I did interview him for The Fight Club when that film was released. The takeaway? He's shorter than I expected.) But they don't seem like bad people. They have lots of kids. They speak out on issues like human rights and the environment.

Jolie even wrote an op-ed for The New York Times about having preventive surgery (a double mastectomy) to avoid possible breast cancer — a move that at the time she was lauded for as it raised awareness about the disease and possible courses of preventive treatments.

But now, pleasure. Some of that, of course, is derived from the very fact that we don't actually know Jolie and Pitt, so it's not like they're going to be calling us out for something we post on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

As well, cynicism understandably rides high about Hollywood romances, at least some of which are almost certainly arranged by agents to maximize publicity. I sincerely doubt Michael Jackson and Madonna were ever close friends or lovers, but their Oscar date pretty much guaranteed them a People magazine cover.

As one character argues in Mike Leigh's classic play, Abigail's Party, "For movie stars, getting married is just like going to the bathroom."

I get it when it's someone evil. Like OJ finally heading to prison. Or Roger Ailes getting the boot at Fox News (though he reportedly got $40 million while stepping out the door). Or even when a notoriously difficult actor gets a scathing review or goes bankrupt.

But this feels like something different: this combines the immediateness of social media with our darkest impulses. It suggests to me that we really do hate Jolie and Pitt for being so impossibly beautiful and rich, and want to see them suffer (at least a little bit) for their utter fabulousness.

Yes, in the grand scheme of things, sharing such silliness is minor. But it speaks to a far-reaching pettiness that such breaking news has so many of us laughing.

Matthew Hays has written on cinema for The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, The Guardian, Vice, The Daily Beast and Cineaste. He teaches courses in film studies at Concordia, and is the author of The View from Here: Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers (Arsenal Pulp Press).

Read Hays’s list of his 10 favourite back-to-school films.