Bathetic

Bathetic describes writing, speech, or art that strives for emotional effect, such as pathos or tragedy, but fails to achieve it, instead producing an unintentionally anticlimactic or sentimental effect. It often involves a descent from the sublime to the ridiculous, characterized by insincerity, oversentimentality, and the use of clichéd or melodramatic devices. This often leads to a sense of embarrassment or awkwardness in the audience, highlighting the disparity between the intended emotional impact and the actual, often humorous, result. bathetic works lack genuine depth, relying on surface-level emotional appeals. This lack of genuine emotion often results in a sense of contrived feelings.

Bathetic meaning with examples

• The movie's ending, with the hero's tearful reunion with his long-lost dog, was so overly sentimental and predictable that it crossed into bathetic territory. The music swelled, the camera zoomed in on the glistening eyes, but viewers mostly rolled their eyes because the scene failed to tug at their heartstrings in a sincere way.
• Her poetry often bordered on the bathetic, employing simplistic rhyming couplets and heavy-handed metaphors to depict profound feelings. While she aimed for the heart, the lack of originality in her execution often left readers stifling a yawn, rather than weeping in awe.
• The politician's speech was filled with bathetic pronouncements, making sweeping statements and expressing simulated concern that seemed designed more for headlines than genuine connection. The overly dramatic delivery, coupled with recycled platitudes, left a bitter taste of manipulation, causing a public uproar.
• The romance novel's reliance on every cliché in the book, from star-crossed lovers to a sudden downpour signifying the emotional turmoil of a break-up, was so relentlessly bathetic that it became unintentionally comedic. The book's attempts at heart-wrenching emotion simply made it a target of humor.
• The play's final act, with its dramatic declarations of love and sacrifice, fell flat because it relied on such trite and improbable plot twists that its bathetic nature completely deflated the impact it was trying to produce, leaving the audience feeling utterly unmoved.