Could this gloomy song really inspire a person to commit suicide?

Rezső Seress and László Jávor ’s song “ Gloomy Sunday ” may be one of the most uncheerful Song dynasty ever record , and is usually call “ The Hungarian Suicide Song ” because of its connexion to a rash of 20th 100 suicides . But could this admittedly glum song really trigger self-destructive behavior ?

Top image from Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod .

“ Gloomy Sunday ” is a song shrouded in so much caption , that even details of its inception are unsure . Probably the best discussion of the Sung dynasty and its wallop comes is Steven Stack , et al . ’s paper“Gloomy Sunday : did the ‘ Hungarian felo-de-se song ’ really create a suicide epidemic?,”which appeared in Z : The Journal of Death and die in 2008 . We do know that the music was written by Rezső Seress and the lyrics were write by László Jávor , and that it was first recorded by Pál Kalmár in 1935 . Some versions of the legend say the the strain was inspire by Seress ’ breakup with a lover , who after killed herself ; others exact it was Jávor ’s suicidal girlfriend who pep up the Sung dynasty . It ’s told from the view of a soul whose lovemaking has die and is meditate suicide to be reunify with them , company by a particularly melancholy melody . Seress himself commit self-destruction on January 13th , 1968 . In his necrology , the New York Times describe that “ Gloomy Sunday ” had left Seress depressed because he despaired that he would never create another hit song .

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narration of the song ’s link to suicide get-go before it was even publish , with one urban legend claiming that the second publishing firm to receive the sheet medicine killed himself presently afterward . But “ Gloomy Sunday ” was an sure hit in Depression - era Hungary , and it eventually made the parachuting abroad . Billie Holiday immortalize her version of “ Gloomy Sunday ” in 1941 , and , as of 2008 , the song had been record 79 time by artists include Lou Rawls , Ray Charles , Elvis Costello , Sarah McLachlan , and Björk . ( However , some of the English - speech communication recording soften the song ’s tone , adding a third stanza that evoke that the death was just a dream . ) It even inspired a film , 1999 ’s Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod ( A Song of Love and Death ) , which gyrate a fancied account of the birdcall ’s creation .

AMarch 1936 clause in Time Magazinelists off a spate of suicides in Hungary that were allegedly link up to the song : a shoemaker quoted the song in his suicide banknote ; two people shot themselves while listening to bands ; people reportedly drowned themselves in the Danube while holding the sheet medicine . And reports of self-destructive conduct linked to the song were n’t just limited to Hungary . In the 1930s , both Time and the New York Times describe on suicides and attempted suicides in the US connected to “ Gloomy Sunday . ” The song was shun on the BBC until 2002 , and according to some report , sure outlet in the US refused to play the song , fear it was somehow responsible for these suicides .

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But of course correlation does n’t equal causation . Many of these death occurred in the thick of the Great Depression , when “ Gloomy Sunday ” was quite pop . And in treatment of “ Gloomy Sunday , ” it ’s often mark that Hungary has an unusually gamy suicide pace . ( In fact , the gamey suicide rates among Finno - Ugric cultures preceding and present haveled to speculation that there may be a factor that predisposes some members of these population to self-destructive behavior . ) And there ’s a high-pitched correlation between approving of suicide and being a devotee of heavy medicine or the blues , but Stack and his fellow researchers found that there was no special correlation after they controlled for married position , age , sexuality , didactics , conservativism , and church attending .

That does n’t predominate out the possible action that “ Gloomy Sunday ” or any other work of art might be suicidogenic . In fact , the term“Werther Effect ” , which refers to a spike of suicides emulate a widely air suicide ( real or fancied ) , was coined by sociologist David Phillips after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther . The chief reference takes his own life , and after the Scripture ’s publication in 1774 , Europe reportedly saw a blizzard of aper self-annihilation . The question of whether people already contemplating suicide have been draw to these work of artwork or whether the employment of artistic production start the door to suicide has n’t been full resolved .

In 2010 , Jane Pirkis and Warwick Blood published“Suicide and the entertainment medium : A vital review,”commissioned by Hunter Institute of Mental Health as part of Australia ’s Mindframe National Media Initiative . The review lash out up enquiry studies on the possible effects of film , television , euphony , and play on suicidal behavior and examines the methodological job in many of the studies . The reexamination see at five commonly accepted factors for causing between a sure work and suicidality : body ( “ The tie between media portrayal of suicide and an increment in actual suicides is consistently abide by ” ) , long suit ( “ The association is statistically significant , and there may be grounds of a dose‐response effect ” ) , temporality ( “ The connection should make sense in chronological terms ” ) , specificity ( “ The tie-up is percipient , such that most citizenry who have the outcome of self-annihilation have been reveal to media portrayal of self-annihilation ” ) , and coherence ( “ The tie should be in line with known fact pertain the result of interest ; existent suicides , attempted suicides or self-destructive ideation ” ) .

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Although the review ascertain that , under those criteria , it ’s still unclear whether certain pieces of media or genres could consistently trigger suicides , there are instances in which airings of special slice of media have been linked to spikes in self-destructive behavior . Various studies have come up that airings of a specific instalment of the max opera house EastEnders , sure episode of the medical drama Casualty , and certain TV movies featuring suicides preceded an uptick in suicides and suicide attempts using the same methods draw in this shows . Regarding euphony , however , the limited review notes that the field largely flush it to put up a secular link between hearing a firearm or genre of music and attempting suicide . Only Stack , et al . ’s discussion of “ Gloomy Sunday ” suggests such a temporal link , which is perhaps part of why the song persist in to tower large in our imagination .

One particularly interesting survey that Stack , et al . cites is a 2003 doctoral dissertation by Patrick Edwin Jamieson at the University of Pennsylvania,“Changes in United States democratic culture portrait of young suicide : 1950—2000.”The thesis find the growth in young person suicide rate between the 1950s and 1990s is predicted by a rising slope in portrayals of self-annihilation in pop film , inviting further discussion about the depictions of self-annihilation in media and their impact on American culture .

So , while “ Gloomy Sunday ” may have very well been connected to some of those self-annihilation decades ago , it ’s unlikely that the song act as a suicidal interpretation of Ringu , getting into your head and inspiring you to kill yourself . But to be on the safe side , if you witness yourself traveling back in time to 1930s Hungary , ferment on something a little peppier when you ’re feeling drear .

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