There's a book. It's called The Birth of Tragedy. On the one hand, Nietzsche is pretty persuasive that, basically, tragedies are the highest form of drama. S

There's a book. It's called The Birth of Tragedy. On the one hand, Nietzsche is pretty persuasive that, basically, tragedies are the highest form of drama. So, one would expect ambitious artists to want to tell stories with realistic characters and without happy endings. (Stories with happy endings are comedies.) On the other hand, the ambition to create tragic drama, or at least attain its status, gets dumbed down and applied imitatively in "dark and gritty" takes on pop culture.