Opening with a quote from Nabokov wherein beauty and pity are inextricably linked - because beauty must die - this text surveys Vey Duke and Battersby's video installation Beauty Plus Pity, stemming from empathy and worry about the world in crisis.

Using Timothy Treadwell as an example of the late-capitalist view that transforms nature and animals into "vehicles of redemption and generic emotions", Emmelhainz reflects on self-expression as the new morality, replacing repression in our collective consciousness. Yet the rejection of the natural and religious worlds leave us inherently messed up creatures, caught in the schism between indulgence and faithlessness.