I think there's a Tim Buckley album.
It's interesting to me that one of the primary classifications of narratives is based, epistemologically, not on any actual content of the work but in the reaction of the viewer. That is, there is no objective way to differentiate tragedy from comedy or tragicomedy. I'm not trying to be controversial here, it's just a side effect of the use of objective or subjective that one of your the possible meanings will inevitably be controversial. To clarify, I'm not saying that we cannot reliably distinguish these categories; I'm merely pointing out that the source of these distinctions cannot be contained within the text (or other medium) itself. It might be tempting to go ad absurdum on me and say that the argument isn't significant because everything is a matter of the interpreter. But I think that it's pretty clear that we can distinguish many things about a narrative without recourse to the interpreter/subject. For example, parataxis/hypotaxis, prose/verse, epic/lyric, even narratological and subject matter distinctions (this last is true only to a certain extent) are largely contained within the text. An opposite argument would be that it is possible to objectively define tragedy/comedy; I grant that this is to some extent true: if a whole bunch of people die at the end it's probably a tragedy, if they get married... But the point is that this investigation is secondary, and ultimately insufficient. The derivation of tragedy/comedy is in the subject, which should be self-evident; furthermore, it's perfectly reasonable to imagine a black comedy which ends with a bunch of deaths; in fact I'm sure there's a few of these kicking around already. With this established, what is notable about this tragedy/comedy distinction is that we usually treat the distinction as objective, given, a priori, etc., and the fact that it is entirely subjective does not disrupt this treatment. This possibility emerges because of the huge degree of shared experience and convention within art. Even if a comedy makes us feel sad (maybe it reminds us of a dead lover), we can still recognize it as a comedy by reference to a conventional self, that normative subject that society instills. (This must be connected to the superego).
She blushed, then reached down and picked up the tears that had fallen from his lips. "I think you dropped these," she whispered past his cheek.
