Of Blood and Titties
by rsbakker
Aphorism of the Day: The only thing certain about morality is that you have more of it.
I’m just going to jump right into Theo’s response to my last posting…
On the second point concerning 2) Moral certainty versus relativistic confusion, I very much disagree that there is any straw man, let alone a Great Straw Man involved. Bakker writes: “The idea seems to be that ‘moral relativism’ has some kind of ‘moral dampening effect,’ which in turn forces the author to reach deeper to achieve moral effects. I’m not so sure this makes much sense.” But I don’t see how the dampening effect can be reasonably doubted. Let me put it in visual terms. If I am painting with primary colors, it is not difficult to achieve the effects of “red” and “blue”. I simply use red and blue paint. If, however, I have nothing but grey paint, it takes a tremendous amount of skill to achieve any distinction between a red effect and a blue effect. So most painters, not being sufficiently skilled, will be forced to utilize other means of getting the effect across to the viewer by appealing to the viewer’s strongest preconceptions about color, preconceptions which are entirely external to the work. (This is what I meant when I referred to an “artificial facsimile of a moral sensibility” which is located within the work itself.) A “red” stop sign or a “blue” police uniform can serve as artificial substitutes for color that isn’t actually there. While one might quite reasonably argue that it is “simplistic” to use traditional and commonly understood colors in order to achieve a certain color effect, I don’t see how one can rationally argue that not using color, or worse, using yellow for red and brown for blue, is a more effective or powerful means of communicating color. What might work out extraordinarily well in the sophisticated hands of a master painter is very likely to turn out as a gaudy and nonsensical disaster in less accomplished hands. And these sorts of morally incoherent disasters are precisely what I perceive in much modern fantasy today. To extend the analogy a bit further, the problem with the end result isn’t that the painting doesn’t have the exact amount of blue that I, (or anyone else), might believe it should have, the problem is that it is an ugly mess that lacks versimilitude and is incapable of stirring any feeling in the viewer but contempt and disgust.
This analogy mystifies me. I truly don’t have a blasted clue what he’s talking about.
The most I can do by way of response is offer an analogy of my own. One of the weird things about teaching nowadays is the way students no longer fit into Perry’s famed stages of ‘undergraduate development’: rather than arriving at university as naive moral realists with a dualistic, defer-to-authority attitude, they tend to be naive relativists. The bulk of them, I have found anyway, will say right or wrong depends on your cultural frame-of-reference, or something similar. To which I’ll reply, “So female circumcision is quite proper so long as it is practiced in Sudan.”
You can almost hear a “poof,” their naive relativism evaporates so fast. The point is this: our moral intuitions often don’t care about our ideas all that much. Humans, as social animals, are other-evaluating machines, and as such, there are very few consistent relativists out there (as I’m sure Grin and Theo would agree (thus the Nazi references)). Relativists are perfectly happy to live and let live as far as lifestyle choices go, but when it comes to acts of obvious harm, they are as censorious and as judgmental as a televangelist at a gay rights parade.
I guess I can see how people like Grin and Theo, who seem to think that ancient tribal prohibitions formulated in an age of endemic violence and prolonged scarcity are every bit as applicable to these wildly prosperous and technologically mediated times, would come to think of naive relativism as ‘dampening morality’: given their rigid and anachronistic yardsticks, the ‘worldly’ must seem ‘less moral’ in any number of respects.
But the empirical fact is that to be human is to be moral. And, as researchers are discovering, to be human is to generally think you’re more moral than others. ‘Me good, you bad,’ is expressed through many of the different biases we suffer. Some of the most pious, insufferably judgmental people I know are self-proclaimed relativists. They certainly seem immune to the ‘moral dampening field’ their ideology is supposedly generating.
Because there’s so damned many of us, our hardwired sense of moral superiority generates quite the chaotic soup of claims and indignations. So the ‘ugly mess’ he refers to at the end of his analogy, far from lacking verisimilitude, is quite an apt description for our all too human moral state of affairs. The ‘contempt and disgust’ he describes is likely just a product of his sense of moral superiority. His attribution of these emotions to some ‘generic viewer’ is likely an example of something called the Consensus Fallacy, our tendency to assume our judgments are more universally shared than they in fact are.
Although he characterized it correctly, I don’t think Bakker quite understood the third point, 3) Organic consistency versus moral anachronism, in its entirety. I applaud his refusal to bow to the temporal moral anachronisms that litter modern fantasy like a virulent STD, and will happily assure him that I have never presumed “individuals in ancient contexts were not morally conflicted”. The simple fact that has apparently been missed here is that in order to be “morally conflicted”, there must be at least two moral poles between which that conflict can take place. It doesn’t matter what the moralities are, as one can create a credible moral conflict regardless of whether one believes that stoning homosexuals is a moral imperative or a totally immoral act. The point is that there must be a defined pole and an anti-pole or else there is no moral conflict; define those poles how you like, albeit with due respect for historical definitions if you have decided to make use of a recognizable historical setting. As for the connection between moral anachronisms in fiction and certain sensibilities, I would think it is rather obvious that it is almost always those writers who reject traditional moral standards – or alternatively, the very concept of universally applicable moral standards – who are so uncomfortable with them that they insist on introducing the moral equivalent of laser-sighted handguns into an era of swords and spears. This is just bad judgment leading to bad writing.
Another argument I’m not sure I understand. I’m inclined to agree that moral conflict requires “at least two poles,” but Theo continues as if he had said something quite different: that moral conflict requires “two immutable poles and two immutable poles only…” Something which is just not the case, as, once again, the real world demonstrates in vivid, heartbreaking detail. We live, and have always lived, in a world filled with moral conflict that turns on multiple, transient poles. Saddam is our trusted ally. Saddam is an evil-doer. The list goes on and on and on.
Finally, I have no choice but to conclude that Bakker has missed the primary thrust of my argument when he writes: “As I hope should be clear by this point, Theo’s four recapitulations of Grin’s points are really different spins of the same complaint: modern fantasy is a moral failure.”
But this is not what I am saying at all. I am observing – not complaining – that modern fantasy is a literary failure and that the literary decline of the genre over the last fifty years is one of the many symptoms of a greater societal decline. That this literary and societal decline has a moral component is readily apparent, but is beyond the scope of my argument, nor does that argument rely upon subscription to “a certain family of wish-fulfilment moralities”. In other words, there is no circle, which is why the potential difficulty of squaring it is irrelevant. I have no desire to tell anyone what they should or should not write, anymore than I wish to tell them what they should or should not eat. Write what thou wilt is the whole of the literary law. But if you happen to be wondering why so many people think your breath stinks, I’m certainly not going to hesitate to explain that you may want to reconsider your eating habits.
‘Things have gone from better to worse.’ If this isn’t a value-judgment then I don’t know what a value-judgment is.
‘I’m not telling people what to write, only that their writing is contributing to the world’s destruction.’ Yeesh.
Seems to me that Theo has a genuine talent for squaring circles, which is what we all do when we find ourselves pinched by our moral intuitions. By shifting the ground of the debate to morality, I think I forced Theo into an uncomfortable position. The notion of art unconstrained by moral or religious prejudice is a venerable imperative that we have inherited from the Enlightenment. By emphasizing the way moral concerns marble his arguments against modern fantasy, I basically pressed his nose against this imperative. Thus the doubletalk of making sweeping value-judgments under the guise of disinterested observation.
Smells like moral cowardice to me. If you really believe it, then just say it: “Joe, you are leading innocent souls to potential damnation,” or whatever it is you say by way of self-confirming commiseration to your in-group peers.
Christ, I spend half my time telling the literati to write genre largely because I think genre reaches people who have been duped by their cognitive shortcomings into thinking they know, in succumbing to a sense of moral certainty that is deceptive (as a matter of empirical fact), as well as an engine of untold social conflict and sorrow, and something we can scarce afford in the technological madness to come. “Write what thou whilst” as far as I’m concerned, is code for “Write for yourself,” which is code for “Write for those like yourself,” which is code for, “Apologize for the in-group status quo.”
Then call yourself ‘critical’ because the people who never read you would be challenged by your presumptions if they did.
There’s nothing wrong with arguing the moral effects of cultural artifacts. Thanks to our hardwired moral conceits, everyone likes to think they are part of the solution rather than the problem. So if you can make a convincing case that modern fantasy is harming society as opposed to simply evolving in directions you don’t like, then, no matter what the writer’s ideological persuasion, you can call them out on their own assumptions, their own yardsticks.
Of course, they will never believe you. But if your position is compelling enough to extort some kind of sustained consideration, then the trajectory of everything they write afterward will have shifted for passing through your semantic field. Maybe they’ll think twice about those blood-drenched titties.
I just don’t see anything remotely convincing about either Grin’s or Theo’s case. Quite the contrary, my guess is that many modern fantasists would look at their arguments as proof that they’re doing something right. That their fantasy has triumphed in some way.
More blood. More titties.
This is either the best title you’ve come up with for this blog or the worst. I can’t decide. I’m…conflicted.
Therefore, it is the best…
OK, so let me get this straight:
1. Fantasy with clearly defined and dualistic morality resonates with audiences.
2. If you write fantasy with a relativistic slant, it won’t resonate with audience and they won’t like you.
3. Ergo, you should write more like a Saturday Morning Cartoon.
His replies imply this is his argument. It’s soundness hinges on premises 1 and 2. Is it true? Seems to me that if the genre is moving in a new direction, it’s because the new direction sells more books.
Scott wrote:
“His attribution of these emotions to some ‘generic viewer’ is likely an example of something called the Consensus Fallacy, our tendency to assume our judgments are more universally shared than they in fact are.”
You hit the nail on the head right here. I am perfectly aware that not everyone thinks The Second Apocalypse is the best thing ever, but it has a reasonably wide following (and a few die-hard evangelists like myself). So, Theo’s argument is in fact reducible to moral contempt based on (presumably) some religious precepts which the new wave in fantasy literature do not accommodate.
More blood and titties please.
Can we get an HBO version of PoN? I wonder who they would cast as Esmenet or Serwe…)
To be honest I’d love to talk to you in person. Not saying it would help either of us really, but I’m glad to have found someone that has accomplished way more than I have who “ultimately” agrees with me. You can email me whenever if you’d like 🙂
His color argument is meaningless. Has he never seen a monochrome photograph in his life?
I learn so much from these posts!
Some unrelated questions:
“If I am painting with primary colors, it is not difficult to achieve the effects of “red” and “blue”.”
Question regarding the color analogy; what is meant by the effect of “blue” and “red”?
To what extent does the artists intent matter? If the artist is trying to create the effect of “blue” and I view the painting as a colorblind individual (which I am), I may not be able to discern the “blue” effect that the artist intended.
What a trouncing! Bakker, you’re quite skilled in argument!
I’m glad that Theo responded to your initial post, your rebuttal of his response really helped to digest this whole argument.
Jorge, I agree, we need a HBO series or some visual representation of PoN. It would be amazing!
RSB, didn’t you say that you had a contract in the works for a show before the books were even published? What ever happened with that? Talk about offending people and challenging their beliefs, values, and moral rightness, a show based on PoN would be absolutely perfect!
Scenes of Scranc, Skin-Spies, and Cnaiur going berserk. I’m sure people would see it as a sign of the end of times.
Well, porn is something that isn’t meant to make you reflect upon the subject and possibly you might change your habits upon reflection. Indeed porn reinforces the habit.
I think books can do that too. I’d say more question soaked titties and more question soaked blood, because just blood and titties can just be a habit reinforcing porn thing.
Actually I’m kind of a wuss in terms of violence, so I’m not that pro the blood, but maybe whoever uses it perhaps needs it (no, I will consider my wussyness could be part of a problem, thank you – I merely hope it isn’t).
But then here
But the empirical fact is that to be human is to be moral.
I’m just splat into a wall – I…what does this mean? What are you describing, Scott?
I’m fairly sure he means that one of the universal features of human cognition is a constant preoccupation with what is right and what is wrong.
He obviously doesn’t mean that all people make morally commendable choices, he just means that people are constantly internally debating with themselves about what is good and what is bad.
Psychopaths probably do this to an extent, although from a much different frame of mind that a person with a normal capacity for empathy might.
Hi Jorge,
I would say no – sometimes I’m just moving around like a lizard, sometimes I move around like an animal. Indeed I’d almost think the idea of a constant preoccupation with right and wrong is like Scott’s interest in where the edge of your vision just ends, and so what you see seems all there is. Are you or anyone really constantly preoccupied, or is that just the scope of what you see of yourself? Like the only times you check to see if your preoccupied are when you are preoccupied – when you aren’t preoccupied (perhaps using the toilet, or doing the dishes (hopefully not at the same time, lol)) you don’t think about it and don’t register your not preoccupied with morality at that point?
I mean, the body is 80% water or some such, but that doesn’t mean you are water.
This is all a little too much for me. Last night was intense, but I think everything will be alright now 🙂
I think someone should try to disentangle the notions of morality in this debate. I just as well might give it a shot …
First of all, I’m a little surprised that no one seems to have come up with something about the difference between morality and ethics. I’m not quite sure about the correct use in English, but in German the term “morality” is usually restricted to fixed social norms that are in principle external (albeit usually internalized), while ethics is more strongly associated with the notion of an individual search for “the right way to live”. Of course, there’s no clear-cut distinction between the two, it’s more or less the same thing from two different perspectives.
What I consider to be important is that relativism can actually be a highly moralist standpoint (and I don’t mean that as a compliment to relativism): If, for example, you are a cultural relativist, you might very well claim that genital mutilation is OK in Sudan, or everywehre where you can arguably claim that a “cultural consensus” allows it or even calls for it. A true cultural relativist would probably also tell me that I “don’t have the right to judge”. This is a actually a very “moral” standpoint: It claims that it is morally right to consider humans not first and foremost as individuals, but as memebers of a certain culture, and that it is morally right to enforce the rule of that culture and reject any rights someone might ascribe to the individuals living in said culture from the “outside”.
I would claim that this type of relativsm is fundamentally moralist, and that it trades in absolutes.
An ethical relativism is something else entirely – an individual which is trying to act ethically has to reflect upon the fact that his or her own set of values cannot lay claim to any absolute validity, but that it is still the only thing that allows himself to meaningfully interact with others. If you are an ethical relativist, you know that you have no choice but to judge and that it is actually okay to judge, as long as you know that your judgement doesn’t stem from an absolute moral truth outside of the realm of society, but from you as an individual who grew up within a certain moral system. For example, I judge genital mutilation to be wrong, because I grew up in a culture that instilled in me the belief that people have the right not to be physically harmed by others, and even though I know that this right is an abstract notion which actually isn’t realized anywhere in the world, I still consider it a worthwile idea, because it is actually important for me as an individual to feel safe from harm and not to be forced to inflict harm onto others.
Now, Theo’s color metaphor seems to imply that he deems ethical relativism to be somehow “too difficult” a concept to master for most writers. In other words, if a fantasy author doesn’t write from the clear cut notion that, e.g., “honorable conduct” (red) is fundamentally good and that “betraying your king” (blue) is inherently bad, the result will most probably be a muddled and ugly grey mess. What he doesn’t seem to take into account is the idea that a writer could write about moral values that are problematic to us, to allow a reader to react to them in an ethical way. In the world of PoN, it is certainly morally right to slaughter infidels, even though we know that these infidels are in no way evil. It is certainly right for fathers to beat their sons, and it is wrong for sons to beat their fathers. These moral beliefs are very clear-cut in the book, they are “red” and “blue”, but they don’t appeal to us – for good reasons. Therefore, works like PoN enforce the notion that we can’t just take moral systems as inherently justified (except if we decide to be cultural relativists of the most cynical kind). We are more or less forced to engage with them, to ethically judge them, even knowing that we are not truly equipped for any absolute judgement. Books like PoN tend to shake the belief that “if it feels right, it probably is right”, because it shows us people that feel right about doing things that we will most probably deem to be wrong, and, more importantly, it still keeps thse characters relatable (maybe with the exception of Kellhus). So, if the moral judgement of these characters that we can relate to leads them to commit gruesome atrocities, what does this say about our potential to commit gruesome crimes while following our own moral code?
If you firmly believe in either some monolithic moralism where what you feel to be right necessarily is right, or in some cultural relativism (to my mind, these two positions are actually closely related), this is of course a bitter pill to swallow.
What Theo also criticises is (I believe) simple blood-and-gut-sensationalism. I actually have no problem with such sensationalism, although it can become a little boring if it is not part of some larger concept. What bugs me is his notion that this kind of razzle-dazzle is neccesarily the result of some kind of moral failure. Which has to do with the notion that the depiction of something amoral is amoral in itself, which I absolutely reject, but that’s a whole new discussion …
Jakob, the only thing I might add to you, is that considering these arguments from the lens of a different language changes the nature of debate. Especially since, I think, most of us could probably cite a handful of controversies including language and semantics, ideas that language might construct our individual physical semantic realities. Consider languages where there are further distinctions and divisions for abstract concepts, such as the German ones you are highlighting or the Arabic languages containing 70+ different words for love.
You know?
RSBakker, while it may (or may not) be true that 1) there is a moral obligation to produce excellent literature or 2) that excellent literature is morally good, those moral claims are irrelevant to what constitutes excellent literature in a technical sense. And Theo’s claim is a third one: that regardless of particular moral claims or consequences, there is a technical standard for what constitutes excellent literature; in this case, a recognizable moral environment that intelligibly fits the particular setting being used.
In other words, Theo’s claim is simply not the moral claim that “Morally confused (in his opinion) literature is bad for society” or even that “Technically crappy literature is immoral.” Rather, it is the technical literary claim that there is a difference between better and worse literature, and that one of the differences has to do with historical fidelity because of the way it renders a story more plausible and intelligible.
There’s really no moralizing hidden beneath the surface. You should address the real question at hand: whether there are technical criteria for what constitutes excellent literature, and whether Theo’s claim for one of those criteria is correct.
You’re forgetting my caveats at the beginning of my rebuttal, Albert (which were meant to preempt precisely this kind of rebuttal).
Although I’m a moral realist, I’m not sure anyone can make any sense out of aesthetic realism (although you’re more than welcome to take a crack at it). Failing that, literature is as literature does, plain and simple. Unless you happen to believe that Theo’s particular interpretative criteria are hanging out there in some kind of semantic phase space, the most you can say is that certain texts do certain things to certain brains at certain times. Some of them salutory, some of them not so much.
I can tell you this coming from a literary background, Theo’s ‘technical criteria’ are nowhere near representing a consensus view. Believe it or not, I was actually interpreting Theo charitably by running with the moralism.
RSBakker, I read them, but I think Theo’s point was to engage precisely this question of what you call “aesthetic realism.” I was interested in reading the responses of two artists to this literary question, which was why I was disappointed to see it go off on a rabbit trail of whether Theo was moralizing or not.
If your caveats actually meant that you are not open to discussing artistic criteria that bridge the experience of people across time and space (or “aesthetic realism” in your words) and that your preemption of this line of discussion was a dismissal of conversation along that line, that’s fine, though disappointing.
I do think there’s something to the claim that having lightsabers and laser blasters in a medieval setting we know is characterized by bows and swords creates problems in terms of literary quality (even if the problems are ultimately surmounted). Analogically, having an ahistorical moral milieu (as opposed to technological) creates problems that may be solved, but more often simply result in bad fiction writing. It’d be more interesting and beneficial if you engaged along those lines and ended the comparatively useless “Keep your Christian moralizing out of fantasy writing” line of discussion.
Perhaps a discussion of whether the “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” constitutes an example of (depending on what you mean) aesthetic realism (grounded not necessarily in semantic phase space but perhaps in shared human experience) or whether all we can say about it is the trivially true “certain texts do certain things to certain brains at certain times.” Just a suggestion for an example; you may have a better one.
Anyway, this is where I bow out. Looking forward to better discussion.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2011/02/lets-try-this-one-more-time.html
The above link is Theo’s response to RSB’s response.
Yeah. Now he’s claiming that he was making a literary proclamation, not a moral one. Unmoderated internet debates are garbage because both sides get to write huge rants and it gets hard to follow lines of reasoning.
RS Bakker twice admits that he doesn’t understand what I’ve written
Man, you’d think people would admire that in some sort of Evel Knievel kind of way, for shear capacity to admit ignorance in the face of incoming certainty.
In my fantasy future, if someone goes “I don’t understand” the room goes quiet, and someone whispers “Oh fuck!”
And it is not a value judgment, but a straightforward statement of fact, to observe that color information is missing from the image and therefore the ability of the viewer to formulate an opinion on the color of the object is severely handicapped.
I’m guessing he doesn’t mean opinion, because it’s staggeringly easy to still form an opinion – grey! See, easy.
An accurate opinion, though?
The thing is, I’d agree you can do that with color, even with a human eye.
But in terms of drawing an accurate opinion on the morality of a piece?
Hey Bakker, how does it feel to be called a “petulant teenager”? I’d almost think that to you it would be a compliment…
who.
fucking.
cares?
http://www.wherethemapends.com/interviews/Theodore_Beale.htm
really? you’re interested in what that guy thinks?
color me (greyscale?) me stunned that a writer of “christian speculative fiction” might not like, uh, “atheist speculative fiction”, especially because the god squadders are so adept at separating literary technical merit from moral virtue and Conformity to Magical Bearded Sky Wizardry in general.
that’s why we make sure to have at least one Young Earth Creationist participate in peer reviews of evolutionary biology journals.
wait, we do do that, don’t we?
bakker might think he’s talking about genre fiction, but he’s really screaming himself hoarse across a vast epistemological divide.
has anyone else read “the dark rising”, which beale praises in the interview?
ugh.
Claiming something has ‘literary merit’ is not the same as claiming your Intelligent Design bullshit has scientific merit. In the latter case there are objective measures that can be used.
At any rate, I think one fantasy writer flaming another fantasy writer is going to seem very amusing to the literary establishment, given that they think the whole genre is a toilet bowl.
That’s why Scott is trying to engage everyone: to test his theory that the literary toilet is actually where debate can happen!
Hi Albert,
You seem to be making a distinction between aesthetic realism about morality and morality in real life? I think the thing is here, there really is no difference. If you like the aesthetic realism that the hero always saves the girl, then that’s your real life sentiment, to some degree, as well. There’s no sealed off playground of morality when you read a book. What happens in vegas doesn’t stay there – not absolutely, anyway.
I get the idea of not suddenly wanting a laser blaster to appear in an ancient setting. But that’s because matter doesn’t just change into a blaster, it does have a set of rules it follows.
Thanks for your response, Callan. The key point is not to look at this in terms of moral preference (what moral behavior I like, e.g. hero saves girl) because that’s not what’s at issue. What is at issue is whether, to use your example, the idea of “hero saves girl” fits the historical moral milieu of the setting in question, say 10th century medieval Europe.
If one doesn’t know anything about the moral landscape of that particular historical period, then importing tropes of, for example, “thin heroically rebellious atheist females saving the day” into that setting won’t be problematic to him. But if one does know something, that moral behavior creates an implausibility to the story which may be overcome through skillful writing, but usually results in an uncompelling story because most writers are not that good and are unable to make it persuasive.
To use your other example, I’d say it’s not so much because “matter doesn’t change into a blaster” that having a laser blaster appear in an ancient setting is problematic, but to be more precise because laser blasters don’t fit the technological milieu of the period. Similarly, certain behaviors (whether or not one likes them or perceives them as moral) don’t fit the moral milieu of the period.
I suspect the problem is simply because people generally know more about the technological milieu of the medieval period (“they did not have laser blasters”) than they do about the moral milieu (“wait, why did Thomas Aquinas matter?”). But the period was characterized by a particular moral landscape, just as ours today is characterized by norms of sexual equality, libertarian notions of freedom, etc. etc. And so importing a moral behavior (regardless of whether I favor it) into the medieval period like, to pick a more extreme example analogous to the extreme technological example of importing laser guns into the medieval period, publicly blaspheming God to the applause of people, simply creates plausibility problems which, again, may not be insurmountable for the skilled writer, but nonetheless constitute significant problems from a literary point of view which have to be overcome. Theo was basically saying (in part), “Writers aren’t doing their due diligence in researching. And so their fiction sucks.” It’s really not about whether Theo or anyone else approves or disproves of blaspheming God.
I don’t know a more clear way of putting this, so I’m just going to stop now and chalk up my failure to communicate to a lack of writing skill because it really seems like people are mistaking what is the central issue.
Hi again Albert,
Well, I’m not sure how you mean a clear way of putting it? As in me getting it as right? What I’m picking up are two different writing methods (at the least), with you describing one of them. So I’m seeing two different methods – not one I have to get as the one that is right.
I’d describe what your talking about as a scripted method. Taking your idea that certain behaviours don’t fit the moral melieu of the period – well, how do you act in real life? Do you think ‘if someone were writing me and trying to fit the moral melieu I’m in, how would I act?’. Well no, of course you don’t – you act as you will. Perhaps you consult your own moral compass, but you don’t check that your own moral compass would somehow match it if someone were writing your life! You do not live to someone elses script. And as one method of writing, one can simply write characters who do not care for any script the authors might think. It’s probably a little skitso to write that way, but it’s another method, as much as the scripted model is a method.
Now I think I totally get you when you say ‘publicly blaspheming God to the applause of people’ or “thin heroically rebellious atheist females saving the day”. I’m thinking of authors who write Mary Sue characters, character who always do the right thing and the good thing and have absolutely no flaws (by the authors reckoning of flaws, anyway) – heck, even the crowd in that example are Mary Sues, suddenly applauding and having the ‘good’ realisation.
The thing is, with that unscripted method I talked about – and this gets a bit creepy – if you actually play out characters with normal human weaknesses, greeds, lusts, hypocrisies … well guess what, they start to act alot like you might expect them to act in that historical time period. They don’t openly blaspheme a god notion, fearing for their own skin. Or maybe they do and the crowd, enraged at it’s own certainty threatened and feeling escalating emotions of rightness, stones them to death. With out even following a script. Creepy, eh? Well, I find it creepy.
What is at issue is whether, to use your example, the idea of “hero saves girl” fits the historical moral milieu of the setting in question, say 10th century medieval Europe
But back onto my main point, it doesn’t matter how specific your getting in saying that this is 10th century medieval Europe – your still making your own moral assertion – it’s not somehow seperate from your day to day morality. It’s just a matter of what you think is the done thing in certain circumstances. Clearly the 10th century has passed so maybe it seems such a moot point as to be seperate from our daily morality. But then again, were still using the same model of brain as we did back in the 10th century.
I mean, what’s the difference today between thinking, for example, you shouldn’t rape anyone, and thinking that in a fiction, a character shouldn’t do X?
Our morality IS aesthetic realism. It’s not pure realism, not just how the world is as it is. Morality is how we want the human world to be. An aesthetic.
I don’t know if I sound nihilistic in saying that about morality – perhaps morality seems more like cast iron to other people. To me I’m describing something incredibly delicate, fragile and beutiful, that is in between us and less than animal behaviour (even the animals have, amongst their own, certain codes)
But anyway, before I just see two methods of writing. Neither of which is by some galactic standard the right one. I have my bias towards one though, I’ll totally grant >:)
Come back and thinking on it more – I’m thinking so, okay, maybe you nail exactly how characters would act during the historical moral milieu of the setting.
Okay and…what? Does the reader think ‘Ah yeah, these papers are in order and it is good that they are in order?’. Maybe alot do, I don’t know?
I’m wondering if the divide is that if you treat literature as a means to real life social change today, well then that perfect representation doesn’t do anything, it misses the mark entirely. It represent the past perfectly and wont affect the present at all – so that’s a fail.
I’m not saying literature is that or has to be, just saying if that is how you treat literature, then the perfect representation is at the very least not a primary goal.
Not that anyones reading this, anyway…
[…] “More blood. More titties.” This is clearly more than just a philosophical creed for Bakker, it is quite evidently his raison d’écriture. Which is fine, if you like that sort of thing. It just strikes me as less of an advance in the state of epic fantasy literature than it does a mainstreaming of the sort of porn that “John Cleve” was publishing 30 years ago. The crusader theme is far from the only similarity between Cleve’s kitsch and Bakker’s epic. The problem is that to a generation that has seen Saw turned into an amusement park ride, the killer rapes of the abomination Xurjranc and his GWAR-like appendage borders on the comedic and is arguably less “shocking” and “transgressive” than the lethal catapulting of the much-penetrated slave girl would have been to readers raised on Halloween and The Nightmare on Elm Street. This is a pity, because underneath the juvenile desire to shock and the apparent porn obsession is a pretty interesting writer with an impressive talent for world-building and mystic horror. […]
[…] Bakker: “Apologize for the in-group status quo.” […]