Stories exist for entertainment, certainly, but they also exist as teaching tools. They have been used this way for thousands of years - from religious parables to ancient mythologies, the stories you hear at bedtime and the ones you read in English Lit classes.
Stories deliver a moral message, and they are uniquely suited to it because they activate an empathetic response in our brains. For a little while, these fictional constructs become real people to us, and that allows us to live through them; and that activation of empathy is what makes it possible to internalize the messages and morals of the story in a way that simply being told how to think or behave would not.
Fiction exists as a playground - a place to explore ideas and situations and work through them. They are, to an extent, therapeutic - both for the author and the reader. The author discovers something about him/herself in the process of writing; they identify their own values and insights and experiences in a way that was not clear before writing them down. The reader/viewer discovers connections to the wider world or their own experiences.
These are essential functions of storytelling. This is why storytelling exists.
There are moral messages in all stories. They’re called themes, and the exist in every story whether or not the author intends to put them there. Themes are the imposition of moral logic to events in a narrative.
Themes emerge in the ways that characters are punished or rewarded for their choices. In the things characters struggle against and overcome or are defeated by.
Does the hero kill the bad guy? (then sometimes killing is acceptable, if it’s to prevent greater harm)
Does the villain die by his own devices? (then evil will ultimately destroy itself)
Does the hero let the villain go, only for the villain to die in some ironic or accidental way? (then the world is just, and will balance its own cosmic scales)
Does the bad guy get away without consequences? (then the world is unjust)
Does the bad guy see the error in his ways? (then evil can be redeemed)
But here’s the thing that’s important: All themes are valid. All of those things above are sometimes true. They are also, sometimes, false. That’s because life is a paradox; it’s full of things that are sometimes true, sometimes false, sometimes both at the same time.
Fiction exists to tease out those inconsistencies. In any given story, one of those themes will be true. In another story, a different theme will be true. Both stories can (and do) describe the reality of the human experience.
Complaining about problematic events or characters may be missing the point. Only themes can be problematic. Characters and plots are just tools for storytelling. The existence of a bad guy is not inherently problematic; what happens to that bad guy and the moral message those events portray may be.
Moreover: The themes of a particular story may or may not directly reflect the morality of the author. Sometimes, you write something with a particular theme simply because you want to see what the world might look like from that perspective. I think, as writers, we may often be drawn to doing precisely that because we have questions: Can evil be redeemed? Is murder ever justified?
We’re asking questions, not making definitive statements.
We’re authors, not oracles. We don’t have the answers to life’s greatest questions. We’re exploring possibilities, trying to figure out how this whole world works.
So don’t malign people for this. Don’t say “Don’t explore these themes” or, god forbid, actively threaten people for exploring themes, even if they’re not themes that you agree with.
Discussing problematic themes is a worthwhile endeavor. Exploring why things are problematic, and how they are portrayed, and the way those things can relate back to the real world and our human experience - all of that is valuable. Discourse and analysis is good! Discussing these themes is how we grow and learn about ourselves and the world we occupy.
Maligning authors - or insisting that certain topics be verboten - only leads to shallow thinking; it punishes soul-searching and critical thought; it gags authors and prevents them from revealing those facets of truth that stories might contain.
After all: If there were no problematic fiction for us to analyze, how would we ever learn so much about our values, our culture, our place in the world?
kaledo-art
germansingergirl
jbbartram-illu
snowghoul
blakekathryn
titsay
annaxmalina
