Do you guys believe that authors have a responsibility to their readers, when writing violent stories, or stories about violent characters, to establish a sense of right and wrong for the reader? In other words, are we, as storytellers, required to show the bad guys being brought to justice, lest we be seen as glorifying violence, or a life of crime? Personally, I do not think so. I don't find that write about crime is glorifying crime, nor is having a criminal for a protagonist making any excuses for criminals. I don't buy into the whole concept that writing about violence automatically equals glorifying violence. Not to mention, how boring would storytelling be if stories about "bad guys" always ended the same way, i.e. the bad guys being brought to justice? I think readers would get bored of that pretty quickly.
No, I don't believe so. Writing is a representation of the world around us or how we interpret that world. In real life horrible things happen - child abuse, murders, terrorist attacks, racism, sexism, ageism - and our writing has to be able to represent that whether or not it is "comfortable" for our readers.
This is the definition of a polemic. If the writer feels the need to tell me the baddie is a baddie in a fashion that begins to evoke the presence of the writer within the narrative (narrative intrusion) then I'm out. I don't want this for several reasons: The writer is telling me I'm a dolt by spoon feeding me the rolls of the characters. What if I completely disagree with the writer's idea of who the baddie actually is? I read posts here all the time where members make statements about the relative goodiness and baddiness of themselves and others in the real world and I have to walk away from the post because their sentiment is ludicrous. There are a lot of broken people with broken ideas about what's what. If you genuinely can pin down the Black Hat™ and the White Hat™ with that kind of assurance, then both are one-dimensional cardboard cutouts. No thanks. I know the "Kum ba yah" version of the answer to this question demands that we treat the entire world as a creche of children of whom we're all taking care, but that answer ignores the human condition out of hand. That's not the kind of animal we actually are, despite the wishes of some.
No. Stories are sometimes supposed to reflect reality, and in reality, the one "we" deem to be the bad guy sometimes gets away. Edit: Who suggests otherwise I wonder? And why?
So, just to play the devil's advocate here, how do we avoid glorifying violence, or the criminal lifestyle, when writing these kinds of stories? Or, should we even be concerned with that? Maybe we should simply write what inspires us and not concerns ourselves with the message being sent, since that is often discovered through the process of writing itself.
The only responsibility an author has to the readers is to try to tell a good story and respect the reader's intelligence. Not meeting this obligation cheats the reader, but also cheats the author. And it carries its own penalty. You don't owe the reader a message. You don't owe him or her Political Correctness. Truth is hard enough to define, and even if you could, it's not an obligation either. Hell, fiction is a lie in any case, and readers will love you if you tell a real whopper.
I totally agree. I believe the only responsibility that a storyteller has is to tell an interesting, compelling story.
Mandated anything is a form of censorship. Art is expression. Otherwise, it is propaganda. Forced morality usually results in rebellion/revolution/backlash/black market. Disapproval in art is talking heads, more now than ever. Responses, however, should be regulated by stoning, maybe?
So how would you respond to someone who charges a mob story with glorifying the criminal way of life as a good one? I mean, aren't we allowed to write about criminals without promoting their way of life? To be clear, I agree with you. But I'm having a conversation with an acquaintance who is criticizing directors who make crime movies. I'm not quite sure what the person's point is, really, but I wanted to open the conversation up here, among authors, to get different perspectives on the matter. And it's no surprise to me that authors here believe in free expression, but I'm trying to understand the mindset that allows someone to think it's a bad thing to tell a story where a "bad guy" is a protagonist.
I guess the concern is that someone will tell a murder "story" that inspires an actual murder? Or whatever the bad thing is. In one of the Tom Clancy books, "Debt of Honor" perhaps, Tom Clancy has the pilot of an airliner turn it into a flying bomb and crash it into the White House in an act of terrorism. Then.......Sept 11, 2001 happened. Do you think Tom Clancy should be held responsible for the fact that a terrorist used a plane as a flying bomb? Perhaps he's guilty of "inspiring" the terrorists?
I'm writing a new Constitution. Among the Rights and responsibilities Article is Free speech is mandatory, and own what you say, you will be accountable for it. This is based on all human activity being available to observe, by request. Open society.
Yeah, I suppose that's the concern. I'm not sure what kind of uptight individual would adopt this position... should all art only depict positive people doing positive things in positive situations that yield positive results? Storytelling, as an art form, would be quite dull and one-dimensional... no? I'm trying my best to understand this position... but I can't. It's just very bizarre to me to think that writing about violence = glorifying it.
I wouldnt - they are entitled to their opinion, but life is too short to spend arguing it with people with such irrational views
we had that discussion recently , here https://www.writingforums.org/threads/ethics-of-depicting-violence.163070/
Well... my issue even with that statement, is how can one even tell a story about a violent character or event without glorifying it? My guess is that, according to this acquaintance of mine, you cannot - unless of course the story ends with "the bad guys" being brought to justice. However, that seems to make so many assumptions about storytelling and an author's actual beliefs about fictional things being talked about in the story. It seems to come from the same vein of thought where people think that first-person shooter games promote real-life gun violence.
You cannot change the nature of a person by writing a book. Similarly you cannot make judgments or associations about people you don't know, or speak as a representative of 'the people' in general, with any credibility. In so doing you are in fact guilty of attempting to change the nature of a person. I wonder how humility figures into this encounter.
And furthermore, how little faith does one have to have in humanity to actually believe that reading a book or watching a violent movie will make someone go nuts and start shooting people? That's just a crazy way to think.
Scarface, The Joker, and Breaking Bad come to mind. Sorry, not books, but I think they are relevant here. What's hilarious to me is that even when the author's message is that these characters are flawed in the worst of ways, the audience largely misses that somehow and still ends up admiring them. So even when you serve Montana or White with a poor self-afflicted fate in an attempt to be ' socially responsible' (or to just tell a good story), it will go over the heads of many. I suspect it's the same reason people like fiction in the first place. We want sensible answers, a good reason for why things happen. Media unfortunately obsesses over the perpetrator's motive because its audience does. Sometimes in real life, people are just fucked up. Or sometimes the issue just has too much depth and nuance for people to even want to understand. Do I know of the legislative or local actors in my country's politics? Nope. I just curse my prime minister.
I must agree. Do NOT follow the sealion down the beach, no matter what the sealion barks at you. The sea lion is a destructive, disingenuous creature.
