If you’re not actually doing something to solve a problem it’s best not to think about it at all. Dwelling is emotionally exhausting and a waste of time.
Of course this doesn’t rule out grieving. Contemplation of a lost one is a vital part of learning to cope without them. Appropriate grieving is very much doing something about a problem. Suppress such thoughts at your peril.
But grieving also demonstrates the cut-off. Excessive grieving, that which lingers and strips your ability to function properly in the world is clearly an enemy, something to stand up to. Gloomy ceaseless grieving certainly happens, but it’s always a pity. It does no-one any favours.
It’s the same all the way down to more trivial problems. Bemoaning that fact that you didn’t get what you wanted or weren’t treated well is worse than pointless. Spilling your sorrows to a trusted friend or professional can be very rewarding of course, but regurgitating your problems to all-and-sundry is draining, and it certainly doesn’t make for good company.
Describing one’s sorrows is contemplating one’s sorrows, and that’s never a happy time. Unless you are actually in the process of petitioning someone for assistance it’s best to keep it to yourself – and indeed from yourself. There’s a limit to how long any insoluble problem should bark away in a human mind. Once you’ve mulled all the useful lessons you can from a bad experience or bad news, there’s nothing more to be gained by thinking about it. Put it to bed, think about something else. Return to it refreshed.
Easier said than done of course. Worries play for our attention, but perhaps certain other beliefs weaken our guard. Perhaps we fear that if aren’t constantly fretting about a problem we’re neglecting it – neglecting the issue of the errant lover, ailing business or missing child.
But it can’t be neglect if you’re not in a position to do anything. If all you have to offer are painful impotent thoughts it’s time to change the record. There’s nothing to be gained by wallowing in sorrow, but a lot to lose. Rather than a duty, dwelling is a costly indulgence.
Tuesday 12 December 2006
Monday 20 November 2006
How to end terrorism in one generation.
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller’s horrific description of countless British terror cells, planning countless heinous deeds, is not an easy thing to question. There’s no way to check information compiled in secrecy. Call it exaggerated and you open yourself up to the accusation of endangering human life, and of course you really do make yourself hostage to fortune.
Nevertheless some external evidence can be factored-in, for one thing Tony Blair’s ringing endorsement. Judging by his track record his understanding of such matters is shamefully inadequate. Taking his opinions seriously has proved disastrous for the world and its inhabitants. To any rational mind Blair’s agreement with any assessment of world affairs must subtract from its credibility. It’s almost a guarantee of error.
Also the timing is highly convenient. The very week the Bush administration is castrated, another blast of terror – at least on paper. Just as the whispers of dissent start to become audible ‘terror’ returns to stifle them. The message is clear and tediously familiar – stay on board, look what happens without our protection.
But more than anything there’s the strange issue of the time-scale. Manningham-Buller suggests that the current wave of Islamic terrorism will “last a generation”. You have to ask, what is the basis for this claim? How did she arrive at this figure?
Obviously much depends on what she sees as the cause of Islamic terror. Many see Islamic atrocities as a response to western atrocities. As long as the west continues to treat Muslim life casually we can expect some Muslims to treat us with equal compassion. If our thirst for oil compels us to mistreat masses of innocent people, some of them will respond in kind.
Alternatively some see the problem as inherent to Islam. Muslims have an innate tendency to world domination (eerily familiar?) and care little for who they kill along the way. In fact they relish dying in the process, because of all the fleshy heavenly rewards.
I can’t see that the head of British Intelligence is of the first opinion, her response would be just too good to be true. If she sees Islamic terror stopping in one generation she must also be predicting the end of western brutality – perhaps something she and the other security services are working towards?: Palestinian liberation, US bases removed from Saudi, Iraq given back to the Iraqis.
A nice thought, and certainly something I’d like to work towards, but it seems unlikely this is what she means. Mere discussion of such an obvious strategy is forbidden in powerful circles. If you want to get anywhere in the state you have to accept that some options are not to be considered, even if this wilful ignorance endangers the people you are employed to serve.
Far more likely she takes the second view. But if so it’s still difficult to imagine how she arrived at the ‘last a generation’ claim. If radical Islam is the problem she suggests what have she and MI5 got in mind, and how do they account for the proposed time scale? If radical Islam really is a hurricane of madness, spiralling through madrasahs and carrying off young minds, exactly what plan has the state devised to tackle it? And why will it take one generation to implement? Why not half a generation, or three?
I suspect the real reason for the time period is political expedience. One generation is the goldilocks option. Any longer and it would sound as though we’ve already lost. But any shorter and it would require evidence of strategy, other than just business as usual, and its usual depressing consequences. ‘Within one generation’ sounds do-able, just don’t expect to be able to detect any progress. We’re in for the medium-term haul.
Nevertheless some external evidence can be factored-in, for one thing Tony Blair’s ringing endorsement. Judging by his track record his understanding of such matters is shamefully inadequate. Taking his opinions seriously has proved disastrous for the world and its inhabitants. To any rational mind Blair’s agreement with any assessment of world affairs must subtract from its credibility. It’s almost a guarantee of error.
Also the timing is highly convenient. The very week the Bush administration is castrated, another blast of terror – at least on paper. Just as the whispers of dissent start to become audible ‘terror’ returns to stifle them. The message is clear and tediously familiar – stay on board, look what happens without our protection.
But more than anything there’s the strange issue of the time-scale. Manningham-Buller suggests that the current wave of Islamic terrorism will “last a generation”. You have to ask, what is the basis for this claim? How did she arrive at this figure?
Obviously much depends on what she sees as the cause of Islamic terror. Many see Islamic atrocities as a response to western atrocities. As long as the west continues to treat Muslim life casually we can expect some Muslims to treat us with equal compassion. If our thirst for oil compels us to mistreat masses of innocent people, some of them will respond in kind.
Alternatively some see the problem as inherent to Islam. Muslims have an innate tendency to world domination (eerily familiar?) and care little for who they kill along the way. In fact they relish dying in the process, because of all the fleshy heavenly rewards.
I can’t see that the head of British Intelligence is of the first opinion, her response would be just too good to be true. If she sees Islamic terror stopping in one generation she must also be predicting the end of western brutality – perhaps something she and the other security services are working towards?: Palestinian liberation, US bases removed from Saudi, Iraq given back to the Iraqis.
A nice thought, and certainly something I’d like to work towards, but it seems unlikely this is what she means. Mere discussion of such an obvious strategy is forbidden in powerful circles. If you want to get anywhere in the state you have to accept that some options are not to be considered, even if this wilful ignorance endangers the people you are employed to serve.
Far more likely she takes the second view. But if so it’s still difficult to imagine how she arrived at the ‘last a generation’ claim. If radical Islam is the problem she suggests what have she and MI5 got in mind, and how do they account for the proposed time scale? If radical Islam really is a hurricane of madness, spiralling through madrasahs and carrying off young minds, exactly what plan has the state devised to tackle it? And why will it take one generation to implement? Why not half a generation, or three?
I suspect the real reason for the time period is political expedience. One generation is the goldilocks option. Any longer and it would sound as though we’ve already lost. But any shorter and it would require evidence of strategy, other than just business as usual, and its usual depressing consequences. ‘Within one generation’ sounds do-able, just don’t expect to be able to detect any progress. We’re in for the medium-term haul.
Friday 29 September 2006
Fiction VII
Fact as a Virtue
Fiction certainly has its virtues. It can enlighten and inform, exercise reading skills and increase vocabularies. It gives audiences access to concepts, landscapes and situations they would otherwise never encounter. At times it’s the best way to communicate important ideas, sometimes the only way.
Nevertheless, there are limits on the sort of information that be conveyed in this manner. Most of the time, the best way to learn about the world is to study it first-hand, or at least as close-hand as you can get.
While Newton’s bizarre life-story might be usefully illuminated by dramatisation, his Principia would suffer dreadfully. Calculus is difficult enough without it being further encoded into a human storyline. If you want to learn how to solve equations there’s no better way than studying equations directly – certainly more illuminating than studying narratives about people who themselves study the equations. In this case it’s definitely best to study first-hand.
In the last part I suggested that some of the virtues commonly ascribed to fiction are undeserved. As with mathematics, politics and human-nature are subjects best studied first hand. You might top-up your knowledge of these subjects with a fiction, or even be inspired to investigate further after consuming a fiction, but a fiction alone would be pretty worthless, in understanding these complex matters.
It may sound facetious, but I sincerely believe the best way to ‘lay bare the human condition’ is by reading pop science. The whole magnificent corpus of natural philosophy is available in lucid terms, written with the layman in mind. Evolution, genetics, psychology, theory of mind – these are our best hope of or seeing ‘directly into the human soul’. While fiction might provide gut-wrenching sensations of existence, pop science actually provides understanding, comprehension.
Just the same with politics. Watching The West Wing or Yes Minister might add colour and structure to your notion of government and civil service, but it’s no substitute for real politics. Without any accompanying knowledge of real politics political fiction becomes mere decoration.
I suspect a bit of self-deception is sometimes at play. It’s just so much easier to consume a fiction than go to source, and it’s a great bonus to think it’s doing us some good. Watching a drama about Newton is a far less daunting prospect than tackling his theories. Watching The Deer Hunter is far easier than reading Manufacturing Consent. Watching M*A*S*H is far easier than studying Korean history.
It’s a bit like the one about the lazy lit student – watches the film of the book instead of reading the book itself. Dramatisations of important discoveries and events are bound to be less of a struggle to swallow than material closer to source, but we tend to pay for that decrease in difficulty with a proportional decrease in useful learning.
The ease with which we gulp down most of our fiction is a pretty good indicator that nothing too profound is being acquired. Real learning – such as that carried out by lit students – is a difficult, head scratching, business. Uncritically consuming fiction, on the other hand, is a breeze.
For the consumer it might sound like a free lunch, but as usual someone ends up paying. It’s tempting to let our feelings towards fictions become a substitute for legitimate moral concern. Reading about child labour in nineteenth-century Lancashire feels like a moral act, but it’s far less disquieting, or implicating, than reading about child labour in Vietnam today – great surges of compassion, none of the guilt. It hurts less to read Dickens because it doesn’t implicate us. All the emotion with none of the culpability.
If we allow ourselves to project our compassion onto simple fictional victims instead of ugly reality, the consequences are anything but virtuous. If we allow ourselves the warm moral glow when there’s no chance of a moral effect it’s a net moral loss. Read in isolation, fiction won’t change the world. You can read and discuss Dickens until the cows come home, but it’s morally worthless if you never apply it to the present. It’s just milking away your morality, rather than acting upon it.
Fiction certainly has its virtues. It can enlighten and inform, exercise reading skills and increase vocabularies. It gives audiences access to concepts, landscapes and situations they would otherwise never encounter. At times it’s the best way to communicate important ideas, sometimes the only way.
Nevertheless, there are limits on the sort of information that be conveyed in this manner. Most of the time, the best way to learn about the world is to study it first-hand, or at least as close-hand as you can get.
While Newton’s bizarre life-story might be usefully illuminated by dramatisation, his Principia would suffer dreadfully. Calculus is difficult enough without it being further encoded into a human storyline. If you want to learn how to solve equations there’s no better way than studying equations directly – certainly more illuminating than studying narratives about people who themselves study the equations. In this case it’s definitely best to study first-hand.
In the last part I suggested that some of the virtues commonly ascribed to fiction are undeserved. As with mathematics, politics and human-nature are subjects best studied first hand. You might top-up your knowledge of these subjects with a fiction, or even be inspired to investigate further after consuming a fiction, but a fiction alone would be pretty worthless, in understanding these complex matters.
It may sound facetious, but I sincerely believe the best way to ‘lay bare the human condition’ is by reading pop science. The whole magnificent corpus of natural philosophy is available in lucid terms, written with the layman in mind. Evolution, genetics, psychology, theory of mind – these are our best hope of or seeing ‘directly into the human soul’. While fiction might provide gut-wrenching sensations of existence, pop science actually provides understanding, comprehension.
Just the same with politics. Watching The West Wing or Yes Minister might add colour and structure to your notion of government and civil service, but it’s no substitute for real politics. Without any accompanying knowledge of real politics political fiction becomes mere decoration.
I suspect a bit of self-deception is sometimes at play. It’s just so much easier to consume a fiction than go to source, and it’s a great bonus to think it’s doing us some good. Watching a drama about Newton is a far less daunting prospect than tackling his theories. Watching The Deer Hunter is far easier than reading Manufacturing Consent. Watching M*A*S*H is far easier than studying Korean history.
It’s a bit like the one about the lazy lit student – watches the film of the book instead of reading the book itself. Dramatisations of important discoveries and events are bound to be less of a struggle to swallow than material closer to source, but we tend to pay for that decrease in difficulty with a proportional decrease in useful learning.
The ease with which we gulp down most of our fiction is a pretty good indicator that nothing too profound is being acquired. Real learning – such as that carried out by lit students – is a difficult, head scratching, business. Uncritically consuming fiction, on the other hand, is a breeze.
For the consumer it might sound like a free lunch, but as usual someone ends up paying. It’s tempting to let our feelings towards fictions become a substitute for legitimate moral concern. Reading about child labour in nineteenth-century Lancashire feels like a moral act, but it’s far less disquieting, or implicating, than reading about child labour in Vietnam today – great surges of compassion, none of the guilt. It hurts less to read Dickens because it doesn’t implicate us. All the emotion with none of the culpability.
If we allow ourselves to project our compassion onto simple fictional victims instead of ugly reality, the consequences are anything but virtuous. If we allow ourselves the warm moral glow when there’s no chance of a moral effect it’s a net moral loss. Read in isolation, fiction won’t change the world. You can read and discuss Dickens until the cows come home, but it’s morally worthless if you never apply it to the present. It’s just milking away your morality, rather than acting upon it.
Thursday 28 September 2006
Fiction VI
Fiction as a Virtue
Once upon a time our English teacher asked us to list the books we were reading out of school. I doubt I was reading anything, but I wrote down the last few titles I could remember. She frowned at my list, “You know you really should be reading some fiction.”
It was voiced with genuine concern for my well-being. Like many people, she saw a life without fiction as a life lacking. Like vitamins, fictions were missing from my psychological diet, a deficiency that would narrow my outlook. Without fiction I would grow into a less ‘well-rounded’ character.
But does consuming fiction make a better human of you? Does it make the world an easier place to comprehend, and cause you to act in a more enlightened way?
Obviously much depends on the fiction. By definition, virtuous fiction would tend to instil virtue, help form that ‘well-rounded character’ all responsible educators desire. Enlightening writing is that which enlightens, leaves you better able to cope in the world. If the only fiction you read is morally and intellectually enlightening the experience is bound to be a constructive one.
But that doesn’t sound much like the average fiction, or the average purchaser. Most of us buy fiction for pleasure, not self-improvement. Although often intelligent and entertaining, it seems uncontroversial to suggest that the mass of fictions we consume range from morally irrelevant to morally malevolent, they certainly teach us nothing useful about the world.
Love it as they might, few viewers of Coronation Street could claim they’d become better moral agents by watching it. After forty years, what could you have possibly learned?: Old women gossip, but it’s usually their undoing in the end? Schoolgirls sometimes fall pregnant? Factory owners drink scotch?
The proportion of useful ideas popular fiction conveys to public minds is slight in the extreme. Popular fiction is about pleasure, not learning, I’m sure most fiction consumers and creators would agree.
There’s less agreement about the virtues of more highbrow fiction, often renamed literature or classics. Such works are heralded as the peak of human intellectual achievement. To whatever degree this might be true, some claims seem quite unjustified. While there is nothing wrong in principle with the idea of virtuous fiction, some powers attributed to it simply don’t stand up to inspection.
It is frequently suggested, without comment, that Shakespeare or even Jane Austen ‘see directly into the human soul’ or ‘lay bare the human condition.’ I really don’t think this is true – but I have an idea why it gets said. Good fiction triggers deep emotion. Subtle dramatisations of profound human interactions can be deeply moving. If it’s done with sufficient intelligence it can feel like you are witnessing vital moral and emotional truth.
But feeling isn’t the same as learning. The fact that a fiction can instil powerful emotions in us has no bearing on the depth of any message it might convey. This misunderstanding seems central to the frequent mistaken elevation of fiction from pleasure to virtue. The beauty we witness and the deep feelings we experience while consuming it can encourage the idea we have learned something deep along the way, when it might not be the case at all.
Politics for example, and Shakespeare again. I remember an interview in which an RSC bigwig emphasized the political profundity of Julius Caesar. Its greatest lesson, he suggested, was that it teaches us ‘the impossibility of politics’.
Again, I don’t think the first claim is true – as before, profundity of feeling is being muddled with profundity of learning. However powerful and moving Julius Caesar might be I’d challenge anyone to identify a novel political insight in it. Its profundity lies in its beauty, its humanity and language, but there’s nothing in it that might make you better able to cope with contemporary politics – certainly nothing as useful as actually studying contemporary politics. It’s eminently quotable, but it won’t clarify current global economics, or inspire social reform.
Indeed if ‘the impossibility of politics’ is the great lesson of the play that greatness is highly questionable, at least to those of a progressive persuasion. It’s really an appeal to political resignation – resistance is futile. For while it’s certainly a great truth that political ambition does invariably descend into corruption and betrayal, it also won us every existing liberty. Although those successes are dust beside the failures, we only possess them because some of our predecessors refused to believe politics was impossible, refused to give up. If the ‘great lesson’ of Julius Caesar actually wards people away from politics its ethical consequences are in fact degenerate, at least in that respect.
Once upon a time our English teacher asked us to list the books we were reading out of school. I doubt I was reading anything, but I wrote down the last few titles I could remember. She frowned at my list, “You know you really should be reading some fiction.”
It was voiced with genuine concern for my well-being. Like many people, she saw a life without fiction as a life lacking. Like vitamins, fictions were missing from my psychological diet, a deficiency that would narrow my outlook. Without fiction I would grow into a less ‘well-rounded’ character.
But does consuming fiction make a better human of you? Does it make the world an easier place to comprehend, and cause you to act in a more enlightened way?
Obviously much depends on the fiction. By definition, virtuous fiction would tend to instil virtue, help form that ‘well-rounded character’ all responsible educators desire. Enlightening writing is that which enlightens, leaves you better able to cope in the world. If the only fiction you read is morally and intellectually enlightening the experience is bound to be a constructive one.
But that doesn’t sound much like the average fiction, or the average purchaser. Most of us buy fiction for pleasure, not self-improvement. Although often intelligent and entertaining, it seems uncontroversial to suggest that the mass of fictions we consume range from morally irrelevant to morally malevolent, they certainly teach us nothing useful about the world.
Love it as they might, few viewers of Coronation Street could claim they’d become better moral agents by watching it. After forty years, what could you have possibly learned?: Old women gossip, but it’s usually their undoing in the end? Schoolgirls sometimes fall pregnant? Factory owners drink scotch?
The proportion of useful ideas popular fiction conveys to public minds is slight in the extreme. Popular fiction is about pleasure, not learning, I’m sure most fiction consumers and creators would agree.
There’s less agreement about the virtues of more highbrow fiction, often renamed literature or classics. Such works are heralded as the peak of human intellectual achievement. To whatever degree this might be true, some claims seem quite unjustified. While there is nothing wrong in principle with the idea of virtuous fiction, some powers attributed to it simply don’t stand up to inspection.
It is frequently suggested, without comment, that Shakespeare or even Jane Austen ‘see directly into the human soul’ or ‘lay bare the human condition.’ I really don’t think this is true – but I have an idea why it gets said. Good fiction triggers deep emotion. Subtle dramatisations of profound human interactions can be deeply moving. If it’s done with sufficient intelligence it can feel like you are witnessing vital moral and emotional truth.
But feeling isn’t the same as learning. The fact that a fiction can instil powerful emotions in us has no bearing on the depth of any message it might convey. This misunderstanding seems central to the frequent mistaken elevation of fiction from pleasure to virtue. The beauty we witness and the deep feelings we experience while consuming it can encourage the idea we have learned something deep along the way, when it might not be the case at all.
Politics for example, and Shakespeare again. I remember an interview in which an RSC bigwig emphasized the political profundity of Julius Caesar. Its greatest lesson, he suggested, was that it teaches us ‘the impossibility of politics’.
Again, I don’t think the first claim is true – as before, profundity of feeling is being muddled with profundity of learning. However powerful and moving Julius Caesar might be I’d challenge anyone to identify a novel political insight in it. Its profundity lies in its beauty, its humanity and language, but there’s nothing in it that might make you better able to cope with contemporary politics – certainly nothing as useful as actually studying contemporary politics. It’s eminently quotable, but it won’t clarify current global economics, or inspire social reform.
Indeed if ‘the impossibility of politics’ is the great lesson of the play that greatness is highly questionable, at least to those of a progressive persuasion. It’s really an appeal to political resignation – resistance is futile. For while it’s certainly a great truth that political ambition does invariably descend into corruption and betrayal, it also won us every existing liberty. Although those successes are dust beside the failures, we only possess them because some of our predecessors refused to believe politics was impossible, refused to give up. If the ‘great lesson’ of Julius Caesar actually wards people away from politics its ethical consequences are in fact degenerate, at least in that respect.
Wednesday 5 July 2006
Fiction V
The Politics of Fiction
As seen in the last part, fiction can instil inappropriate fears. But fear isn’t a special case. Whatever the subject, there’s always the risk a story will leave us with inaccurate information about the world. It’s a recurring quandary with fiction. It’s great that it can tell us about things we wouldn’t otherwise encounter, but not so great when what it tells is isn’t true. Sometimes it might be better not to know at all.
Clearly, if your entire knowledge of Jewish people comes from Nazi propaganda films you’d be better knowing nothing at all. Likewise, if your entire knowledge of Libyans is based upon the salivating sub-humans depicted in Back to the Future complete ignorance would be preferable.
Sad to say, for many children and adults in the Thirties and the Eighties such characterisations were all they had to go on. Consequently when they heard the words ‘Jewish’ or ‘Libyan’ it was those sort of images that sprang to mind. Consequently, when it came to gassing and bombing these people, there was less outcry. Malevolent sub-humans elicit little public sympathy, and that was how fiction had helped to paint them.
Fictional depictions are sucked into vacuums in our knowledge. If a mind has no information on a subject other than through a fiction, it will tend to store and utilise that fiction as it would fact.
For example, watching Quincy is the closest I’ve come to knowing an American pathologist. No surprise, when I hear the term ‘American pathologist’ it is Jack Klugman’s face and pleasant demeanour that spring to mind. I’ve little else stored on the subject.
Alternatively, if I hear the term ‘aging beach stud’ then naturally I’ll picture Mr Hasslehoff. But this time my mind will also factor-in a bit of Robert Mitchum, in Cape Fear, and perhaps some of the older characters in surf-movies like Big Wednesday. As it happens, I have actually been on some Californian beaches, so those memories of reality will also inform my reading. Nevertheless, in this particular case the fictions remain the majority input. They’re the defining images in my mind.
Colourful as it can be, this reliance on fiction for facts leaves us vulnerable to misrepresentations, no more so than in the sphere of politics. Depending on which narratives you consume you can be left with a very different impression of events: If your entire knowledge of the American frontier comes from watching John Wayne movies you’ll be left with a particular view of that period. If it comes from Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee you’ll be left with a very different set of images. Heroic horseback duels between righteous Europeans and noble savages would turn to images of genocide.
If your entire knowledge of Vietnam ‘war’ comes from watching ‘Nam movies, your opinion of what happened will be tightly circumscribed. You might think of it as a brave adventure, you might think of it as a tragedy that befell young American manhood. But you certainly won’t see it as the US battling to derail democracy in Asia.
Doubtless, such depictions have helped keep the true horrors out of the public mind, and on track.
Or take the concept of the British spy. Ask anyone on Earth to name a British secret agent. It won’t be Guy Burgess or David Shayler. James Bond is far better known, a far bolder image in the public eye than any real spy.
For all the fun of the films, this misunderstanding has been an boon for state-criminals, a priceless diversion from reality. When we should picture murky individuals, sneaking, lying and squealing, instead we picture immaculate evening attire, casinos, Ferraris, Dry Martinis and beautiful women. When we should be protesting the destruction of countless democracies instead we picture a dashing hero, keeping Moscow or whatever at bay. Perfect war propaganda, without any government coaxing.
Star Trek was a stunning piece of cold-war propaganda. The whole premise is America’s infinite benevolence, and its right to police the universe. As power passed from Europe to the States, Star Trek spelled out the change: Now we could see the future, and that was American too. If anyone was going to build intergalactic ships it was them. If anyone was going to patrol the universe it was them. Still difficult to imagine it any other way.
Perhaps the most subtle political messages come at the level of the individual characters. To what ever extent our politics is influenced by friends and acquaintances, something similar applies for fictional characters. Realist fiction is out to seem like reality, to make us feel we are witnessing real people and real events. Unavoidably, part of that reality is the political complexion of each character. Without any necessary authorial intent, fictional characters tell us what we are, as political animals.
Much as I know that Dirty Den was a scoundrel and a lover and a small businessman, I can also assume he voted for Margaret Thatcher. Hilda Ogden on the other hand was a stubborn old prude, a classic working class Tory, while trade unionist Bobby Grant on Brookside was firmly on the Labour left.
So, what’s the pay off? Of all the people who influence us politically, what net influence do our fictional acquaintances exert?
In this sense it seems hard to deny that spending time consuming popular fiction is spending time in the company of deeply apolitical people. Soap characters, in particular, are a pitifully disconnected bunch. Aside from election days, the subject simply isn’t approached. To the extent that we are politically motivated by those around us, soap ‘friends’ are the last people to inspire a revolution.
This certainly isn’t a call for more left-wing soap characters, rather to point out how unworkable that would be. It’s not really what fiction is about. Popular fiction is about entertainment, not hard work. Soaps and big movies can’t waste time constructing politically progressive characters. They have to stick to the simple things, things we all know best – birth, sex, power, death. There’s no room for revolutionary ideology in Hilda Ogden’s mouth, there’s simply no call for it.
The very form of fiction makes it better suited for conveying reactionary messages. After all, fiction is always re-presentation - it comes alive by reminding us of things we’ve already encountered, not by suggesting abstract plans for the future. Novelties abound, of course, but they must always reference the familiar or things just wouldn’t make sense. However subtly delivered, stereotyping is unavoidable – how else could we relate to the characters?
Fiction always has to remind us of real people, real events. It may point to the future but it always has two feet in the past. For this reason alone no fiction can really be politically neutral. Whatever writers and devotees might believe, all fictions convey the political perspective of the period - often little more than the accumulated bigotry of the period.
As usual, it’s easy to see after the event. These days decent folk wince at early Hollywood depictions of race. We can see it now, but clearly a lot of people didn’t at the time. It seems safe to assume that many of our current crop of racial stereotypes are similarly narrow-minded, and will have future liberals wringing their hands about what terrible people we all must have been.
While progressive fiction is a possibility it’s always going to be in a minority. Orwell’s novels contain priceless political insight, but they really are bucking the trend. The mass of popular fictions perpetuate conservative readings. Most of the fiction we consume is for pleasure, and pleasure rarely means profound.
As seen in the last part, fiction can instil inappropriate fears. But fear isn’t a special case. Whatever the subject, there’s always the risk a story will leave us with inaccurate information about the world. It’s a recurring quandary with fiction. It’s great that it can tell us about things we wouldn’t otherwise encounter, but not so great when what it tells is isn’t true. Sometimes it might be better not to know at all.
Clearly, if your entire knowledge of Jewish people comes from Nazi propaganda films you’d be better knowing nothing at all. Likewise, if your entire knowledge of Libyans is based upon the salivating sub-humans depicted in Back to the Future complete ignorance would be preferable.
Sad to say, for many children and adults in the Thirties and the Eighties such characterisations were all they had to go on. Consequently when they heard the words ‘Jewish’ or ‘Libyan’ it was those sort of images that sprang to mind. Consequently, when it came to gassing and bombing these people, there was less outcry. Malevolent sub-humans elicit little public sympathy, and that was how fiction had helped to paint them.
Fictional depictions are sucked into vacuums in our knowledge. If a mind has no information on a subject other than through a fiction, it will tend to store and utilise that fiction as it would fact.
For example, watching Quincy is the closest I’ve come to knowing an American pathologist. No surprise, when I hear the term ‘American pathologist’ it is Jack Klugman’s face and pleasant demeanour that spring to mind. I’ve little else stored on the subject.
Alternatively, if I hear the term ‘aging beach stud’ then naturally I’ll picture Mr Hasslehoff. But this time my mind will also factor-in a bit of Robert Mitchum, in Cape Fear, and perhaps some of the older characters in surf-movies like Big Wednesday. As it happens, I have actually been on some Californian beaches, so those memories of reality will also inform my reading. Nevertheless, in this particular case the fictions remain the majority input. They’re the defining images in my mind.
Colourful as it can be, this reliance on fiction for facts leaves us vulnerable to misrepresentations, no more so than in the sphere of politics. Depending on which narratives you consume you can be left with a very different impression of events: If your entire knowledge of the American frontier comes from watching John Wayne movies you’ll be left with a particular view of that period. If it comes from Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee you’ll be left with a very different set of images. Heroic horseback duels between righteous Europeans and noble savages would turn to images of genocide.
If your entire knowledge of Vietnam ‘war’ comes from watching ‘Nam movies, your opinion of what happened will be tightly circumscribed. You might think of it as a brave adventure, you might think of it as a tragedy that befell young American manhood. But you certainly won’t see it as the US battling to derail democracy in Asia.
Doubtless, such depictions have helped keep the true horrors out of the public mind, and on track.
Or take the concept of the British spy. Ask anyone on Earth to name a British secret agent. It won’t be Guy Burgess or David Shayler. James Bond is far better known, a far bolder image in the public eye than any real spy.
For all the fun of the films, this misunderstanding has been an boon for state-criminals, a priceless diversion from reality. When we should picture murky individuals, sneaking, lying and squealing, instead we picture immaculate evening attire, casinos, Ferraris, Dry Martinis and beautiful women. When we should be protesting the destruction of countless democracies instead we picture a dashing hero, keeping Moscow or whatever at bay. Perfect war propaganda, without any government coaxing.
Star Trek was a stunning piece of cold-war propaganda. The whole premise is America’s infinite benevolence, and its right to police the universe. As power passed from Europe to the States, Star Trek spelled out the change: Now we could see the future, and that was American too. If anyone was going to build intergalactic ships it was them. If anyone was going to patrol the universe it was them. Still difficult to imagine it any other way.
Perhaps the most subtle political messages come at the level of the individual characters. To what ever extent our politics is influenced by friends and acquaintances, something similar applies for fictional characters. Realist fiction is out to seem like reality, to make us feel we are witnessing real people and real events. Unavoidably, part of that reality is the political complexion of each character. Without any necessary authorial intent, fictional characters tell us what we are, as political animals.
Much as I know that Dirty Den was a scoundrel and a lover and a small businessman, I can also assume he voted for Margaret Thatcher. Hilda Ogden on the other hand was a stubborn old prude, a classic working class Tory, while trade unionist Bobby Grant on Brookside was firmly on the Labour left.
So, what’s the pay off? Of all the people who influence us politically, what net influence do our fictional acquaintances exert?
In this sense it seems hard to deny that spending time consuming popular fiction is spending time in the company of deeply apolitical people. Soap characters, in particular, are a pitifully disconnected bunch. Aside from election days, the subject simply isn’t approached. To the extent that we are politically motivated by those around us, soap ‘friends’ are the last people to inspire a revolution.
This certainly isn’t a call for more left-wing soap characters, rather to point out how unworkable that would be. It’s not really what fiction is about. Popular fiction is about entertainment, not hard work. Soaps and big movies can’t waste time constructing politically progressive characters. They have to stick to the simple things, things we all know best – birth, sex, power, death. There’s no room for revolutionary ideology in Hilda Ogden’s mouth, there’s simply no call for it.
The very form of fiction makes it better suited for conveying reactionary messages. After all, fiction is always re-presentation - it comes alive by reminding us of things we’ve already encountered, not by suggesting abstract plans for the future. Novelties abound, of course, but they must always reference the familiar or things just wouldn’t make sense. However subtly delivered, stereotyping is unavoidable – how else could we relate to the characters?
Fiction always has to remind us of real people, real events. It may point to the future but it always has two feet in the past. For this reason alone no fiction can really be politically neutral. Whatever writers and devotees might believe, all fictions convey the political perspective of the period - often little more than the accumulated bigotry of the period.
As usual, it’s easy to see after the event. These days decent folk wince at early Hollywood depictions of race. We can see it now, but clearly a lot of people didn’t at the time. It seems safe to assume that many of our current crop of racial stereotypes are similarly narrow-minded, and will have future liberals wringing their hands about what terrible people we all must have been.
While progressive fiction is a possibility it’s always going to be in a minority. Orwell’s novels contain priceless political insight, but they really are bucking the trend. The mass of popular fictions perpetuate conservative readings. Most of the fiction we consume is for pleasure, and pleasure rarely means profound.
Friday 2 June 2006
Fiction IV
Fiction and Fear
One evening, not long after I moved out of the family home, my mother phoned, anxious. Apparently Damon from Brookside had been stabbed in the street and left to die – standard upbeat fare. Clearly she was upset, Damon was about my age. One way or another she was phoning to check I was okay.
At the time I found her concern annoyingly naïve and misplaced, but a second example puts me in my place: When I was seventeen skinheads were having one of their many renaissances. To celebrate, ITV screened Made in Britain, a play about a psychotic and deeply defiant skin. Tim Roth was Trevor, the boy who respected no authority, listened to no reason, spat in the face of huge coppers and always managed to get up afterwards, and smile.
For all the thrill of witnessing his wild behaviour I have no doubt that Trevor made me more scared of skinheads. Always a bit scary, unknown skins on the streets of Chelmsford and Romford emitted higher levels of foreboding.
I’m sure many of them would’ve been chuffed. At the time the fashion attracted lads who wanted to look tough, whether or not they actually were. Then again, some of them might have just found the play exciting like I did, only with the added cachet of brotherhood.
Then again, others might have felt intimidated by it, incapable of emulating such behaviour. Perhaps some were even scared by it, and turned off. Whatever, one thing’s certain, the amount of real skinheads as sociopathic as Trevor remained vanishingly small. Most were only in it for the fashion, the friends, the scene. They no more wanted to hit me than I wanted to hit them.
Looking back I have to ask, was it worth it? For the sake of entertainment, my mother and me made reality into a scarier place for ourselves. For the thrill of fictional fear we sacrificed some confidence in reality.
Horror stories are scary, obviously. An open case of fiction as bringer of fear. Publicity boasts how scared you’ll get, how you’ll need to leave the landing light on (strange things, those humans.) But instilling fear is not the preserve of horror or the thriller. Fear is a staple of fiction, one of its most powerful means of moving us.
One consequence is an increased suspicion of reality. Entertaining ourselves with fear inevitably leaves us with a scarier looking world.
Although they’re usually not the most gorily violent, it’s probably the ultra-realist fictions that cast the longest shadows on the psyche. Alien petrified audiences, but I’ll bet the fear was mostly short-lived. Spacecraft and sentient robots simply aren’t a part of our daily lives. Nothing we encounter in reality reminds us of our fears in Alien.
Conversely, the fictional reconstructions used in programs like Crimewatch refer to our immediate surroundings. Naturalistic representations of frightening events, set against a backdrop of everyday reality. We’re assured the rationale is virtuous, but it’s simply not true. Even if such mini-dramas do jog memories it can only be those of a handful of people. Once it’s been established that you weren’t in the area at the time it all becomes porn, morbid curiosity, entertainment. Nothing more than the thrill of seeing real muggings and real molestations, played out by actors.
The payback comes when you’re walking home, after dark. While you might be fully aware that you’re in no greater danger after watching a re-enactment of a mugging, there’s no telling that to your subconscious. If you frequently immerse yourself in fantasies about people leaping out of dark alleys wielding knives, there’s no way to stop your animal brain from getting twitchy when you walk pass real dark alleys. No matter how sophisticated the audience there’s never a queue for the shower after a screening of Psycho. At some level of consciousness the fear remains.
If you want to know what it’s like to live in the sea don’t ask a fish. It’s a sentiment that applies well to fictional fear. It’s hard to see it until you get out of the water and look back. I followed Eastenders from it’s beginning until the mid-nineties. I remember liking it, and discussing the antics with colleagues the next day. When I see it now I’m staggered by the tension. I can’t eat my dinner with it on. An endless cycle of shouting and threatening, violence close at hand.
That tension, I suppose, was what I previously watched it for. A good part of the entertainment of Eastenders is the sensation of being in the company of crooks, hard men, the odd psycho. Eastenders is designed to make you feel you’re there, in the houses and lock-ups and dodgy pubs. ‘Realistic’ is the greatest compliment you could pay to its creators.
And of course it’s not just Albert Square. Film and television bombard us with horror stories about strangers, how awful it is ‘out there’. Not because it is, but because it sells. One consequence is a distorted picture of human nature, skewed toward violence and fear.
None of which is not to suggest horrible things don’t happen, clearly they do. The problem is one of proportion. Like sex, violence sells. One of the standard quick fixes for flagging ratings is to crank-up the aggression, the tension, the fear. Makers of soaps and cop-shows may claim they are just representing reality but that just begs the question – whose? The aspects of reality they choose to represent are often far more aggressive than the average viewer’s life. While many of us may regret not being as sexy as the people on the telly, it’s surely a huge compensation that we’re not as violent.
Since I stopped watching soaps and thrillers, strangers are less likely to give me the creeps. There are less silly fantasies waiting in my mind, sending out false alarms, painting innocent bystanders in a bad light. It’s logical enough really. If you don’t keep fantasising about unpleasant people you won’t keep seeing them on the bus. If you enjoy fictional street violence, but have an intense fear of dimly-lit city streets, you might try killing two birds.
One evening, not long after I moved out of the family home, my mother phoned, anxious. Apparently Damon from Brookside had been stabbed in the street and left to die – standard upbeat fare. Clearly she was upset, Damon was about my age. One way or another she was phoning to check I was okay.
At the time I found her concern annoyingly naïve and misplaced, but a second example puts me in my place: When I was seventeen skinheads were having one of their many renaissances. To celebrate, ITV screened Made in Britain, a play about a psychotic and deeply defiant skin. Tim Roth was Trevor, the boy who respected no authority, listened to no reason, spat in the face of huge coppers and always managed to get up afterwards, and smile.
For all the thrill of witnessing his wild behaviour I have no doubt that Trevor made me more scared of skinheads. Always a bit scary, unknown skins on the streets of Chelmsford and Romford emitted higher levels of foreboding.
I’m sure many of them would’ve been chuffed. At the time the fashion attracted lads who wanted to look tough, whether or not they actually were. Then again, some of them might have just found the play exciting like I did, only with the added cachet of brotherhood.
Then again, others might have felt intimidated by it, incapable of emulating such behaviour. Perhaps some were even scared by it, and turned off. Whatever, one thing’s certain, the amount of real skinheads as sociopathic as Trevor remained vanishingly small. Most were only in it for the fashion, the friends, the scene. They no more wanted to hit me than I wanted to hit them.
Looking back I have to ask, was it worth it? For the sake of entertainment, my mother and me made reality into a scarier place for ourselves. For the thrill of fictional fear we sacrificed some confidence in reality.
Horror stories are scary, obviously. An open case of fiction as bringer of fear. Publicity boasts how scared you’ll get, how you’ll need to leave the landing light on (strange things, those humans.) But instilling fear is not the preserve of horror or the thriller. Fear is a staple of fiction, one of its most powerful means of moving us.
One consequence is an increased suspicion of reality. Entertaining ourselves with fear inevitably leaves us with a scarier looking world.
Although they’re usually not the most gorily violent, it’s probably the ultra-realist fictions that cast the longest shadows on the psyche. Alien petrified audiences, but I’ll bet the fear was mostly short-lived. Spacecraft and sentient robots simply aren’t a part of our daily lives. Nothing we encounter in reality reminds us of our fears in Alien.
Conversely, the fictional reconstructions used in programs like Crimewatch refer to our immediate surroundings. Naturalistic representations of frightening events, set against a backdrop of everyday reality. We’re assured the rationale is virtuous, but it’s simply not true. Even if such mini-dramas do jog memories it can only be those of a handful of people. Once it’s been established that you weren’t in the area at the time it all becomes porn, morbid curiosity, entertainment. Nothing more than the thrill of seeing real muggings and real molestations, played out by actors.
The payback comes when you’re walking home, after dark. While you might be fully aware that you’re in no greater danger after watching a re-enactment of a mugging, there’s no telling that to your subconscious. If you frequently immerse yourself in fantasies about people leaping out of dark alleys wielding knives, there’s no way to stop your animal brain from getting twitchy when you walk pass real dark alleys. No matter how sophisticated the audience there’s never a queue for the shower after a screening of Psycho. At some level of consciousness the fear remains.
If you want to know what it’s like to live in the sea don’t ask a fish. It’s a sentiment that applies well to fictional fear. It’s hard to see it until you get out of the water and look back. I followed Eastenders from it’s beginning until the mid-nineties. I remember liking it, and discussing the antics with colleagues the next day. When I see it now I’m staggered by the tension. I can’t eat my dinner with it on. An endless cycle of shouting and threatening, violence close at hand.
That tension, I suppose, was what I previously watched it for. A good part of the entertainment of Eastenders is the sensation of being in the company of crooks, hard men, the odd psycho. Eastenders is designed to make you feel you’re there, in the houses and lock-ups and dodgy pubs. ‘Realistic’ is the greatest compliment you could pay to its creators.
And of course it’s not just Albert Square. Film and television bombard us with horror stories about strangers, how awful it is ‘out there’. Not because it is, but because it sells. One consequence is a distorted picture of human nature, skewed toward violence and fear.
None of which is not to suggest horrible things don’t happen, clearly they do. The problem is one of proportion. Like sex, violence sells. One of the standard quick fixes for flagging ratings is to crank-up the aggression, the tension, the fear. Makers of soaps and cop-shows may claim they are just representing reality but that just begs the question – whose? The aspects of reality they choose to represent are often far more aggressive than the average viewer’s life. While many of us may regret not being as sexy as the people on the telly, it’s surely a huge compensation that we’re not as violent.
Since I stopped watching soaps and thrillers, strangers are less likely to give me the creeps. There are less silly fantasies waiting in my mind, sending out false alarms, painting innocent bystanders in a bad light. It’s logical enough really. If you don’t keep fantasising about unpleasant people you won’t keep seeing them on the bus. If you enjoy fictional street violence, but have an intense fear of dimly-lit city streets, you might try killing two birds.
Monday 24 April 2006
The Real Bogeyman
We’re in trouble, no mistake. Every credible scientific source warns of impending environmental catastrophe. Every day delivers another calamitous statistic, tipping points approaching, scientists’ worst expectations realised.
Then, when you think it couldn’t get anymore intractable, Exxon and Halliburton are in the White House. Even the feebly modest Kyoto agreement is blocked. Cars and aeroplanes just get bigger and more numerous, with projections of exponential future growth. Even those few newspapers that run environmental features drown them in adverts for 4x4s and 2-4-1s to Paris. For every single warning about over-consumption, a thousand imploring us to over-consume.
Still that’s the situation and we’re stuck with it. That’s what we’ve got to address rapidly or go the way of the thylacine. That’s my candidate for the real bogeyman.
Not everyone agrees. Some maintain this bogeyman is just a bogeyman. There is no impending environmental crisis, or if there is it has nothing to do with human activity. Melanie Phillips is one. She believes that herself and a handful of uncelebrated scientists understand the situation better than NASA. Who am I to argue, but I’ll stick with NASA.
Matthew Parris isn’t far behind. He accepts climate change is happening, but he doesn’t think the evidence of its linkage to human activity is proven. Contrary to the world’s leading climatologists, he thinks we need to look into it a little further, otherwise carry on pretty much as we are. He also wonders whether our fear of such catastrophe might just be a standard facet of our psyche, whether or not that threat exists. We’ve lost biblical Armageddon, thankfully, but gained nuclear Armageddon – now we’re inflicting eco-Armageddon on ourselves, too. Like Phillips, Parris suspects my real bogeyman is just another traditional bogeyman.
I’m not sure of Nick Cohen’s position on global warming but it doesn’t seem to rank too highly in his fears. Since his overnight conversion to neo-conservatism (or since the rest of us shifted to fascism, as he see it) his principle concern has been the threat of radical Islam.
What this threat might actually involve it’s impossible to tell. His new allies at the Pentagon have already concluded that environmental destruction is a far greater threat to human survival than retail terrorism, so it can’t be that. If he is privy to The Protocols of Islam I think it’s time he let the rest of us have a look, so we can judge for ourselves. Otherwise his position seems very strange. It’s not so bad to leave subsequent generations with no habitat, just so long as they don’t get converted to Islam on the way. Let our granddaughters die, if corporate logic demands it, just don’t let them die wearing burkas.
Sadly, even some traditional leftists (that’s Trotskyite-Islamo-Fascists to Nick Cohen) still treat this bogeyman as an object of ridicule, rather than a real and growing threat. Any mention draws wounded, bitterly sarcastic responses: “So you think we should start reusing toilet paper? Working class people don’t deserve cars and holidays? What sort of a future is that? Let’s all die of pessimism. Complete pie in the sky anyway. No politician who promises to reduce growth will ever get elected.”
To emphasise the selflessness of this stance the consumer rights of ‘all workers of the world’ are also cited: “So, people in India don’t deserve cars and holidays? They don’t have the right to aspire to the things we take for granted?”
In all the above cases it seems to me that another kind of bogeyman is at large: Fear of change. Not least, fear of reduced living standards. Many of us have become used to having money to throw about, and an endless supply of products and services to meet it. Cheap hi-fis and exotic holidays, all washed down with lots of booze. The parents’ generation couldn’t have dreamed of it. Much of the vitriol levelled at environmentalism stems from the horrific thought of this luxury-tap drying up. Weaned onto perpetual purchasing, many of us are traumatised by the mere mention of a slow-down.
Also, quite understandably, people feel indignant at the suggestion that they’re doing something wrong, particularly when it’s something that they cherish. People set their hearts on their products, their cars, their holidays. It’s always annoying to hear criticism of things you desire, or already proudly own, even worse to hear them being blamed for the awful state of the world.
Still, there are greater pains than these. If you accept the scientific consensus on global warming then resisting and obstructing action is morally wrong. Consumer rights don’t enter into it. No matter where you’re from, Coventry or Beijing, no generation of humans has the right to steal from subsequent generations. The motoring aspirations of humans in 2006 can’t be allowed to reduce the life expectation of humans in 2026. How fair would that be on the future workers of the world?
As for the unelectability of candidates who seek to slow growth, well that’s something that will have to change, one way or another. We’d do well to remember universal suffrage and free healthcare seemed impossibly idealistic goals a century ago, yet now we take them for granted. And if the stakes are as high as them seem then we really have no option. If it’s change or perish then it has to be change.
Then some fears are peculiar to some people. If you’ve built your political life around a particular ideology it must be daunting when it turns out to be a disaster. Matthew Parris was a cheerleader for Thatcherism. If that policy is driving us to extinction, then whatever has he been preaching all these years? That’s why he waxes lyrical to the point of incomprehension. He can’t address the science of climate change because science isn’t on his side. Science would tell him it’s all been a terrible mistake, and we need to change course. Not bedtime reading.
Melanie Phillips fears the spectre of communism. She thinks environmentalism is a left-wing plot to derail the monetarist revolution. To some degree, I suppose it has to be. Thatcherism has always been slash and burn and may the most powerful and ruthless win – the very behaviour that has brought us to this point. For scientist Phillips however such conclusions are quite out of bounds. Indeed if the answer to any question isn’t unbridled neo-liberalism then the question must be wrong. If science concludes Milton Friedman is killing us, then it is science that must be at fault. There is no alternative.
Nick Cohen’s big fear we’ve already met, but his reaction to it is also noteworthy. To fight Islamic terror he’s allied himself with its central cause – Bush and Blair’s “war on terror”. His own paper recently confirmed this. Soon after the London bombings Cohen claimed “We all know who was to blame for Thursday's murders ... and it wasn't Bush and Blair.”, yet this month The Observer reported that the “Home Office inquiry into the deadliest terror attack on British soil has conceded that the bombers were inspired by UK foreign policy, principally the decision to invade Iraq.” This is a man who wants to fight terrorism?
Just the same, if he is shrewd enough to fear climate change he couldn’t have picked worse bedfellows. The Bush administration is hell bent on long-term destruction, for short-term booty. Oil and arms, stalking the globe.
What can’t be denied is that there’s a market for this stuff. Much as there are plenty of columnists happy to disseminate doubts about climate change there are a great many people who want to read them. It’s comforting to be told not to worry, that everything is going to be just fine. But it’s a cruel trick. When you hear what real scientists have to say on the subject, and discover the track record of the maverick scientists, and hear which oil companies have funded their ‘independent’ research, such hopes crash back to earth.
I for one would be delighted if Melanie Phillips turned out to be right. Few things would make me happier. But the weight of hard evidence smothers the dream. Her desire for the world to be as she wants counts for nothing. Comforting dreams cut no ice in the physical sciences, and dreams are all she has.
And that’s why climate change is worth worrying about and biblical Armageddon isn’t. True, the sensation caused by each is probably much the same. Rather than momentary blind terrors they’re overarching fears, dark clouds always present at some level of consciousness. But the fact that the kind of fear is the same tells us nothing about the reality of the threat. Armageddon was never scientifically defended, it was always pure unassailable myth. By contrast, human induced climate change has been studied intensively.
Whether or not these kinds of fears have some innate component is hardly the point. What matters is that some fears are bogus and others are justifiable. If anyone’s getting medieval it’s the climate-change deniers. They’re the ones waving the obscure texts, and warning us away from science. They’re the ones preaching unquestioning faith in the everlasting, regardless of what evidence is put before them.
References:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/000255.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1065-2113244,00.html
observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1525172,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1745085,00.html
Then, when you think it couldn’t get anymore intractable, Exxon and Halliburton are in the White House. Even the feebly modest Kyoto agreement is blocked. Cars and aeroplanes just get bigger and more numerous, with projections of exponential future growth. Even those few newspapers that run environmental features drown them in adverts for 4x4s and 2-4-1s to Paris. For every single warning about over-consumption, a thousand imploring us to over-consume.
Still that’s the situation and we’re stuck with it. That’s what we’ve got to address rapidly or go the way of the thylacine. That’s my candidate for the real bogeyman.
Not everyone agrees. Some maintain this bogeyman is just a bogeyman. There is no impending environmental crisis, or if there is it has nothing to do with human activity. Melanie Phillips is one. She believes that herself and a handful of uncelebrated scientists understand the situation better than NASA. Who am I to argue, but I’ll stick with NASA.
Matthew Parris isn’t far behind. He accepts climate change is happening, but he doesn’t think the evidence of its linkage to human activity is proven. Contrary to the world’s leading climatologists, he thinks we need to look into it a little further, otherwise carry on pretty much as we are. He also wonders whether our fear of such catastrophe might just be a standard facet of our psyche, whether or not that threat exists. We’ve lost biblical Armageddon, thankfully, but gained nuclear Armageddon – now we’re inflicting eco-Armageddon on ourselves, too. Like Phillips, Parris suspects my real bogeyman is just another traditional bogeyman.
I’m not sure of Nick Cohen’s position on global warming but it doesn’t seem to rank too highly in his fears. Since his overnight conversion to neo-conservatism (or since the rest of us shifted to fascism, as he see it) his principle concern has been the threat of radical Islam.
What this threat might actually involve it’s impossible to tell. His new allies at the Pentagon have already concluded that environmental destruction is a far greater threat to human survival than retail terrorism, so it can’t be that. If he is privy to The Protocols of Islam I think it’s time he let the rest of us have a look, so we can judge for ourselves. Otherwise his position seems very strange. It’s not so bad to leave subsequent generations with no habitat, just so long as they don’t get converted to Islam on the way. Let our granddaughters die, if corporate logic demands it, just don’t let them die wearing burkas.
Sadly, even some traditional leftists (that’s Trotskyite-Islamo-Fascists to Nick Cohen) still treat this bogeyman as an object of ridicule, rather than a real and growing threat. Any mention draws wounded, bitterly sarcastic responses: “So you think we should start reusing toilet paper? Working class people don’t deserve cars and holidays? What sort of a future is that? Let’s all die of pessimism. Complete pie in the sky anyway. No politician who promises to reduce growth will ever get elected.”
To emphasise the selflessness of this stance the consumer rights of ‘all workers of the world’ are also cited: “So, people in India don’t deserve cars and holidays? They don’t have the right to aspire to the things we take for granted?”
In all the above cases it seems to me that another kind of bogeyman is at large: Fear of change. Not least, fear of reduced living standards. Many of us have become used to having money to throw about, and an endless supply of products and services to meet it. Cheap hi-fis and exotic holidays, all washed down with lots of booze. The parents’ generation couldn’t have dreamed of it. Much of the vitriol levelled at environmentalism stems from the horrific thought of this luxury-tap drying up. Weaned onto perpetual purchasing, many of us are traumatised by the mere mention of a slow-down.
Also, quite understandably, people feel indignant at the suggestion that they’re doing something wrong, particularly when it’s something that they cherish. People set their hearts on their products, their cars, their holidays. It’s always annoying to hear criticism of things you desire, or already proudly own, even worse to hear them being blamed for the awful state of the world.
Still, there are greater pains than these. If you accept the scientific consensus on global warming then resisting and obstructing action is morally wrong. Consumer rights don’t enter into it. No matter where you’re from, Coventry or Beijing, no generation of humans has the right to steal from subsequent generations. The motoring aspirations of humans in 2006 can’t be allowed to reduce the life expectation of humans in 2026. How fair would that be on the future workers of the world?
As for the unelectability of candidates who seek to slow growth, well that’s something that will have to change, one way or another. We’d do well to remember universal suffrage and free healthcare seemed impossibly idealistic goals a century ago, yet now we take them for granted. And if the stakes are as high as them seem then we really have no option. If it’s change or perish then it has to be change.
Then some fears are peculiar to some people. If you’ve built your political life around a particular ideology it must be daunting when it turns out to be a disaster. Matthew Parris was a cheerleader for Thatcherism. If that policy is driving us to extinction, then whatever has he been preaching all these years? That’s why he waxes lyrical to the point of incomprehension. He can’t address the science of climate change because science isn’t on his side. Science would tell him it’s all been a terrible mistake, and we need to change course. Not bedtime reading.
Melanie Phillips fears the spectre of communism. She thinks environmentalism is a left-wing plot to derail the monetarist revolution. To some degree, I suppose it has to be. Thatcherism has always been slash and burn and may the most powerful and ruthless win – the very behaviour that has brought us to this point. For scientist Phillips however such conclusions are quite out of bounds. Indeed if the answer to any question isn’t unbridled neo-liberalism then the question must be wrong. If science concludes Milton Friedman is killing us, then it is science that must be at fault. There is no alternative.
Nick Cohen’s big fear we’ve already met, but his reaction to it is also noteworthy. To fight Islamic terror he’s allied himself with its central cause – Bush and Blair’s “war on terror”. His own paper recently confirmed this. Soon after the London bombings Cohen claimed “We all know who was to blame for Thursday's murders ... and it wasn't Bush and Blair.”, yet this month The Observer reported that the “Home Office inquiry into the deadliest terror attack on British soil has conceded that the bombers were inspired by UK foreign policy, principally the decision to invade Iraq.” This is a man who wants to fight terrorism?
Just the same, if he is shrewd enough to fear climate change he couldn’t have picked worse bedfellows. The Bush administration is hell bent on long-term destruction, for short-term booty. Oil and arms, stalking the globe.
What can’t be denied is that there’s a market for this stuff. Much as there are plenty of columnists happy to disseminate doubts about climate change there are a great many people who want to read them. It’s comforting to be told not to worry, that everything is going to be just fine. But it’s a cruel trick. When you hear what real scientists have to say on the subject, and discover the track record of the maverick scientists, and hear which oil companies have funded their ‘independent’ research, such hopes crash back to earth.
I for one would be delighted if Melanie Phillips turned out to be right. Few things would make me happier. But the weight of hard evidence smothers the dream. Her desire for the world to be as she wants counts for nothing. Comforting dreams cut no ice in the physical sciences, and dreams are all she has.
And that’s why climate change is worth worrying about and biblical Armageddon isn’t. True, the sensation caused by each is probably much the same. Rather than momentary blind terrors they’re overarching fears, dark clouds always present at some level of consciousness. But the fact that the kind of fear is the same tells us nothing about the reality of the threat. Armageddon was never scientifically defended, it was always pure unassailable myth. By contrast, human induced climate change has been studied intensively.
Whether or not these kinds of fears have some innate component is hardly the point. What matters is that some fears are bogus and others are justifiable. If anyone’s getting medieval it’s the climate-change deniers. They’re the ones waving the obscure texts, and warning us away from science. They’re the ones preaching unquestioning faith in the everlasting, regardless of what evidence is put before them.
References:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/000255.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1065-2113244,00.html
observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1525172,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1745085,00.html
Tuesday 21 March 2006
Fiction III
3. What is Fiction?
All fictions contain some fact. While Hilda Ogden is clearly fictional, such characters do exist. In that sense at least she is something of a truth about the world. Similarly, while Hilda’s home town of Weatherfield is an invention it’s one structured around reality. If nothing else the accents – even if the dialogue is totally fabricated those accents are a true part of Manchester, a truth about the world.
Fiction is a bit like salt. It’s something we sprinkle on representations to enhance their credibility. Clearly there’s fictive content and real content in every novel, film and television program.
Television news, of all things, sells itself as pure fact. Of course it does possess factual content, it’s usually about real people and real events, and the newsreaders are real people too. Nevertheless the journalism is usually rich in fiction. If the truth is an honest summary of the days events, one that might enlighten and inform a democracy, television news is shot-through with fiction. In this sense, the very last thing it does is tell the truth about the world.
Novels are card-carrying fiction. They’re a celebration of the art of making things up. But just like soaps, the key is realism. Snippets of reality, things we already know and recognise, fabricated into novel narratives for the sake of entertainment. This sort of fiction is deeply dependent on fact.
Sci-fi for example. While Daleks are obviously fictional, their personality traits are cherry-picked from real humans. Ruthlessness and blind obedience to tyranny are, sadly, persistent aspects of human life. Daleks are a mixture of these and other unfortunate earthly conditions. Conversely, Marvin the Paranoid Android is a collection of facts about decent people, capable people, melancholy people. Like Eyore, he warms us with memories of our own friends and acquaintances. Neither Dalek nor Marvin would engage us if we didn’t already have experience of nasty humans, and tragicomic humans. That’s what they’re based on.
Pornography is obviously phoney, but it works by looking real. However ludicrous the screenplay, the players must at least look human if it’s to work. Pornography is a bold example of how fiction works by impersonating reality. It makes people horny by giving them the feeling they are actually witnessing or participating in real sex. Certainly explains the moaning and the looks to camera, and the frightening close-ups. At some level of consciousness, you could almost be there.
Odd as it sounds, even maths textbooks contain some fiction. Errors in theory or in the answers at the back would be fictional. They’d be untruths that would leave the student with a worse understanding of the world. More positively, fictions can also be employed actively, to help with the explanations: “Bryan has sixty pence. He gives thirty to Charlie…” Pure fiction, but for a noble cause. A little fiction to clarify important facts.
Biography and autobiography may claim the status of fact but they often embody more fiction than novels. A biography of Churchill might be chronologically precise in a manner Citizen Kane never can be, but the inferences drawn concerning his life and character might be wholly inaccurate, fictional. If the biographer already loves or loathes Churchill they’ll tend to pick and position those facts which express their own feelings towards him, the narrative path they want him to wander down, rather than an honest appraisal. And of course Kane was based on Hearst, who certainly was a real man. Perhaps Hearst’s life as embodied in Kane was a highly accurate portrait, more so than many a deferential Churchill biography.
Like novels, biographies are finely woven threads of fact and fiction. Things can get very tangled. It’s often difficult to say which parts are true and which false, even for the author. Even if we agree that fact and fiction are at work in a given text, we’ll often disagree as to which aspects are the real ones, and which the invented.
No more so than with historical writing. Unlike maths books, there’s always disagreement about which aspects of history books are fact and which fiction. The main contention is of course politics. Political belief is inseperable from historical belief. We each advocate the politics we advocate because of what we believe to have happened in the past. Every political colour cites the past as the justification for their current stance. If you want to applaud the Nixon administration you cite their record in office. If you want to condemn the Nixon administration you cite their record in office.
Clearly something funny is going on here. Logically, some written history must be fictional, at least in parts. If it’s possible for two radically contradictory histories to be published concerning the same historical event, one of them must be a shameless travesty, perhaps both.
Being of my own political persuasion I tend to see conservative historians as purveyors of fiction. Not wilfully cynical, or inaccurate with dates – that’s not the level the fiction operates at. The fiction comes in the selection of facts, the order they are put into, the story this gives rise to. The fiction comes with the picture of the world this sequence of facts implies.
Although I’d be surprised if there was ever a wrong name or wrong date in a Simon Schama television history, the way the facts are employed produces a downright fictional picture of social change. He gets you thinking about all the wrongs things. It might be pretty, and heart-rending, to imagine that the decisions of kings and queens drive civilisation onward, but it teaches you nothing about the world. “At that moment Elizabeth realised, England was hers” – a bold image certainly, but one that teaches you nothing useful about the world.
Of course Simon Schama would say the same thing of left history. It’s leftists who don’t understand the true engine of history – elite humans, but it’s not good enough to put this all down to point of view. At least one of us must be wrong. Was the cold war Soviet aggression or an American fiction? Clearly both factors played a part, but which was prevailing? Which version best explains the current state of the world? Noam Chomsky and Niall Ferguson would doubtless have a thousand examples on hand to throw at each other, but what’s the fact? Unless it’s a dead heat, one of these accounts must be nearer to the truth, and the other predominantly fiction. One of these commentators must be pushing false history.
Of course there’s another way in which news-anchors can be economical with the actuality. He might be wearing a toupee or a girdle, she’ll certainly be wearing lipstick, or even breast implants. For that’s where this all starts. As humans we all tell fibs to some degree. The fictions we incorporate into our representations are just a cultural extension of our day to day lies.
In this sense, fiction is as old as human consciousness. Lying is as much a human reality as honesty. At the very least, we all modify our behaviour in different company. We have ideals about ourselves we work to and we’re often prepared, consciously or otherwise, to bend the truth a little when we can. We affect telephone voices. We assure children that their paintings are beautiful. We tell interviewers that the job sounds fascinating, and loved ones that the meal was lovely, and no, of course you don’t look fat. We all have to lie sometimes just to keep the peace, and not break each other’s hearts. Sometimes it’s downright immoral not to lie. Then again, sometimes we lie cynically, for material, emotional or political gain.
The fictions we read and write are an extension of our daily fabrications, our mix of innocent daydreams, white lies, and cynical deceits. In turn, the effect of these fictions can be good or bad, moral or malevolent. Like lies, some fictions really are worse than others, and that’s the subject of the following parts.
All fictions contain some fact. While Hilda Ogden is clearly fictional, such characters do exist. In that sense at least she is something of a truth about the world. Similarly, while Hilda’s home town of Weatherfield is an invention it’s one structured around reality. If nothing else the accents – even if the dialogue is totally fabricated those accents are a true part of Manchester, a truth about the world.
Fiction is a bit like salt. It’s something we sprinkle on representations to enhance their credibility. Clearly there’s fictive content and real content in every novel, film and television program.
Television news, of all things, sells itself as pure fact. Of course it does possess factual content, it’s usually about real people and real events, and the newsreaders are real people too. Nevertheless the journalism is usually rich in fiction. If the truth is an honest summary of the days events, one that might enlighten and inform a democracy, television news is shot-through with fiction. In this sense, the very last thing it does is tell the truth about the world.
Novels are card-carrying fiction. They’re a celebration of the art of making things up. But just like soaps, the key is realism. Snippets of reality, things we already know and recognise, fabricated into novel narratives for the sake of entertainment. This sort of fiction is deeply dependent on fact.
Sci-fi for example. While Daleks are obviously fictional, their personality traits are cherry-picked from real humans. Ruthlessness and blind obedience to tyranny are, sadly, persistent aspects of human life. Daleks are a mixture of these and other unfortunate earthly conditions. Conversely, Marvin the Paranoid Android is a collection of facts about decent people, capable people, melancholy people. Like Eyore, he warms us with memories of our own friends and acquaintances. Neither Dalek nor Marvin would engage us if we didn’t already have experience of nasty humans, and tragicomic humans. That’s what they’re based on.
Pornography is obviously phoney, but it works by looking real. However ludicrous the screenplay, the players must at least look human if it’s to work. Pornography is a bold example of how fiction works by impersonating reality. It makes people horny by giving them the feeling they are actually witnessing or participating in real sex. Certainly explains the moaning and the looks to camera, and the frightening close-ups. At some level of consciousness, you could almost be there.
Odd as it sounds, even maths textbooks contain some fiction. Errors in theory or in the answers at the back would be fictional. They’d be untruths that would leave the student with a worse understanding of the world. More positively, fictions can also be employed actively, to help with the explanations: “Bryan has sixty pence. He gives thirty to Charlie…” Pure fiction, but for a noble cause. A little fiction to clarify important facts.
Biography and autobiography may claim the status of fact but they often embody more fiction than novels. A biography of Churchill might be chronologically precise in a manner Citizen Kane never can be, but the inferences drawn concerning his life and character might be wholly inaccurate, fictional. If the biographer already loves or loathes Churchill they’ll tend to pick and position those facts which express their own feelings towards him, the narrative path they want him to wander down, rather than an honest appraisal. And of course Kane was based on Hearst, who certainly was a real man. Perhaps Hearst’s life as embodied in Kane was a highly accurate portrait, more so than many a deferential Churchill biography.
Like novels, biographies are finely woven threads of fact and fiction. Things can get very tangled. It’s often difficult to say which parts are true and which false, even for the author. Even if we agree that fact and fiction are at work in a given text, we’ll often disagree as to which aspects are the real ones, and which the invented.
No more so than with historical writing. Unlike maths books, there’s always disagreement about which aspects of history books are fact and which fiction. The main contention is of course politics. Political belief is inseperable from historical belief. We each advocate the politics we advocate because of what we believe to have happened in the past. Every political colour cites the past as the justification for their current stance. If you want to applaud the Nixon administration you cite their record in office. If you want to condemn the Nixon administration you cite their record in office.
Clearly something funny is going on here. Logically, some written history must be fictional, at least in parts. If it’s possible for two radically contradictory histories to be published concerning the same historical event, one of them must be a shameless travesty, perhaps both.
Being of my own political persuasion I tend to see conservative historians as purveyors of fiction. Not wilfully cynical, or inaccurate with dates – that’s not the level the fiction operates at. The fiction comes in the selection of facts, the order they are put into, the story this gives rise to. The fiction comes with the picture of the world this sequence of facts implies.
Although I’d be surprised if there was ever a wrong name or wrong date in a Simon Schama television history, the way the facts are employed produces a downright fictional picture of social change. He gets you thinking about all the wrongs things. It might be pretty, and heart-rending, to imagine that the decisions of kings and queens drive civilisation onward, but it teaches you nothing about the world. “At that moment Elizabeth realised, England was hers” – a bold image certainly, but one that teaches you nothing useful about the world.
Of course Simon Schama would say the same thing of left history. It’s leftists who don’t understand the true engine of history – elite humans, but it’s not good enough to put this all down to point of view. At least one of us must be wrong. Was the cold war Soviet aggression or an American fiction? Clearly both factors played a part, but which was prevailing? Which version best explains the current state of the world? Noam Chomsky and Niall Ferguson would doubtless have a thousand examples on hand to throw at each other, but what’s the fact? Unless it’s a dead heat, one of these accounts must be nearer to the truth, and the other predominantly fiction. One of these commentators must be pushing false history.
Of course there’s another way in which news-anchors can be economical with the actuality. He might be wearing a toupee or a girdle, she’ll certainly be wearing lipstick, or even breast implants. For that’s where this all starts. As humans we all tell fibs to some degree. The fictions we incorporate into our representations are just a cultural extension of our day to day lies.
In this sense, fiction is as old as human consciousness. Lying is as much a human reality as honesty. At the very least, we all modify our behaviour in different company. We have ideals about ourselves we work to and we’re often prepared, consciously or otherwise, to bend the truth a little when we can. We affect telephone voices. We assure children that their paintings are beautiful. We tell interviewers that the job sounds fascinating, and loved ones that the meal was lovely, and no, of course you don’t look fat. We all have to lie sometimes just to keep the peace, and not break each other’s hearts. Sometimes it’s downright immoral not to lie. Then again, sometimes we lie cynically, for material, emotional or political gain.
The fictions we read and write are an extension of our daily fabrications, our mix of innocent daydreams, white lies, and cynical deceits. In turn, the effect of these fictions can be good or bad, moral or malevolent. Like lies, some fictions really are worse than others, and that’s the subject of the following parts.
Monday 13 February 2006
Fiction II
2. A Slice of Life
Reality is a complex place, for all intents and purposes infinitely so. Representations on the other hand are necessarily finite. There’s only so many hours in the day to observe things, and only so much time to draw, paint, sculpt, film, or write down those observations. You can’t just keep adding detail indefinitely, and any attempt to do so would result in something strange rather than something realistic.
Nevertheless, certain forms of representation can at least give the impression that they embody total reality. Although they make for a weird team, there’s a distinct connection between Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Monet’s water lilies, Rodin’s The Kiss, and Coronation Street. Although methods vary, they’re all designed to make you believe that what you are witnessing is living reality, other realities. Some hot and sweaty, others crisp and fragrant. You could almost be there.
Clearly this isn’t true of all representations. However much beauty and anguish you might see in a Van Gough chair, you wouldn’t want to sit on one. Similarly, while Picasso’s figures can exhibit deep humanity, there’s little chance of mistaking them for real humans, there in the room with you, thank heavens.
With visual representations one of the key tools is perspective. Unlike Picasso’s demoiselles, Whistler’s mother is perfectly proportioned. The legs of her chair are in all the right places and her shadow falls just where it would. You could be Whistler, standing at his easel, and the two-dimensional geometry falling on your retina would be much the same. You could be there, and it feels like it too.
It’s part of what you might call the ‘photo-ishness’ of certain paintings. Like a photograph, Whistler’s mother does a jolly good two-dimensional impersonation of our three-dimensional world, as it falls upon our eyes. Indeed, if David Hockney is right about the use of camera obscurers in renaissance painting, it makes perfect sense that these forms should work on us in similar, and quite unprecedented ways.
Another key ingredient of photo-ishness is the filling in, the shading or colouring of a two dimensional image. Here again, the more natural looking paintings are the ones that resemble photographs, the ones where brightness and colour are distributed much as they might be in a photograph. Impressionist painting is a clear case. Little dapple here, little splat there, just like in a photo. Clearly these painters and thinkers learnt from the new medium. Impressionism might well be called ‘painting in the light of photography’.
Like accurate geometry, accurate filling-in is an effective way to make a flat, still image spring to life. A canvas coloured and shaded in sympathy with the world is more likely to instil a feeling of looking at the world.
Although words and paint convey meaning in very different ways, when it comes to inducing a sense of reality the starting point is the same. As with a painting there’s no possible way to transcribe the totality of a scene in words. The best you can do is choose snippets, those which best coax the reader to fill in the rest of the detail, or at least convince the reader that the rest of the detail is present, just unseen.
Like great portrait painters, great fiction writers are people with a skill for picking the right metonyms, ones that encourage the reader to project their own sense of reality onto the text. Like fine painters, they can spot those aspects of reality that will be most evocative. How is another matter. Inspiration is always going to be enigmatic, even for the inspired. Nevertheless there are some long-established fictional devices that give some indication of what can be achieved.
The first is so common and so logical it’s often included in style guides for budding writers: Long before product placement, fiction writers were using brand names, real and fictional, to boost the realism of their work.
Makes sense. Use the term 'metal polish' in a fiction and it conjures little in the mind of the reader – but call it Brasso and it springs to life. Brasso gives the reader a chance to visualise a real product they’ve handled, or seen on a shelf. Even if you’ve never heard of Brasso it still sounds a likely metal polish, in a loud tin, one you might see under a neighbour’s sink. Likewise, don’t say vinegar, say Sarson’s. If you remind people of a bottle they’ve actually seen and handled, they’re more likely to smell it on fictional chips and feel it running down fictional sleeves.
Again, it works because it rings true. In truth there are no generic products, everything is made by someone. The Rovers Return is the only pub where customers ask for a packet of their ‘usual cigars’. Like it or not, we now think brands where we once thought things. Using brand-names helps fictions to feel real, because brands have become such a large part of our reality.
Another reliable realism activator is the small inessential exception to life’s norm. A well chosen unlikelihood can breath life into empty space. I remember a Norman Mailer story in which a man momentarily focuses on a “surprisingly well drawn nude lady” on a wooden panel in the gents. No more is said, but it's very effective. Truth is, badly drawn nude ladies are ten a penny. Good erotic graffiti is a rarity, it really stands out from the crowd.
Occasionally truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes we do glimpse beauty in the strangest of places. The unusual is all part and parcel of reality, less common than the usual, but still significant. Fictions stand a better chance of feeling like reality if they occasionally tip their cap to the unusual.
Lastly, it pays to keep certain aspects of a fiction quite jagged and messy-looking if you want to strike a realist chord – beginning or ending a chapter mid-dialogue, perhaps, or even mid-narrative. Again the reasoning is quite sensible. No moment of our conscious lives does have a precise beginning, let alone a tidy end. Sentences really do come at us from out of the blue. Conversations chop and change as our lives proceed. There is no Once upon a time or Happily ever after in this life. No surprise, stories which eschew such conventions are more likely to ring true.
Fictions come alive by seeming like reality, and reality comes at us in flashes, slices. Reality is products on shelves, scrawled images, broken sentences, all competing for our attention. Believable fictions are those which manage to evoke something of this sensory onslaught. Stories seem real when they come at us like that, because life comes at us like that.
Next thrilling installment in progress.....
Reality is a complex place, for all intents and purposes infinitely so. Representations on the other hand are necessarily finite. There’s only so many hours in the day to observe things, and only so much time to draw, paint, sculpt, film, or write down those observations. You can’t just keep adding detail indefinitely, and any attempt to do so would result in something strange rather than something realistic.
Nevertheless, certain forms of representation can at least give the impression that they embody total reality. Although they make for a weird team, there’s a distinct connection between Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Monet’s water lilies, Rodin’s The Kiss, and Coronation Street. Although methods vary, they’re all designed to make you believe that what you are witnessing is living reality, other realities. Some hot and sweaty, others crisp and fragrant. You could almost be there.
Clearly this isn’t true of all representations. However much beauty and anguish you might see in a Van Gough chair, you wouldn’t want to sit on one. Similarly, while Picasso’s figures can exhibit deep humanity, there’s little chance of mistaking them for real humans, there in the room with you, thank heavens.
With visual representations one of the key tools is perspective. Unlike Picasso’s demoiselles, Whistler’s mother is perfectly proportioned. The legs of her chair are in all the right places and her shadow falls just where it would. You could be Whistler, standing at his easel, and the two-dimensional geometry falling on your retina would be much the same. You could be there, and it feels like it too.
It’s part of what you might call the ‘photo-ishness’ of certain paintings. Like a photograph, Whistler’s mother does a jolly good two-dimensional impersonation of our three-dimensional world, as it falls upon our eyes. Indeed, if David Hockney is right about the use of camera obscurers in renaissance painting, it makes perfect sense that these forms should work on us in similar, and quite unprecedented ways.
Another key ingredient of photo-ishness is the filling in, the shading or colouring of a two dimensional image. Here again, the more natural looking paintings are the ones that resemble photographs, the ones where brightness and colour are distributed much as they might be in a photograph. Impressionist painting is a clear case. Little dapple here, little splat there, just like in a photo. Clearly these painters and thinkers learnt from the new medium. Impressionism might well be called ‘painting in the light of photography’.
Like accurate geometry, accurate filling-in is an effective way to make a flat, still image spring to life. A canvas coloured and shaded in sympathy with the world is more likely to instil a feeling of looking at the world.
Although words and paint convey meaning in very different ways, when it comes to inducing a sense of reality the starting point is the same. As with a painting there’s no possible way to transcribe the totality of a scene in words. The best you can do is choose snippets, those which best coax the reader to fill in the rest of the detail, or at least convince the reader that the rest of the detail is present, just unseen.
Like great portrait painters, great fiction writers are people with a skill for picking the right metonyms, ones that encourage the reader to project their own sense of reality onto the text. Like fine painters, they can spot those aspects of reality that will be most evocative. How is another matter. Inspiration is always going to be enigmatic, even for the inspired. Nevertheless there are some long-established fictional devices that give some indication of what can be achieved.
The first is so common and so logical it’s often included in style guides for budding writers: Long before product placement, fiction writers were using brand names, real and fictional, to boost the realism of their work.
Makes sense. Use the term 'metal polish' in a fiction and it conjures little in the mind of the reader – but call it Brasso and it springs to life. Brasso gives the reader a chance to visualise a real product they’ve handled, or seen on a shelf. Even if you’ve never heard of Brasso it still sounds a likely metal polish, in a loud tin, one you might see under a neighbour’s sink. Likewise, don’t say vinegar, say Sarson’s. If you remind people of a bottle they’ve actually seen and handled, they’re more likely to smell it on fictional chips and feel it running down fictional sleeves.
Again, it works because it rings true. In truth there are no generic products, everything is made by someone. The Rovers Return is the only pub where customers ask for a packet of their ‘usual cigars’. Like it or not, we now think brands where we once thought things. Using brand-names helps fictions to feel real, because brands have become such a large part of our reality.
Another reliable realism activator is the small inessential exception to life’s norm. A well chosen unlikelihood can breath life into empty space. I remember a Norman Mailer story in which a man momentarily focuses on a “surprisingly well drawn nude lady” on a wooden panel in the gents. No more is said, but it's very effective. Truth is, badly drawn nude ladies are ten a penny. Good erotic graffiti is a rarity, it really stands out from the crowd.
Occasionally truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes we do glimpse beauty in the strangest of places. The unusual is all part and parcel of reality, less common than the usual, but still significant. Fictions stand a better chance of feeling like reality if they occasionally tip their cap to the unusual.
Lastly, it pays to keep certain aspects of a fiction quite jagged and messy-looking if you want to strike a realist chord – beginning or ending a chapter mid-dialogue, perhaps, or even mid-narrative. Again the reasoning is quite sensible. No moment of our conscious lives does have a precise beginning, let alone a tidy end. Sentences really do come at us from out of the blue. Conversations chop and change as our lives proceed. There is no Once upon a time or Happily ever after in this life. No surprise, stories which eschew such conventions are more likely to ring true.
Fictions come alive by seeming like reality, and reality comes at us in flashes, slices. Reality is products on shelves, scrawled images, broken sentences, all competing for our attention. Believable fictions are those which manage to evoke something of this sensory onslaught. Stories seem real when they come at us like that, because life comes at us like that.
Next thrilling installment in progress.....
Wednesday 25 January 2006
Fiction I
1. Fiction and Metonyms
While most consumers of fiction are perfectly familiar with the metaphor, far fewer have even heard of the metonym. This is odd considering its importance in creating plausible stories. When it comes to understanding how fictions ‘come alive’ the metonym is the key.
A good way to grasp the metonym is by contrasting it with the metaphor. With a metaphor you try to capture the essence of something by calling it something else, My love is, a red, red rose, for example. Clearly this isn’t meant literally. A rosebush would make an ungrateful lover, even for a rugged Scotsman. It’s only an allusion to qualities shared by both; youth, vitality, beauty, symmetry, silky textures and bright colours, and perhaps a little thorniness too.
With a metonym on the other hand you describe something using an aspect of that very same thing. Calling alcohol the bottle or a car your wheels. Calling Sinatra Blue Eyes and Van Damme the Muscles from Brussels. The nicknames, Brains, Fingers and Four Eyes. For that matter, calling a woman a bit of skirt, or a man a prick.
Of course they’re not mutually exclusive. Calling a man a prick can be a metonym and a metaphor. If you mean he’s sexually predatory, or sexually obsessed it’s a metonym. If that one small part of him seems to have an unnatural hold over the rest, it’s apt to call him by that thing. But if you were just using it to imply that he was stupid, or even resembled one physically, then that would be a metaphor. You’d be suggesting he had the same intelligence, or appearance, as this famously dumb-looking organ.
While metaphors certainly are an important part of fiction, metonyms are central. Fiction is all about describing things by their parts. Has to be. Reality is too complex to describe in full. The only thing fiction writers can possibly do is transcribe aspects, bits and bobs of the complex whole.
Nevertheless, when fictions work they do ‘feel’ real. When they work properly they can make it feel like a whole other world is alive before us. That’s really what people are buying when they buy fiction, a taste of another reality. The worst thing you could say about any novel is that you didn’t believe in any of the characters. With fiction, believable is the bottom line.
Of course some will argue that most of fiction is pure fantasy, with an audience fully aware that it’s all made up, but it’s really not true. If you care in any way about what happens to the characters in a film, you must believe they exist, in some sense, if only for the duration of the show. Of course Princess Lea doesn’t exist, but we can still fear for her life. Of course Bambi never existed, yet grown men cry.
Even something as simple and abstract as Itchy and Scratchy conforms to this. If we didn’t believe they were real in some sense we wouldn’t wince at the violence. You can’t pity something without believing it exists. You can’t feel pain for another creature if you don’t believe it to be sentient, at least for the duration of the show. Somehow, a crudely drawn three-dimensional cat appears to be in agony.
That ‘somehow’ comes down to choice of metonyms. With that particular cartoon, we may believe the cat exists to some degree, but not much. The choice of metonyms, the parts represented, restrict our reaction to squeamishness, rather than full-blown revulsion. If all you use to represent the complexity of a cat’s leg is a thin black stick, with a pink cross-section, then it’s no surprise we don’t vomit when it’s amputated with a chainsaw.
Alternatively, by selecting ever more subtle, more ‘realistic’ metonyms it would be possible to ratchet-up the reality, and so the revulsion. A Bambi-quality version of Itchy and Scratchy would be quite sickening, and a Walking with Dinosaurs-style computer generated version would probably spark-off riots in the Home Counties.
You might think all that’s happening here is increase in detail. A more detailed cat looks more realistic and so is more likely to generate sympathy. In part I’d agree, this is all about realism, or realistic-ness. But I’d argue that it’s choice of metonym, rather than amount of detail, that dictates whether a fiction ‘comes alive’. Choice of detail rather than quantity of detail.
The success of such things as The Blair Witch Project bears this out. Tiny, slithery little metonyms: darkness, heavy breathing, the snap of a twig. You can hardly call these devices detailed, yet they can cast a huge and horrifying reality onto an audience. And it’s not just scary movies. The most heart-wrenching scene in a romance might well consist of three minutes of virtual darkness, with just two voices chatting quietly. Maybe throw in an owl.
Clearly it’s not how much you say, it’s what you say and how you say it. It’s the choice of detail, not the amount of detail that makes fictions ‘feel’ real.
Part Two will follow shortly.....
While most consumers of fiction are perfectly familiar with the metaphor, far fewer have even heard of the metonym. This is odd considering its importance in creating plausible stories. When it comes to understanding how fictions ‘come alive’ the metonym is the key.
A good way to grasp the metonym is by contrasting it with the metaphor. With a metaphor you try to capture the essence of something by calling it something else, My love is, a red, red rose, for example. Clearly this isn’t meant literally. A rosebush would make an ungrateful lover, even for a rugged Scotsman. It’s only an allusion to qualities shared by both; youth, vitality, beauty, symmetry, silky textures and bright colours, and perhaps a little thorniness too.
With a metonym on the other hand you describe something using an aspect of that very same thing. Calling alcohol the bottle or a car your wheels. Calling Sinatra Blue Eyes and Van Damme the Muscles from Brussels. The nicknames, Brains, Fingers and Four Eyes. For that matter, calling a woman a bit of skirt, or a man a prick.
Of course they’re not mutually exclusive. Calling a man a prick can be a metonym and a metaphor. If you mean he’s sexually predatory, or sexually obsessed it’s a metonym. If that one small part of him seems to have an unnatural hold over the rest, it’s apt to call him by that thing. But if you were just using it to imply that he was stupid, or even resembled one physically, then that would be a metaphor. You’d be suggesting he had the same intelligence, or appearance, as this famously dumb-looking organ.
While metaphors certainly are an important part of fiction, metonyms are central. Fiction is all about describing things by their parts. Has to be. Reality is too complex to describe in full. The only thing fiction writers can possibly do is transcribe aspects, bits and bobs of the complex whole.
Nevertheless, when fictions work they do ‘feel’ real. When they work properly they can make it feel like a whole other world is alive before us. That’s really what people are buying when they buy fiction, a taste of another reality. The worst thing you could say about any novel is that you didn’t believe in any of the characters. With fiction, believable is the bottom line.
Of course some will argue that most of fiction is pure fantasy, with an audience fully aware that it’s all made up, but it’s really not true. If you care in any way about what happens to the characters in a film, you must believe they exist, in some sense, if only for the duration of the show. Of course Princess Lea doesn’t exist, but we can still fear for her life. Of course Bambi never existed, yet grown men cry.
Even something as simple and abstract as Itchy and Scratchy conforms to this. If we didn’t believe they were real in some sense we wouldn’t wince at the violence. You can’t pity something without believing it exists. You can’t feel pain for another creature if you don’t believe it to be sentient, at least for the duration of the show. Somehow, a crudely drawn three-dimensional cat appears to be in agony.
That ‘somehow’ comes down to choice of metonyms. With that particular cartoon, we may believe the cat exists to some degree, but not much. The choice of metonyms, the parts represented, restrict our reaction to squeamishness, rather than full-blown revulsion. If all you use to represent the complexity of a cat’s leg is a thin black stick, with a pink cross-section, then it’s no surprise we don’t vomit when it’s amputated with a chainsaw.
Alternatively, by selecting ever more subtle, more ‘realistic’ metonyms it would be possible to ratchet-up the reality, and so the revulsion. A Bambi-quality version of Itchy and Scratchy would be quite sickening, and a Walking with Dinosaurs-style computer generated version would probably spark-off riots in the Home Counties.
You might think all that’s happening here is increase in detail. A more detailed cat looks more realistic and so is more likely to generate sympathy. In part I’d agree, this is all about realism, or realistic-ness. But I’d argue that it’s choice of metonym, rather than amount of detail, that dictates whether a fiction ‘comes alive’. Choice of detail rather than quantity of detail.
The success of such things as The Blair Witch Project bears this out. Tiny, slithery little metonyms: darkness, heavy breathing, the snap of a twig. You can hardly call these devices detailed, yet they can cast a huge and horrifying reality onto an audience. And it’s not just scary movies. The most heart-wrenching scene in a romance might well consist of three minutes of virtual darkness, with just two voices chatting quietly. Maybe throw in an owl.
Clearly it’s not how much you say, it’s what you say and how you say it. It’s the choice of detail, not the amount of detail that makes fictions ‘feel’ real.
Part Two will follow shortly.....
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