Social Angst and All That
by Peni Griffin
I must write stories. That's why I was born.
I start with a cool hook: What if a citizen of a magic-based society had a disability that turned off magic? I end up with a story that focuses on friendship, duty, and the nature of democracy. No matter how much you want to stay light and entertaining, internal and external pressures act, and before you know it you've got deep themes coming out your ears.
The story in question, with the working title Disenchanter, has been interrupted so many times I no longer remember when I started it. Now that I'm done, I have to re-write the thing backwards simply to render it coherent, and talking heads must roll. I can do that. What worries me is that - although the climax has not changed from my first conception - the implications of that climax have mutated. I am so worried (rightly or wrongly) about the future of American democracy that I am nearly panicked about how this real-world concern will affect the quality of my book. (Yeah, yeah, my priorities are whacked. So sue me.)
Creative people throughout history have faced precisely the problems I face now. Can an artist isolate himself in the proverbial ivory tower and blithely produce art for art's sake?
Of course not.
Just as, economically, I am obliged to hold down a day job and juggle my writing life with the needs of my employer, ethically, I am obliged to carry out my ideals to the best of my ability. Voting is as much a responsibility as a right, and I am also called on daily to make informed decisions about which causes to support and how to support them. (Argue with the boss? Go to a rally? Write a check? Sign a petition?) We all have time and sanity budgets to worry about; being an author does not make me special here. Leaving political activity to professional politicians and extremists will be the death of democracy, if it dies; and ordinary people doing the best they can will be the life of it, if it lives. I may feel the pressure of this more than some, but I don't bear any more responsibility than anyone else in the private sector.
But since I work out my intellectual and moral positions in fictional form, my real world and my fictional worlds necessarily impact each other. Does a moral stance automatically render a story didactic? If not, at what point is the line crossed? And what is the problem with didactic works, anyway?
You won't see much public acknowledgment of it, but a lot of people like being lectured. When I was a child, the overt moralism of books like Little Women, Heidi, and Black Beauty was simultaneously comforting and stimulating. Could books like The Celestine Prophecy, the Book of Virtues, and The Da Vinci Code have hit bestseller lists if a sizable adult audience didn't get a similar effect? I have discussed before the folly of judging children's literature solely for its educational content, but that doesn't mean I think that content should be ignored. If you want your children to have strong beliefs, the best thing you can do is model strong belief for them. One way to do this is to expose them to works illustrative of strong beliefs - including ones you don't share. Any brain that engages actively with C.S. Lewis or Phillip Pullman will be stronger for the experience, and any brain that engages with both will be stronger yet.
Still, the accusation of "preachiness" is a deadly one, and an easy tool for condemning art. Even when we are willing, it's hard to separate our moral stances from our artistic judgements. Since I recognize this, when I revise Disenchanter a primary concern will be to translate my heroine's ideas into actions, reducing the statements of principle while increasing the effect principles have on the plot. The fewer sermons, the fewer hooks to hang an accusation on.
But the sudden, shocking disaster in the Sport Palace and the scapegoating of the goblins afterward was not part of my original plot plan. They happened in the course of writing, and wouldn't have happened at all if certain events in the autumn of 2001 had been averted. Is the intense political activity this creates around the climax too topical for a fantasy book which will take at least another year to revise and then still need to find a publisher, go through normal editing and production, and appear (if it ever does) in what I hope will be an entirely different political climate?
Topicality is a problem when an incident is "ripped from the headlines" without being subject to artistic transformation into its universal and resonant elements - when the audience is presumed to bring a pre-existing response to the material, instead of being brought to that response by the skill of the creator. All art is contextual, but you don't have to understand the history of the American Civil War in order to get the full impact of Ambrose Bierce's "Chickamauga." If 21st century audiences can read Dean Swift, perform Shakespear's histories, and sing Viet Nam war protest songs with meaningful pleasure, then 21st century artists can strive for similar long-term relevance. It's no harder than anything else we're trying to do.
But before we reach posterity we must survive the present. Will we alienate editors, or reviewers, or teachers? Will we be banned from schools without a hearing? Will our houses by egged by our neighbors if they learn that we disagree violently with them; or even if they mis-read and interpret us as disagreeing? Children's literature is an unacknowledged battle ground in which no one wears a uniform and the participants slap deceptive labels on themselves and others. No one is immune from attack, and the worst attacks come from people who, according to their labels, ought to be the strongest supporters of those they attack.
This is indeed terrifying, but I'm inclined to be severe with myself about my own terror. It's easy to cringe before we're hurt and underestimate society's capacity to accept us as we are. (Granted, this is often based on experience, but that's a column I may never be calm and rational enough to write.) If I don't write as if I have complete freedom of speech, then I don't have complete freedom of speech. To heck with that.
Besides, anything that makes part of the population mad as blazes is bound to delight another part of the population. Washing egg off your siding is a trivial job compared to finding your audience; if having to do the first is the prelude to the other, go for it. Faint heart never won fair publicity.
This raises another fear, that perhaps only a dedicated artist can understand - the fear that less than stellar work can be overestimated by people who happen to agree with the political or moral stance they find in it. You can't guard against this, except by doing your best work and bearing yourself modestly if undeserved kudos fall in your lap.
Frankly, I should be so lucky.
All this is part of the creative life. The problems I've described are no different
from those faced by Shakespeare or Christopher Isherwood or Louisa May Alcott.
I'll work it out my way and J.K. Rowling will work it out her way and posterity
will condemn, praise, or ignore us after our deaths in ways we cannot predict
or control.
Lately, however, I've had another thought.
What if, by putting our hearts and souls into works of art and entertainment, we encourage apathy?
Stories are supposed to illuminate the real world, inspire people to think clearly, encourage them to act. This is how socially conscious artists justify spending time on art instead of in soup kitchens or at protest rallies - we're modeling heroism and prompting action in others. But -
How often, when we are young, do our parents calm us down with the words: "It's only a story/comic/movie/TV show?"
If you see it in a story, it isn't so.
Vampires are make-believe; so are vampire-slayers.
Ghosts don't exist. Neither do people who find justice so the restless shade can sleep.
Spy paraphernalia doesn't get hidden in dolls and little girls don't save the free world by guarding them.
Bad guys don't do horrible things and children don't defeat them.
Triumphing over your bad impulses and achieving your goals ethically, in accordance with your ideals, is a pretty fantasy.
Ordinary people aren't noble and don't make a difference in the real world.
On a certain Tuesday morning three years ago, I listened to the radio and thought, stunned into stupidity: "So where is Superman?"
I couldn't wrap my brain around it. I think many people still have not. Suicide bombers and torture and conspiracies - that's the province of villains. Villains require heroes - the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived, 007, the Last Son of Krypton. We cast our political leaders as heroes, a role for which many of them are manifestly unsuited, and go about our daily business, because little hobbits only save the day in stories.
By modeling fictional people taking responsibility, do I enable people to dismiss their own responsibilities?
By channeling my real-world concerns into stories, am I deluding myself that I am doing something constructive when I am really making things worse?
Early in the history of this column, I talked at length about the societal fear that readers of fantasy will lose their ability to distinguish fact from fancy. I dismissed, and still dismiss, this fear as unreasoning and unsupported by the facts.
Today, I reverse that fear. Distracted by fantasy, will we fail to carry its carefully-thought out metaphors, its heartfelt ideals, its passionate call to action, into real life?
Do we distinguish between fantasy and reality too well?
Appendix for those with lots of interest and/or downtime at the office:
 For a clever working out of the idea of the story as active role model, see the long-running storyline in the Fuzzy Knights web comic (rated PG for language, misspellings, and a small amount of sexual innuendo, which is not what you expect from a work focusing on stuffed animals). The story begins in Issue 31, and the relevant moral is stated is Issue 109, but you'll miss some great stuff if you skip straight to it.
To relate what I say here to what I said previously, see my two-part column "Fantasy:
Threat or Menace?" and my column concerning didacticism.
And - ahem - the "Paleoindian book" is at long last in galleys and scheduled for release in the U.S. in November!
June/July 2004 © Peni Griffin
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