Meta Revisited I: Monsters
I've tried different ways to organize my meta, but the only way that really seems to work is tags; it's just too sprawling to organize any other way. But I thought I might visit my meta tags, either one-by-one or in groups, and put forth a collection of the major meta posts with that theme, with annotations and commentary, to trace the evolution of my thought on the subject. I decided to start with the topic of monsters, those who do evil while willing good. What is striking is how these posts are at once me taking a thought as it percolates through my consciousness and evolves in my mind, and is also a discussion, as I take from many different sources that inspire me--other LJ posts, discussions in comments, and, of course, popular culture.
1. Buffyverse Day 2005: An essay on power and its rôle in the Buffyverse, and its rôle in making me love the Buffyverse. This post is important because it goes to length to describe why the will-to-power has such a hold over me as a reader and viewer of texts, tracing my (essentially fannish) history with the motif, finally culminating with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but only after a great many twists and turns.
[The characters] challenge the clear and easy distinction between hero and villain and make it extremely clear that "normative" is not always the same as "good." In doing so, the show flirts with the fascination I and others feel for the villain, recognizing it as not essentially something belonging to the Other (the monstrous, the vampiric), but something which is essentially human.
2. The Monster in the Mirror: A direct response to a Colbert Report sketch which compared President Bush to Superman, but also more indirectly in response to jennyo's fangirling of Laura Roslin and my own fangirling of a decidedly dark version of Dawn. Here I explicitly formalize the notion of the "monster" (which has of course been a staple of my meta ever since): they who do evil in the name of good, whether it's Jack Bauer torturing people on 24 or whatever. Here I take the stand that monsters are not the sort of people we want, say, running the country in real life, but also admitted just how powerful a hold that sort of character has over us in fiction.
Call me an idealist, but this is what I think: if we have to abandon our principles to save the world, then we turn ourselves into a world that is no longer worth saving. [. . .] I'd rather watch the Huns invade and enslave us all by force than give up one bit of my American civil liberties (the precious few that are left!) in the name of security.[. . .] // The twist is, what if the Huns at the gates aren't Islamofascists, but vampires and demons?
3. More Meta on Monsters: A Response to the BSG Finale: Um, basically what it says on the label. A response to the season finale for season 2 of Battlestar Galactica. Spoilers.
I'm fascinated in Dawn and Giles as monsters, ubermensch with whom I vicariously identify through the will-to-power, but my relation to Roslin is different. I turn to her as a maternal character, as the President I'd like to have, and so like Jed Bartlett or Gina Davis' character from Commander-in-Chief (whatever happened to that show anyway?) I don't want to see her turn into a monster. A monstrous President strikes far too close to home, whereas a monstrous starship captain is far enough removed that I can enjoy the expression of the will-to-power.
4. Meta: Mimesis, Monsters, and Morality: In which I begin to angst that I keep writing about characters doing all these actions with which I am ethically and politically uncomfortable. I don't have any answers to my questions yet, but I am beginning to ask the important questions. Also, I begin to frame the issue in philosopher-speak.
By writing about monsters--indeed by glorifying in their will to power--am I condoning their actions? Am I condoning that is acceptable to infringe on human freedoms in the name of security, in defiance of the one principle which I hold most dear? The answer to that strikes me as unequivocately no; none of these stories come with disclaimers saying "The behavior in this story is morally acceptable." They are fantasy and wish-fulfillment, not how I really want the world to be but how I sometimes like to pretend it is (or could be). But neither do they (nor should they) come with disclaimers saying "The views expressed by this fic are not necessarily those of the author." We should take responsibility for our creations.
5. More Meta on the Morality of Mimetic Monsters: I begin to come up with answers--that we need to concern ourselves not with the formal characteristics of a text but how it functions in a sociohistorical location--and to frame both the questions and answers much more deeply within the language of analytic philosophy. I also begin asking more questions which question the way that texts communicate their meanings, which of course is a whole different theme in my meta--and one I'll collect in a different post.
I find it difficult, as someone skilled (not by any fancy education, although I have that too, but simply by living in the culture and speaking the language) in various relevant narrative conventions, and even with imaginative resistance and assuming that the same moral rules apply in the fictional world as in this one, to interpret Buffy as not endorsing the actions of Buffy (even when she's clearly wrong, like late season 7) or Giles, or Battlestar Galactica as not endorsing the actions of Roslin. The narrative conventions make it clear who is in the right and who is in the wrong. [. . .] The question that needs to be asked isn't what would be the ideal text in the feminist utopia but what is empowering to these people at this time on the ground?
6. Points of Interest in a Convergence Culture: I respond to a post by jennyo where she discusses how Laura Roslin is "a scary, dangerous person who's going to break and make the Cylons look like kids playing at evil" and why she fangirls her anyway.
God knows that in real life there is nothing more dangerous than someone who is certain that they are right and won't respect any limits on doing what they feel they need to do. The only difference, I suppose, is that in fiction we can be sure that our Mary Sues really are always right, at least in the moral order in which we read out of (or into) the text. But is this really all that separates a Roslin from an Operative? And what does that say (if anything) about real-world ethics? (And if ethics sometimes falls to the exigencies of a crisis, when is that crisis, and who draws the line? Some would claim we--meaning "the United States of America" or perhaps even "Western Civilization"--have already fallen into that sort of crisis.)