Meta: Monsters, Morality, and Mimesis
Mark Liberman at languagelog has made a post discussing the use of the phrase "harm's way" in which he actually mentions the season 5 Angel episode. Also relating to linguistic issues, I've had a long discussion today [this part of the post was written a couple of days ago--ed.] with an international student who was visiting the appartment over our frustration with any and all attempts to parse sentences of the typeWho(m) was spoken to?
Yeah, I'm a geek.
ajhalluk has a post that was metafandommed on how literary characters aren't real people, and thus our moral obligations to respond to them aren't the same as they would be to real rapists, child molesters, etc. This links in to a flocked discussion cathexys has been hosting on ethical responsibilities in literature, especially in response to Holocaust depiction. It also connects to my flocked post in which I answer "Whom would I shag" with TMI and overthinkiness, the upshot being (for those I haven't friended) that treating fictional characters as real people (even just to question whether one would sleep with them) results in a lot of unforseen complications.
What I found most interesting about ajhalluk was the way in which her(?) post parallels the whole train of thought I've had recently over the concept of "monsters"--i.e. those characters who do evil in the service of good. "[H]eroes can get away with murder," she notes. "And frequently do." Jossverse canon is full of examples: Buffy killing the Knights of Byzantium, Giles killing Ben, etc. And I know that Battlestar Galactica isn't lacking in that category either; nor are Firefly and Serenity.
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.
Ethics and aesthetics interact in complex ways, a fact that was reinforced for me as I was doing my reasearch for my thesis. Our moral commitments determine how we approach a text; this is the entire problem (or pseudo-problem) of imaginative resistance. I literally cannot watch police procedurals, for they invariably contain scenes of police personnel cutting corners or not going to extremes to protect their suspects' civil liberties, and the invitation to imagine our world being like that provokes not only resistance in me but outright paranoia and hysterical fear. Monsters like Giles or Buffy are larger-than-life and thus safe; these creatures are far more urbane and thus in their way much more scary. (How do I know these things--which the texts seem to treat as perfectly fine--aren't being done on a regular basis? What could I possibly do to stop it, beyond renewing my ACLU registration?) (Although the current administration has gone a long way to convincing me that monsters are real. I'm not sure which president is more monstrous, Bush or Roslin.)
As a critic and a writer, I am two minds of how my ethics should affect how I approach a text. My politics, metaphysics, and theology are all radically contingent upon my feminist ethics. It seems odd that aesthetics should be exempt, but grounding aesthetics in ethics just rubs me the wrong way in a way that grounding theology in ethics just doesn't--in analytic philosopher-speak, it contradicts my intuitions.
I guess the real problem is that when I am writing I become, in contradiction to everything I consciously believe, a Platonist or perhaps even a Moorean. I can feel aesthetic Good as if it existed outside of me; therefore it is free of all commitments, including moral ones. This is perhaps a necessary antinomy for the sake of artistic production; but once I have taken off my writer's hat and, as critic, approached what I have created, what is my responsibity to it?
* * *
I wanted to say more, but I graduate in a couple of days (note to self: return library books) and I have a dozen other things to do. [Thus the update window sitting open on my computer since Sunday morning--ed.] I actually have two ficathon stories due on the day I graduate, which shouldn't have been a problem since I've had this entire week off, but I just can't come up with a suitable plot for one of them. And the story is actually for one of y'all, and you deserve the best, flist.
Yeah, I'm a geek.
ajhalluk has a post that was metafandommed on how literary characters aren't real people, and thus our moral obligations to respond to them aren't the same as they would be to real rapists, child molesters, etc. This links in to a flocked discussion cathexys has been hosting on ethical responsibilities in literature, especially in response to Holocaust depiction. It also connects to my flocked post in which I answer "Whom would I shag" with TMI and overthinkiness, the upshot being (for those I haven't friended) that treating fictional characters as real people (even just to question whether one would sleep with them) results in a lot of unforseen complications.
What I found most interesting about ajhalluk was the way in which her(?) post parallels the whole train of thought I've had recently over the concept of "monsters"--i.e. those characters who do evil in the service of good. "[H]eroes can get away with murder," she notes. "And frequently do." Jossverse canon is full of examples: Buffy killing the Knights of Byzantium, Giles killing Ben, etc. And I know that Battlestar Galactica isn't lacking in that category either; nor are Firefly and Serenity.
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.
Ethics and aesthetics interact in complex ways, a fact that was reinforced for me as I was doing my reasearch for my thesis. Our moral commitments determine how we approach a text; this is the entire problem (or pseudo-problem) of imaginative resistance. I literally cannot watch police procedurals, for they invariably contain scenes of police personnel cutting corners or not going to extremes to protect their suspects' civil liberties, and the invitation to imagine our world being like that provokes not only resistance in me but outright paranoia and hysterical fear. Monsters like Giles or Buffy are larger-than-life and thus safe; these creatures are far more urbane and thus in their way much more scary. (How do I know these things--which the texts seem to treat as perfectly fine--aren't being done on a regular basis? What could I possibly do to stop it, beyond renewing my ACLU registration?) (Although the current administration has gone a long way to convincing me that monsters are real. I'm not sure which president is more monstrous, Bush or Roslin.)
As a critic and a writer, I am two minds of how my ethics should affect how I approach a text. My politics, metaphysics, and theology are all radically contingent upon my feminist ethics. It seems odd that aesthetics should be exempt, but grounding aesthetics in ethics just rubs me the wrong way in a way that grounding theology in ethics just doesn't--in analytic philosopher-speak, it contradicts my intuitions.
I guess the real problem is that when I am writing I become, in contradiction to everything I consciously believe, a Platonist or perhaps even a Moorean. I can feel aesthetic Good as if it existed outside of me; therefore it is free of all commitments, including moral ones. This is perhaps a necessary antinomy for the sake of artistic production; but once I have taken off my writer's hat and, as critic, approached what I have created, what is my responsibity to it?
* * *
I wanted to say more, but I graduate in a couple of days (note to self: return library books) and I have a dozen other things to do. [Thus the update window sitting open on my computer since Sunday morning--ed.] I actually have two ficathon stories due on the day I graduate, which shouldn't have been a problem since I've had this entire week off, but I just can't come up with a suitable plot for one of them. And the story is actually for one of y'all, and you deserve the best, flist.