From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: Responsibilities of Artists (was Re: Pornography and Playboy)
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 03:00:34 GMT

In article <1992Jul27.004705.17211@midway.uchicago.edu> kwhyte@dent.uchicago.edu (Kevin Whyte) writes:
>In article <1992Jul26.232450.14901@midway.uchicago.edu> mss2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:

>>	"Then it's quite possible that we do disagree.  There are lots
>>of things I'd consider it wrong to attempt to convince someone else
>>of.  Things one knows to be falsehoods, for example.  If I were to
>>attempt to convince you that, say, Jews are a subhuman race conspiring
>>to enslave everyone else, and back this up with made-up facts and
>>distortions, knowing that they're made up facts and distortions, then
>>I think I would be doing something wrong.  If you disagree, then we've
>>found the point at which we diverge, and there's probably not much
>>else to say.  It might be interesting to determine why we each believe
>>as we do, but we're unlikely to convince one another."

>  I didn't really mean to include delibrate lying, I was mostly 
>responding to your statement about writing KKK propaganda being 
>evil.  Much as with anything else, it is possible to cause harm
>by trying to convince people of something, if harm is your intent.

	"But my point is that portraying something one disbelieves as
true _is_ lying.  What's the difference between making up facts and
making up other truths?  Is it any less a lie to write a story which
states that unprovoked cruelty is honorable (assuming the writer
doesn't believe this to be true) than to write a work which states, as
fact, that Beethoven was actually a Buddhist monk?"

>  Mostly I'm trying to say that I see nothing wrong with art which
>conveys/explores ideas that the artist finds distasteful.  Art 
>which allows you to understand, sympathize with, and (temporarily) believe
>someone foreign to you is, I think, a good thing.

	"Conveying and exploring are two different things, while
portraying something as praiseworthy is still a third.  And I
think there's a significant difference between a work which bears the
theme "Had I been subjected to the influences depicted, I too might
have become a Nazi camp guard" and one which suggests, "It would have
been glorious to have been a Nazi camp guard, had I only lived at the
right time."

  A character study
>which allowed people to understand at a gut level how and why people 
>can commit acts that seem unimaginable is a powerful tool for understanding.
>People (hopefully) are capable of thinking about what they see, rather
>than just believing it.  If the audience is small children then I might
>feel differently.

	"Again, I don't think that it's necessary to convey particular
_acts_ with approval to make it possible to understand how someone
else can reach that conclusion.  It's very dependent on context.  For
a crude example, if one's main character is a pre-Civil War
Southerner, and he launches into a defense of slavery on the basis of
black inferiority, that's one thing.  It's another thing, though, if
all the black characters in the tale _are_ clearly mentally inferior,
if an attempt at schooling black children fails miserably because the
children are all too stupid to learn, if all the sympathetic black
characters express love for their master's discipline, while all black
characters who oppose slavery are little better than wild animals.
Now, if these events were presented as happening thus, but the whole
novel were from the slaveowner's point of view (such that _he_ is
shown to suppose that the school failed because of black inferiority,
and we see the school only through his eyes) that's quite another
thing.  In the first instance (assuming that this isn't an alternate
history in which Africa held an inferior subspecies of hominids), the
author is using his omniscience to say something about blacks-- in the
other he's using it to say something about slaveowners and slavery."

>>	"Which is not to say that I don't believe that everyone should
>>be allowed to advocate their ideas in any ways they choose.  I just
>>think that advocating ideas which you, personally, believe are wrong
>>is wrong, because ultimately it's lying.  (Is lying wrong?  Yet
>>another question.)  It's doing something which will, in direct
>>proportion to one's skill as an artist, encourage people to believe
>>something which one does not believe to be true, and is thus wrong for
>>the same reason that it would be wrong to forge historical evidence,
>>or fake scientific data.  In these cases, one is saying something
>>about the world which one believes to be untrue, and art is simply
>>another way to say something about the world."
>
>   That assumes the point of art is to advocate something, or to
>assert an accurate picture of the world.  Often it is used as a
>vehicle to explore or shed light on a warped, or at least different
>way of seeing things.

	"Not that _the_ point of art is to advocate something, but
that art, by its nature, _does_ say something about the world.  It
can't avoid it.  Thus, it is not that the "point" of _Romeo and
Juliet_ was that there is nobility in facing death with bitter mirth,
but nonetheless, that is what one feels on seeing the death of
Mercutio-- or the play has failed, in that respect, to have its
intended effect upon the watcher.  If Shakespeare believed that facing
death with anything but pious repentence was _wrong_, then he was
lying to his audience by making Mercutio so likeable and worthy of
respect."

>> and
>>	"Ideas aren't people, and ideas don't have rights.  _People_
>>have the right to hold ideas, but that isn't the same thing.  The idea
>>that the Earth is round and the idea that it's flat do not have a
>>right to equal time in my mind as citizens of the community of ideas,
>>and I'm free to exile the latter to mental Siberia, never to allow it
>>to return unless it brings truly extraordinary evidence of its
>>innocence of the crime of falsehood.  To weigh every idea in the
>>balance of one's judgment is one thing.  But, to stretch a metaphor to
>>the breaking point, it's quite another to take an idea which one has
>>convicted of falsehood, drag it back, dress it in elegant clothing,
>>and attempt to insinuate it into other peoples' mental communities.
>>The wise may recognize the blackguard for what he is, but might justly
>>consider it the equivalent of your recommending a known thief to their
>>service without suggesting that they lock up the good silver first.
>>(Note that if one believed that the idea was on the up and up, and was
>>simply using poor judgement, that would be another matter.)"

>  Fortunately, ideas are not necessarily guilty or innocent.  In some
>sense they even do have rights (or rather, people who enforce these
>"rights").  Look at the PC issue:  people who basically believe the PC
>platform saw other people believing it just because it was PC, and 
>argued the other side.  I think it comes down to the fact that I consider
>any well thought out opinion better than any randomly instilled one.
>It is more important to me that I, and others, think clearly about issues
>than it is that we end up believing anything in particular.  To that
>end, thought provocing art is more valuable to be that art whose positions
>I agree with. 

	"Where did I disagree with this?  It's not as if there's any
lack of people arguing a plethora of ideas.  Nor is it wrong to defend
an idea one disagrees with-- but there is a difference between
defending another's right to hold an idea and asserting its truth.
And clearly, if one does not yet hold an opinion on a certain issue,
one is not lying by exploring both sides.  But, again, one is just as
responsible for what one portrays as truth in fiction as for what one
maintains in nonfiction.  Thus, one could say, `Perhaps the Nazis had
legitimate grievances against the Jews, and thus were justified in
killing them'-- but someone who said that should expect to offend
people (in my opinion, justly).  For the same person to write a story
set in the 1920's with universally villainous Jews and universally
heroic Nazis, and to finish the book with a noble participant in the
Beer Hall Putsch swearing vengeance upon the Jews, and an epilogue
showing him personally turning on the gas to kill his tormentors, is
pretty much equivalent.  (I'm using crude examples, because artistic
subtlety would require talent and a novel's length.)  Quite possibly
an interesting character study, but the character is being portrayed
against a background which is implied to bear some resemblance to
actual Germany in the actual 1920's.  And thus, the author can expect
and deserve the same outcry from those offended, because he's saying
the same thing.

	"In addition, while I prefer _people_ who think out their
opinions to _people_ who hold ideas in blind faith, I won't extend
that preference to ideas themselves.  I'd rather encounter someone who
had never questioned kindness to strangers than someone who had
reasoned her way to the belief that cruelty was enjoyable, and
therefore to be engaged in if she could get away with it.  I'd prefer
still more someone who had weighed kindness and cruelty and had solid
reasons for preferring the former, certainly."

>  This debate shows up in many places.  Consider the movie 9 1/2 Weeks.
>Very few people enjoy the movie in the narrow sense of being made happy by
>it.  People seem to fall into two groups:  those who hate the movie because
>of what it portrayed, and those who enjoyed it because it gave them insight
>into something different ( if still unpleasant ).

	"I've seen _9 1/2 Weeks_.  My impression of it, at least, was
a film which showed (to some extent) how the main characters chose to
engage in the behavior which they did, but the film itself was still
"outside".  I think the movie would have been somewhat different if it
had been made by people who honestly thought that the characters'
behavior was laudable and enjoyable, rather than, at best, someone
else's cup of tea.  _9 1/2 Weeks_ was an almost clinical look at
something different from what both the artists and the expected
audience considered normal behavior-- sort of like non-fans making a
movie about an sf convention, or non-members making a movie about a
religion.  (Note that in this context, normal is used to denote
"typical" rather than "good".)  The theme I saw in it, anyway, was
"This exists" rather than "Isn't this neat?", and that's not an
untruth, even from the perspective of people who don't share a taste
for it.  Conversely, a tale which said, "this is the _only_ way to
_really_ express love" might well be lying, or at least misleading--
and note that there's a difference between what _characters_ say and
the theme of the story they're in, so that a sympathetic character
saying something like that is not the same thing as making this a
theme.  Now, if there were many characters attempting to pursue more
typical relationships, all of whom were failing, and some couples
discovered that they could rekindle their love with S&M, while all
those who rejected this were miserable... do you see?  Now the film
isn't just saying something about the characters, or about some
people-- it's suggesting a truth about people in general, by what it
chooses to show, and what it doesn't.  And an because art is a
voluntary act, an artist is as responsible for what he chooses to show
and not show, and what themes he conveys, as he is for anything else
he says or does."

Michael


-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Workers of the world, forgive me.
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 You had more to lose than I thought."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Karl Marx (1990) as imagined by
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Jim Koncz (konc@midway.uchicago.edu)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans