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: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 06:57:58 GMT

In article <d-mm3lm.aahz@netcom.com> aahz@netcom.com (Aahzmandius) writes:

>Having pilloried you, let me now play Devil's Advocate, and see if I can
>re-state your case in a meaningful way:
>
>You are making two assertions here.
>
>1)  That an artist can affect the thoughts, emotions, and opinions of
>other people through the medium of their works.

	"That seems a fair summary of what I'm saying, though I
reserve the right to bite the head off of anyone who, after all I
wrote on the subject, takes me to mean that people are incapable of
thinking for themselves or evaluating what they experience through
art.  :-) With that proviso, though, I'll agree that I'm claiming that
artists can affect thoughts, emotions, and opinions."

>2)  Because of that power, the artist has the responsibility to remain 
>true to their own internal philosphy.

	"This is more problematic.  I would agree with it, but I think
that its the interpretation of this idea which is causing some of
the problems.  Remaining true to one's internal philosophy is not
equivalent to refusing to explore philosophies one does not agree
with, nor to portraying those who disagree with one universally in a
bad light, and those who agree universally in a good one, or that
views one disagrees with are totally without merit.

	"The whole thing hinges upon my assertion that all works of
art assert that certain things are true, and that this is different
from those things which they create as explicit fiction-- that stories,
for example, claim truths which, for the reader to understand the
work, he must accept at least provisionally.  Some of these are pretty
non-controversial-- even in a fantasy, if a normal human goes without
food for a year, and no magic or other such aid is given to him, he
can be expected to die.  If he does not die, not because the author is
deliberately creating a magical world in which food is less necessary,
or because humans are hardier, but simply because the author, knowing
better, chooses to go on with the plot out of laziness or the
assumption that the reader won't know the difference, the author is
deliberately fostering an untruth.  This is not the same as creating a
fantasy deliberately for the purpose of a story-- if the author _was_
deliberately creating a magic which made starvation take longer, or a
hardier human race, he has an obligation to make this explicit or
implicit in his artwork.  Similarly, a science fiction mystery cannot
allow its solution to hinge on the detective hearing a satellite
explode from his spacecraft-- if it did, and the author knew better,
he would be lying about the way space is.

	"Can you see the difference between the story saying this
imaginary detective lives in an imaginary future and rides an
imaginary spacecraft, and saying that the sound of exploding
satellites can carry in orbit?  This is not a scientific text, after
all.  No one is going to look this story up as a reference on physical
fact.  But nonetheless, there is a fundamental difference between,
say, having the plot hinge on the existence of Bat Durston, fictional
hero of the space frontier, and having the plot hinge on the "fact" that
normal water, with no scientifictional plot device, freezes at 50
degrees centigrade.

	"Now, _if_ I've made the case that fiction asserts certain
physical and biological matters as truth, rather than fiction, it may
be possible to continue on.  (You'll forgive me if my faith in my
powers of explanation has been shaken.)  I maintain that authors also
believe that certain epistomological and moral insights are true, even
if those are that nothing is truly knowable and that there is no
ultimate meaning for the words `good' and `evil'.  I consider an
artist to have the same obligation to truth, as far as she knows it,
in these areas as she does to truth in physical reality.  So just as a
physicist-author could honestly write about a world in which ftl
travel was possible, an Islamic author could write about a world in
which Persian dualism was true, as fictional constructs.  _But_, the
situation would be different if each was writing a story about
characters in which physical and theological reality, respectively,
were implicitly indicated to be the same as in our world.

	"Similarly, it might be possible, somehow, to construct a
culture in which date rape was appropriate behavior-- but if one
writes about twentieth century America (assuming that the author has
clue one about women in twentieth century America) then one is lying
if one writes a story which indicates that a majority of women are
dying to be date raped.  One may well be lying if one writes about
_one_ woman who is dying to be date raped, if the story gives no
indication as to how or why she differs from the norm, or even that
she does, while suggesting that her female friends agree with her, and
so on.

	"Of course everything depends on context.  If I were to say,
in response to an atrocity in Yugoslavia, `Well, it's not the first time
someone was impaled in the Balkans,' you, lacking clues as to
inflection and experience with my personality, might well think me
callous and uncaring.  Snark, on the other hand, might recognize this
as a sardonic and sarcastic reference to a phrase from my Byzantine
History professor, and as such an expression of anger and frustration
at what's going on there.  Thus, to you I might have conveyed the
(false, to my mind) claim, `faraway deaths don't matter'.  To the
audience which I'd direct it to, though (i.e. the group of people who
would catch the reference without need of explanation) it would convey
the (true, IMHO) claim that `this is horrible-- all the more so
because it has gone on there for so long', with a subcarrier of `we
must laugh at such things, as our only defense against impotent rage
or tears'.

	"I don't claim that an artist need be clairvoyant-- again,
Heinlein would not have been responsible if Charles Manson had really
used _Stranger in a Strange Land_ to create a murder cult.  But an
artist should be able to use her reason and experience to foresee the
probable audience of her work, and those truths which she asserts, in
the manner I explained above, should be _true_ to the best of her
knowledge about the world, and she should be able to reasonably expect
her _intended_ and _expected_ audience to be able to see those truths
clearly (though other audiences, less aware of the conventions and
assumptions inherent in her work, may fail to do so).  Subtlety is
appropriate when art is directed towards those who can appreciate it
(and there's certainly nothing wrong with art working on multiple
levels, like Shakespeare's slapstick for the masses and Latin puns for
the cognoscenti) but one shouldn't create subtlety with the _intent_
that the people whom one is attempting to communicate with (and art
_is_ communication, whatever else it is) will misunderstand.

	"I have a feeling I may have just moved the dust clouds around
rather than clearing them up, but I guess I might as well cost the net
hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, in finding out.  :-)"

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)


-- 
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)
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