Hacker News Reader

Comment by zogrodea | Hacker News Reader

Your second paragraph reminds of Aristotle's counter to Plato in one instance.

The debate was about whether media (poetry, plays) should be allowed. Plato thought, no, because poetry and other media burden the audience with emotions that have no value in practical life.

Aristotle countered that the poem has a "payoff" which relieves these emotions generated by reading the poem, so that the audience feels less emotionally burdened by the time it ends.

I particularly like R. G. Collingwood's historical commentary on their debate in The Principles of Art (published 1938), where he talks about our addiction to entertainment and being trapped in a vicious cycle ("one more episode").

View on HN

Yep, and this is called catharsis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsis

For more on Plato's thoughts on aesthetics:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-aesthetics/

I wouldn't say he was critical of poetry because they weren't "valuable in practical life" as Plato certainly wasn't a pragmatist. It's more that he thought the imitative arts didn't give true knowledge (i.e., a poet talking about war doesn't have actual true knowledge of war) and that poetry/literature often has bad role models that shouldn't be imitated by real people.

I used to find Plato's criticisms absurd and difficult to understand, but as media becomes more realistic, more influential, and more willing to display unethical characters in a sympathetic light for the sake of "the market" or "storytelling" I think he is probably correct at some level.

I'm thinking of the countless shows which glorify violence, cheating, drug smuggling, and so forth. It's not clear that glorifying these things in the media leads to them being acted out in real life, but even if it doesn't: that still seems like a massive sense of cognitive dissonance, wherein the cultural products of a society are only tenuously related to its real-world values.

I think Plato's argument is best illustrated by the TV show How TV Ruined Your Life by Charlie Brooker (the creator of Black Mirror). Each episode covers different topics like technology, love, etc. which television has completely warped.

It's not even about glorifying some of the worst aspects of humanity, it's about all of our expectations. My favorite concrete example is child birth: it's always portrayed as a quick procedure in the vast majority of TV shows, less than a few minutes from water breaking to the baby popping out. Nothing could be further from the truth and a lot of women get a nasty surprise when they get pregnant and an OBGYN explains what to expect.

Consider, in a related vein, what happens when things are just omitted.

Miscarriages are an extremely common phenomenon for humans. Yet while our stories about reproduction feature endless variations of the conception, pregnancy, childbirth and child raising parts of the process, very little mention is ever made of miscarriages.

As a result, when they happen (which they do a lot), they come as a real shock for people who have not otherwise been exposed to this detail of the human condition, even though they are really quite normal, perhaps even mundane.

Every single FDA vaccine prescribing guide says "All pregnancies have a risk of birth defect, loss, or other adverse outcomes. In the U.S. general population, the estimated background risk of major birth defects and miscarriage in clinically recognized pregnancies is 2% to 4% and 15% to 20%, respectively" or something very similar. At least try to calibrate your world model for something this important.

> wherein the cultural products of a society are only tenuously related to its real-world values.

I don't know if Plato does this too, but I'm pretty certain you're making a mistake here. Most (almost all, I would argue) of the shows that feature violence, cheating, drug smuggling etc. present them as cautionary tales: do <this> and <that> will probably happen to you, even if there's a brief period between when you think things are going well.

Human cultures are full of cautionary tales, and in this sense these "countless shows" are not glorifying their themes, but continuing in the tradition of telling us "don't do this (probably)".

This is a common rebuttal, but I don’t think it holds up under much scrutiny. People idolize the charismatic protagonists, they don’t look at them as cautionary tales. The reaction is “that’s cool,” not “I guess he didn’t win in the end.”

Fight Club is a good example. Tyler Durden is clearly the most charismatic character and has “inspired” a whole lot of viewers, even if he loses in the end.

It is difficult to deal with examples like Fight Club, where the audience simply interprets the entire story in a different way than the author.

Should an author be responsible when they create a what they intend to be a cautionary tale only to find that it is interpreted as a celebratory tale?

I don’t think the author is the relevant person here. The filmmakers are, and they pretty clearly chose to make Durden a charismatic figure and Jack an awkward one. And of course they would - it makes for a better story and overall film.

Beyond that, I think most films/shows are functionally the same. No one wants to watch an ugly, uncharismatic actor just…fail. That doesn’t make for a good story. It seems pretty obvious to me that the vast majority shows are produced based on the quality of the story, not on instilling ethical values. Otherwise why would something like Dexter even exist?

Durden is, according the author at least, an imaginary character. In his mind at least that overrides the "charisma" level. So make of that what you will.

People preferences for story telling is partly why the really good story tellers are so reverred: they make us comfortable, engaged even, in stories in which our natural inclinations would lead us towards different outcomes. We don't like watching ugly, uncharismatic actors fail, but the good stories keep us engaged when the pretty, charismatic actors get their just rewards for bad behavior.

I have no idea why anyone would think that Dexter is not a tale about moral values, and the "right ones" too ...

"Responsible" is a highly overloaded word, but if nothing else it's a call for writers to be cautious in how they present things.

I'm working on a story with a (mostly) sympathetic protagonist who does some awful things and ultimately undergoes moral meltdown. One of my beta readers pointed out that my ending, bleak as it was, sort of rewarded the protagonist by giving her catharsis and some vindication, if not an actual happy ending. I took that as the top priority from that round of feedback and made sure to tweak the framing.

Did I succeed? Maybe. Can I absolutely prevent people from taking the wrong message? No. But I can try, and at least cut off the obvious routes to misinterpretation, learning from previous examples (Fight Club is actually not too far off in spirit). I think this is a moral responsibility of anyone making art, especially stories, for consumption by others: you at least have to try, where "try" includes a good faith effort to learn from common mistakes.

Thank you for your service.

Service? Thank me when it's published and the real life feedback comes in. Maybe. :D

> I'm thinking of the countless shows which glorify violence, cheating, drug smuggling, and so forth. It's not clear that glorifying these things in the media leads to them being acted out in real life, but even if it doesn't: that still seems like a massive sense of cognitive dissonance, wherein the cultural products of a society are only tenuously related to its real-world values.

Remember the good ol' days?

> All criminal action had to be punished, and neither the crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the audience, or the audience must at least be aware that such behavior is wrong, usually through "compensating moral value".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code

Reply on news.ycombinator.com