Meta: Monsters, Morality, and Mimesis

[alixtii]

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 type

Who(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.

Comments

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I think my interaction with texts "as if they were real" extends to issues of ethics. I get frustrated with compromising of ethics in police interrogation scenes on tv shows, but equally I see rhetoric of "greater good" and ends justifying means in, for example, Joss shows, and I think, "Oh my liberal friends who get so uncomfortable when I make similar arguments IRL must be so not pleased." Okay, actually my immediate reaction is to interrogate what political statement Joss is making. But I have the priormentioned thoughts later/as well.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

"Oh my liberal friends who get so uncomfortable when I make similar arguments IRL must be so not pleased."

Well, I'm not pleased and am deeply uncomfortable, but fandom in general (which skews liberal, no?) seems to not care. So I guess what I'm wondering, why the hell not?

Okay, actually my immediate reaction is to interrogate what political statement Joss is making.

Mine too, insofar as "Joss" we mean the author-function of the text rather than the biographical human being. I have a pretty good sense what Joss Whedon the man would think of Bush's wiretapping, but I have serious doubts what the author-function of Buffy that I construct when I watch the episodes "would" think. And this is the same problem I have with my own fiction: I know what I think about various things, but they seem to be at odds with the views of the author-function "Alixtii O'Krul" which I construct when I read my own fic. And I'm just not sure how to respond to this fact, which I find in some ways problematic.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

My impression definitely is that fandom skews liberal. I can't speak to BSG much since I've never seen it, but I know for BtVS/Angel and even Firefly the "villains" are constructed in such a way that viewers are much more comfortable calling them Evil than they are in the political world of their own lives. (I could get off on a tangent about how the American Left has demonized the Bush Administration and often reflexively defends anything that Administration is opposing -- and opposes anything that Administration does.) Also, much media is very anti-authoritarian, which I think is a theme American liberals are very comfortable with. Additionally, that comfort can cause said liberals to gloss over the fact that the anti-authoritarian people are enacting their own authority/power in sometimes problematic ways. We are cultured to root for the underdog, and it's very easy for us to support ethically shady things when they are in utilized in opposition to something we view as reprehensible. (There is also the argument that Those In Power control the game so the Good Guys are forced to cheat in order to have Good ultimately triumph. Not an ethics compatible with Christianity I would argue, but one many people both secular and religious often don't problematize.)

Watching S7 BtVS for example, with its talk of war etc., I very much felt that the writers were making a statement about what was going on in the political context of the writers/viewers. It seemed like the writers wanted us to sympathize with Buffy, however, which I had difficulty getting my head around both because it was difficult to do so (cue lots of meta talk about how Buffy has never been trained to be a leader) and also because mapping the S7 conflict onto our own political landscape she often seemed to be a stand-in for figures I felt confident Joss disagreed with very strongly.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I know for BtVS/Angel and even Firefly the "villains" are constructed in such a way that viewers are much more comfortable calling them Evil than they are in the political world of their own lives.

So killing (or whatever) is more acceptable when it is vampires at the gates than it is when it is terrorists? Perhaps this sort of inconsistency an be best explained by knee-jerk liberalism, but I'd like to think there is something else going on. (Also, I don't think fandom is that liberal.)

Also, much media is very anti-authoritarian, which I think is a theme American liberals are very comfortable with.

Doesn't account for the appeal of President Roslin (for which I can't of course hold you responsible)--or even President Bartlett at some key moments--but yes, that does seem to be some key element. Which does suggest that maybe there is a deeper, more complex and more subtle morality at work? But...

Additionally, that comfort can cause said liberals to gloss over the fact that the anti-authoritarian people are enacting their own authority/power in sometimes problematic ways.

Exactly! And that's precisely the situation with my Watcher!verse Dawn--she's become an institutional power in her own right, getting to decide who lives and who dies. (And I write about that because of course that has its appeal as a manifestation of the will to power.)

And I think there are plenty of times when within the show Buffy and/or Angel set themselves up as an institutional (counter-)power; Buffy, for example, has authority by virtue of being the Slayer--an authority which the show not only fails to problematize, but which season 7 valorizes in the (relatively nonsensical) outcome to the Slayer mutiny.

I understand why Joss made some of the decisions he did; after all he was making art, not propaganda. (Although season 7, which really did begin to feel like propaganda in the way it forced our loyalties, left me scratching my head. But I do think there were fannish voices which did call him on it.) But that opens up the question of whose artistic standards we are using and whether objective aesthetic values can be said to exist, and how those values are caught up in our ethical values. And I just don't know the answers to those questions.