Well, I'd say there's a distinct difference between, on one hand, *depiction* of modes of thought & actions that are reprehensible, and, on the other, *endorsing* such things in the text.
But the depiction is in itself a mode of thought. If I have a story depicting a character doing something morally distasteful, then going to sleep in her beloved's arms, that can be interpreted as a condoning of the actions, no? Unless her action is universally distasteful, in which case the story might be interpreted as satire (e.g. 1984--my mind's still somewhat on my thesis). Whether that's what the story "really" means is more or less irrelevant, because it can be reliably predicted that a number of readers will be reading the story as making that moral statement.
Or to put it another way--it's not that Mrs. Rochester is mad in Jane Eyre (to continue to use that as my example despite never having read it) that is problematic from a feminist perspective, but the way Charlotte Bronte depicts her. Her depiction of the madwoman in the attic represents a mode of thought which is sexist, heterosexist (probably), and patriarchal.
When one reads a story (or watches a TV show), one is invited to frame moral issues in certain ways in which one might not if the only method of persuasion was rational argument. I read my stories and see them as framing moral issues in these ways, and am not always fond of the way in which these framings work.
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Date: 2006-05-18 04:24 pm (UTC)Well, I'd say there's a distinct difference between, on one hand, *depiction* of modes of thought & actions that are reprehensible, and, on the other, *endorsing* such things in the text.
But the depiction is in itself a mode of thought. If I have a story depicting a character doing something morally distasteful, then going to sleep in her beloved's arms, that can be interpreted as a condoning of the actions, no? Unless her action is universally distasteful, in which case the story might be interpreted as satire (e.g. 1984--my mind's still somewhat on my thesis). Whether that's what the story "really" means is more or less irrelevant, because it can be reliably predicted that a number of readers will be reading the story as making that moral statement.
Or to put it another way--it's not that Mrs. Rochester is mad in Jane Eyre (to continue to use that as my example despite never having read it) that is problematic from a feminist perspective, but the way Charlotte Bronte depicts her. Her depiction of the madwoman in the attic represents a mode of thought which is sexist, heterosexist (probably), and patriarchal.
When one reads a story (or watches a TV show), one is invited to frame moral issues in certain ways in which one might not if the only method of persuasion was rational argument. I read my stories and see them as framing moral issues in these ways, and am not always fond of the way in which these framings work.