Subject:
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Re: debates (was: John Leo's opinion of "The West Wing")
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 7 Oct 2002 14:18:06 GMT
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Viewed:
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1252 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
> When I read a book, I am likely to talk about it, or alter my future reading
> based on that read. So it has changed my behavior whether or not there are
> social messages involved. So I guess I'm leaning toward intent as the primary
> defining factor.
>
> An author might write about some alternative social institution as a curiosity
> for his story, but if there is no attempt to promote that (or the converse)
> institution, I don't think it's reasonable to call it propaganda.
These two paragraphs are the crux of the issue, for me. We might add a
third permutation and ask: if the author creates a work intended to stir
social change, but it doesn't, is it still propaganda? That seems like a
suitable opposite of your second paragraph.
Everything that I've read on the subject, as well as all my thinking about
it, leads me to determine that authorial intent is close to meaningless,
while the interpretation of the collective readership is nearly paramount.
This may be less true for non-fiction works such as The Constitution, but
I'm still not sure about that.
In any case, a fiction writer should be able to divorce her own
political/social/economic views from her writing--that's part of why it's an
art rather than merely a catharsis or regurgitation. It's really no
different from divorcing oneself from the characters one creates.
Similarly, an actor is said to be "good" when he "vanishes" into the
character--the personality of the actor is unguessable from the role he
portrays. But that's not to say that the author can't include his own
views, but effective fiction writing should leave the reader unable to
determine conclusively what the writer's views are, and those views are in
any case secondary to the work at hand.
Reading Heinlein, for example, one might conclude that he's a repressed
misogynist with little knack for realistic dialogue. Or we might guess that
L. Neil Smith suffers from so-called "Libertarian macho flash." Or we might
observe that the writers of The West Wing are culpable puppets of a
socialist agenda. Or we might note that Steven Soderbergh's 2+ hour
commercial for the DEA suggests that Soderbergh is on the gov't payroll.
But how do we know any of these things? We infer them based on our
perceptions of the artwork, and we apply those perceptions to the people who
created those works. Is that valid? Probably about as valid as a Rorschach
(or Myers-Briggs!) test.
Maybe Heinlein was deliberately writing bad dialogue to poke fun at the
sci-fi genre. Maybe Smith is actually a rabid supporter of gun control, and
his unrestrained writing is intended to caricature the views of
pro-gun-rights activists. The point is that, judging solely from the
artists' works, we have no way to conclude what the artists' true views
really are. We may *think* that we can make that determination, but the
best you can hope to say is "in this particular work, I perceive that artist
X conveyed an attitude of Y."
> Houghton Mifflin Company says that propaganda is "the systematic propagation
> of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of
> those advocating such a doctrine or cause."
>
> I don't like when edumacators make the claim that by teaching kids about
> sexuality, we are endorsing sexual activity.
I agree absolutely. What kills me is that it often seems that the same
people who condemn sex education as pro-sex propaganda are the same ones who
say that gun education reduces a child's likelihood of mishandling a gun.
The former is as ridiculous as the latter is sensible (and I'm not being
sarcastic!).
> The contradiction with the dictionary definition (in the case of books, or
> sex ed) comes from the "systematic" and "doctrine" bits, I think.
Yeah, that's weird. I don't see why propaganda needs to be systematic or
doctrinal. I mean, at what point does it qualify as systematic as opposed
to incidental or repetitive? Sure, it *can* be systematic, like the ongoing
propaganda machines trying to convince everyone that a cellphone or an SUV
is vital to survival. But it can also be a once-and-done infodump that
subsequently takes on a life of its own.
Dave!
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