I know, who’s ready for this, eh? Anyways, here we go.
When I was a kid, maybe 12 years old, I went to the Experience Music Project & Sci-fi Museum (EMP/SFM) in Seattle for the the first time. In the area where the SFM now puts their traveling exhibits, they had a then-permanent exhibit about the evolution of sci-fi throughout history. It touched on the common themes and morals and ideals, the fear of man being outpaced by technology, the morality of science that we didn’t yet exist and didn’t understand. It looked at sci-fi’s transition from space westerns to an actual genre of its own.
Part of that exhibit was a piece all about science fiction that predicted reality. This looked at maybe a dozen or more major sci-fi publications through time and the real-world science that followed. This included things like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein predicting organ transplants and multiple HG Wells works that predict multiple future science, including genetic engineering, lasers, and nuclear weapons (wherein he stated that a world govt would be the only thing to save us from nuclear annihilation). We’re not talking vague predictions, either. The World Set Free predicted and inspired the atomic bomb. Leo Szilard developed the chain reaction method of splitting the atom, thereby creating atomic energy. He wrote that HG Wells’ book both showed him the power of such technology to create a better society, as well as destroy it.
Links: BI about sci-fi predicting science || Telegraph about HG Wells’ predictions || BBC on atom bomb and Szilard
Remembering this exhibit today reminded me of a news flood shortly after the release of 50 Shades of Grey about a rise in sex-related injuries. Both in America and Britain, ER visits for foreign object removal absolutely jumped, and it was directly attributed to the release of the novel. Why would that be the case? Well, as a person who’s been in the BDSM community, I can tell you that 50SoG is terrible at accurate describing both toys and consent. It’s not enough to feed someone a new idea and failing information, even in fiction. There’s a reason the BDSM community largely attempted to distance itself, not wanting to be responsible for the thousands of potential injuries newbies could be faced with because they were lacking information.
It’s more than just the idea, though. 50SoG, despite its many problems, became a HUGE success. This not just meant the signing of the movie deal, but the release of merchandise. This included an entire line of branded sex toys. Among the more innocuous stuff like lube, sleep masks, and feather dusters came much more dangerous items like paddles, hand cuffs, and anal plugs. Hand cuffs alone can be dangerous when you do understand BDSM, but throw in a lackluster understanding of consent and safety like we see in 50SoG and that shit can easily become rape and other forms of serious bodily injury. Detractors might say “It’s just fiction, people can tell the difference!” but the BDSM community and many feminists were quick to point out that making that assumption comes with a serious risk. And they were right. Fiction or not, grievous bodily harm befell a lot of people because fiction gave them an idea but left out the context needed for safe execution.
Links: 50SoG Sex Toys || NY Times about rise of sex toy sales || Mirror about rise of 999 calls following book and movie releases || WaPo about jump in ER visits following book release in 2012 || The Atlantic about 50SoG and consent || The Guardian about BDSM feelings on the 50SoG movie
Fiction gives us ideas to explore and consider. Those ideas could be grand, romantic images of fantasy worlds, distant thoughts of a heroic quest, the morality of new sciences. Big, big ideas. It can also gives us little ideas to consider. What it would be like living in a new city or small town, how we would react to some tragedy in our life, the kind of interpersonal relationships we could have if we were just brave enough or bold enough to get out there.
Fiction affects reality in a very real way. You cry when you read a death scene? Fiction is affecting your very reality. You feel happy and relaxed reading a favorite book? Fiction is affecting your reality. You talk about some great idea or morality or social mores you read in a book with your friends? Fiction is affecting your reality.
In a sense, that can often be the point of fiction, science fiction especially. In grade school, we often read fairy tales that are meant to present young kids with “the moral of the story.” These fairy tales often exist for the express purpose of altering reality. It’s a neat, uniquely contained example of some bad behavior or action that wraps up perfectly. Consequences delivered, happily ever after. What better way to teach someone a moral idea? The details of the story don’t detract from the point like they would in real life, and things are clean-cut for children’s understanding. You can’t expect an 8 year-old to really grasp grey or complex morality, can you? Especially not when reality as a concept isn’t even universal, existing on several different levels and driven uniquely by different justifications.
Even more dangerous, fiction can seem like reality and subsequently be taken as such. Political publications are a perfect example of this. Many seem and sound very factual, but have no supporting evidence. Sadly, we often don’t check the facts on things we want to believe. The Oatmeal has a great comic about it that explains it better than I ever could: That can be found here.
This kind of fiction is insidious on purpose. But what about fiction that is insidious on accident? There is plenty of fiction out there that exists for the sake of empathy and identity; this is often the center of the debate around the impact of diversity in literary works and on screens. There was a reason Moonlight was so heralded as an exceptional example of diversity; it wasn’t just that the characters were black, it was also because the movie tonally encourages empathy with the characters. And tone is definitely a part of it. The way we say things, the way they are depicted, has a huge impact on how we understand and internalize those events.
Consider this: Why is it so weird to watch a comedy show without the laugh track? We can even watch bits we’ve laughed at before, only to find them utterly unenjoyable without the laugh track. Tone is another piece of information for the brain as much as dialogue and body language; it tells us how to perceive the information we’re being given. Tone is the concept behind a lot of news circuits and editing, even music. Consider the tone of conservative and liberal pundits interviewing each other: questions are often asked with deliberate flare and frustration or skepticism. The problem being that doing so inherently turns the listener against the interviewee even before there’s been a chance to answer. This leads to fabled “gotcha” moments like we often saw on Bill O’Reilly. What was said doesn’t matter as much as it sounding weak to the audience.
Links: NY Times about brain function during fiction || Pacific Standard about aggression influenced by fiction || The Guardian about fiction affecting empathy || BBC about religious children struggling to distinguish fictional and realistic stories || WaPo interview about dark fiction and teen brains || Psychology Today about fiction media and real-world consequences ||
We use tone to build empathy. We find that things can sound reasonable just because they are said calmly and with an air of authority, especially when we have no knowledge about the subject or evidence at hand to counter what’s being said. Consider how much false news stories are passed on on tumblr and facebook just because they sound legit. So many of us never even check the source!
This is how empathy can be created with tone. Take a topic that’s somewhat controversial and present it with soft music, gentle vocabulary, soft lighting. Now you’ve made your audience predisposed to understanding a scene exactly as you want them to. Remember soft focus in the 40s? Every time we saw soft focus around an actress’ face or a set, we knew that either romance or a dream sequence was likely to follow.
Tone is also how empathy becomes dangerous. A classic example is Birth of a Nation and the resurrection of the KKK. Despite having existed in almost no form in America since the 1870s, the KKK came roaring back to life in 1915 with the release of the movie, Birth of a Nation. In this movie, a freed slave is depicted as a thief and rapist and all around vile guy. The character is pursued, caught, and punished by KKK members. That same year, the Klan was re-established in Atlanta with only 15 members, their regalia based on the costumes in the movie. While the original post-confederacy Klan was almost entirely about anti-blackness, the rebirth version was focused on modern issues including anti-Catholicism and antisemitism, despite those values never being featured in the movie. Enrollment ballooned to an estimated 6 million members by 1924, but resistance crushed that number back to 30k by 1930.
It’s important to note that Birth of a Nation was based on the play The Clansman, which was a direct response to a play version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Three pro-clan books were written after Thomas Dixon Jr. saw the play and vowed to effectively rewrite the story in the manner he believed was historically accurate. He even “borrowed” characters from Uncle Tom’s Cabin and reskinned them in a positive light. This retort wasn’t just because Dixon was upset, but also because Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, had become quite famous and important nationally. While there were efforts to criticize it, it was largely perceived well and enabled many to empathize with the lives of slaves. The book created such a shift in national narrative about slavery that it has been credited with being one of the sparks starting the Civil War.
Links: Generic KKK Wiki || WaPo about BoaN reviving the KKK || SPLC about BoaN as KKK propaganda || Wiki about The Clansman || WaPo follow-up article about BoaN and The Clansman || Wiki about Uncle Tom’s Cabin || Wiki about the author of The Clansman || Harriet Beecher Stowe Center about impact of UTC
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t write tricky subject matter. We absolutely should! Writing exposes us to new ideas, understanding, information. However, the fiction that we write has to be tonally appropriate for the content we are writing. This is where 50SoG failed. Despite depicting an abusive relationship that had no consideration for consent, those elements weren’t tonally defined as bad, but rather romantic. Hence the push following the release of 50SoG and, to a lesser extent, Twilight to contextualize and tonally correct the events of the books. Fiction affects reality, and tone is partially how it does so, so we have to be careful about how we write and interpret fiction in our lives. The consequences of glorifying harmful content is all too real.
C.A. Jacobs
C.A. Jacobs 