Culture Does Fiction/Entertainment Need To “Teach People” In Order To Be Great?

CarlManvers2019

CarlManvers2019

Writers Blocked Douchebag
StormEagle said:
Since when have the left ever cared about what Jesus thinks?

Them trying to use a religious figure as a veil for their actions is the absolute height of hypocrisy, especially using one from a religion with such stringent moral guidelines and principles.

(Am personally non-religious. Otherwise known as Sunday Christian.)

And why the hell would anyone give a shit about what comic characters say? That’s like saying I should get a motorcycle, a shotgun, and take up bounty hunting because I really admire Lobo.
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CarlManvers2019 said:
Because “good fiction” is supposed to “teach you” or something

Man it’s weird how these guys who’d normally be with us, telling Jack Thompson off, are acting like a bunch of weird adults who want to use entertainment to make children “better” instead of just acknowledging fun as fun

If you liked X-Men as a kid and still do, you’re supposed to go with everything of the FarLeft calls fighting racism and bigotry as well as accept things like how they made Trump into MODOK

Towards a New Nerd Culture – Honey Badger Brigade

honeybadgerbrigade.com honeybadgerbrigade.com

They wanted “nerd culture” to be important, they did this by trying to go and make themselves considered a “relevant” art like Les Miserables or Black Klansmen
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[QUOTE="StormEagle, post: 14509, member: 574"] ...That’s bullshit though. Fiction doesn’t have to have a higher meaning or purpose. It is there to, first and foremost, entertain. That’s the entire purpose of fiction, to distract us all from our shitty little lives and give some form of escape from the daily grind. I want to read about the land of Mordor, or escape to the Death Star and see Obi-wan fighting Vader, I want to read about the Artic wastes and the city of the elder things or R’yleh in the pacific. I want to read about glorious mountains and high action fights or see the Emperors astartes fighting on the worlds of the Istvaan system. I don’t read or watch fiction to get a fucking morality lesson. Not to say fiction can’t have a moral, but that moral has to be wrapped in something actually entertaining. Otherwise it’s just preaching. [/QUOTE]
 
Here’s the thread regarding fiction me and @StormEagle were talking about, now anybody interested, come in

This partially related to how SJW’s go on about how a number of the entertainment we enjoy were “always political” and “taught people” like X-Men which sorta mutate into how we shouldn’t complain about SJWism

That said, I think this sort of problem about “teaching people” is a mutation from a bunch of romanticist-esque douchebags who wanted the fiction they enjoy to sound “smart” and keep over philosophizing over it like the guys from that fanfiction.net Subforum called “In Flight” and their obsession with Shirou Emiya
 
I suppose it in part depends on where we draw the line between teaching and preaching. The Lord of the Rings, if you will, also teaches its readers and audience a lot of things (the value of companionship and friendship, just leadership, corruption, dedication and steadfastedness in the face of overwhelming adversity, sticking to your virtues, and a whole host of other points), but I doubt that for the overwhelming majority of those enjoying it these were anywhere in the forefront of the piece.

By and large, maybe one can sum it up like this: good entertainment can teach people, but to do so the teaching part must not be the main part. It can piggyback on the stories and characters, but it cannot openly command either.
 
I get the idea of escapist fun being the point of fiction. I personally tend to hew to what Chuck Sonnenburg (SFDebris) listed as what he thought were the three points of writing good stories, namely, the writer needs to do at least one, if not more, of three things: entertain, inform, or inspire.

Obviously fiction that only exists to entertain has merit. The idea that every bit of fiction in every medium must teach or promote some kind of virtue is highhanded.

But you can't take that too far in the other direction either. In the direction of "fiction only exists to entertain us and anything more is preaching and annoying". Some of the best fiction does have a "message" to it. The value is in how organic the message is to the story, such that the viewer/reader isn't being preached to.

And on the point of the X-Men... yeah, this is one case of a group that's usually had at least some political element through their existence. Some of their classic stories, like "God Loves, Man Kills", directly deal with the issue of prejudice and bigotry, and it's long been a backdrop of the team. The identified minority's changed, obviously. Originally it was racial minority, then around the 90s and especially the aughts it became sexual minority. But the element's usually been there. Trying to argue it's escapist fiction turned political is sorta wrong.

And I see I've been ninjaed a bit, but the point I think is the same: there are "points" in fiction, but good fiction makes them organic to the story.
 
I honestly wonder how X-Men would change, I think it and the rest of Marvel are on a sort of Warpath for anybody remotely against the Far Left

And really, it’s more complicated since even there looks to be stuff like there being valid reasons to complain about certain “minorities” and that IRL the Western Left doesn’t look to like East Asians so much
 
X-Men's minority angle was always a bit hamfisted, given that the comparison hinges on the fact that the minority in question is a powerless group subjected to the whims of the majority. That idea loses a lot of its narrative oomph! when it's applied to people who literally have the power to flatten city blocks, mass mind control you, or kill you just by touching you!

I mean, I know why the comparison is drawn - it just doesn't add up.
CarlManvers2019 said:
And really, it’s more complicated since even there looks to be stuff like there being valid reasons to complain about certain “minorities” and that IRL the Western Left doesn’t look to like East Asians so much.
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I've gotten the impression "the Left" only likes minorities it can look down upon in a sort of racism of low expectations. Kinda hard to do that when the people in question tend to have, on average, a slightly higher mean IQ, incredible work ethic, and group cohesion not based on clan culture but national identities.
 
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Culsu said:
I suppose it in part depends on where we draw the line between teaching and preaching. The Lord of the Rings, if you will, also teaches its readers and audience a lot of things (the value of companionship and friendship, just leadership, corruption, dedication and steadfastedness in the face of overwhelming adversity, sticking to your virtues, and a whole host of other points), but I doubt that for the overwhelming majority of those enjoying it these were anywhere in the forefront of the piece.

By and large, maybe one can sum it up like this: good entertainment can teach people, but to do so the teaching part must not be the main part. It can piggyback on the stories and characters, but it cannot openly command either.
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That’s basically what I was getting at.

Morals are incedental to a work of fiction. What matters is the story and characters. If you don’t have a good story or engaging characters, any moral point you’re trying to get across will just look ham handed and forced.

Lord of the Rings is, like you said, a wonderful example of this.

Let’s take Boromir for instance. Throughout the entirety of the story, he is depicted as a good, if brash, man that is just trying to do the right thing for his people. This opens up the doorway to temptation and the whispers of the ring, and eventually his assault on Frodo and his attempt to steal the ring.

It’s a classic tale of good intentions leading one down the wrong path. If Boromir has been more like Aragorn and recognized his own weakness and realized the full danger of the ring, he might have been able to resist. But desperation lead him down the wrong path and he was only redeemed by his heroic death in defense of Pippin and Merry.

And Lord of the Rings is just chock full of stuff like this.

It’s good story telling ,i.e entertaining story telling, that gets the message through organically and with subtlety.

And those are two words that some people seem to have forgotten. I have no problem with there being a moral to a story, I just don’t want to be preached at by the writer.
 
Culsu said:
X-Men's minority angle was always a bit hamfisted, given that the comparison hinges on the fact that the minority in question is a powerless group subjected to the whims of the majority. That idea loses a lot of its narrative oomph! when it's applied to people who literally have the power to flatten city blocks, mass mind control you, or kill you just by touching you!
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TBF, last I checked in Marvel, most mutants are not that powerful and vary in usefulness when it comes to their abilities and can be killed with regular knives and bullets

One thing me and the guys on our sister sites can agree on, is that whether its for superheroes in-general or just mutants, Marvel Civilians ARE asshole-idiots who are extremely ungrateful and are only really brave when they subconsciously know that the guys they’re attacking will NOT hit back

They attack “Rogues” and Superheroes, they do NOT attack Supervillains
 
First and foremost, it has to be enjoyable.

If it teaches, fine. If it doesn't teach, fine. What is not fine is something that gets tossed, put down, closed, turned off or tuned out.

Frankly, if the story/movie/whatever is a turgid slog, not only is your message not communicated to the audience, you may well put the audience off that medium forever. Lots of adults stop reading for pleasure due to school reading killing the joy.
 
CarlManvers2019 said:
TBF, last I checked in Marvel, most mutants are not that powerful and vary in usefulness when it comes to their abilities and can be killed with regular knives and bullets

One thing me and the guys on our sister sites can agree on, is that whether its for superheroes in-general or just mutants, Marvel Civilians ARE asshole-idiots who are extremely ungrateful and are only really brave when they subconsciously know that the guys they’re attacking will NOT hit back

They attack “Rogues” and Superheroes, they do NOT attack Supervillains
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True enough, I was taking the high powered examples to bring the point across. That being said, even lower-tiered mutants by and large have advantages due to their abilities that put them far ahead of ordinary baseline humans. Yes, Samuel Colt was the great equalizer, but what does this make a man who has a colt and can teleport behind you in a firefight, for example? ;)
 
Darth Robbhi said:
First and foremost, it has to be enjoyable.

If it teaches, fine. If it doesn't teach, fine. What is not fine is something that gets tossed, put down, closed, turned off or tuned out.

Frankly, if the story/movie/whatever is a turgid slog, not only is your message not communicated to the audience, you may well put the audience off that medium forever. Lots of adults stop reading for pleasure due to school reading killing the joy.
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I remember more than a decade back, when I was put into this extra-school by my parents and I was made to read some Magic Treeehouse books

I was repeatedly stopped up to certain pages and had to do some sort of analysis of them and make an essay.....robbed the fun out of them for me

Say, ever play NiER Automata? I did, I know there are themes and ones that people just makeup or look for from them.....all I really pid attention to was the characters I grew to like, 2B’s ass, A2’s ass, exploding those two robot girls for fanservice and mowing down enemies for fun

Didn’t care so much about all that philosophizing
 
Culsu said:
True enough, I was taking the high powered examples to bring the point across. That being said, even lower-tiered mutants by and large have advantages due to their abilities that put them far ahead of ordinary baseline humans. Yes, Samuel Colt was the great equalizer, but what does this make a man who has a colt and can teleport behind you in a firefight, for example? ;)
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Yeah, but most Muggles look to almost subconsciously know when odds are that the “muties” aren’t going to use a gun or whatever is near them in conjunction with their powers

The moment they do, they either join X-Men Villains or become Supervillains.....and you do not fuck with the latter, they commit mass murder very casually
 
Scottty said:
In order to be a success, fiction has to keep people's attention. The story and the characters have to be something the reader cares about.
Lord of the Rings does not preach about the dangers of ambition. It shows examples.
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I think even SJW’s can do that, I mean Mark Waid did make a Donald Trump Expy called “King Baby” and others strawmanned anyone they could decide to call a Nazi or “Alt-Right” by making them walking stereotypes
 
If you start by trying to "have a message" your story will flop.
Start with a good story, with interesting characters and an imaginative setting, and you will also be presenting a message without really trying. What message it will be will depend on you.
With some people, the message they present is that they cannot create a good story.
 
Scottty said:
If you start by trying to "have a message" your story will flop.
Start with a good story, with interesting characters and an imaginative setting, and you will also be presenting a message without really trying. What message it will be will depend on you.
With some people, the message they present is that they cannot create a good story.
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I think it’s even possible to “have a message” as more of a side-effect of the writing or as a coincidence

Kengan Asura was a series mostly just about guys beating the crap out of each other to decide who’d be the head of Japan’s economy

But I think it did give one lesson, particularly in the 56 year old MC who was friends with the 28 year old MC who was a fighter

“You can still change, even in an older age, past your younger days”

Okay, admittedly that was for like maybe 3 or 4 characters but it was evident and pulled at your heart strings
 
I want to be entertained. Sometimes it might teach me something. Sometimes it might be the gang from always sunny running some kind of scam.

No, it doesn't need to teach anything to be great.
 
Francis Urquhart said:
For any given person, the realistic line is quite simple. If they agree with the content, its teaching. If they disagree with the content, its preaching.
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But, if you are at that point, you've already failed.

The point of the old fashioned social issue novel, like Uncle Tom's Cabin, is to seduce, not bludgeon.
 
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