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

[Francis Urquhart]

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.

Not necessarily, it depends on the audience. I would say that the audience for Uncle Tom's Cabin was probably more sophisticated than today's in that they could read a story, appreciate it as a story and absorb the lessons it presented. They may not agree with those lessons; they may reject them completely, but the appreciation of the story as a story is there. Today that isn't the situation. Today, if the story doesn't bludgeon the reader with the desired "lesson", then its dismissed by the SJW community with screaming abuse. If there is a lesson in there that isn't part of the desired doctrine then its "preaching" no matter how subtly its inserted. Today, stories aren't seduction, they're rape.

 

[Darth Robbhi]

Not necessarily, it depends on the audience. I would say that the audience for Uncle Tom's Cabin was probably more sophisticated than today's in that they could read a story, appreciate it as a story and absorb the lessons it presented. They may not agree with those lessons; they may reject them completely, but the appreciation of the story as a story is there. Today that isn't the situation. Today, if the story doesn't bludgeon the reader with the desired "lesson", then its dismissed by the SJW community with screaming abuse. If there is a lesson in there that isn't part of the desired doctrine then its "preaching" no matter how subtly its inserted. Today, stories aren't seduction, they're rape.

Which is why they fail to do what a story is supposed to do - bypass your defenses and persuade you. If they lay it on so thick people automatically reject it, it's useless for anything beyond thumping your chest and saying how virtuous you are.

It's not rape. It's either a rough masochistic sex fest if you agree, or a very short attempted rape by a moron at a combination gun and donut shop, right after shift change, during a benefit for K-9 officers and demo of every weapon known to man if you don't.

In either case, it's bloody useless at actually solving any of the problems it attempts to address.

 

[Francis Urquhart]

t's not rape. It's either a rough masochistic sex fest if you agree, or a very short attempted rape by a moron at a combination gun and donut shop, right after shift change, during a benefit for K-9 officers and demo of every weapon known to man if you don't.

I must remember that line . . . . .

In either case, it's bloody useless at actually solving any of the problems it attempts to address.

No argument there.

 

[Darth Robbhi]

I must remember that line . . . . .

I felt inspired by local events, and a series of poor life choices California Man made on Monday.

No argument there.

They're their own worst enemy.

 

[Francis Urquhart]

They're their own worst enemy.

Again, no argument there. The issue though is not that their own propaganda is effective but the screaming hysterical hatred which they direct at anything that does not form part of their own propaganda barrage,

 

[Deleted member]

I actually believe that much great fiction like LOTR and Dune and War and Peace and Solzhenitsyn’s Red Wheel Cycle and Mishima’s Sea of Fertility is inherently educational and inherently makes a political argument, and as @Darth Robbhi says the brilliance of these works are in the subtleness of the educational value. “Low” fiction which is good is biographical fiction that takes on the characteristic of a history of a particular event or a biography of a particular person, which is a reimagining of historical and human behavioural concepts and conceits which are fixed into new and wild circumstances. The problem comes when low fiction writers try to moralise, that’s when you get unreadable dreck.

 

[Darth Robbhi]

@Captain

I actually believe that much great fiction like LOTR and Dune and War and Peace and Solzhenitsyn’s Red Wheel Cycle and Mishima’s Sea of Fertility is inherently educational and inherently makes a political argument, and as @Darth Robbhi says the brilliance of these works are in the subtleness of the educational value. “Low” fiction which is good is biographical fiction that takes on the characteristic of a history of a particular event or a biography of a particular person, which is a reimagining of historical and human behavioural concepts and conceits which are fixed into new and wild circumstances. The problem comes when low fiction writers try to moralise, that’s when you get unreadable dreck.

You can moralize, and do it very well, in any kind of work. But it requires the "show, not tell" and "less is more" approaches. It become unreadable dreck if you lay it onn way too thick, which seems to be what these people want.