Writing Right with Dmitri: Moral Issues

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Words, words, words. That's what we're made of. Herewith some of my thoughts on what we're doing with them.

Writing Right with Dmitri: Moral Issues

A man in green with a feather in one hand and drawing a theatre curtain with the other

Sometimes I'm too flippant in this column. Some might say this was a result of a generally noncommittal view of life. I'll pretend I didn't hear that. Nevertheless, comments on a recent column, in which I offered somewhat jocular advice on how to kill off a character you don't like, led to an interesting discussion. What I took away from that discussion was a really interesting observation by some of h2g2's writers:

What we write about, and how we write it, reflects our own personal moral compass. How true that is.

Often, when we're discussing an author's work, we explain why we like it by pointing to the style, or the way the characters come alive. We may point to the pacing, or the plot twists, or the elegance/vividness/general enjoyability of the settings. But none of that is important to us if we don't approve of the author's sense of right and wrong.

Some works which were very popular in their day make us cringe now. Just consider this passage:

Boom! boom! boom! went the three heavy rifles, and down came Sir Henry's elephant dead as a hammer, shot right through the heart. Mine fell on to its knees and I thought that he was going to die, but in another moment he was up and off, tearing along straight past me. As he went I gave him the second barrel in the ribs, and this brought him down in good earnest. Hastily slipping in two fresh cartridges I ran close up to him, and a ball through the brain put an end to the poor brute's struggles. Then I turned to see how Good had fared with the big bull, which I had heard screaming with rage and pain as I gave mine its quietus. On reaching the captain I found him in a great state of excitement. It appeared that on receiving the bullet the bull had turned and come straight for his assailant, who had barely time to get out of his way...   – H Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines.

I doubt Mr Haggard expected us to cheer for the elephants, but if you're like me, you probably hope one of them steps on Quatermain before it's all done.

The casual disregard of the right of elephants to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is not the only thing that disturbs us about these 'jolly Brits abroad' adventure stories. If we've a spark of decency, we also object strenuously to the xenophobia, sexism, and general sense of entitlement exhibited by the overprivileged gits that inhabit these rollicking yarns. One can become thoroughly tired of the white man's burden.

Original Dracula play poster.
I am not a honky. I am a Romanian.   – Dracula in Love at First Bite

Xenophobia and sexism aren't always overt in fiction. As the film quote above emphasises, there's a fair amount of the nasty stuff going on under the surface. If you think Dracula is all about fear of the Undead, think again. Modern analysts have pointed out that the late-19th-century novel has its roots in fear of exotic immigrants. In other words, the Englishmen in the story are afraid that oily foreigners are going to show up in large numbers and steal their women. The fact that the women in the story find these exotic foreigners pretty interesting just shows that women can't be trusted, and need big, strong (and above all, white) men to do their thinking for them. Bah.

This is why I prefer the 1979 film Dracula: A Love Story to Bram Stoker's original novel. The novel's a work of genius, of course, technically proficient. It's all told in epistolary form, using the latest technology. The technique is groundbreaking. I don't care. In John Badham's film, it is perfectly clear that the Count represents a form of liberation for women. The stodgy folk may oppose this sort of going on, but there's a strong sense that joining the Undead might be a small price to pay for self-actualisation and (dare we say it? We dare) sexual satisfaction.

Are those moral issues? I think they are. So, apparently, does Joss Whedon, who reframed the whole vampire question in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer by making the vamps back into bad guys, but liberating the Slayers. These young women do not swoon. Instead, they get out Mr Pointy the stake, and clean up the graveyard. Sometimes they rescue men in passing, which is kind of them.

One way you can tell whether you approve of a writer's moral compass is to question what happens to the characters in the story. Don't buy into the argument that 'So-and-So did such-and-such, and must be punished.' Stop and think: the writer did that. He made the character commit a crime so he could punish him. And he gave the person who committed the crime a certain look, accent, skin tone, or national background just so he could indulge in a bit of crowing over that group. Look at the villains and you will see what people are afraid of.

You think that's not happening right now? Last night, I was watching a police procedural. An enjoyable one in many ways. But the Big Bad (multiple-episode villain), as the scriptwriters call him, was an evil Russian mobster in LA who terrorises innocent Angelinos. (I know, that's an oxymoron.) My reaction to this was mixed: annoyance on behalf of my Russian immigrant friends ('oh, they get to be the Undesirable Foreigners now') and amusement, because the actor playing the villain was so obviously, from his appearance and surname, an American good ol' boy with a Boris Badanov accent.

What can you do about this? For one thing, you can make sure that you don't pick your villains out of your pet-peeves trunk. Don't bother writing about how much you hate goths, or men/women, or people from Guadalajara. Dig deeper, and think about motivation. Better yet: make the villain come from your group. You'll be less likely to take cheap shots.

Corporate lawyers versus Uncle Sam.

When I was talking about offing villains, I mentioned the end of Fagin, Charles Dickens' detestable villain – partly because I wanted to draw attention to the glee with which 19th-century writers dispatched the guilty, but partly also because the detail Dickens used reminded me of his insider knowledge as a long-time Old Bailey watcher. I assumed that Dickens had come by the character of Fagin honestly. Ikey Solomon was the model for this villain. Ikey was a thoroughly bad character. He also happened to be Jewish, though that had nothing to do with why he became a fence.

Dickens was always so enthusiastic about his descriptions. He gives us a vivid run-down on crossed eyes, slovenly attire, weird hairdos, the whole gamut, whenever he talks about anyone. In the original Oliver Twist, Dickens went on and on about Fagin's being a Jew. It was 'the Jew this' and 'the Jew that'. Apparently, the Jewish community took offence, as well they might. Dickens was not innocent of anti-Semitism. He said he thought that most of the criminals of that type were Jewish. (He was way wrong.) But after he made friends with a Jewish couple, Dickens found out how much offence he had caused with this characterisation. By way of apology, he changed many of the references in later editions of Oliver Twist. Well, you live and learn, and it seems Dickens did, a bit.

Let's explore the moral territory we live in. Let's be as honest as we can about it. Will someone, somewhere, judge us for it? Unquestionably. But then, they might tell us what we've missed, and then, like Dickens, we can learn something.

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Dmitri Gheorgheni

19.03.12 Front Page

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