Tuesday, 22 April 2008
(Books) Kyra Smith rants about the widespread attitude to spoilers and takes potshots at JK Rowling and George Lucas in passing.
~
As you've probably noticed (and some of you may have complained about) I tend to be rather blase about spoilers when I'm discussing things on this site. This not because I am a kitten-kicking fun-wrecker who wants you to draw less pleasure from the books you read and the films you watch, it's simply because I don't subscribe to the seemingly widely held and generally unquestioned view that spoilers are the ultimate evil. Just to add a proviso to this before the rotten tomatoes start flying over the footlights, this is not to say that I don't think spoilers can be bad in certain circumstances. However, I am increasingly coming to resent the knee-jerk assumption that spoilers are, essentially, "any information about plot happenings not immediately apparent at the beginning of the text" and so utterly catastrophic that people must be protected from them at all costs.Just to get this out of the way early, yes, there are some genres and some texts that are dependent on a sense of mystery, bewilderment and slowly developing understanding. Memento is better if you don't have a clue what's going on. Films by M. Night Shyamalan are generally only worth two viewings: the first to go "aaaaah" when the twist comes and the second to spot all the clues and hints you didn't spot the first time round. The pleasure of detective stories, murder mysteries and the rest of their ilk lies for a large part in not knowing and, perhaps working out, whodunit. Cases such as these, I would argue, benefit from spoiler warnings in that too much information about the plot genuinely spoils the experience.
But for most things, there is very little actual plot information that, once given away, completely compromises pleasure in the text (otherwise you'd never read a book a second time) but this is what the term "spoiler" suggests and that's how people tend to react to it. On the internet, at least, spoilering someone seems to carry an equivalent moral weight to killing and then eating their dog. However, I would argue that, while there are some plot elements that might be marginally more striking had they come as a complete surprise, for the most part there are no such things as
I think the exaggerated horror that has come to be attached to spoilering has its root in two fallacies that, although they might seem obvious, nevertheless are worthy of articulation. The first is the current prevalence of the primacy of plot. I suppose you can blame shows like Lost and Heroes for this but, these days, plot is all. The only reason to watch Heroes week by week, I would argue, is to find out what happens next. When I was first introduced to it, I absolutely devoured it, watching episode after episode in an orgy of curiosity. Now that the series is done with, I can't really imagine ever wanting to watch it again. Perhaps in a few years time when I've forgotten the intricacies of what happens when and why. Although it's a competent piece of television, all it really has going for it is the plot. This isn't necessarily a criticism because it does what it does excellently but it's essentially a shallow creation that depends almost completely on its twists, turns and cliff-hangers. The other interesting thing about my experience with Heroes is that I watched it in a discussion blackout. A palpable air of secrecy hung over my friendship group - nobody wanted to talk about it until everybody had seen it, lest they inadvertently say too much and ruin a surprise. Personally I'd rather have the pleasure of shared engagement but that's me, I can also see why we all went to such lengths to protect each other from knowledge.
Now this is all well and good as far as Heroes as concerned except it seems to have spread. My evidence for this, to be fair, is what people say on the internet but by placing such emphasis on spoilers you essentially prioritise plot above everything else. I know plot is something that feels tangible, hence it's easier to concentrate on and make a fuss about, but by saying "if you tell me stuff that happens in this you will ruin it for me" you're essentially saying "I'm only watching/reading this to find out what happens next." And there is far more to a text than that. I might be slightly biased in my irritation for this due to an ex-boyfriend who always used to make a big deal out of not being spoilered insisting it would completely utterly ruin his enjoyment because he had such an excellent and pronounced sense of "narrative causality" (thank you Mr Pratchett, giving arseholes words since 1983) that it was rare he had the pleasure of not knowing what would happen next. But unless you're reading a Murakami novel, in which case all bets are off, we nearly always have some vague idea of what's going to happen next anyway (they'll get together or they won't, the war will be won or lost) - ultimately we're reading (or watching) for the wholesale experience, the unfolding events, certainly, but also character, style, themes, ideas and general emotional and aesthetic involvement with the text as a composite of many elements.
The second fallacy (I just love the word fallacy, I don't get enough opportunity to use it) seems to be a fundamental misconception about the nature of fiction itself. Yes, we talk a lot about the willing suspension of disbelief but, ultimately, a piece of fiction is an artificial creation. The worlds it depicts are not real worlds, the people are not real people - even if they are recognisably similar. Star Wars is not a detailed presentation of an imagined world that can be understood in the same terms we use to understand our own - if this was the case we'd have to assume the laws of time and physics are so profoundly different to our own that they allow Emperor Palpatine to leg it from his fight with Yoda on Coruscant to Mustafar in time to stop Anakin dying a limbless death. This, of course, a basic continuity error but whinging about it misses the point: it's dramatically appropriate (if anything is dramatically appropriate in that festering turd of a movie) that Palpatine is able to rescue Anakin in person, instead of sending a bunch of faceless minions to scoop him up and stick in him a Vadar costume. Fiction is not governed by the same forces that control our world: it's governed by meta-textural considerations like narrative, drama and style. Nor do we respond to characters in the same way we respond to real people and the emotions we experience - although not to be discounted - are in no way an accurate representation the emotions we might feel if something similar happened to us in our every day lives.
I remember when the final Harry Potter book came out there was an awful lot of hoo and hah because people were spoilering other people for the deaths, marching around the midnight openings with placards listening them all. Yes, this was puerile and irritating behaviour but people's outrage was disproportionate to the offence. I believe even JK herself - bastion of sanity and common sense that she is - issued a statement rebuking the spoilerers for their selfishness in ruining the devoted fans' enjoyment of her work 1. You see, as we have noted in previous articles, death is a big thing for Rowling and, therefore, for her admirers. And one of her standard insights (sorry "insights") into death is the shock and irrevocability of it - how can we forget that immortal line "the suddenness and completeness of death was with them like a presence" (it's right up there with "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil.") To follow this to its logical conclusion, the reason, we must assume, that Rowling (and her fans) consider information about who dies to be such a profound and major spoiler is because the surprise is an integral part of the experience i.e. that we, the reader, experience a similar level of shock to the characters at having lost a friend or loved one.
This is arrant nonsense and it's offensive arrant nonsense. Fiction can certainly give you intellectual and emotional insights into death and grief, and perhaps give words you might otherwise have lacked to help you understand the way you feel, but it can't even begin to recreate how it actually feels to be bereaved. In Memoriam, perhaps, comes close. Harry Potter just, well, doesn't. By making a big deal out of JK Rowling, and fanbase, are essentially pretending that it does. Death functions differently within narrative - it's not personal. When somebody close to your dies, the emotions you experience are, for the most part, shameful. You feel numb and then feel bad for feeling numb. You feel resentful because you feel abandoned by someone you cared about, even though it's not their fault they died. You feel frightened because you suddenly realise that you, too, will die someday. You feel whatever the hell you feel and you can bet it isn't something that you'll be proud of. You certainly don't find yourself drawing profound universal lessons about the futility of the war or the inevitably of death.
As I said when I first began this article there are occasions when certain in-text information is deliberately designed to be a revelation in which case it's just good manners not to destroy that. But most plot happenings, including character deaths, are just stuff that happens and should be treated as such.
New York Times
~
For the fifth HP book I remember I happened to read something on the day the book came out that told me Sirius died. I was surprised--I knew somebody was going to die, but didn't guess him. Had I been reading along in the book by that point it probably wouldn't have been as much of a surprise because the story started pointing that way long before Sirius fell through the curtain. Seeing it casually mentioned on the Internet was probably the most "surprising" death I can remember in HP for that reason. But it didn't change my reading experience much either way.
If there's something t a story, even if that story has a big surprise, it should improve upon knowing the information. That's why soap operas are never worth much in reruns.
As far as deaths go, falling through a curtain is pretty dumb. The only way it could be made more silly if an old-style vaudeville-type crook had emerged from behind the curtain to yank Sirius forcibly offstage...
I always think of Sirius's death as a Worms prod death. But as Sister M says he does basically spend the book going around with a neon flashing above his head reading "Wouldn't it be, like, tragic and ironic if I DIED" - mmm, that's quite a long sign :)
With reference to the shared experiences - which, you're right, are always very pleasurable - I can't help but think that it's actually pretty near impossible to come at a text with the same sort of assumptions and presumptions as someone else, regardless of whether one of you has heard things about it previously or not, because the way you approach something, and what you get out of it, is always going to be individualised and partially influenced by your history, personal experiences, knowledge etc. etc. To quote Only Forward, "everyone is alone in their world." I shall put a smiley here :) to make that appear to be a less depressing statement.
The other thing which I do find myself thinking is that given the order and manner of a revelation is a decent part of a creator's input, then I think it renders one slightly less capable of fairly judging a work that you haven't consumed in the intended fashion. I think that there's an implicit expectation in most works that the audience not know what is going to happen in advance. If you defy that expectation then you have to accept that you may not receive the work at its best, and I like to feel that I've given things an entirely fair chance and hopefully gotten the best possible experience that was available.
Now, it would appear that to many people there is a difference in kind between saying "In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Harry fights the schemes of Lord Voldemort" and "In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the kindly old mentor-figure of Dumbledore is killed." The thing is, I actually struggle to see where. We are reading a fantasy series in which we have a hero and a Dark Lord and an aged mentor; we would surely expect the aged mentor to be shoved offstage so that our hero can't use him as a crutch in the battle against the Dark Lord, just as surely as we would expect the books to mainly involve the hero battling the Dark Lord's schemes, because it's precisely the sort of thing that happens in that sort of series. Heck, even in A Song of Ice and Fire, a fantasy series that's almost entirely about the plot, it's almost not a spoiler to say "Character X dies" (or, even, "Character X is rumoured to be dead, but is in fact alive"), because it's like saying "And then, get this, the Sun comes up in the morning, having gone down in the evening!" Not only is a devil-may-care attitude to the survival of major characters something we expect from Martin, but we can also make a fair stab at who is going to survive and who is going to die off. (I mean, was there ever any point in the first three books where any of us honestly thought that Tyrion was going to croak it?)
Sure we may expect Dumbledore to get offed- but that expectation could have been wrong; finding out whether our predictions are right is part of the fun of reading the book. Furthermore we might not expect him to get killed in that particular book- she could have been saving it for a dramatic point in Book 7.
I think the point is that for some people spoilers *do* make things less fun. If they don't for you, then great, that's fine. But its only common courtesy not to spoil things for others- if you're on the internet then mark your spoilers, if you're discussing things with friends then give people who don't want to hear some fair warning. These things don't take much effort, so where's the harm?
I think my moderate (i.e. real) position on the subject of spoilers is that ultimately it comes to down to personal rights - obviously everyone who doesn't want to be has a fundamental right *not* to be spoilered and, as you say, it's a simple matter of common courtesy not to inflict spoilers on people. But equally the attitude of self-righteous hysteria from the anti-spoiler crowd rubs me up the wrong way. It's like you can say "there's a real cool shot of Christ Church in the movie" or "I really like the bit when he's in the alternative dimension" and people will be going "Avaunt bitch! How darest thou" (or words to that effect) as if you've just done something utterly morally reprehensible.
Haha - I guess what I'm basically getting at it is that people should be nice to each other, m'kay =P
Also although - as you have uncontrovertibly shown - there are perfectly sensible and understandable reasons for not liking spoilers I think there are also annoying reasons which, I would (and did) argue spring from fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of fiction.
- People who especially dislike spoilers shouldn't be reading movie reviews which extend further than, say, a couple of paragraphs. I fully respect people's right to come to a film or book without being tipped off as to what's going to happen (there's plenty of instances where I feel the same). On the other hand, the price of not knowing the details of the plot is taking the chance that the plot will just suck.
- Not only is it actually quite difficult to do a decent review of a book, film, or whatever without discussing the plot, there are some cases where, in my opinion, I'd actually be doing the readers a disservice by not mentioning certain things. I am currently reading a series of Warhammer novels with the intent of reviewing them for Ferretbrain; in one of the books, there's a gobsmackingly stupid scene where our hero helps a Chaos-warped mutant recapture her essential humanity by having sex with her, and then kills her. This scene is just as dumb (and mildly disturbing) as it sounds, and while I could say "there is one scene in particular in this book which is very very silly, in a kind of sick way", in this case I don't think I'd really get the point across without saying "he fucks this chick and then kills her and it's a good thing because he's reminding her of what it is to be human".
On the other hand, I think (especially on mediums like Ferretbrains) it's more interesting for reviews to be "analysis in retrospect" as opposed to "recommendations ahead of time". Certainly, my favourite review on here is Dan's epic breakdown of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and that'd lose 99% of its hilarity if he wasn't able to share spoilers like "In this chapter, Harry and his friends sit in a tent and do nothing" and "Harry defeats Voldemort using a loophole in the magic item rules".
I think Joe is absolutely right that being "spoilered" does make a difference, and I don't think anybody is actually going to disagree with that. The only disagreement, I think, is what counts as a "spoiler" and that's difficult to define because it's so entirely subjective.
To take Arthur's two examples, while it's all good fun (*tremendously* good fun, in fact) to be mean about JK Rowling, the reason that *I* wouldn't have felt "spoilered" by being told about the death of Dumbledore ahead of time isn't that I saw it coming, but that by that point I had so little investment in the book as a whole that I didn't care if Dumbledore lived, died, or turned out to be Voldemort's father or Ron from the Future.
I think it is (perhaps) easy for people like us, who tend to read books with a careless detachment and smug sense of superiority to forget that not everybody reads the same text in the same way we do. For an avid Potter fan, my review of Deathly Hallows would have completely ruined the experience (not least because I was very, very rude about it).
I think the thing people often miss about spoilers, then (and I think this is, ironically, the crux of both Kyra's argument and Joe's objection to it) is that they're entirely context-dependent. "Snape Kills Dumbledore" is a spoiler for somebody who is invested in Harry Potter, and not a spoiler for somebody who isn't. JK Rowling and the Guys Who Yelled Spoilers are both making the same mistake, assuming that there is only one right way to read any given book.
Other stuff:
1) Harry Potter. The part-spoiler of knowing somebody died but not knowing who died in book 5 I found really enhanced the reading of it. Because any time anyone was injured or knocked out you felt they could die. Which isn't to say I was reacting as if they were real people - but just because one doesn't genuinely mourn the death of a fictional character, it doesn't mean that the unexpected death isn't shocking and exciting. Though I did think that it was a bit crap when Sirius did actually die - I barely noticed. My philosophy tutor thought it showed something about how we don't always instantly grasp it when someone dies.
2) Lord of the Rings. Isn't it interesting how this is a plot that can't be spoiled because it does not rely on suspense or a secret plan by the bad guys? Unlike most of the subsequent fantasy based on LOTR that rely on plot twists.
3) What about real-life stories - anecdotes, news stories etc.? Aren't they instances showing that we do treat stories and life the same - and doesn't the drama of stories like elections come from not knowing the ending? Though on the other hand we can take pleasure in hearing anecdotes we've heard before. But thinking about that one, don't we often take pleasure in knowing the ending because we enjoy watching how people who don't yet know will react and fondly recall how it felt to hear this story and not know the ending, or else we enjoy a sort of power over the story because we know where it's going.
No, I'm sorry, but we really don't. We do not sit down and discuss the literary merits of a press conference. We don't write essays (unless we are especially up ourselves) about how it would be more thematically appropriate for George Bush to have invaded Iran instead of Iraq. Journalists who introduce metaphors and sly implications and interesting subplots to their stories get told off by their editors, because when we follow the news we're interested in the facts, and the sort of flirtatious shell-games we tolerate of authors is frustrating when you want to read the latest about crazy Austrian men and their cellar-families.
The fact that we talk about news "stories" does underline that we human beings have a sort of narrative instinct, a driving desire to put events into a logical order which we can follow in a linear fashion, but as Kyra points out fiction is more than a narrative. Don't mistake this for literary snobbery - it's equally true of lowbrow fun as it is of serious weighty tomes. The plot of Star Wars is as thin as a rake and flimsy as tissue paper, but that doesn't mean that Star Wars is a bad movie.
and doesn't the drama of stories like elections come from not knowing the ending?
Personally, I find that the drama of stories like an election involves in having a personal stake in proceedings; I voted for politician X of party Y, so I'm happy when X and Y do well and disappointed when they do badly. The most dramatic election I can remember was the 1997 one, and we all knew damn well the Tories were going to lose that one. The excitement came in seeing the likes of Portillo lose their seats.
A final point: stories about World War II are fascinating to a great many people, even though we all know full well that Hitler loses. History is inherently a narrative subject, and yet it comes refreshingly pre-spoiled.
As to treating stories and life the same - I guess that's rather too huge a debate for a comment. Really I just wanted to raise the point that as much as I agree with Kyra that we do treat life and stories differently, the distinction can't be drawn absolutely - the perspectives we take on things we are personally involved with are not discontinuous with the perspectives we take on stories and art. The big difference being that the material is 'given' so that we can't argue about Bush invading Iran not Iraq but we can argue about thematically appropriate ways of narrating what did happen, we do react to it and involve ourselves in it in terms of symbols and narratives etc. Though this is all obviously drifting a little from talk of spoilers!
It is true that the virtues of literary fiction includes more than narrative, but that's also true of non-fiction stories. We can criticise or appreciate the same kinds of things in non-fiction stories as in fictional ones - things like style, use of symbols etc. The case of editors slapping down journalists is exactly this - criticising them for inappropriate style for that particular type of non-fiction story. Those criticisms wouldn't hold for other kinds of story about reality e.g. anecdotes we tell down the pub. And there are many examples of non-fiction where we can talk of the literary merit of the style, or where we can say that that is a better way of telling that particular story.
However, while there are elements other than the narrative that are important to both types of story, it is the way we react to the narrative and the constraints upon what is narrated that differentiates fiction from non-fiction. You give the example of how we can't criticise the literary merits of a news story by saying that it is thematically inappropriate for Bush to invade Iran not Iraq, because the constraint on what is narrated is that it has to be true. And we react differently to a (true) narrative about a loved one dying than to a narrative about a fictional character dying.
Some points from this (because numbered points make me happy):
1) There are clearly some blurry lines here. Anecdotes and urban myths are purportedly true but there is usually a blurring of truth in the telling that is more acceptable than it would be in journalism.
2) While we can't offer literary criticism to the story about George Bush invading Iraq not Iran because of its subject matter being thematically inappropriate, we could offer "literary" criticism to a story about George Bush going to Mount Doom and saving the world on the basis that it is thematically inappropriate for a news story not to be true. Truthfulness is a rule of that type of story as are the rules about not using symbols, sub-plots etc. just as other considerations might apply to other types of story. There's also of course the factor of WHAT true material is thematically appropriate and should be included, and which should not.
3) It's a sliding scale obviously, but I'm also not convinced that we never react to real life stories in the way you described. Sometimes things happen and we think "No! That wasn't what was meant to happen!" Let's say when Obama doesn't win in Texas, or when Heath Ledger dies young (not particularly good examples, just the ones recently that made me think of this). To some degree my reaction there is because these are real life events that I have a stake in - I am sad because I want Obama to win, because I liked Heath Ledger as an actor. But it's also the case (perhaps because I have a fairly tenuous personal stake in those true stories) that it frustrates my aesthetic sense of what was meant to be happening in terms of a meaningful narrative - having already interpreted the present in terms of an imagined future where Obama wins in Texas and Heath Ledger goes on to ever bigger and better roles. It's a rubbish story for the democratic election to keep going on and on or for Heath Ledger to die young - the way things are doesn't mean anything.
Now this really has absolutely bugger all to do with spoilers. That was the first paragraph of my previous comment - some real-life stories are more exciting because the outcome is uncertain, even if others are exciting despite or because of knowing the end. I wonder if we had accurate prophecy if they would have to give spoiler warnings?
I think you're misunderstanding Arthur's use of the term "thematically appropriate". News stories being untrue isn't "thematically inappropriate", it's just plain illegal. A story about George Bush going to Mount Doom and saving the world could address the *themes* of personal responsibility against the rise of evil perfectly well. It would still be untrue, and therefore not a valid news story.
As for the US election and Heath Ledger, as you yourself admit your reaction to those events has *nothing* to do with whether it makes a good story and *everything* to do with your personal investment. In fact, I'd argue that the events you describe would, in a work of fiction, *absolutely* improve the "story". Heath Ledger's death brings his "story" to a satisfying and unambiguous conclusion, whereas if he was still alive there wouldn't be a story at all, he'd just be some actor. As for the Democratic elections, in every *fictional* election I've ever seen, things always go right down to the wire until the last possible minute, again an easy early win for the guy you like is a *bad* story.
You really can draw a sharp, clear, dividing line between real life and fiction. People react to the two things in very different ways.
Regarding Heath Ledger and the US election - I think really they are indications of the sliding scale. The death of Heath Ledger stands between the death of a fictional character and the death of a real family member in terms of my personal investment in the death. And this is why I am able to take a perspective on it that is closer to that I would take on a story. As Arthur agreed, we interpret reality in terms of narratives and we interpreted Heath Ledger in terms of a story in which he was going to grow up and be the next Jack Nicholson or whoever. Him dying was like finding that the second half of the paperback you had bought was actually blank, or aliens invading earth halfway through Jane Eyre - it interrupted the narrative flow, didn't fit with the expectations of the future we had based on our interpretation. Perhaps you can fit the sudden death into a different kind of story - a tragedy - but this involves a new interpretation. Brokeback Mountain becomes his one great role rather than the one promising many more (admittedly this assumes you like Brokeback Mountain as much as I do). But I think that when we experience events as meaningless, we are experiencing them as not fitting into a story. Ledger's death was an end but not a satisfying end. And no series of West Wing could sustain the election campaign going up and down and up and down interminably.
I'm not quite sure how to precisely make the case for the other extreme, about how where we do have a clear personal investment we react in ways parallel to how we react to art. Except to say that art and stories both reflect and form the ways we interpret reality and the roles in which we act and view ourselves. There are differences - as I said, I agreed with Kyra's comments about the cases in question - but I really don't think a very sharp, clear line can be drawn. Especially once you start talking about non-narrative art as well.
Um, just to rewind the discussion away from Heath Ledger (didn't see that coming...), I just wanted to say that I actually sort of agree with this the central tenant (I think):
"the perspectives we take on things we are personally involved with are not discontinuous with the perspectives we take on stories and art"
At least it's interesting to think about the effect the one informs the other and so forth. I think the problem lies when people (the actually quite amorphous concept of 'people' I had when writing this article, I think perhaps indicating just people who annoy me on the internet) automatically assume there's literal correspondance i.e. that the shock and grief you could feel for Sirius is directly comparable to the shock and grief when, say, your grandfather dies.
I know I've just said the same thing about a thousand different ways (well, about three times) but I suppose I just wanted to affirm my position is actually less extreme than the article suggests it might be ... and equally that I have do, in fact, respect and agree with the more sensible aspects (as articulated here) of anti-spoiler argument.
I wouldn't, however, compare journalism - a very particular pursuit - with "art", a word which bundles together a massive heap of pursuits. I think there are questions which it is appropriate to ask of each and any piece of, say, creative writing, which it would not be appropriate to ask of a journalistic piece, just as there are questions you could appropriately ask of a symphony which wouldn't make any sense if you asked them of a portrait.
Journalism can be seen as just one particular approach among many ones more normally considered artistic which aim to express or understand a real event.
Is it the point of art to express or understand real events? Only, in my view, if you broaden the definition of "real events" to include abstract philosophical concepts, emotions, religious impulses, and other thoughts and processes and things that occur entirely inside people's heads. And would be considered considered very bad journalism to write a piece which explores in a metaphorical subtext your personal feelings about God, for example, but it might be very good fiction.
As you say yourself, art bundles together a massive heap of very different pursuits - my point is that journalism is not fundamentally different in kind from some of these pursuits. There are no questions that could be sensibly asked of each and every one of these pursuits - no question that could be sensibly asked of creative writing, symphony, portraits, journalistic accounts etc. But in fact there are a lot of questions that could be sensibly asked both of journalistic stories and fictional stories e.g. about language, style, structuring, narrative technique etc. There are other questions that could not be sensibly be asked of a journalistic piece e.g. "Why didn't you have George Bush invade Iran instead?". However (warning, another numbered list):
1) Even 'fictional' writing can be criticised for poor research and unrealistic psychology - criticisms not disconnected from criticising a news story for being inaccurate
2) On the matter of how you can criticise a fiction story for having X happen rather than Y but not a non-fiction story: well you can criticise a journalistic story for what it does or doesn't mention. We can criticise a story about America that fails to mention Iraq or a story about Iraq that does mention Abba. So there is an extent to which you can make related criticisms of journalistic pieces. And on the other hand, there are limits on making those kind of criticisms of literary fiction. You could say that Harry Potter would be better if, say, Harry hadn't whined so much and been less passive, but it wouldn't be meaningful to say Harry Potter would be better if it had the text and plot of Ulysses. You've gone past modifying the text and instead replaced it. It's like saying a chocolate cake would be better if it were made with carrot instead of chocolate. With Harry Potter it's not clear where you reach this limit before the book is no longer Harry Potter, but with journalistic pieces you reach this limit when you stop dealing with true events. You're saying this truth cake would be better if it were made with interesting falsehoods rather than truth. The same kind of limit exists for fictional literature, it's just less obvious where the boundary is.
I'm not making the point that journalism IS art, any more than poetry is prose or portraits are music. But as a pursuit and in terms of the approaches we take to it, journalism cannot be sharply cut off from art.
I think you're confusing form and content. You could write a poem about a rainbow, you could write a scientific thesis about a rainbow, but the criteria by which you judge the merits of a scientific thesis are completely different to the criteria on which you judge the merits of a poem.
But as a pursuit and in terms of the approaches we take to it, journalism cannot be sharply cut off from art.
The thing is, I actually think it can. Yes, you can criticize both a newspaper or a novel for being badly written, you can criticize both a car and a person for being dirty and smelly, it doesn't mean that we can't draw a sharp line between cars and people.
I'm not claiming that the poem and scientific thesis have the same form - obviously two things with the same form and the same content would be the same. I'm claiming that there are continuous gradations from one form to the next and also between the criteria used to judge different forms. There are examples of where you meet in the middle - genuine science fiction, non-fiction novels, urban myths, sensationalist journalism, poems or plays about news events. Journalism and science aren't somehow hermetically sealed off from other kinds of writing and the criteria used to judge those types of writing.
I'm not sure where the argument goes from here though - you can say that two things that are sharply divided can be judged on the same criteria, and I can say that two things that are judged on different criteria, e.g. a poem and a play, are not divided sharply.
Except surely the fact that we do judge these two things by different criteria is proof of a sharp division, because if they were not sharply divided we would not judge them by different criteria? In fact, it could be argued that the criteria themselves represent at least one sharp division?
The logic you are espousing suggests that there is in fact no distinction between any object, and the world is just one incoherent mass in which oranges blur into coatracks blend into black holes blend into the weak and strong nuclear forces. Once you reach such a state it becomes impossible to firmly say anything about anything, ever, because we cannot (or refuse to) make any distinction between different things. I would say that suggesting that there is no firm difference between science writing and journalism and poetry would irritate a great many scientists, journalists, and poets, except for scientists who secretly envy journalists or poets, or journalists who harbour frustrated desires to be scientists or poets, or poets who admire journalists and scientists.
In terms of reality, lots of apparently absolute differences have been questioned by science and philosophy. I don't know to what extent there are sharp divisions and and to what extent it's an incohernt mass. But that's slightly beside the point - the question is as to whether writing / art has sharp divisions within it. To say there are no sharp divisions between different forms of writing and art is not to say it is unstructured and incoherent. Nor is it to say that there are no differences. Clearly, a poem is different from a newspaper article. But this difference, and the difference in criteria on which they are judged, do not constitute sharp divisions because you can trace a continual line of forms from one to the other, which are also continuous in terms of the criteria used to judge them. Between poems and newspaper articles you have the various non-fiction forms I mentioned above. The criterion of judging a newspaper article for being true and accurate is connected to the criterion of judging fictional stories for having accurately-researched settings, convincing psychology. The criterion of objectivity and avoiding metaphor is also used to judge naturalist drama. Science or journalism as a way of writing about the world can be and has been criticised on artistic grounds - for being sterile and dull, for being committed to questionable ideas about objective access to absolute truth etc.
It is arguable that lots of differences between concepts or objects are in fact matters of degree and dividing lines are indeterminate - when does blue become purple, when does the German language become the Dutch language, when does ape become human etc. - but whatever one thinks about the other cases it is definitely true when it comes to art.
The criteria/values/purposes of artistic works and perspective range continuously between such contradictory and varied extremes that it is impossible to find any one approach or definition encompassing all art and possible to find continuities between art and all sorts of other fields and objects. The contradiction means that the same reason why some art might be clearly distinguished from science will be the same reason why science will be found to be similar to other art and subject to similar approaches.
It's also why any statement about, say, the difference between art and life or the importance of narrative / spoilers can only be provisional and limited to a certain region. So that on the one hand, it's ridiculous to react to the death of a symbolic character with emotion as one would to the death of a real, particular person - but then other on other views, a particular piece of art has no significance beyond itself, art should raise emotions and art and reactions to art are not separate from life but part of it.
Which is my long-winded attempt to have my cake and eat it.
We might learn a lot of things we didn't previously know or appreciate through art, but it can't impart in us a genuine emotional experience of bereavement or loss or true love; at best, it can present us with a sort of two-steps-removed facsimile of it. I know plenty of people (I was one of them myself) who had no patience for romance subplots before actually getting into a long-term relationship, simply because they had no sympathy through their life experiences to the subject matter at hand.
It's not just a matter of art though - it's also why we can have certain moral dilemmas . It's the difference between personal loyalty to a particular person, who we see as an exception to general rules, and viewing that same person just as one person among many, stripped of individuality and subject to the same rules as everyone else. Either extreme is insane.
If it is not the same way, then there is a categorical division, because, as you point out, it's not the same - we can look at the differences and say "well, this is the set of reactions which have these qualities, and this is the set of reactions which have these different qualities", and presto! Categories!
It's like the difference between regarding jazz as "jazz" or as hard bop, bebop, fusion, trad jazz, free jazz...
It is not only arguable, it is categorically true, but that does not make it meaningful or useful.
Blue and Purple are quite literally part of a spectrum, and obviously the dividing line between the two is not sharply defined, but your argument seems to be going further, to the suggestion that *because* you can imagine a continuous spectrum between Blue and Purple, that therefore it is meaningless to say "blue and purple are different colours".
The point made casually in the original article is that we react differently to real events and to fictional events. Now obviously there will be some similarities between your reaction to - say - the death of a fictional character and the death of a real person, just as there will be some similarities between your reaction to (for example) eating a delicious biscuit and having your legs cut off with a chainsaw. Both involve your brain interpreting nerve impulses and translating them into sensory information, which your conscious mind interprets as either pleasurable or painful. It would not, however, be sensible for me to make a biscuit and say "I really think that this biscuit gives the person who eats it an insight into what it's like to have your legs cut off with a chainsaw".
To put it another way, I'm sure that the vast majority of Dutch people would be grossly offended if you told them that their language was basically no different to German.
Ironically, you seem to be viewing the difference between "absolute, categorical differences" and "differences of degree" as absolute and categorical when they are, of course, actually differences of degree.
The electromagnetic spectrum, being a real, literal spectrum, is an excellent example of this.
We define "visible light" as light which has a wavelength between 400 and 700 nanometres (more or less). This distinction is of course arbitrary, and the difference between light with wavelength 399nm and light with wavelength 401nm is essentially meaningless. However we categorize this range of wavelengths as "visible light" because it is the light which is visible to the human eye. If you try to light a room with light of wavelength 500nm you won't be able to see anything, because it won't be visible.
Visible light and infra-red light are categorically different. One is visible to the human eye, one isn't. Now of course there's a borderline where things are "sort of just about visible" and "not quite visible" but nine times out of ten those borders simply don't matter.
Essentially you're falling prey to a sort of abstract version of Xeno's paradox. Starting at fiction, you move halfway towards reality, then halfway again, then halfway again, and then declare that it is impossible to distinguish between the two.
In terms of how broad the concepts are: clearly, art has sub-genres like music, which in turn has sub-genres like jazz, which in turn has further sub-genres. These genres and sub-genres are different from each other but are not perfectly, absolutely divided off unless they are rigidly and artificially defined e.g. a haiku. Where there are not rigid divisions of this kind, there are problem cases - not everything can be neatly slotted into different categories. Indeed, artists are always trying to question apparent borders. Even where there are rigid definitions which is by far and away the exception, these definitions do not mean that haikus etc. are utterly alien to other poems. Haikus and non-haiku poems will be susceptible to similar approaches and criticisms.
In terms of the art/life or art/journalism division or whatever, I am not denying there is a difference, nor that art is replacement for life. What I'm maintaining is that:
1) Journalism, scientific writing etc. are not absolutely divided from art in terms of suitable approaches, common properties etc.
2) The perspectives we take on life are to some extent the same as those we take on life, and vice versa.
In 2) I am talking about perspectives at more than just a cognitive level - I am talking about conscious reflection and cultural perspectives. I am not denying that life and art are different but rather that we cannot sharply divide the two.
Frankly, I really don't think you're attacking the weak points of my argument. If I were attacking my argument, I would focus on the fact that it's a bit paradoxical and seems to make artistic debate pointless if I have my cake and eat it by claiming both sides are right.
Sorry for the triple post, and sorry to be blunt, but I really think this needs saying.
What you say here is simply not true. It's also borderline offensive.
The "death of the father-figure" in fiction is a symbolic process of growth and maturation. It's a part of the hero's journey. In real life the "death of the father" is when you recognise that your father is a real, fallible person who makes mistakes, and that you can get by in your life without him watching over you. This is almost *never* related in *any way* to the actual physical death of a real man.
My grandfather died a couple of months ago. My mother did not experience any great symbolic growth as a result, she was not liberated by the experience (except insofar as she didn't have to deal with his horrible, debilitating cancer any more). Her relationship with him did not change (except, again, towards the end it involved dealing with a lot more shit and dribble), she did not undergo any kind of personal discovery or revelation. He just died, and it was slow, and lingering, and humiliating and there was nothing symbolic or thematic about it, it wasn't a story, it wasn't a narrative it was not in any way *fictional*. Nothing changed, nobody grew or learned, he just *died*, not as a symbol, not as an idea, but as a frequently unpleasant old man who was so broken down and ill he couldn't swallow.
So, um, look a bunny rabbit. See its little nose.
Thank you all this very interesting discussions but perhaps, as Andy suggests, we should wrap this up here.
(honestly, boys *tsk tsk*)