On Problematic Tropes

[rowyn]

I have a couple of conflicting principles that I don't know how to reconcile:

* Fiction at its best illuminates reality. This includes all genres, even the obviously fantastic and implausible. Fiction has the ability to make us understand one another better, to let us see through another's eyes. This is amazing and powerful and should be used wisely.
* Daydreams and fantasies are harmless fun. Fantasizing about things that are unrealistic, as long as you know that they're unrealistic and have no interest in making them reality, is fine.

There's no conflict between the two when one's fantasy is something socially-acceptable if impossible, like "having a telepathic bond with a friendly dragon".  Things where, if you could make them real, it wouldn't be particularly detrimental for the world at large.

But lots of fantasies are not socially-acceptable, nor a desirable/plausible reality. Twilight, for example, gets a lot of flak for its romance between a century-old vampire stalker and his 17 year-old love interest*. There's a novel I won't name about a romance between a Nazi concentration camp commander and a  Jewish prisoner that ends with him rescuing the internees and her converting to Christianity. Master/slave romances are commonplace.

I've named all romance tropes here because those are the ones I hear discussed. Maybe in horror circles they discuss whether their monsters are too monstrous or the events depicted too awful, and I just don't hear it. I hear occasional decrying of the Chosen One trope of fantasy, or more rarely, on the idealization of feudal societies and tyranny.

In general, I am talking about tropes that entertain but appear to do the opposite of illuminate: dehumanise, debase, disinform. Tropes that turn things that are devastating and awful in reality into light entertainment, or portray those things as acceptable and even enjoyable in the context of the story.

I believe in free speech, so obviously I think people should be allowed to read and write what they please regardless of whether or not I think it has merit. That part is easy.

But when I run into a trope that deeply offends me, I feel this conflict over whether or not condemnation is appropriate. How dangerous are fantasies? Does it make a difference if you draw on real history or use a fantasy world for the setting? (Eg, would the Nazi/Jew romance be less offensive if the same tropes were used in fictional countries with fictional religions?) How much does tone matter? I can't help thinking that tone has an impact, that some things are written as escapism and the author and readers are aware that it's Not Realistic, and that's different from a book written seriously. From one where the author's style suggests "this book is illuminating, resonant, true" and I am all D:

But I don't know. Maybe what I want is a bright line between someone's goofy dubcon fanfic and a mainstream novel glorifying rape, and maybe there can't be one. Maybe judging works case-by-case, and recognizing that what I think is offensive and repugnant may be someone else's harmless fantasy (and vice-versa) is inevitable.

I remain curious about how other people feel on the topic: Of the principles I opened with, do you find one one or the other unconvincing? If both are relevant, how do you handle the conflict?

* On this subject: I half-joked last month that 'I'm not saying it's not possible to write a good romance between a first-person young woman narrator and an ancient superpowerful male jerk. Wait, maybe I am'. But I remembered later that there's a book I liked which used this trope! N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. So yeah, apparently I judge based on execution as well, even when I feel strongly about the trope.

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

This is reminding me of a subset of MLP fanfic called the 'Conversion Bureau' where there are two groups of authors who hate each other a lot.

The original stories were about ponies coming to Earth and telling humans that they all had to convert into ponies and have their violent impulses curbed, or die to a wave of magic that burned humans to ash. A lot of them were slice of life transformation fics, but some were about fighting the evil resistance that didn't want people to 'lose their humanity' and were willing to kill innocent ponies to prevent it.

Some people thought the premise was misanthropic because it was implying that humans were inherently violent, so it sparked a wave of response stories where the people that converted were not the same as they'd been before so the original people were 'dead', and the ponies were evil for wanting to 'replace' everyone, and the heroic resistance had to murder millions of ponies and converts in order to save humanity.

It's really, really hard to read one of the stories written by the people you don't agree with, because you're almost guaranteed to side with the antagonists and then they'll LOSE in stupid ways because the author really wants you to identify with the protagonists and this is the part where you're supposed to be cheering. x.x

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

where there are two groups of authors who hate each other a lot.

Ah yes. Warring narratives in shared-world fiction. Been there. Sadly, done that, too. :( Ack. (There's so much I wish I could conveniently "undo" in the past. Leave the present as-is, sure, but let me just edit out this or that stupid thing I did that really didn't add anything useful to anyone's experience.)

fighting the evil resistance...

Huh. This actually reminds me of a sci-fi story I read, as part of an anthology (and I can't for the life of me remember any useful titles -- or any useful keywords to find it via Google) where some aliens came to Earth, journeyed around, and one of their number was basically releasing gas/spores/magic-stuff/whatever that was altering all life on Earth to be mildly psychic in the very, VERY specific sense that if you hurt anyone, you would suffer a mental backlash so you felt the pain of the person you caused the pain to. And if you killed someone (no mention made here of whether it has to be done PAINFULLY), you would die as well. And this would bring peace to the world. And this psychic power is amazingly accurate at determining who is "responsible" for what, without any nuance in regards to, say, if it's an accident, or just how indirect your responsibility can be and you still get nailed for it.

And it all works, of course, there's nobody in this world who would be willing to personally die in order to take out a large number of enemies.

This didn't just affect humans, and it wasn't limited to harming humanity. So no meat. Carnivores are out of luck. Lions, tigers, bears ... wolves, house cats, dogs? Doomed. But, hey, carnivores = evil. We learned that much from funny-animal cartoons, right? (I wonder if the author had any idea whatsoever just how much of our ecosystem includes life forms that KILL other life forms, and how totally messed up we'd be with such a mind-bogglingly large mass-extinction event?)

I so wanted to run over those self-righteous aliens with a truck, or blow them up or something, when I read this in high school. My emotional reactions in high school were generally ... lacking in nuance ... but after more careful consideration, it would probably be the right thing to do for the sake of saving the planet (just for more rational reasons than I bothered to consider at the time).

Ditto regards either side of this "Conversion Bureau." From what you've told me, I don't think I'd want to root for anybody in that conflict. Whee.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that's "Rule Golden" by Damon Knight.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

*ding ding ding ding!* We have a WINNER!

Thanks -- My Google-fu is weak (as is my memory). I'm pretty sure I would have never figured that out on my own.

[rowyn]

*giggles at "lacking in nuance"* Still, I can't fault your present-day reasoning. Ugh.

[rowyn]

It would be difficult for me to feel like either "side" in the Conversion Bureau thing was "reasonable". It reminds me of when you pointed out "Saturday Morning Cartoon logic", where certain types of stories work if you accept their tropes, but accepting their tropes requires ignoring not the laws of physics or probability or whathaveyou, but the general rules of "how people generally behave" or "how consequences work". And you can do that! But it's a different kind of suspension of disbelief from that required for fantasy.