Yeah I've been talking a lot about Orwell the past few days and he wrote an essay about the "tragic sense of life" that I think a lot about (it's ostensibly his deep dive into why Tolstoy hated Shakespeare so much and particularly King Lear)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
It sounds silly to accuse smart educated adult people of this But it is very common in all of us, I think, to have that kneejerk response that "Hey if you the author made this happen, that means you *wanted* it to happen You made these people suffer, and that makes you evil"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
This is literally Tolstoy and Shakespeare Tolstoy, for whatever reason, specifically fixated on how much he hated King Lear And he thought the play made Shakespeare a *bad person*, that only someone with a "degraded moral sense" would set it up so Cordelia dies at the end
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
And, like, it's a fair cop Tragedy isn't always good art, and a tragedy is always trying to say something about what the author sees as the rules of the world we live in, and you're allowed to hate that statement
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
But if you just flat-out reject the tragic sense of life completely, you're in denial about something You're running away from truth, you're refusing to confront what is the fundamental basis, the definition, of *having a moral sense at all* to begin with
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
Like, look, the whole definition of being a good person means being good even if it doesn't actually work out in the end If you need to know whether it will all work out before you do anything good, you're not actually a good person You're a fake good person
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
We all fucking know that, and yet moral guardians in every era seem to demand that the world of fiction wipe away this basic truth so that the imaginary world it presents us instead can be "inspiring" and "hopeful"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
And it's not like there's no place for that But if you live in that escapist fantasy all the time, you become thoughtless and stupid, and when you become thoughtless and stupid, you become an asshole At least you should consider that, if you think fiction affects culture
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
Alan Moore went in hard on this in his take on Watchmen There's something very specifically American about Superman He's the world's strongest man because he's the world's righteous man and vice versa
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
On the one hand it's an inspiring story of hope and escapist fantasy to cling to for members of the underclass who have never seen power wielded other than to oppress etc etc etc On the other hand, it's *fucked up*
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It's inspiring TO YOU, if you're in the implied audience and the story is told in such a way that you easily identify with the guy If not -- if you're, say, a foreigner who can't help but see Superman as an American symbol -- it's pretty fucking scary to see that thought process
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
"Of COURSE I'm the good guy Of COURSE I'm the one who can be trusted with nuclear bombs If I weren't the one with the right to have nukes, then how come I AM the one who has nukes, huh?" (This is literally the message of The Incredibles and that's also fucked up)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
I mean in the case of Orwell's take on King Lear, the tragedy here is simple Lear wants to have his cake and eat it too He wants to magnanimously give away his power and retire He also gets mad when the people he gives his power to start using it against him
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