Polemic, real characters, and real *people*

[ssk7882 <skelkins@attbi.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50445

Pippin wrote:

> I think there are two different styles being used on 
> the list, which results in confusion or unfulfilled 
> expectations. 

Absolutely agreed!  In fact, this conversation is beginning
to remind me very much of a discussion I had with a housemate 
a while back over Naomi Wolf's _The Beauty Myth._

Now, _The Beauty Myth_ is a book that I like, and the reason 
that I like it is because it is written with such passion, 
and such skill, and such rhetorical force.  It makes extreme 
statements, and it makes them with courage.  It does not 
vacillate, and it does not waffle.  It is not *wishy-washy.*
It is not balanced, it is not careful, and it is not fair.  
It does not try to see both sides of the argument.  That is not 
its purpose.  It is at base a work of polemic, and I personally 
think that it is a very enjoyable one.

My housemate, on the other hand, disliked this book intensely,
not because he disagreed with its basic premises (he did not),
but rather, because he felt that the book's "case" was weakened 
by the fact that its author was in places extremely sloppy with
her facts and figures, by the fact that she was not careful to
qualify her statements, by the fact that she did not give any
attention to the other side of the argument, by the fact that
the work is not "fair."   

This bewildered me, frankly, because I know that my housemate
is very fond of many other works of polemic and apology.  I
therefore could not understand why he should have been so
bothered on those grounds.  After a long and mutually 
frustrating discussion over this, we finally came to the 
realization that the reason for our disparate readings of 
this text had really been rooted in our expectations.  My 
housemate had sat down with the book expecting it to be a 
kind of academic social science text.  He had therefore been 
reading it with the expectation that it would present certain 
types of material (facts, figures, statistics), and that it 
would then analyze this data in a very particular way.  

I, on the other hand, had sat down with this book with the 
understanding that it was a book-length *essay.*  I had 
therefore been reading it in a frame of mind which recognizes 
polemic as one of the acceptable -- and, indeed, expected -- forms 
of discourse that the narrative might take.  Unsurprisingly, 
therefore, I was in the end pleased with the work, while 
my housemate was taken aback and disappointed.

Literary analysis is in part such an interesting field, IMO, 
because it incorporates quite a wide variety of narrative 
approaches.  There are people who do things like tallying
up the number of occurrences of specific words in texts
and compiling concordances of them.  These people are
engaged in literary analysis.  

Then there are books like William Empson's _Milton's God,_ 
which launches an all-out attack on the character of God 
in Milton's "Paradise Lost" -- and in the process, attacks
quite a number of aspects of standard Judeo-Christian 
theology as well.  This book is a work of polemic.  It 
is also a work of literary analysis.

And then there are works which fall somewhere in between
these two extremes: Stanley Fish's _Surprised By Sin,_
for example, which evaluates "Paradise Lost" neither
through concordance nor polemic, but instead, by proposing
a very particular interpretation of reader response to
the text.  This, too, is a work of literary analysis.

I think that it is important for us to bear in mind that
polemic has its place -- and a very well-established place,
at that -- in discussions of works of literature.  Literary
analysis is not a court of law.  We are not judges, and the 
characters are not on trial for their lives.  There is no 
onus upon us to be "fair" to fictional characters, or to 
give both sides of an argument over their qualities either 
equal weight or equal hearing.

I also think that we might want to keep in mind that the
discussions taking place on this forum are *conversations.*
They have more than one participant.  This even further
reduces the onus on any *one* person in a thread to try
to cover all sides of an issue, or to give equal time to 
various interpretations of the text.  We are having a 
conversation here, not drafting a constitution.  

All that said, there are rules of "fairness" that I do
think we try to engage in.  We try not to be rude to
*real* people.  We try not to utilize ad hominem attacks 
against our fellow list-members.  We try not to insult 
real human beings, people who are made of flesh and blood
and bone, people who have feelings that can be hurt.  

Fairness to the *characters,* though?  Sparing the
characters' feelings?  Refraining from saying mean
things about them?  Giving them the benefit of the
doubt?  

I see no moral obligation to do any such thing.  The 
characters are not real, but fictional, and they can
no more be hurt by anything that we say on this forum 
than my desk chair can be.  I am therefore often taken
aback by statements that seem to draw conclusions
about people's relationships with other *people* based
on their favored style of discussing a *text.* 

Amy:

> I suppose the disagreement between us may come down to 
> the fact that we may speak differently about real-life 
> people. 

But fictional characters *aren't* "real-life people!"

I think that the disagreement here may actually come down 
more to the difference between literary and fannish reading 
practice: in other words, between the conception of the 
fictional characters as constructs, and the conception of 
them as real people.

These are slightly different ways of viewing the text.
Both of them are valid, and nearly everyone engages in 
both types of reading simultaneously when they sit down 
to enjoy a story.  We also usually engage in both types 
of thinking on this list when we sit down to *discuss* 
the story.  

Usually...But not always.  And that's when we get into
trouble.  

Interestingly enough, the "trouble" nearly always starts up 
when somebody expresses a negative opinion about a popular 
character.

Funny, how that works.

I am not going to use the Dread "M Word" here <g>, but it does 
seem to me that this distinction -- between reading practice 
which accepts the characters as constructs and that which insists
on treating them as real people -- has been coming up frequently 
of late, perhaps because shipping arguments seem to bring it
out in people.  

So Maria, for example, says that she did not like Cho Chang.
She felt a strong sense of dislike for her, and on reflection,
realized that this was probably because she didn't care for 
Cho's narrative function in the story.  

Now, this is a perfectly valid -- and, indeed, very common -- 
reason for a reader to feel a strong sense of dislike for a 
fictional character.  It is, in fact, precisely the same reason 
that Eileen cited a while back for feeling such a strong 
dislike for Bartemius Crouch Sr's dear departed wife.  

Yet when Maria said this, she got responses which implied that 
her reader response was somehow "unfair," that it was unjust 
to "hold Cho accountable" for her own narrative function in 
the text.  The argument here, if I have it right, is: "It's 
not *Cho's* fault that she serves a function you don't like!"

Okay.  Now the thing about this is that in real life, it 
is indeed very unfortunate when people dislike or speak badly
of people they do not know based on the "functions" they fill, 
or based on other people with whom they associate them.  That's 
*prejudice,* right?  It's unjust.

Cho Chang and Barty Crouch Sr., however, are *not* real people.  
They are *like* real people, in that they can come to feel 
so very real to us that we start responding to them with 
the same depths of emotion that we ordinarily reserve for
genuine human beings, but at the end of the day, they are 
fictive constructs.  It is therefore perfectly "fair" to 
feel a liking or a disliking for them on account of the 
narrative functions that they play in the story, or because
they remind us of people we have known in real life, or
because we simply do not like their "types."  

Cho and Barty and Ron and Harry and Remus are not being 
"maligned" by such reader responses.  How can they be?  
They have no feelings which we the readers can hurt.  To 
the extent that they can be said to exist as "people" at 
all, they exist on a different plane of reality than we 
as readers do.  To the extent that they can be said to 
have "feelings" at all, those feelings can only be hurt 
by the people who exist on the same plane of reality that they 
do -- in other words, by the other fictional characters.  Cho
and Ron and Harry and Remus Lupin (whether Ever So Evil or 
not) can all hurt each *other.*  But we the readers?  

Nah.  We can't touch 'em.

We can, however, hurt each others' feelings.  

Accusing other people of rhetorical dishonesty is an effective
way of doing this.  

Another is expressing the opinion that other people's ways of 
discussing or responding to literary characters must in some 
way reflect upon how they treat real people in real life.



Elkins