Over the holidays, I took advantage of my Amazon Prime membership and finally started watching a show that's intrigued me for a while, but which I'd been too chicken to start. I'm happy to report that Bryan Fuller's Hannibal - based on the novels about pop culture-notorious cannibal Hannibal Lecter - lives up to the hype, and then some. The show is DARK. The show is GORY. It's given open-minded me a nightmare or two, and, at this point, halfway through season three, I'm not ashamed to admit that I often pause the stream, and peek ahead on the progress bar so I know when to close my eyes or skip an especially icky moment. It's not a show for the faint of heart - nor for the close-minded. You see, I could wax poetic about Mads Mikkelsen - who I was a big fan of prior to watching this - for pages and pages, but this post isn't about the show. Not really. It's about the ways fiction offers us these special, exclusive windows into hearts and souls not our own...and the ways a lack of nuance, hate, and cancel culture are currently eroding all the benefits of dark fiction.
In the first moments of the first episode of Hannibal, we meet Will Graham, a professor and special agent in the employ of the FBI. He's a profiler; he's also what's called a "pure empath." Will's gift is empathy: he - through artfully done segments of the show's narrative - has the ability to put himself wholly in the shoes of the criminals the FBI is trying to catch. He can follow their logic, and therefore anticipate their movements, thanks to his unique ability to let go of his own thoughts and biases. He himself doesn't have murderous impulses - though it's a theme Hannibal seeks to exploit in the show - but he's able to think like a murderer. He's wildly empathetic.
What struck me from the first was this: authors have to be empaths, too. Oh, how often I beat the war drum of empathy. It's my constant refrain: a fiction author's job is to think like other people. I'm not putting my whole life and truth on the page, but I'm putting someone's life and truth there, and if anyone can read my work, and identify with it, and find something special in it, then I've done my job well.
This week, in our Dartmoor Read-Along, it's Loverboy's turn. And, quite honestly, given the policing that's been happening in the book community over the past year, I knew some trepidation going into it. Tango's experience is not my experience - do I have a right to tell his story? That's just one of the things being debated on social media. In the past year, I've watched the same book "influencer" target two women authors I respect and admire greatly with Twitter callout posts. In one case, challenging a three-year age gap between characters as "pedophilia," and in another challenging an author's previous fanfic stories as "pedophilia," in the latter case, without any nuance or clarification as to the fic's actual intent. These are two specific, high-profile cases, but it happens all too often: someone on the internet using a cartoon avatar, a name that may or may not be real, and boosted by the safety of anonymity, launches a callout post in the name of "protecting" and "informing," but with the clear intent of harming an author's name and reputation. The conversation starts as "concerned" members of the book community wanting to limit who can tell which stories - but ends up, in truth, demanding that certain stories not be told at all. Both sentiments are appalling to me. In both cases - in any case - a reader has the choice to not read something he or she finds upsetting. Determining what's allowed to exist, however, is a form of censorship, and, unfortunately, it's alive and well amongst authors, bloggers, influencers, and plenty of insulated, cartoon-avatar social media users.
The sad part? In NO cases that I've witnessed have any of the authors actually been promoting harmful behavior. All of this is the result of particular whiny consumers wanting to control every aspect of the art being created. "Don't Like Don't Read" is something in which I believe in wholeheartedly. There are plenty of books out there you couldn't PAY me to read. 50 Shades? NO THANK YOU. Catch me enjoying that never. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't exist; that doesn't mean an author needs to be bullied, called-out, etc.
If we limited a person's "right" to write about certain topics based on their own experiences, we'd be cutting fiction-writing off at the knees. For example: I don't write about my own issues, for the most part. I can't. There are stories that I've had family ask me to put to paper...and I just don't know how. It hurts too much. But there are other people who can tell those sorts of stories, and who have, and who will. I don't care if they've lived any of it - I just care that they portray the issues thoughtfully, empathetically, in a way that resonates with others. And if they don't...? I simply move and read other books.
I'm terribly afraid nuance is dead. And all I know to do is to push back against the loud, ignorant, hateful - potentially paid - voices, and keep striving for art. The only way art survives is if we insist upon it.
This week, in our Dartmoor Read-Along, it's Loverboy's turn. And, quite honestly, given the policing that's been happening in the book community over the past year, I knew some trepidation going into it. Tango's experience is not my experience - do I have a right to tell his story? That's just one of the things being debated on social media. In the past year, I've watched the same book "influencer" target two women authors I respect and admire greatly with Twitter callout posts. In one case, challenging a three-year age gap between characters as "pedophilia," and in another challenging an author's previous fanfic stories as "pedophilia," in the latter case, without any nuance or clarification as to the fic's actual intent. These are two specific, high-profile cases, but it happens all too often: someone on the internet using a cartoon avatar, a name that may or may not be real, and boosted by the safety of anonymity, launches a callout post in the name of "protecting" and "informing," but with the clear intent of harming an author's name and reputation. The conversation starts as "concerned" members of the book community wanting to limit who can tell which stories - but ends up, in truth, demanding that certain stories not be told at all. Both sentiments are appalling to me. In both cases - in any case - a reader has the choice to not read something he or she finds upsetting. Determining what's allowed to exist, however, is a form of censorship, and, unfortunately, it's alive and well amongst authors, bloggers, influencers, and plenty of insulated, cartoon-avatar social media users.
The sad part? In NO cases that I've witnessed have any of the authors actually been promoting harmful behavior. All of this is the result of particular whiny consumers wanting to control every aspect of the art being created. "Don't Like Don't Read" is something in which I believe in wholeheartedly. There are plenty of books out there you couldn't PAY me to read. 50 Shades? NO THANK YOU. Catch me enjoying that never. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't exist; that doesn't mean an author needs to be bullied, called-out, etc.
If we limited a person's "right" to write about certain topics based on their own experiences, we'd be cutting fiction-writing off at the knees. For example: I don't write about my own issues, for the most part. I can't. There are stories that I've had family ask me to put to paper...and I just don't know how. It hurts too much. But there are other people who can tell those sorts of stories, and who have, and who will. I don't care if they've lived any of it - I just care that they portray the issues thoughtfully, empathetically, in a way that resonates with others. And if they don't...? I simply move and read other books.
I'm terribly afraid nuance is dead. And all I know to do is to push back against the loud, ignorant, hateful - potentially paid - voices, and keep striving for art. The only way art survives is if we insist upon it.
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