Pop culture and the Goodies vs Badies trope

[Cheetah]

I read an interesting article on how the modern stories with a good side vs an evil side are just that, modern. That until the 19th Century and nationalism, the myths and stories that were told didn't have any moralistic opponents in them.

And that this good vs evil trope is probably harmful.

The first time we see Darth Vader doing more than heavy breathing in Star Wars (1977), he’s strangling a man to death. A few scenes later, he’s blowing up a planet. He kills his subordinates, chokes people with his mind, does all kinds of things a good guy would never do. But then the nature of a bad guy is that he does things a good guy would never do. Good guys don’t just fight for personal gain: they fight for what’s right – their values.

[...]

In old folktales, no one fights for values. Individual stories might show the virtues of honesty or hospitality, but there’s no agreement among folktales about which actions are good or bad. When characters get their comeuppance for disobeying advice, for example, there is likely another similar story in which the protagonist survives only because he disobeys advice. Defending a consistent set of values is so central to the logic of newer plots that the stories themselves are often reshaped to create values for characters such as Thor and Loki – who in the 16th-century Icelandic Edda had personalities rather than consistent moral orientations.

[...]

Stories about good guys and bad guys that are implicitly moral – in the sense that they invest an individual’s entire social identity in him not changing his mind about a moral issue – perversely end up discouraging any moral deliberation. Instead of anguishing over multidimensional characters in conflict – as we find in The Iliad, or the Mahabharata or Hamlet – such stories rigidly categorise people according to the values they symbolise, flattening all the deliberation and imagination of ethical action into a single thumbs up or thumbs down. Either a person is acceptable for Team Good, or he belongs to Team Evil.

Good guy/bad guy narratives might not possess any moral sophistication, but they do promote social stability, and they’re useful for getting people to sign up for armies and fight in wars with other nations. Their values feel like morality, and the association with folklore and mythology lends them a patina of legitimacy, but still, they don’t arise from a moral vision. They are rooted instead in a political vision, which is why they don’t help us deliberate, or think more deeply about the meanings of our actions. Like the original Grimm stories, they’re a political tool designed to bind nations together.

[...]

There's also a long Hacker News thread on the topic.

Personally, I've always found the pure good vs pure evil stories to be rather simplistic and boring. Caricatures which are always good or always evil aren't real, and people don't simply to "evil" just because. I hadn't really thought of how recent this is though, or what the implications of it might be.

So to further enlighten the topic, I decided to check with here: What are your thoughts concerning morality in stories?

 

[Synobun]

If I wanted my entertainment to closely resemble real life I would probably be doing more things with my life instead of wasting it away watching television.

There's certainly a trope of black and white morality in media but I don't think that's problematic. Have you read folktales? They suck. Most moral wrist-wringing in stories is infantile anyways.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I personally believe the Borg are misunderstood and unfairly maligned by the inhabitants of the Alpha quadrant. They offer peace and end to all the maladies of pure organic life but are given nothing but hostility for their virtuous actions.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I read an interesting article on how the modern stories with a good side vs an evil side are just that, modern. That until the 19th Century and nationalism, the myths and stories that were told didn't have any moralistic opponents in them.

So the bible wasn't written until the 19th century?

It’s no coincidence that good guy/bad guy movies, comic books and games have large, impassioned and volatile fandoms – even the word ‘fandom’ suggests the idea of a nation, or kingdom.

Fandom is a community, not a nation or kingdom. The only context for using the word "kingdom" that means anything to me is the Society for Creative Anachronism. In that context, I'm a citizen of the Kingdom of Avacal (previously the Principality of Avacal in the Kingdom of An Tir). It's not an identity I've actively used during the past 20 years, but it's still something that was part of my life for 12 years (in the '80s and '90s) and is meaningful to me.

Some SCA people are involved in various fandoms, be they science fiction/fantasy, gaming, historical fiction/drama, etc.

 

[Peuri]

A popular narrative about the political climate in the west seems to be one of growing polarization. I'm not sure if that is really true or not. But would it be a stretch to say that the way our contemporary stories are constructed, that is of only one dimensionally goor or bad characters as mentioned in the article, has changed the way we see our political opponents through this lense of good vs. evil? If you listen to people talking about their political opponents, there is a tendency to see the opponents as irredeemably wrong and totally devoid of arguments or viewpoints worth listening. Like in a movie, the opponent exists only to be destroyed or converted.

 

[Mouthwash]

There's a SSC piece on this now, if anyone's interested. He takes issue with the claim that the 'good vs evil' narrative was a product of modern nationalist groupthink, and suggests some alternatives.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's an interesting article, but I'm not sure I agree with Nichol's evaluation of folktales. It seems to me that, having failed to find a modern, Western, legal-rational moral structure to the stories, she's concluded that they have no moral structure at all. It's true that characters in older stories don't tend to embody good or evil as great, grand abstractions, but it doesn't follow that the characters are not themselves good or bad, are not righteous or wicked, are not courageous or cowardly, and that this doesn't drive conflict.

I mean, when she's describing the Arthurian mythos, she says that, "[Arthur's] adversaries were often, literally, monsters, rather than people who symbolised moral weaknesses." As if monstrousness, in a world as emphatically Christian as the court culture of Medieval France, wouldn't be read as having some sort of moral significance?

Anyway, obligatory SMBC:

Spoiler for size :

 

[Live trash can]

I think fighting for something is, for lack of a better word, nice.

And I think most people would choose something bigger than themselves to fight for.

This could bypass the dichotomy of good and evil. Maybe

 

[warpus]

It can certainly be great propaganda tool to paint a situation in a binary "us vs them" sort of way. You can rally your people around you and come out looking like a boss. I don't get why most people don't just see right through it, but that's another topic for another day

So I think real life tends to mirror these ideas of "good vs evil" and our folktales pick some of that up and evolve.

 

[Mouthwash]

I don't get why most people don't just see right through it, but that's another topic for another day.

I'm going to assume you're talking about non-liberal causes? It's not as though feminism or Palestinian solidarity could be based on anything like that, nope.

 

[Bugfatty300]

Only to the most basic neutral notions good and bad will earn a global audience. Eventually I think we'll all be on the same page more or less, until then we\re just going to have to suffer rewatching DS9 episodes and being called pretentious hipsters.

Of course by "global" I mean that one massive Asian country with chilling effect censorship and a fondness for watching dozens of loud nonsensical movies about good robotic aliens fighting bad robotic aliens.

 

[Kyriakos]

I read an interesting article on how the modern stories with a good side vs an evil side are just that, modern. That until the 19th Century and nationalism, the myths and stories that were told didn't have any moralistic opponents in them.

And that this good vs evil trope is probably harmful.



There's also a long Hacker News thread on the topic.

Personally, I've always found the pure good vs pure evil stories to be rather simplistic and boring. Caricatures which are always good or always evil aren't real, and people don't simply to "evil" just because. I hadn't really thought of how recent this is though, or what the implications of it might be.

So to further enlighten the topic, I decided to check with here: What are your thoughts concerning morality in stories?

Depends on how you define good vs evil. Moralism is christian, generally (ie judaic; at least if one goes by Nietzsche's famous work on a (possible) genealogy of european ethics vs judaic moralism).

While good vs evil may sound generic, it should be noted that polar extremes are inherently important in language, and by extension also in thought. Although this doesn't have to mean that a good vs evil scheme has to not be utter garbage, but that is down to the author, not the actual dynamic itself imo.
Eg, in various works about the antithesis between known and unknown, you have an accompanying (either expressed or not) dynamic of good (as in known and trusted) and evil (as in potentially catastrophic due to being unknown). Most european fantasy of the high quality type (i mean by serious authors, eg E.T.A. Hoffmann) uses this duality (in the case of Hoffmann: The Nutcracker, the Sandman, The Elixirs of the Devil, Councilor Krespel etc).

Of course the good vs evil thing is also used by low quality authors, eg Tolkien ^^ Then it becomes a trope.

 

[Live trash can]

Good and evil does take part in our STORY of the World.

I find that if you aquire knowledge, this often takes away something from what we find evil.

 

[BvBPL]

That until the 19th Century and nationalism, the myths and stories that were told didn't have any moralistic opponents in them.

John Milton would disagree.

 

[Live trash can]

John Milton would disagree.

This makes me think of Norwegian fairy tales.

For instance, the hero helped an old woman who had stuck her nose in a tree and she helped him later again.
Other people had walked passed her and because of her help the hero won something.

Not really moralistic opponents, I guess...

 

[Farm Boy]

Anyway, obligatory SMBC:

Spoiler for size :

My sarasm/humor filter is broken this week I think. I see the SMBC and see swing and a miss on:

Spoiler :

Edit: I don't think my random picture is going to tell the whole story. So from Wiki: Keeper of all human knowledge -

That fall, the former president was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer. Facing his mortality, Grant struck a publishing deal with his friend Mark Twain for his memoirs, hoping that they would provide for his family after his death.

 

[BvBPL]

I think the real take away is that those stories that have stood the test of time are more complex and just better stories than many stories that receive popular acclaim in contemporary life. That observation about what stories stand the test of time shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Pop culture necessarily appeals to the lowest common standard. They are necessarily simple.

When the Romans threw Christians to the lions, they absolutely demonized the Christians into single-dimensional beings of pure evil exactly as Uwe Boll does with the antagonists in his films. But in 2000 years, it wouldn’t be Uwe Boll’s films that stand out as exemplars of culture just as we don’t think of circus games in that way today.

 

[warpus]

I'm going to assume you're talking about non-liberal causes? It's not as though feminism or Palestinian solidarity could be based on anything like that, nope.

What are you talking about? Don't assume anything, just.. read what I said and go with that.

 

[Live trash can]

But in 2000 years, it wouldn’t be Uwe Boll’s films that stand out as exemplars of culture just as we don’t think of circus games in that way today.

Interesting. That makes me think about the Bible. That is about 2000 years. How many stories from that do people remember?

I actually remember a few: the kind-hearted Samaritan, the story of Job, how Moses made a way through water, and Jesus's miracles.

Are those examples of excellent story-telling?

But I remember much more vividly Star Wars. And other Sci-Fi movies/series.

 

[Evie]

"Monsters instead of people that symbolize moral weakness" is world-class nonsense : the monsters are often implicity, and in some case explicitly (eg, Fafnir, explicitly a human-like being turned into a dragon due to greed) the product of moral weaknesses. Other examples of monsters in classic mythology that are the fruit of humans mistakes, either directly (eg, a human's own failing turn him into a monster : Fafnir) or indirectly (eg, the failings of another human result in the creation of a monster : the Minotaur, Grendel). The link between the human and the monstrous is also highlighted by some of the most famous monsters of the late medieval and renaissance belief system : the werewolf (a human abandoning the civilized ways and becoming a slave to their bestial instincts) most notably. Vampires and even to some degree Witches (the Renaissance version) also fall into this scheme.

Then to compare that with Star Wars, when Star Wars explicitly goes out of its way to dehumanize Vader and paint him as exactly that : a monster. He, like the Ringwraiths (or the Orcs, for that matter) in Tolkien, have only the vaguest sense of humanity left to them ; they (Vader and Ringwraits), like Fafnir and werewolves, are humans turned into monsters by their own flaws. Obi-Wan even directly allude to this : "He's more machine than man". Vader is a cybernetic monster, or so we're lead to believe ; it's only after the Empire plot twist that we begin to see the leftover traces of humanity, that Luke will be able to use to redeem him in Jedi. The Ringwraiths, for their part, have no traces of humanity left, and can only be destroyed.