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Thinking some more about contrast
Sep. 7th, 2009 07:31 amI've been thinking about death, and how the only feedback I've got about my script was that nobody died so the stakes were low.
It seems to me that stories concentrate too much on death. SF stories in particular. It's all very well saying the Evil Empire is Evil because it kills people. But I think there's a pretty broad agreement among most humans that Killing Is Bad. (There's some groups who decide other groups don't count, and SF explores that a lot, and it is valuable, but still.) We don't really need to discuss the point much for the majority of cases. There's dark ones about revenge and justice and a few sick ones about if it's possible to literally be a waste of space but in general Killing Is Bad. We know that.
So more interesting and complicated stories would be discussing the really wide realms of Bad that can happen while everybody lives.
It's like Serenity: Once you get down to Reavers and corpses everyone can see Miranda went horribly wrong. And because it's so clear it can fit in a single movie. And because it's so clear we don't really need to discuss it again. If the question is if it's wrong to try and 'improve' on human nature then pushing it so far everybody dies isn't any kind of answer. The line to Wrong is waaaaaay before that.
I think drawing a high contrast world where Good is Good and Evil is Evil and you can tell because the Evil side does a bunch of killing is actually dangerous. People can get a hell of a long way into doing really bad stuff and still say they're not Evil because Evil is Those Other People Who Do Killing. Evil is always Those Other People. No helpful.
Need to hold up a mirror and get people to recognise what is in it.
Killing is bad, but so are so many other ways of grinding each other down or treating people as things.
I want to write about those. People dying is the end of those. And people dying is kind of a distraction when the point is different ways of living.
It seems to me that stories concentrate too much on death. SF stories in particular. It's all very well saying the Evil Empire is Evil because it kills people. But I think there's a pretty broad agreement among most humans that Killing Is Bad. (There's some groups who decide other groups don't count, and SF explores that a lot, and it is valuable, but still.) We don't really need to discuss the point much for the majority of cases. There's dark ones about revenge and justice and a few sick ones about if it's possible to literally be a waste of space but in general Killing Is Bad. We know that.
So more interesting and complicated stories would be discussing the really wide realms of Bad that can happen while everybody lives.
It's like Serenity: Once you get down to Reavers and corpses everyone can see Miranda went horribly wrong. And because it's so clear it can fit in a single movie. And because it's so clear we don't really need to discuss it again. If the question is if it's wrong to try and 'improve' on human nature then pushing it so far everybody dies isn't any kind of answer. The line to Wrong is waaaaaay before that.
I think drawing a high contrast world where Good is Good and Evil is Evil and you can tell because the Evil side does a bunch of killing is actually dangerous. People can get a hell of a long way into doing really bad stuff and still say they're not Evil because Evil is Those Other People Who Do Killing. Evil is always Those Other People. No helpful.
Need to hold up a mirror and get people to recognise what is in it.
Killing is bad, but so are so many other ways of grinding each other down or treating people as things.
I want to write about those. People dying is the end of those. And people dying is kind of a distraction when the point is different ways of living.