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shadowkatHmmm...I snagged this from elsi, and I was expecting to disagree with it. Mainly because the sociological/political read on stories -- often can come across as sanctimonious posturing from armchair social activists. But, this doesn't, it wasn't at all what I expected and I found myself nodding along with it. It does a good job of explaining why many people fell for the narrative in the books and series (not everyone, obviously), and why The Wire was so effective and innovative.
Scientific American Observations -- the Real Reason Fans Hate the Last Season of Game of Thrones
[I know not everyone does. Because I've seen their responses to. And debated it with them. The debates sort of fell into...:
The paint is off-white.
It's cream.
It's clearly off-white.
It's clearly cream, see the yellow in there.
There's no yellow in that, you are color-blind.
You are an idiot, and I'm done, let's go see Silence of the Lambs instead.
This by the way was the argument I had with my brother while painting our parents basement ages ago. We had to buy another pint of paint, because we'd run out, and were arguing over what color to buy. Online arguments with people about television series often remind me of arguments I've had with my brother over the years. At a certain point, I just give up and walk away. During this argument, we took a break and went to see Silence of the Lambs -- which we sort of agreed with one another with, but also didn't. He analyzed it from one angle, and I from another.]
Anyhow..outtakes from the article (which is why I prefer printed articles to podcasts - I can show you what grabbed me).
In sociological storytelling, the characters have personal stories and agency, of course, but those are also greatly shaped by institutions and events around them. The incentives for characters’ behavior come noticeably from these external forces, too, and even strongly influence their inner life.
People then fit their internal narrative to align with their incentives, justifying and rationalizing their behavior along the way. (Thus the famous Upton Sinclair quip: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”)
The overly personal mode of storytelling or analysis leaves us bereft of deeper comprehension of events and history. Understanding Hitler’s personality alone will not tell us much about rise of fascism, for example. Not that it didn’t matter, but a different demagogue would probably have appeared to take his place in Germany in between the two bloody world wars in the 20th century. Hence, the answer to “would you kill baby Hitler?,” sometimes presented as an ethical time-travel challenge, should be “no,” because it would very likely not matter much. It is not a true dilemma.
We also have a bias for the individual as the locus of agency in interpreting our own everyday life and the behavior of others. We tend to seek internal, psychological explanations for the behavior of those around us while making situational excuses for our own. This is such a common way of looking at the world that social psychologists have a word for it: the fundamental attribution error.
When someone wrongs us, we tend to think they are evil, misguided or selfish: a personalized explanation. But when we misbehave, we are better at recognizing the external pressures on us that shape our actions: a situational understanding. If you snap at a coworker, for example, you may rationalize your behavior by remembering that you had difficulty sleeping last night and had financial struggles this month. You’re not evil, just stressed! The coworker who snaps at you, however, is more likely to be interpreted as a jerk, without going through the same kind of rationalization. This is convenient for our peace of mind, and fits with our domain of knowledge, too. We know what pressures us, but not necessarily others.
That tension between internal stories and desires, psychology and external pressures, institutions, norms and events was exactly what Game of Thrones showed us for many of its characters, creating rich tapestries of psychology but also behavior that was neither saintly nor fully evil at any one point. It was something more than that: you could understand why even the characters undertaking evil acts were doing what they did, how their good intentions got subverted, and how incentives structured behavior. The complexity made it much richer than a simplistic morality tale, where unadulterated good fights with evil.
The hallmark of sociological storytelling is if it can encourage us to put ourselves in the place of any character, not just the main hero/heroine, and imagine ourselves making similar choices. “Yeah, I can see myself doing that under such circumstances” is a way into a broader, deeper understanding. It’s not just empathy: we of course empathize with victims and good people, not with evildoers.
But if we can better understand how and why characters make their choices, we can also think about how to structure our world that encourages better choices for everyone. The alternative is an often futile appeal to the better angels of our nature. It’s not that they don’t exist, but they exist along with baser and lesser motives. The question isn’t to identify the few angels but to make it easier for everyone to make the choices that, collectively, would lead us all to a better place.
Another example of sociological TV drama with a similarly enthusiastic fan following is David Simon’s The Wire, which followed the trajectory of a variety of actors in Baltimore, ranging from African-Americans in the impoverished and neglected inner city trying to survive, to police officers to journalists to unionized dock workers to city officials and teachers. That show, too, killed off its main characters regularly, without losing its audience. Interestingly, the star of each season was an institution more than a person. The second season, for example, focused on the demise of the unionized working class in the U.S.; the fourth highlighted schools; and the final season focused on the role of journalism and mass media.
Luckily for The Wire, creative control never shifted to the standard Hollywood narrative writers who would have given us individuals to root for or hate without being able to fully understand the circumstances that shape them. One thing that’s striking about The Wire is how one could understand all the characters, not just the good ones (and in fact, none of them were just good or bad). When that’s the case, you know you’re watching a sociological story.
Although I'd argue that in Game, there are a few characters that lean too far one way. That said, the books, and to some degree the early portion of the series, does a good job of explaining Ramsay Bolton -- who is as much a product of his environment and sociological structure as Jon Snow and Samwell Tarly. The difference though is -- unlike Tarly and Jon, he wasn't sent to the Wall, but instead provided with the task of acting as his father's enforcer to obtain his father's pleasure, and power. He couldn't have it outright -- since he was illegitmate, and you had to be legitimate in that world and as such, he was no more than just another of his father's hounds. The idea of being powerless in the sociological structure is a heavy them in both Game of Thrones and The Wire, and I agree the Wire executes it better -- in part because it's only five seasons, and it is more focused. Game of Thrones attempts to do too much.
Another outtake:
Whether done well or badly, the psychological/internal genre leaves us unable to understand and react to social change. Arguably, the dominance of the psychological and hero/antihero narrative is also the reason we are having such a difficult time dealing with the current historic technology transition. So this essay is more than about one TV show with dragons.
And..
The preference for the individual and psychological narrative is understandable: the story is easier to tell as we gravitate toward identifying with the hero or hating the antihero, at the personal level. We are, after all, also persons!
In German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s classic play, Life of Galileo, Andrea, a former pupil of Galileo, visits him after he recants his seminal findings under pressure from the Catholic Church. Galileo gives Andrea his notebooks, asking him to spread the knowledge they contain. Andrea celebrates this, saying “unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.” Galileo corrects him: “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”
Well-run societies don’t need heroes, and the way to keep terrible impulses in check isn’t to dethrone antiheros and replace them with good people. Unfortunately, most of our storytelling—in fiction and also in mass media nonfiction—remains stuck in the hero/antihero narrative. It’s a pity Game of Thrones did not manage to conclude its last season in its original vein. In a historic moment that requires a lot of institution building and incentive changing (technological challenges, climate change, inequality and accountability) we need all the sociological imagination we can get, and fantasy dragons or not, it was nice to have a show that encouraged just that while it lasted.
I'd argue that the Avengers stories tried to arc above that -- in that there wasn't just one group or an individual hero, but many heroes, all of which had done horrible things or morally ambiguous ones at various points. They don't completely, but you do see the influence of the instution and the individuals struggling within it. Captain America is a product of the military institution, he is a military experiment gone right -- and he slowly realizes the flaws within that institution and that while it had been created to fight fascism, there are strains of fascism within it. Tony Stark, Ironman, is a product of his father's weapon manufacturing business -- which he'd initially created to defend the world, but as Tony discovers kills more people and causes more warlords to be made. These are individuals railing against the very systems that created them -- systems such as the defense industry, and the military. Which is why the series is so popular, because that feeling of powerlessness against a military industrial complex -- is a familiar one. This is a sociological story not just a psychological one. The focus on both is not on their parents, although Tony's is more than any other character with the exception of Thor, but on the institutions.
And I'd agree one of the things I'd loved most about Game of Thrones was that structure, and that structure has not been maintained since S7...it even began to slowly break apart in that season I think. It's not in evidence at all now.
Scientific American Observations -- the Real Reason Fans Hate the Last Season of Game of Thrones
[I know not everyone does. Because I've seen their responses to. And debated it with them. The debates sort of fell into...:
The paint is off-white.
It's cream.
It's clearly off-white.
It's clearly cream, see the yellow in there.
There's no yellow in that, you are color-blind.
You are an idiot, and I'm done, let's go see Silence of the Lambs instead.
This by the way was the argument I had with my brother while painting our parents basement ages ago. We had to buy another pint of paint, because we'd run out, and were arguing over what color to buy. Online arguments with people about television series often remind me of arguments I've had with my brother over the years. At a certain point, I just give up and walk away. During this argument, we took a break and went to see Silence of the Lambs -- which we sort of agreed with one another with, but also didn't. He analyzed it from one angle, and I from another.]
Anyhow..outtakes from the article (which is why I prefer printed articles to podcasts - I can show you what grabbed me).
In sociological storytelling, the characters have personal stories and agency, of course, but those are also greatly shaped by institutions and events around them. The incentives for characters’ behavior come noticeably from these external forces, too, and even strongly influence their inner life.
People then fit their internal narrative to align with their incentives, justifying and rationalizing their behavior along the way. (Thus the famous Upton Sinclair quip: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”)
The overly personal mode of storytelling or analysis leaves us bereft of deeper comprehension of events and history. Understanding Hitler’s personality alone will not tell us much about rise of fascism, for example. Not that it didn’t matter, but a different demagogue would probably have appeared to take his place in Germany in between the two bloody world wars in the 20th century. Hence, the answer to “would you kill baby Hitler?,” sometimes presented as an ethical time-travel challenge, should be “no,” because it would very likely not matter much. It is not a true dilemma.
We also have a bias for the individual as the locus of agency in interpreting our own everyday life and the behavior of others. We tend to seek internal, psychological explanations for the behavior of those around us while making situational excuses for our own. This is such a common way of looking at the world that social psychologists have a word for it: the fundamental attribution error.
When someone wrongs us, we tend to think they are evil, misguided or selfish: a personalized explanation. But when we misbehave, we are better at recognizing the external pressures on us that shape our actions: a situational understanding. If you snap at a coworker, for example, you may rationalize your behavior by remembering that you had difficulty sleeping last night and had financial struggles this month. You’re not evil, just stressed! The coworker who snaps at you, however, is more likely to be interpreted as a jerk, without going through the same kind of rationalization. This is convenient for our peace of mind, and fits with our domain of knowledge, too. We know what pressures us, but not necessarily others.
That tension between internal stories and desires, psychology and external pressures, institutions, norms and events was exactly what Game of Thrones showed us for many of its characters, creating rich tapestries of psychology but also behavior that was neither saintly nor fully evil at any one point. It was something more than that: you could understand why even the characters undertaking evil acts were doing what they did, how their good intentions got subverted, and how incentives structured behavior. The complexity made it much richer than a simplistic morality tale, where unadulterated good fights with evil.
The hallmark of sociological storytelling is if it can encourage us to put ourselves in the place of any character, not just the main hero/heroine, and imagine ourselves making similar choices. “Yeah, I can see myself doing that under such circumstances” is a way into a broader, deeper understanding. It’s not just empathy: we of course empathize with victims and good people, not with evildoers.
But if we can better understand how and why characters make their choices, we can also think about how to structure our world that encourages better choices for everyone. The alternative is an often futile appeal to the better angels of our nature. It’s not that they don’t exist, but they exist along with baser and lesser motives. The question isn’t to identify the few angels but to make it easier for everyone to make the choices that, collectively, would lead us all to a better place.
Another example of sociological TV drama with a similarly enthusiastic fan following is David Simon’s The Wire, which followed the trajectory of a variety of actors in Baltimore, ranging from African-Americans in the impoverished and neglected inner city trying to survive, to police officers to journalists to unionized dock workers to city officials and teachers. That show, too, killed off its main characters regularly, without losing its audience. Interestingly, the star of each season was an institution more than a person. The second season, for example, focused on the demise of the unionized working class in the U.S.; the fourth highlighted schools; and the final season focused on the role of journalism and mass media.
Luckily for The Wire, creative control never shifted to the standard Hollywood narrative writers who would have given us individuals to root for or hate without being able to fully understand the circumstances that shape them. One thing that’s striking about The Wire is how one could understand all the characters, not just the good ones (and in fact, none of them were just good or bad). When that’s the case, you know you’re watching a sociological story.
Although I'd argue that in Game, there are a few characters that lean too far one way. That said, the books, and to some degree the early portion of the series, does a good job of explaining Ramsay Bolton -- who is as much a product of his environment and sociological structure as Jon Snow and Samwell Tarly. The difference though is -- unlike Tarly and Jon, he wasn't sent to the Wall, but instead provided with the task of acting as his father's enforcer to obtain his father's pleasure, and power. He couldn't have it outright -- since he was illegitmate, and you had to be legitimate in that world and as such, he was no more than just another of his father's hounds. The idea of being powerless in the sociological structure is a heavy them in both Game of Thrones and The Wire, and I agree the Wire executes it better -- in part because it's only five seasons, and it is more focused. Game of Thrones attempts to do too much.
Another outtake:
Whether done well or badly, the psychological/internal genre leaves us unable to understand and react to social change. Arguably, the dominance of the psychological and hero/antihero narrative is also the reason we are having such a difficult time dealing with the current historic technology transition. So this essay is more than about one TV show with dragons.
And..
The preference for the individual and psychological narrative is understandable: the story is easier to tell as we gravitate toward identifying with the hero or hating the antihero, at the personal level. We are, after all, also persons!
In German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s classic play, Life of Galileo, Andrea, a former pupil of Galileo, visits him after he recants his seminal findings under pressure from the Catholic Church. Galileo gives Andrea his notebooks, asking him to spread the knowledge they contain. Andrea celebrates this, saying “unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.” Galileo corrects him: “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”
Well-run societies don’t need heroes, and the way to keep terrible impulses in check isn’t to dethrone antiheros and replace them with good people. Unfortunately, most of our storytelling—in fiction and also in mass media nonfiction—remains stuck in the hero/antihero narrative. It’s a pity Game of Thrones did not manage to conclude its last season in its original vein. In a historic moment that requires a lot of institution building and incentive changing (technological challenges, climate change, inequality and accountability) we need all the sociological imagination we can get, and fantasy dragons or not, it was nice to have a show that encouraged just that while it lasted.
I'd argue that the Avengers stories tried to arc above that -- in that there wasn't just one group or an individual hero, but many heroes, all of which had done horrible things or morally ambiguous ones at various points. They don't completely, but you do see the influence of the instution and the individuals struggling within it. Captain America is a product of the military institution, he is a military experiment gone right -- and he slowly realizes the flaws within that institution and that while it had been created to fight fascism, there are strains of fascism within it. Tony Stark, Ironman, is a product of his father's weapon manufacturing business -- which he'd initially created to defend the world, but as Tony discovers kills more people and causes more warlords to be made. These are individuals railing against the very systems that created them -- systems such as the defense industry, and the military. Which is why the series is so popular, because that feeling of powerlessness against a military industrial complex -- is a familiar one. This is a sociological story not just a psychological one. The focus on both is not on their parents, although Tony's is more than any other character with the exception of Thor, but on the institutions.
And I'd agree one of the things I'd loved most about Game of Thrones was that structure, and that structure has not been maintained since S7...it even began to slowly break apart in that season I think. It's not in evidence at all now.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-20 12:40 pm (UTC)And going further, if we could re-home many of these people, would we be rid of fascism? The question I think at the bottom of that is...what causes the fascism to begin with? It wasn't Hitler. He's the symptom. So what caused the disease?
no subject
Date: 2019-05-20 03:11 pm (UTC)I think it's a bit more complex than "toxic combination of RWA followers and leaders" - the particular social and economic conditions had to be right for them to reach critical mass and take over - but.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-20 04:46 pm (UTC)No, I haven't -- thank you for the recommendation.
Agreed. Far more complicated. A lot of has to do with how humanity has evolved over time and the importance based on authoritarian structure in regards to tribe, family, religion, work, education etc.