Emulation vs. Discernment
I suppose that the title above presents a somewhat false dichotomy, but you'll see what I mean soon.
I once read a book. Really. I did. The problem was that I didn't like it. Oh, sure the story was good and the world in which it took place was well crafted. The writing showed skill and - to an extent - artistry, and it was engaging as well. Yet after the reading was done I had an issue: the main character. He was the hero of the story - the one who understood everything first and best and whose superior gifts allowed him to save the day. But he wasn't a very good person. Actually, he was a pretty bad person.
So I read the sequel and, while the protagonist began to show some signs of humanity, he still left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't know how many books in the series I eventually picked up, but after a while I quit because I felt like this person who was not-such-a-good-example was being lifted up as a light for me to follow.
I was pretty naive. You see, I thought (because I had been carefully trained to think this way) that the folks I read about in books - the main characters - were figures for me to emulate. I was supposed to be exposed to great literature so that I could develop a healthy hero-worship of literary (I use the term loosely) figures and try all my life to copy and combine their legendary virtues. I thought that people wrote books just for that - to show other people how to live right and to have the bad guys lose in a way that clearly showed the obvious evil of their ways.
I had the same attitude about movies. If the main character did it or said it, it must be good because the main character is always good. At the very least, the movie must be saying that it is good, whether or not I agreed. A good movie (or book) was one in which the main characters did and said things I liked and would do or say myself. A bad one was one in which the hero didn't live by universal Mormon morality. In that case, he (she) was no hero to me. Such works showed the perversion of carnal, worldly men.
Then something new occurred to me. What if I could read a book or watch a movie not for the purpose of emulating the main character - of idolizing him - but for the purpose of discerning what I could about good and evil, life and death, light and darkness through the content and context of the thing? What if these works were not so much a series of instructions (do this, don't do that) as they were explorations of the possible - the impossible? What if I was not necessarily meant to like the main character, but only to learn from him?
Whoa! Brain cramp! The thought that I could gain more from a text through active discernment than through blank-stare ninth-grade geometry class absorption was unsettling, revolutionary, and ultimately very liberating. It enabled me to see good and bad in a work without accepting the whole as inherently good or rejecting it as unequivocally bad. It allowed me to look at motives, context, origin, and a thousand other things I'd never caught a glimpse of before when I was simply saying "that's a bad book, but the movie is good."
Now, don't get me wrong, I still find things in film and literature that I think are worthy of emulation, and things that I despise. But I don't think that's the whole point anymore and I rarely find a work that I uncategorically call good or bad. Now I can listen (I think) to what the author is really saying, rather than just the words the characters use. I pay attention to the devices used by the creator and the created and ask myself what I can glean from noticing them. I allow characters to have flaws, and writers/filmmakers as well.
Most of us have probably heard this quote from Lorenzo Snow:
“I saw the imperfections in [Joseph Smith] ...I thanked God that He would put upon a man who had those imperfections the power and authority He placed upon him... for I knew that I myself had weaknesses, and I thought there was a chance for me... I thanked God that I saw these imperfections.” (Private journal quoted in Maxwell [1984], 10.)
Also this, from Moroni:
"Condemn me not because of mine imperfection, neither my father, because of his imperfection, neither them who have written before him; but rather give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been." (Mormon 9:31)
I ask, where is this attitude towards the authors and artists, heroes and other characters, who may be very much inspired, although very much imperfect? Instead of condemning in art that which we would not do or with which we do not agree, can we not learn from it?
Again, I stress that I do not mean to admire or emulate the unsavory, but rather to seek after the good without limiting it falsely, and to draw from the disquieting the principles that allow us to look on others (and ourselves) with compassion, mercy, and charity. This is the way I try to look at things now, and I hope it is better. I'm sure I have more to learn and more changing to do, but I think this is a step in the right direction.
Now if only I could find that book again...
I once read a book. Really. I did. The problem was that I didn't like it. Oh, sure the story was good and the world in which it took place was well crafted. The writing showed skill and - to an extent - artistry, and it was engaging as well. Yet after the reading was done I had an issue: the main character. He was the hero of the story - the one who understood everything first and best and whose superior gifts allowed him to save the day. But he wasn't a very good person. Actually, he was a pretty bad person.
So I read the sequel and, while the protagonist began to show some signs of humanity, he still left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't know how many books in the series I eventually picked up, but after a while I quit because I felt like this person who was not-such-a-good-example was being lifted up as a light for me to follow.
I was pretty naive. You see, I thought (because I had been carefully trained to think this way) that the folks I read about in books - the main characters - were figures for me to emulate. I was supposed to be exposed to great literature so that I could develop a healthy hero-worship of literary (I use the term loosely) figures and try all my life to copy and combine their legendary virtues. I thought that people wrote books just for that - to show other people how to live right and to have the bad guys lose in a way that clearly showed the obvious evil of their ways.
I had the same attitude about movies. If the main character did it or said it, it must be good because the main character is always good. At the very least, the movie must be saying that it is good, whether or not I agreed. A good movie (or book) was one in which the main characters did and said things I liked and would do or say myself. A bad one was one in which the hero didn't live by universal Mormon morality. In that case, he (she) was no hero to me. Such works showed the perversion of carnal, worldly men.
Then something new occurred to me. What if I could read a book or watch a movie not for the purpose of emulating the main character - of idolizing him - but for the purpose of discerning what I could about good and evil, life and death, light and darkness through the content and context of the thing? What if these works were not so much a series of instructions (do this, don't do that) as they were explorations of the possible - the impossible? What if I was not necessarily meant to like the main character, but only to learn from him?
Whoa! Brain cramp! The thought that I could gain more from a text through active discernment than through blank-stare ninth-grade geometry class absorption was unsettling, revolutionary, and ultimately very liberating. It enabled me to see good and bad in a work without accepting the whole as inherently good or rejecting it as unequivocally bad. It allowed me to look at motives, context, origin, and a thousand other things I'd never caught a glimpse of before when I was simply saying "that's a bad book, but the movie is good."
Now, don't get me wrong, I still find things in film and literature that I think are worthy of emulation, and things that I despise. But I don't think that's the whole point anymore and I rarely find a work that I uncategorically call good or bad. Now I can listen (I think) to what the author is really saying, rather than just the words the characters use. I pay attention to the devices used by the creator and the created and ask myself what I can glean from noticing them. I allow characters to have flaws, and writers/filmmakers as well.
Most of us have probably heard this quote from Lorenzo Snow:
“I saw the imperfections in [Joseph Smith] ...I thanked God that He would put upon a man who had those imperfections the power and authority He placed upon him... for I knew that I myself had weaknesses, and I thought there was a chance for me... I thanked God that I saw these imperfections.” (Private journal quoted in Maxwell [1984], 10.)
Also this, from Moroni:
"Condemn me not because of mine imperfection, neither my father, because of his imperfection, neither them who have written before him; but rather give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been." (Mormon 9:31)
I ask, where is this attitude towards the authors and artists, heroes and other characters, who may be very much inspired, although very much imperfect? Instead of condemning in art that which we would not do or with which we do not agree, can we not learn from it?
Again, I stress that I do not mean to admire or emulate the unsavory, but rather to seek after the good without limiting it falsely, and to draw from the disquieting the principles that allow us to look on others (and ourselves) with compassion, mercy, and charity. This is the way I try to look at things now, and I hope it is better. I'm sure I have more to learn and more changing to do, but I think this is a step in the right direction.
Now if only I could find that book again...
Comments
I've always enjoyed batman, reading it in comic form, watching the campy 60s made for T.V. series, most of the silver screen adaptations. Batman is an exception. I prefer the shiny clean, minimal fault guy.
As I think you understood, though, my point is that we often miss valuable opportunities for growth because we think that everything a character does is being set forth by the author/creator as good or because we think that we have to agree with everything for it to be okay to watch/read.
Leaving literature and visual arts completely: I've been guilty of seeking out the good in those who have been banished to the 100% evil realms of human thought. Specifically, Adolf Hitler was said to be an exceptional person by those who were near him. I do not believe there are many 100% evil people. It is when the bad is exceptionally heinous that it becomes near impossible to reconcile any good that might exist.
I've written about this before (here, for instance), but I think you have explained it much better than I could. In part because I don't really remember ever being that didactic a reader.
I find the account of Amalickiah's rise to power chilling everytime I read it. He is undoubtedly the hero of chapter 47 yet he is equally undoubtedly not to be emulated.
Whether we can gain more from a more complex view of literature is arguable (I vote yes and strongly, but I'm sympathetic to disagreement), but let no one deny that there is value in both methods.
On the other hand, Christopher Nolan's revisioning of the story takes that sensibility to another level, one that many people, including many Mormons, think is just too much: too insensitive to evil and violence, too amoral, too dark. I'm not one of those people. In a universe framed around various shades of gray, I see these new films, Dark Knight especially, as being fully aware of the moral implications of what it might mean to live in such a universe. I use the word "might" because these films are simply compressed, fictional approximations of the world we live in. They thus deal only in possibilities and truth, not probabilities and fact. In other words, our world will never be Batman's world, but the truths expressed and explored therein can rightly be brought to bear in the ways we approach living in this world.
Would I recommend the movies to everyone? Not necessarily. I think it takes a certain degree of maturity and a certain level of discernment to be able to approach such a world on its own terms, that is, to engage evil, immorality, and sin without falling prey to these forces ourselves.
This is where I think your distinction between emulation and discernment becomes useful, Adam. It seems to reflect, for me, a general willingness to embrace such moral ambiguity while in pursuit of some greater truth. Now, whether this willingness comes with spiritual maturity or not, I'm unsure. For me, that's been the case (as it appears to be for you). As I've developed intellectually and spiritually, I find myself much more willing to reach out and embrace things that I may have once immediately dismissed as evil. And I'm better able to see through a character's weaknesses and strengths into their (potential) humanity. In this light, as your post implies, both are useful ways of reading that we may each embrace at different times during our personal progression.