The Discarded Image Today

One of the more novel thoughts to come out of C. S. Lewis's The Discarded Image is the idea that stories teach people by example what the proper response to various events, such as love, treachery, and anger. No medieval or pre-Enlightenment audience would think that Lucifer was the hero of Paradise Lost, for instance, since a hundred other contemporary stories taught them to be able to identify and respond to heroism and treachery. Rather it is today's audience, steeped in anti-heroic realism, materialistic naturalism, and narcissistic post-modernism, who no longer grasp the traditional responses to the great betrayal of Lucifer and enshrine him as a hero. In short, story teaches social behavior, and a change in story can change a society.

This has come to mind repeatedly over the past week or so.

The first case involves a Twitter spat between conservative pundits and Superversive writers over a request to promote a Trump-focused fiction anthology. Dawn Witzke took the pundits to task:

They claim that they want the culture to change. There are a ton of nonfiction books scolding the society for the state it’s in and ranting about how it needs to change. There are commentators on the radio and television going on and on about how horrible things are today in society. Well, what do they expect?

The Right cannot ignore art and literature and then expect the culture to change. Politics alone will not do that. You can’t legislate morality. You have to change society through many different avenues, politics being only one of those. 

When you neglect society, eventually, society changed the laws. Which is exactly what has been happening over the past 50 years. We went from a society with cohesive traditional values and work ethic to a hedonistic society where “if it feels good do it” and individuals aren’t responsible for themselves. 

So why conservatives think that ignoring culture, art and literature in favor of ranting about politics is going to somehow miraculously change society? They’re daft. 

Last year, when I was at the National Diaper Bank Conference in Philadelphia, the keynote speaker talked about influencing moms in regards to caring for their children. She sited statistics that showed fictional television programs did more to change what people do than fact based PSAs. Mom’s emulated their favorite characters on the shows.

The emphasis here is mine, but it shows the power of story over culture. People do get programmed on acceptable behaviors through story.

The second case illustrates this more clearly. I was not going to touch the Hollywood scandals here, but Diversity & Comics on YouTube pointed out something strange about the Hollywood rape and assault scandals. Each man accused followed a similar script in his assault, a script that followed the tropes of seductions shown in bad 1970s movies.

Finally, and less politically charged, I have been working my way through Brandon Sanderson's Oathbringer. This has been difficult, not because Sanderson is a bad writer--at one time he was enough of a favorite to commit fanfiction in his worlds, but because I've changed along the way. Between the previous Book of Endless Pages and this one, I got swept up in reading the pulps and similarly inspired stories. Now I no longer recognize the characters in Sanderson's book as properly human. They act wrong to me. The responses to treachery, violence, and even attraction in the story are off. For instance, the killing of a traitor who betrayed one's father should not be followed by an almost Steve Urkel like "Did I do that?" As such, it wouldn't surprise me if this latest Book of Endless Pages finds itself discarded.