Truth and Fiction pt. 3
Fictions can be more truthful than truthiness. I'm thinking of the entire self-help industry. *narrows eyes*
But how does a reader know what aspects of an artwork are true, and which devices of mediation? Real-to-life characters in fiction are still always and necessarily Autons compared to real human spirit/psyche/agency. Places are sketched with a few balanced words. Situations are invented, paradoxes resolved, coincidences explained away (or not, depending on the genre). Even works of pure autobiography are mediated through memory and self-consciousness. And probably a ghost-writer.
This is Lacan's chain of signifiers?
But I believe in Truth. I believe that even in something as thickly invented as Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, truth hasn't been summarily ejected. It can't be. Nothing is entirely . . . untruth.
Perhaps I should think about the difference between Realism and Reality.
Very much in line with my Doctor Who . . . thing. . . I find myself drawn to the speculative and surreal. I have seen hyperrealist paintings - drawings so real they look like photographs, but they're still two-dimensional, like photographs. The eye says, "that is real!" but the eye is fooled by shading and perspective. In some ways, realism feels like fraud, and I feel like a victim for believing it. Realism in fiction is simply. . . pointless. Why work so hard to create what anybody can see for her or himself? To show off skill, of course. All art is self-portrait, and hyperrealism is the ego of the eye. And have you ever noticed that "realistic" cinema or fiction has to be depressing and lower-class? Even the most true-to-life portrayal of aristocracy is not realism, because it is not common. It's real (connected to actuality in some way), but not realism.
I prefer my "reality" filtered by a mind, because people are the truth I seek in fiction. The more mediated "reality" is, the better I understand the substance through which it passed. So when I read Jasper Fforde, I don't learn any kind of truth about his literary objects. Thursday is invented. Wales is invented. Jane Eyre is doubly invented. I learn about Jasper Fforde: but there's a catch. As the only truly signified object in his own works, he is still deeply mediated by signifiers, shadows, and reflections, and lies tend to bounce erratically: only incidental Truth flies true.
So I watched the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary episode. Four times in three days, once in 3D. Despite 3D being the dimension we function in at the moment, 3D cinema does not make something more realistic: it makes it more mediated, like hyperrealism. I didn't really learn anything about the Doctor, or Clara, or the TARDIS. I learned more about fans, about actors in the process of acting, and about Moffat. I learned about the relationships between them, mostly through instinct and wild guesses. And some of it will be wrong. Doctor Who isn't realistic, but it is real. It's a real phenomenon that influences real people in real life. It suffers from today's diseases, just as it slowly recovered from yesterday's plagues. It is not a source of truth or untruth, but a mediative substance that (because I have some Truth already) I can learn about real people from.
Now I wish all my best friends and relatives would let me read their secret manuscripts. Moffat has a keen mind that I enjoy a certain familiarity with, but he isn't important to me in any immediate sense. I seek the storyteller, not because I allow him any authority, but because people are important - a Truth wrapped in a thousand beautiful lies at the heart of Doctor Who.
So, I just read your series of three posts and found them deeply interesting, and also lovely. And one thought I had is, yes, you can learn about people by the stories they tell. But you have to be careful (and I have no doubt you are, because you are a thoughtful and well-practiced reader) because that kind of thinking can lead you astray--authors often portray things in their works that they do not endorse or identify with. Fiction, like you said, is mediated.
ReplyDeleteI also think you can learn about people by the stories they cherish.
For me, talking about truth in fiction requires the division of truth into subcategories, and since I'm a rhetorician, the terms that spring to mind are logos, ethos, and pathos, which I'm going to redefine shamelessly.. Logos, meaning data, reason--we might say observable reality (which of course is also always mediated). Ethos, defined as character, integrity. And pathos, feeling.
Fiction, though it is not real in the "logos" sense, can FEEL "true" in the "pathos" sense. The emotional resonance of "Life Is Beautiful" compared to any Nicholas Sparks movie is unmistakable. Sparks manipulates me into crying; the tears feel false, and the emotion makes no impression on my soul. But the tears I shed for Benigni feel true, and transformative, if only in a very small way.
The truth I get most often from fiction, though, is neither logos nor pathos, but ethos. I believe we build character mainly by the stories we cherish, whether they are true (in the logos sense) or not. And we must remember that even true stories are mediated. One reason I love Doctor Who is that the show's ethos shapes a world, or rather a being-in-the-world, that I find worthy. It is "true" in the sense that its ethos, mediated through the filter that is me and all my experience, creates for me a better universe than that offered by other stories.
I am, however, sensitive to the fact that stories are mediated not only by their tellers but by their audience. Fiction is, as you say, more malleable in its interpretation than "true" stories are. They have to be digested, and like food (but unlike oxygen), not everyone can tolerate the same substances. (See? I'm mixing metaphors too.) Gospel truth is nourishing for anyone who will take it. Fiction may or may not be.
Apt. Thank-you.
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