Some time ago I posted a question regarding why in American culture we have such a deep fascination with movies about crime. We pay large amounts of money to see people commit heinous crimes and enact horrible acts of violence. You can see that here: Vicarious and Conflicted Evil: a Question
A friend responded to this post with some thoughts about his or her (not telling) conflicted fascination with HBO’s long running crime drama The Sopranos. I recently revisited our correspondence, and found that I wanted to share a bit of it.
My friend noted this:
“Why did we find them so compelling? Because repeatedly, each episode would pull us ‘in’ to having compassion for Tony Soprano, the evil guy. We always wanted him to come out on top. Internally, I was always pulling for him to escape being caught by the FBI. And it felt sooooooo weird. Why were we wanting the bad guy to win? Why? I guess it is because when I look at the evil that exists in my own heart, I want that same compassion, even though I don’t deserve it.”
What this reveals is the power of a story well told, no matter WHAT the subject matter. It draws you in. I was struck by this while reading some time later in a book on the Old Testament:
“A story invites the reader to surrender his or her own thought system and to enter the world of another and to be carried along by the flow of this other world. Through this the reader becomes an insider, a part of the world of the narrative….
“We can see parallels in modern cinema, which entices the audience to identify with a different world and a different worldview in an entertaining and subtle way. Moviemakers are thoroughly aware of a story’s power to draw the audience in to adopt an alien perspective and value system.”
(Bruce K. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology, pages 104-105)
How should this (if it is true) effect how we deal with modern cinema/television?
MagistraCarminum
Well, nothing is new under the sun. The moral dilema of the storyteller has been argued about at least since Socrates… (part of his argument with the Sophists, I think, was that they were using the power to persuade in an immoral way.) This is a very important question, but one not that easily answered. One thing we can probably agree upon is that a story teller has some obligations to his audience. If the audience trusts him enough to give themselves to the story, the story teller should not betray that trust.What it means to betray that trust, and how we measure it, is, of course, the rub…