I was the baboon.
You’re the baboon.
The reader is always the baboon, cutting holes in his umbrella to let the sunshine in, then getting drenched in the rainstorm.
I was four, so I didn’t know the word condescension, but rather preferred when dad read another book instead of the volume of fables.
Classic, ancient, vital, yet their form serves to illustrate another point: a problem with modern entertainment.
Alex Perez, a retired ballplayer and astute critic of the state of publishing, keeps talking about how shallow things become with an agenda. He most often takes the woke perspective to task, as that’s the one in vogue, but is equally quick to call out any answering volley from the right. An overarching point of his: propaganda isn’t art.
It kills it. And we know it.
This has stuck with me, and started one of Sam Adam’s brushfires of freedom in the mind. Or at least some smoke drifting up from my ears.
Fables and Propaganda
Both formats seem to take the same approach. Convey a clearly-defined (often ideological) point, using whatever method that works.
Make a steel hook, and put whatever bait the stupid fishes will bite around it.
Halfway through the story, movie, or show, we stupid fish, yanked towards the fisherman, regret it, or are heartened by it, confirmed or affirmed or offended, but are never able to swim to our own conclusion.
We’re harvested, and counted.
“And therefore…” (Moral of the story here.)
Stories, Symbols, and Signs
Carl Jung’s words float over the bowl of egg noodles on my plate, swirling around, and showing up to make me a nerd at any party. Dig this.
“I began this essay by nothing the difference between and sign and a symbol. The sign is always less than the concept it represents, while a symbol always stands for something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. Symbols, moreover, are natural and spontaneous products. No genius has ever sat down with a pen or a brush in his and and said : ‘Now I am going to invent a symbol.’ One one can take a more or less rational thought, reached as a logical conclusion or by deliberate intent, and then give it ‘symbolic’ form.” No matter what fantastic trappings one may put upon an idea of this kind, it will still remain a sign, linked to the conscious thought behind it, not a symbol that hints at something not yet known.” C. G. Jung, Man and his Symbols, emphasis mine.
Taken in a bad light, fables and hack stories could be thought of as signs, while works of depth have a symbolic nature to them.
Each reading or listening brings a new glimmer, a piece we’ve been searching for in our endless puzzle, a new way to look at the world.
Perhaps it doesn’t have to be “serious” to be deep. A simple Christmas melody might move a listener to tears at one point, while a “sophisticated” piece of modern classical music might leave an audience flat.
The Lord of the Rings is written in a plain voice, but it’s been transfixing readers for generations. (I’ve read it four times, and plan a fifth soon.)
The Bible and other holy texts are almost too obvious to mention.
The Answer to Hollywood
“What did you think of the movie?” mom asked as we walked out of Mike Rowe’s Something to Stand For.
“Mike needs to hang out with some of my senior buddies. They’d cut him down to size so fast.”
(And I was grateful again for their friendship and perspective-keeping skills.)
I liked what he was trying to do, presenting stories of true American heroes, and why we might stand to honor them. It’s an important thing to put forward.
For that, thank you, Mike.
I might offer two things I learned from the movie, two things I’ll be working on (but nobody else has to, least of all, Mike Rowe. That’s his business, and mine is mine, and that is that.)
If I were lucky enough to be as talented and successful as Mike, I think I’d make a similar movie. For me, that would be a disaster. If I, the artist, obscure my art, and it’s my art, and not the art, my audiences might not exactly appreciate it.
Flattening something as complicated into a bit of history into one moral is a dangerous game. One runs aground on the isle of two-dimensions right quick. The passengers will refuse to accept any moral if the captain delivers first one with a blunt instrument. My apologies to my own bludgeoned audiences. (And to that elderly lady who slammed the door on her way out of my last lecture mid-Johnny Cash song…well, okay.)
To be fair, Mike and his team did a snazzy job, and I’m so glad there’s something positive and productive on the screen. Yes, Mike, I’d like to see you make another movie. Yes, Mike, I like what you’re doing, and the whole thing confuses me, too.
It’s necessary to push back against the increasingly unhinged propaganda spewing from Hollywood. But how? (Mike, I’m glad you’re trying.)
Well, it’s not by playing their game. They’ll win every time. If you sell your soul, you get some earthly power in the bargain. Or at least a good effects department.
Mike made it clear that his stories were for everyone, and they weren’t political. He was right, and I appreciate that. Ideological trap skirted? Yes, but not the nuance snare. I’d do exactly the same thing, and it’s easy to critique sitting here in air conditioning listening to Mozart.
The trailers before the movie were equally interesting, and seemed to miss the mark consistently.
The answer to one flavor of propaganda isn’t another to counterbalance. Perez makes that point repeatedly on X, and I hope he keeps it up.
I’m not sure of all of the answers to the problem, but one of them seems: telling a good story–making it less of a sign and more of a symbol. (By Jung’s definition, that means the teller doesn’t know everything about it, either, which is both terrifying and exhilarating.)
Does any author or storyteller–or human–know the Truth? Aren’t symbols the closest we can hope to come?
It’s a scary thing, letting the reader or watcher determine his own point from the art.
But then again, how do you want to read? I’d prefer to swim on my own, towards my own interpretation, than be yanked by a fable, wouldn’t you?
But what’s the alternative?
Visit your local theater to find out.
Keep thinking, I’ll be trying to do the same. Maybe we’ll all muddle towards something better further on up the road.
-Josh