(Mis)-Interpreting the Story: Violence in Fiction
Okay, so, a preface: I wrote this essay for a class, hence why there are parenthetical citations and a works cited. That said I had an astounding amount of freedom while writing this and ended up really liking the final result, which is why you’re now able to read it here.
A NOTE AS OF JULY 4, 2020: I had some additional thoughts on the things I wrote in this essay due to recent events, which I’ve debating adding. Partially because I wasn’t sure if it would make a difference but also because I’m pretty sure this blog has no readers, but nonetheless I felt the need to say something. I’m adding this addendum to the end of the essay after the works cited so that the original essay and your reading of it can stay unhindered.
Depending on where you start this story, it’s about a man named Friend who stood in front of a room of 18-year-olds and yelled “FIGHT CLUB!!” with teeth bared and arms triumphant.
In this story, he’s a warning not an example. He was warning us, the students, who were at the time unaware of the film we were about to watch. He warned us for reactions. He said, you won’t react like that. After seeing this movie, after having studied gender and ethics and advertisements for a whole school year, you will understand what it is trying to say. You will understand, unlike those who put this film on a pedestal, why you don’t want to be in fight club.
We saw the film. And Friend was right. We understood. We understood what Palahniuk was saying, what Uhls was saying, what Fincher was saying. We didn’t understand what die-hard fans of this movie were saying. We didn’t understand how they didn’t understand.
It’s not uncommon
for artists to create work that’s commentary on a societal issue.
for this commentary to be covert, to be waiting to be unpacked.
for it to be deeply misunderstood.
especially when the commentary is on the perpetration of some sort of violence.
The Given Circumstances:
There are few moments from my high school experience that I remember so vividly and viscerally as my class of 60 tight-knit seniors watching Fight Club together, most of us for the first time. It was like a film school audience. There were gasps and whispers and tapping feet and jittery hands. There were shielded eyes and elbows to the ribs and barely-held in reactions to what we all saw on the screen. We loved this movie. We talked about it for what seems like the rest of the school year. It came up in debates and casual conversations and essays and socratic seminars. We loved this movie because we felt like we understood it.
One drawback to film school is people having a preconceived idea about who you are and what your opinions on movies are. They think you worship Tarantino, or put too much praise on indie French films, or exclusively watch A24 produced projects. And yes, having been here for what’s basically a full school year now, I know the people they’re thinking of. But I also know that Inglorious Basterds is a good movie and Xavier Dolan does have something to say and Moonlight is arguably one of the best films from the past decade. I know these things because we’re here to study these things.
I wonder
what people who glorify the violence in Fight Club think the film is about.
how they missed the subtext about commercialism and the patriarchy.
whether they maybe ignored it.
if it’s in the DNA of the film for it to be misunderstood.
You don’t cast Brad Pitt in a movie just to make him an unlikeable antagonist.
My friend said this to me. He’s right, in a way. But isn’t the point of Tyler Durden the fact that he’s part of the Narrator? Isn’t the point of the film that there’s this part of people (men) created by society but shunned by society, which in the right (wrong) circumstances, tears them apart from the inside? My friend is right. You don’t cast Brad Pitt in a movie just to make him an unlikeable antagonist.
You cast Brad Pitt as an understandable antagonist. Psychopathic, twisted, of course, but understandable. But maybe we’re so used to liking Brad Pitt that we can’t see him as anything but good, at least in a way, and whatever good means.
“Tyler is an alpha male who does what he wants and doesn’t let anyone stand in his way” (Baker).
Peter Baker tries to do what many have before him: understand “The Men Who Still Love Fight Club.” He’s seen the movie, read the book, and comes from the perspective of knowing what Fincher aimed to do with his film. He acknowledges what we all have, that it seems like these men in question who unthinkingly glorify Tyler, glorify the violence he perpetuates and represents, equally seem to choose to ignore his ultimate demise. They ignore that the Narrator realizes Tyler’s parasitic nature, his instability. They ignore that the Narrator, in a way, wins. There are horror stories. We know them and so does Baker. Of the guys who dress up as Tyler for Halloween or name their pets after the film. To Baker, to us, it seems strange. How can they ignore what is so important to the film that they hail? Baker argues that it’s partly because of the film itself. Like the way we can’t see Brad Pitt negatively, Fincher “sells why it was tempting to fall for the cult of Tyler. But he doesn’t quite show the horror of where that gets you. Or, for some people, that’s not the part of the movie that sticks” (Baker). We understand the motives and inner-working of Project Mayhem as well as the characters in the film, but we aren’t given a way out. We aren’t told of a way to change your life, right intentions in mind, without resorting to violence.
Depending on where you start this story, it’s about a girl with fierce determination walking into the DVD section of her public library and eventually leaving it, armed with the first three seasons of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
In this story, the girl is me. I, like millions of other people, became a quick fan of the witty yet heartfelt humor that drives Brooklyn Nine-Nine. But over the course of my now years of watching this show, something shifted, both in me and societally. Maybe it’s what we now jokingly call a “cultural reset,” but in what feels like one night (August 9th, 2014) we all became painfully aware of the institutionalized prejudice and racism that has existed (continues to exist) in our law-enforcement agencies. Suddenly there were calls to action, boycotts of businesses, cancelling of people. And quietly, through all of this, Brooklyn Nine-Nine continued to thrive, amongst dozens of other cop-related shows like Blue Bloods or any of the many variations of NCIS or Law and Order.
It’s easy to say that
all law-enforcement related content is propaganda, but that’s too simple.
comedy is meaningless, but we all know that’s not true.
mass-produced network television is trite, but we all know that’s not true either.
Sometimes TV means something, not because of what it’s trying to say, but because of the effect it has on the people watching it.
But sometimes TV means something because of what the writers want it to mean. We all know the old saying, that the director controls a movie but the writers control TV. But every stereotype starts somewhere.
I think the greatest testament to the effects of so-called propaganda is the fact that I started watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Blue Bloods at the same time, but I had to stop the latter after two seasons and the former still draws me in every week. It doesn’t take a trained eye to see that Blue Bloods is unashamedly propaganda. But it does take a misguided one to think that Brooklyn Nine-Nine is.
Some Comparisons:
The genre: Blue Bloods is a drama; Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a comedy. But we know that comedy isn’t meaningless.
The given circumstances: Blue Bloods is set in a world that the writers perceive to be the worst parts of New York, enhanced; Brooklyn Nine-Nine is set in a world where crime comes secondary to workplace banter.
The violence: Blue Bloods has yelling and shootouts and aggressive interrogations and explosions; Brooklyn Nine-Nine has sarcasm and traffic-cone duty and wild goose chases and an overall astounding lack of weapons considering the situation.
The outlook: Blue Bloods is cynical; Brooklyn Nine-Nine is naive. But to say that naive is all it is discounts its awareness.
The values: Blue Bloods is about people who are cops (detectives, lawyers, police chiefs) and do questionable things but it doesn’t matter because their cause is supposedly noble; Brooklyn Nine-Nine is about good people who are cops but aren’t good people because they’re cops.
“Within its frame of pie contests and Jim Halpertian pranks, though, Brooklyn Nine-Nine does have a sense of good policing and bad policing” (Poniewozik).
James Poniewozik addresses what needs to be: that too many people have claimed that Brooklyn Nine-Nine is propaganda for it to simply be a misunderstanding to be swept under the rug. He examines another review of the show, which claims that, like in The Office (also created by Michael Schur), we are forced to view the NYPD as an underdog service like Dunder-Mifflin, instead of the powerful institution that it is.
Maybe Jake Peralta doesn’t have the same cultural effect that Tyler Durden does, but people still dress up as him for Halloween, so that’s going to be my standard. Yes, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is naive, but it would be harmful to say that it isn’t aware. Whether it’s the episode about the prejudice that existed and continues to exist within the NYPD in the 70s, or the one about the Me Too movement, or the one about accountable policing, or the many about racial profiling, yes, Brooklyn Nine-Nine depicts a very happy and sunny version of both the city and institution that it represents, but it would naive of us to think that the show isn’t saying something. As Poniewozik explains, “maybe another, more satirical sitcom might look harder at the policing context for those stats, but the fact that Brooklyn Nine-Nine doesn’t does not make it a conservative whitewash.”
Disconnect, Connected
So how did this happen? When reading articles like Poniewozik’s, I often find myself asking questions like this. Maybe Brooklyn Nine-Nine is doing something different than Fight Club, but it’s doing something nonetheless. The TV show does the opposite of the film; instead of seemingly glorifying violence, it seemingly infantilizes an institution with a history of violence. But like the Wizards of Waverly Place said, everything is not what it seems. Yet something about the show’s sunny and carefree exterior makes viewers think, despite its tackling of important issues, that it isn’t aware of the world it actually exists in. Comedy isn’t meaningless, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine uses its comedy to make a nuanced critique of the institution it represents by depicting it the way it wants to be seen. But maybe, somewhere along the way, there were one too many robot jokes from Jake Peralta, and the meaning of the show fell through the cracks.
Depending on where you start this story, it’s about a boy excitedly encouraging a girl who at the time he didn’t know too well to read Watchmen, the “best graphic novel ever.”
In this story, the boy would explain that he’s read the book multiple times. That it’s a poignant and beautifully drawn story about power and class and poverty. About how it’s relevant to what’s happening in the world, how it’s not only the story of a broken system but the story of a broken man who doesn’t realize it.
Four years later, I started reading it and he finished the newly-made TV show, and he told me, “really no one in Watchmen is a true hero.” This felt like a warning, not dissimilar to Friend’s. It felt like he was saying, stay vigilant, be aware, because the story is told from Rorschach’s perspective but that doesn’t mean that he’s a good person. He can’t see his own flaws, so we have to for him. And so I read the book. And he was right. Rorschach isn’t a good person. He’s just a person, after all. He’s not a superhero with special powers, he’s a man with concerning ideas about the world who uses violent means to try to change the society around him to fit these ideas. My friend understood. I understood. Most people who read the book understand. But not everyone.
Heroes and Villains
That’s what comic books have always been about. It’s always the morally pure good guy with the shield, the suit, the heart of gold, who comes in to defeat the bad guy, with his narcissistic outlook and fancy costume. Most of the time, it’s like this, and it’s simple. It’s easy for us to root for Captain America, the skinny kid from Brooklyn who doesn’t know how to back down from a fight. It’s easy for us to sympathize with Black Panther, the king who is fighting for the sovereignty and protection of his home country and people. But every so often someone comes along, who we want to root for so badly. Who represents good things and who is easy to sympathize with. But who also uses less than moral means to achieve his goals. There’s a term for it, and we all know it: antihero. They’re familiar, they’re everywhere. They’re Sherlock Holmes and Han Solo and Punisher and Megamind. But just a cursory glance at the Wikipedia page of anti-heroes tells you that they aren’t Rorschach.
“The comic was probably my earliest slap in the face about the "heroism" of taking the law into your own hands to beat up the unconvicted and the mentally ill, and especially the idea that a character could be morally superior or unassailable simply because they do so according to a set of self-imposed rules” (Polo).
Susana Polo explains her experience of reading Watchmen, how at first she felt the overwhelming need to sympathize with Rorschach because that’s what she was used to doing with characters in his position. She explains that at first, she was guilty of defending him, only to realize that he uses his lack of allegiance to powerful organizations as a means to further his twisted vision for the world. She explains that from random fans at conventions to politicians like Ted Cruz, too many people make the mistake of thinking Rorschach is a hero. Polo argues that of course we want him to be a hero, but he isn't, undeniably due to his actions but also partly due to the rules. “Rules are the very reason why superheroes work as a concept,” Polo says. Whether it’s actual laws or a set of internal moral guidelines, the people in fiction who we call heroes are those who have a line that they refuse to cross. It could be Spider-Man refusing to kill or something even more minor, but heroes are heroes because someone holds them accountable, even if that someone is just themself.
Morals
are what keep the world spinning.
are personal, subjective.
are the driving force behind every fictional character we call a hero.
are sometimes not enough.
Black and White
Morals can only get you so far when they lead you to see the world in polar opposites. “To Rorschach, people always have the ability to be good. If they aren’t good, by his standards, it’s their own fault for not achieving his benchmarks. Despite calling himself a hero, he has no will to help those who fall on the wrong side of goodness” (Abad-Santos). To Rorschach, the world is black and white, and to too many readers, it is the same. Alan Moore wrote Watchmen with the intention of it serving as a critique of both politics at the time and superhero culture at the time. He wrote Rorschach to be a breathing symbol of these critiques. Yet, in all of its ingenuity and nuance, Moore also wrote a comic that is subtle. It’s subtle in the way that he intended to criticize Reagan but wrote about Nixon so that people would be more sympathetic (Abad-Santos). It’s subtle in that despite Rorschach serving as a symbol, he is undeniably the protagonist, the story told from his perspective. He puts Rorschach into the light as a way to criticize what he stands for, but in doing so he creates the opportunity for people to misinterpret the reason for the character’s significance. Instead of realizing what Moore was trying to do (maybe despite, since Moore isn’t exactly quiet about his opinions), too many readers saw the light on Rorschach’s masked face and took it as a symbol of his apparent heroism, violent tendencies and all.
Depending on where you start this story, it's about a person who is a fan of a piece of media, much like a lot of us, but who likes this media for all the wrong reasons.
In this story, this person might not have bad intentions. They might be open to change. They might just have interpreted it wrong.
It's difficult to say that someone's interpretation of art is "wrong," because that seems to go against the principles of appreciating art itself. There is no "right" way to feel about a painting or a movie because the experience of viewing it is unique to you. But when art is made with a specific moral or story in mind, there very well may be wrong ways to view it.
It’s not uncommon for art to be misunderstood but this misunderstanding becomes dangerous when the art is about something as grave and powerful as violence. But if art that blatantly portrays violence is negative, and art which uses it as a form of reverse psychology also has negative effects, and art that openly criticizes violence is ignored, then what can you do? What is the solution? We don't cast Brad Pitt in movies like Fight Club because he's too likeable? We don't use comedy as a means to tell important stories to a wider audience? We don't explore the use of varying perspectives to try to have a greater understanding of interesting but flawed characters?
No piece of art is flawless. Yes, maybe Fincher managed to sell the idea of fight club too well, but enough people understand the intended meaning of the story for this to really be the case. We can't control what is created but we can control our reactions to it - it's about education, about understanding, of both the material and each other. This isn't about forcing a perspective or feeling about art onto a viewer, that defeats the purpose of art and individuality. This is about stepping in when art is so clearly and dangerously misinterpreted that a significant group of people think it's standing for something which it actually speaks against.
The solution isn't to hold a huge book club to get to the bottom of the issues at the heart of the media we all love, but maybe it is about finding the time, (making the time) to discuss it with each other, and to create an open and accepting thread of communication so that we can understand the works and each other better. Hopefully then, after it all, a Tyler Durden or a Rorschach will never truly exist in the world, all so that a Jake Peralta can. ⬥
Works Cited
Abad-Santos, Alex. “Some Watchmen Fans Are Mad That HBO's Version Is
Political. But Watchmen Has Always Been Political.” Vox, Vox, 24 Oct. 2019, www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/24/20926872/watchmen-hbo-backlash-politics-sjw-race.
Baker, Peter C. “The Men Who Still Love ‘Fight Club.’” The New Yorker, 4 Nov.
2019, www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-men-who-still-love-fight-club.
Polo, Susana. “Dear Ted Cruz: Rorschach Is Not a Hero.” Polygon, Vox, 29
July 2015, www.polygon.com/2015/7/29/9060251/ted-cruz-rorschach-watchmen.
Poniewozik, James. “No, Brooklyn Nine-Nine Isn't Conservative Propaganda.”
Time, Time, 20 Nov. 2013, entertainment.time.com/2013/11/20/no-brooklyn-nine-nine-isnt-conservative-propaganda/.
JULY 4, 2020, ADDENDUM:
When I originally wrote this essay and published it on this website, George Floyd was still alive, and the Black Lives Matter protests that his murder spurred were yet to occur. I wrote this essay, specifically the section on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, from the privileged and somewhat naive perspective of someone who hasn’t and likely will not experience institutionalized and systemic racism. Is it likely that I will be treated differently for the color of my skin? Yes, but not by the system itself, rather, by individuals. When I wrote this essay, I genuinely believed that unlike the conservative propaganda of Blue Bloods and Paw Patrol, not all shows about law enforcement were inherently flawed, and that B99 was the exception to the norm, but after taking the time to educate myself in the past month, I think I was wrong, and I felt the need to address it.
Yes, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is funny and lighthearted and well-meaning and diverse and way more nuanced than it’s given credit for. But more than all of this, its existence as a show about good cops, regardless of the fact that they are good people who are cops and not people who are good because they’re cops, is an issue. It’s an issue because at the end of the day, there truly is no “good” cop because all cops benefit from a system built on racism and discrimination, and to highlight the quirky shenanigans of a dorky police precinct is harmful to this undeniable fact. Because of who’s behind and in front of the show, I sincerely (and perhaps, again, naively) believe that the infantilization of the NYPD was not the intended affect of the show, but it is an unfortunate result. Honestly, as much as I loved this show, I don’t know if I can continue to watch it in good conscience. Someone on Twitter joked about it but I genuinely would be so happy if for the next season they changed the whole show to be about the Postal Service and didn’t address the change. This show, despite its once fond place in my heart, and despite its liberal ideas, is flawed from its premise alone. While to an extent I regret writing that whole section of this essay about how it isn’t actually propaganda, I thought the better idea would be to address the issue here instead of deleting what I wrote. I was wrong, I’ve learned, and I continue to learn, and if you’re a fan of this show, I hope you can too.