From the NerdCon: Stories 2015 panel on the moral responsibility of the storyteller:
50 million people have read [the Hobbit], a lot of them very young, and walked away going, “smoking is pretty great. Smoking is magic. It’s the only magical thing that [Gandalf] can do that I can do.” And this means that even if it just inclined, maybe one in a thousand, [to be] a little more likely to pick it up, that means Tolkien is likely responsible for thousands of cancer-related deaths. And I’m not funning around. This means that he was engaged in a causative way to giving a bunch of people lung cancer. This is what I obsess about when I’m writing my own stuff.
Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind
One of the reasons I wanted to be on this panel was because, in twenty years as a writer, I’ve never once thought about this question [about the moral responsibility of the writer]. It has never once occurred to me to think about my fiction in this context.
Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians
Books are dangerous. You might hate it. It could be awful. Don’t pick up stories if you don’t want to run in to something.
Paolo Bacigalupi, author of The Windup Girl
Spending reading week on a road trip to NerdCon: Stories was one of the most memorable events from my time at university. The Green brothers and Patrick Rothfuss created the annual conference as a place where all kinds of storytellers could meet and discuss their craft. Sadly, it only got enough momentum to last two years from 2015 to 2016. I’m so glad I was able to be there both years.
The conference was my first introduction to Pat Rothfuss. He was so articulate and thoughtful and such an unapologetic feminist that I knew I had to read his books. After reading, my suspicions were confirmed – he is a brilliant writer.
The conference was also my first introduction to table-top role playing with a live Dread one-shot. By now, I am mildly obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons and the world of communal storytelling.
Though perhaps the most impactful part of the conference for me was the panel on the storyteller’s moral responsibility. Stories influence readers, for better or worse. How should authors and other storytellers approach creating stories responsibly? It was a great panel and it still exists in podcast form here on Castbox. I recommend giving it a listen. The discussion has lots of fantastic food for thought.
Something that really stuck with me from the discussion was Lev Grossman’s comment above. Now, my older sister loves his Magicians series. She read it as she was transitioning from an international high school to a Canadian university, and she found it really encouraging to follow a protagonist who was struggling with a similar (albeit more magical) transition. She gave me the first book as a graduation present right before I headed off to my own university adventure. She wasn’t happy to find out that I never finished reading it.
It wasn’t that the book was poorly written. I was in awe of how engaging Lev’s writing style was. The problem was that the protagonist’s experience of the world was incredibly depressing. In reading, I found myself feeling that he’s right – the world irredeemably sucks. At that point in my life, empathizing so deeply with a depressed protagonist was particularly unhealthy for me, so I stopped reading.
Even though it negatively affected me, I don’t think what Lev wrote was in any way immoral. What was really good for my sister happened to be really bad for me. We shouldn’t shy away from topics that could negatively affect some people when they could also positively affect others. At a certain point, it becomes the readers’ responsibility to know their own boundaries and when to put the book down.
When my sister heard that I was going to a conference that Lev Grossman was attending, she tossed me her copy of The Magicians and begged me to get it signed. So, as I waited in the long, long line of fans at Lev’s signing event, I thought about how my sister’s experience of his book was so different than mine. I wanted to find a way to encourage Lev, to say it’s okay that he wrote a potentially dangerous book, because what made it dangerous also made it valuable. I wanted to reassure him that readers can know when to put a book down.
Of course, I couldn’t find a way to say that without also saying, “I’m glad I stopped reading your book.” So, I just asked him to sign it for my sister and that was that. Now that I finally have my own blog, I’m sharing my thoughts here. If you have any more thoughts on the moral responsibility of the writer, share them below and we can continue the discussion.
This is why I never dispute someone when they tell a book I couldn’t read or hated was there favorite. Also, such an interesting topic: should artists restrict themselves from making art because it could be harmful OR should consumers regulate what they consume? Personally I lean more on the side that consumers are smarter and more intuitive then they are often given credit. Just because someone was influence “negatively” by a piece of art, does not mean it was not meant to be created. Ultimately we are are not responsible for other people’s thoughts or reactions. As an artist you must look at your own morals and beliefs and guage whether what you are putting into the world reflects that, not changing your piece to try and encompass everyone notion of what is right or wrong or influential.
For the most part I agree, but I have a slightly different opinion based on the different types of potential harm. When it comes to content that people could find emotionally triggering (like what I describe in the post), I think a lot of it comes down to self regulation because almost anything could be a trigger to anyone. But when it comes to stories that potentially propagate racist or sexist tropes, I think the onus is on the author to keep those narratives out of the collective unconscious. You should definitely listen to the podcast. They look at the issue from a lot more angles than I covered in this post.
Ok. Yes I also agree that tropes that support bigotry, misogyny and general hatred should be something a writer should be consciously aware of in order to avoid them as those can be extremely harmful.
We do have a choice in what we read, just as we have a choice in what movies we choose to watch. Characters may smoke on camera. Invasive medical procedures have become seriously realistic as is the trend to demonstrate intense physical violence. Explicit movies bring up certain negative emotions that can be emotionally difficult for some, especially for those who are unable to differentiate between real life and what is motivated by a culture that glorifies violence. If the novelist is responsible for negative tropes that may incite negative behaviors, then is the visual media also accountable?
It’s a complex issue! I still think there is a degree to which creators of any sort have a moral responsibility to not produce content that is objectively harmful to the audience. Now that we’re not just talking about books, there is one type of visual media that the audience has no choice but to consume: ads. You can’t reasonably avoid seeing an ad on the street or on websites. There is lots of evidence that demonstrates how photoshopped images of unrealistically skinny women negatively impact individual women’s confidence and contribute to serious health conditions such as anorexia and bulimia. Is it morally right for companies to continue producing and distributing these objectively harmful ads that the audience has no functional choice but to consume? We made it illegal for cigarette advertisers to make ads that target children because of their vulnerability and the objective health harms involved. Young children see photoshopped ads of women all the time, so what is the distinction of harm between these two types of ads?