The message is that we are all broken.
We are all broken.
We are all broken.
I admire my sister greatly for her response to this message, which was (I paraphrase) "so you get up at some point and you just go on from there." That is real bravery, to say, "today is right now" and refuse to live 10 years ago, 40 years ago, 60 years ago, stuck at the moment when the vessel was cracked.
What I find appalling about people's opinions about emotions is that people look at emotions as they might look upon car crashes; they tend to focus on the damage, on the emotional life that is on the extremes of pain or excitement or danger. As if they were all emotional adrenaline junkies. I do not discount the fact that most people feel that sharing emotions is to share pain, for we live lives of stress and trauma. My disappointment is not with emotions, but with the imbalance.
Drama is a way of expressing a story. In drama, one watches actors and those actors must convey believable human involvement with the characters or something is lost, the story is no longer captivating. Jane Austen believed that the novel was the place to explore, not drama, but the evolution of a single human mind through different states. Many writers of the 20th Century used this powerful vehicle to explore differences in humans, from the pathological, to the sub-standard, to the eccentric. As it became more and more popular to explore psychological pathologies, I believe that people started to glom onto pathology as their own, sympathizing with it and wanting to heal themselves. Not only is this dangerous, but it is attractive to the degree that it is addictive for some people. Worse, yet, it is so attractive that the publishing industry has found, in pathology, a huge market.
I recently picked up two series of books to read: C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series. The juxtaposition of these two series gave me the opportunity to see the range of psychodrama in novels. Both series are best sellers, both writers went to the screen with great success, both writers are separated only by about thirty years. C. S. Forester was English, but he lived much of his life in the States. However, the differences between these two writers in time, in gender, and in nationality, influenced their writing styles. Let me be explicit now about my prejudice: I found Hornblower to be a joy to read and Bradley to be painfully boring, almost unreadable. Despite my own prejudices, it is important to note what is popular and why. Hornblower continues to be popular, but editors lean toward buying more material like Bradley's wildly popular Mists of Avalon. The reasoning behind this is that Bradley is what the market wants.
It is not my intention to talk about the market here, but psychodrama. I define psychodrama to be drama that is based on an emotional fixation in one or more characters that is potentially disabling to themselves or those around them. This can be a powerful tool, such as in Macbeth, Hamlet, or the Shining. There are types of fiction that depend heavily on psychodrama: some Romance, Horror and some Suspense/Mystery. I do think that psychodrama, like cheeseburgers is best when indulged in sparingly, especially when it is "supersized" as it is in the powerful book, the Shining. Unfortunately, it is so powerful, that it has become bloated and has poisoned popular fiction.
It astounds me that music missed this, dance missed this, even art dabbled with it and missed it, but what of fiction? Even movies are saved from it by the beauty of the scenery that often accompanies even the more horrific of tales. But what of the novel, what of the story? I am sad to see that too often action stories, space stories, Westerns, History and Fantasy are filled with psychodrama. I think that it is more powerful, when depicting some situation that is in itself tense and horrible or action-packed that if the emotional element is a bit downplayed it is more powerful. One does not have to focus on every blown-up soldier to appreciate the Napoleonic wars. One does not have to know the captain's torment with his dying wife to appreciate the story of his sub fighting off the Nazi U-boats. One does not have to be tormented by aliens to explore the galaxy.
What makes Hornblower work so well is that Forester downplays interpersonal drama. His captain goes mad, but it is referred to with a single line or two SHOWING us that the captain huddles in his bed and whimpers whenever anyone comes near him. Hornblower works as a character because he is intensely aware of his own failings so much so that he refuses to acknowledge them to the audience, both the reader and the men around him. With one short sentence, he dismisses his overwhelming fear of heights to climb up into the shrouds and perform a miracle to save a sail in the midst of combat. He does so because the action forces him to do so. He is the hero, he cannot stand by and worry, he must act. And so we believe his rise through the oppressive navy despite being poor and having no influential friends. We believe him when he burns his glove up putting out the fuse of a bomb that has landed on his ship because we know that no matter how he FEELS, he will act. We end up cheering him because we know that his feelings toward himself are those of a man broken, but he picks up, he goes on, and we know that he is braver than the man who cannot go on for fear. We know it. We feel it. We feel the uplifting of a MAN, a man who will go on from this moment, this now. It is a human thing to put aside the pain, the suffering, the past and to do what has to be done.
There is a time and place for both the stoic and the psychodramatic in fiction. I'm not sure that they should be mixed. I think that that is the failing of Bradley.
Bradley tells action tales loaded with believable magic, usually of the psychic kind. What ruins her stories (this is my opinion) is that her characters do not participate in the story, but are constantly distracted by their brokenness. Now why excellent novels like the Shining work so well is that the situation is so, well, normal. King specializes in abnormal or paranormal characters in depressingly normal situations. What could be more banal and normal and boring than a family caretaking a hotel over a winter? Layer upon layer, King builds up the tension that is only inside these characters--the situation remains so quiet, so boring, that we are totally caught up in the nightmares. We want the flood of blood, the ghosts, the horror, because the situation is so bereft of anything interesting. Thus we can say, "if I were alone, stuck in a place like that, with cabin fever, stir crazy, yes, I would start seeing things too," and it WORKS.
Bradley has a remarkable set up in Darkover. She has a planet where people have evolved psychic powers to the extent that they can teleport and blow each other up. They call upon forces so strong that they are taken over by interdimensional evils and they fight each other to the death. Very like Andre Norton's Witchworld series. She has the Terran Empire try to exploit Darkover or interact with it, and she has complicated politics where one faction is trying to save the world by forbidding the use of these powers and another trying to cut themselves off from being exploited by Terra. The world is hostile and different from Earth. And what do her characters do? Worry about whether they are gay or not. Worry about whether they can handle marriage or not. Worry about whether their fathers like them or not. Worry about, well, you get the point, although I'm belittling it with sarcasm, they spend much of the book worrying. So much so that the action suffers and Bradley spends a great deal of time with characters standing around talking to each other about their problems.
One of the reasons that horror can work extremely well is that all the psychodrama is internalized to the point where the characters become afraid to talk to each other. Thus they make mistakes and cannot perform simple reality checks with each other. Bradley's characters end up in impossible situations where they cannot talk to each other (and thus solve some problem) because they worry that their father might misunderstand them or reject them. In an action story like Bradley has set up, she doesn't have time to lay the groundwork for a father-son exploration, but throws this in and we are left saying "why don't they just talk about it and we can get on with the story." After a while, the characters cannot DO anything at all, the action slows way down, and there is way, way too much dialogue and people spend all their time trying to figure out the other person's feelings. This can work in drama, if that is what the drama is about. Romantic comedy specializes in misunderstandings. Family dramas work if that is the focus of the story. In action adventure, there are too many loose ends, too much going on, and the psychodrama gets way, way too distracting.
I've noticed in the workplace, that in places where there is real work to be done, like restaurants, the workers tend to downplay psychodrama. They may shout, curse, stomp, rage, and yell at each other, but they have to keep cooking. Most of the time, the tense action of the work makes it so people just don't have time to sit around and wail about their feelings. In offices or in retail where the pace is sometimes so boring that you're about crazy, psychodrama tends to play too large a part. Personally, I have a distaste of indulging in emotional problems. I from a blue collar background where people had so many problems that the prevalent attitude was "deal with it." Boredom was relieved by the latest drama, but the emotions were downplayed. I've heard stories told of drunken husbands cutting open their wives and the wives going to work because they had to feed the kids told in a matter of fact voices that made them intensely believable.
But the strange thing is, that way, way too much effort is put into "getting along" or exploring how to deal with each others' feelings at work or in situations where one should be working. Like fiction, there is a place for this. I've often been in offices or stores that were crippled by someone's drama when there was work to be done. The work did not get done. We're so keen to blame Asia or Mexico for taking away jobs and ruining our workplaces when there is this huge enemy within that demands that people show their feelings and underlings or co-workers deal with them. Bosses can be broken and workers expected to empathize and commiserate instead of work. Communication about work slows way down so that people can try to untangle their feelings and the feelings of others. Action comes to a standstill. For the workplace, this is death.
I have to wonder if the popular preoccupation with feelings, especially the negative feelings, has made gluttons out of everyone. And what about the sublime? We get to laugh. We get to be excited. Sometimes the music or the scenery is sublime, but what about people? Do people get to indulge in their positive feelings in fiction? The editors say no, that that doesn't make for good fiction. A hero must have a hole in his heart. He must be broken.
I'm going to stand up and say, "I am not broken." If the vessel is a bit cracked, then I want, instead of frantically repairing it, to fill myself with light instead of mud. I desire the sublime. I desire that which elevates the spirit, that which makes me love my fellow man, that which makes me love being alive. I do not like horror because I do not find it cathartic like many do. I find it depressing. I like action stories like that of Hornblower because they make me feel that man can do what has to be done, on his feet, facing the giant, facing the problems, facing what he has to face to DO, to ACT, to live.
We do not need a war to make us struggle to survive. We only need to be like my sister or like fictional characters like Hornblower and say, "yes, that happened. Yes, I am ashamed of it. Yes, I am afraid of it. Yes, I am damaged by it. But so what?" Get real. Deal with it. What an incredibly admirable attitude. And how despised! Certainly, one has to know why one acts the way one does, but that is understanding motive, not living the psychodrama. I'm going on, but I think we need more examples of the sublime, of the brave, and of the path shining before us, so we do not keep looking at our shadows.
Yes, all of us are broken, but all of us are sublime. I know which I prefer to have guide my way.
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