Sunday Salon: Reality and Fiction

Nymeth at things mean alot wrote a wonderful post today about the relationship between fiction and reality, questioning whether a book is better if it more accurately reflects the reality of the issue it is covering...at least that is part of what she was exploring.

Nymeth mentions Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel chronicling the experiences of one African-American female's journey of self-discovery. The novel omits any of the difficulties southern blacks experienced with the white communities surrounding them. As Nymeth says, Hurston "wanted to...write about a black community whose life was not defined by racism". For me, this is part of the answer. While blacks and whites certainly were in conflict, a black community [the black community] is not and should not be defined by its struggles against racism. Hurston's novel ignored whites. Excellent. Not everything one group of people experiences is in reaction to another group of people. By ignoring a major conflict, Hurston called attention to the fact that this group of African-Americans lived lives outside of racial issues. A black person exists even if there are no whites around...

In the same vein, a gay couple can exist outside of the controversy of homosexuality. I have never read the book, but Nymeth says "My Most Excellent Year [features] a teen gay couple [who] fall in love and start dating without any of the fear, rejection, hostility, bullying and even assault that the majority of gay couples still face today". After I saw Brokeback Mountain, a student asked me whether I felt it was "a good pro-gay flick". I responded that I thought it was a good love story. The film certainly included scenes touching on the struggles of homosexual couples and individuals, but for me the film was overwhelmingly a romance. Perhaps by not focusing on the negativity, the author/director downplays the controversy and hence makes the "uncommon" common, in effect normalizing homosexuality in both the book/film.

Normalization such as this is possibly necessary if we are to truly accept "alternative lifestyles", "minorities", "fringe groups", [insert PC categorical terminology here]. For example, if Hurston's book was about a white woman finding herself, readers wouldn't question why the book didn't include the struggles between whites and blacks at the time. Perhaps by ignoring the "reality" of the situation, the author is actually making it more real.

Also, I don't see how any author can perfectly reflect reality because reality is different for everyone. Not every teen gay couple is barred from attending prom together; not every woman who goes to an abortion clinic is ridiculed by protesters outside the doors; not every Muslim in America has been accused of terrorism. I'm not saying these things don't happen - they most certainy do - but I am saying that negativity is not all of reality.

Ipso de facto - we can not hold authors accountable for an accurate representation of "reality".

Hmmm...I hope that makes sense.