STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Characters in fiction aren’t allowed to be flawed anymore
By Joe Jarvis - July 20, 2020

A screenwriter has apologized for a “racist” scene in a short film she made in 2013.

In it, three teenage characters put ash on their faces as part of an alleged Mayan ritual. At one point the teen boy asks, “is this racist?”

The scene had nothing to do with “black-face” except for the jest from the fictional teen character. (“Black-face” is when someone colors their face to do a stereotypical imitation of a black person, like the governor of Virginia.)

So now we are two steps removed from any actual racism. Because A) it wasn’t blackface, and B) it was fiction!

Writers aren’t allowed to create teen characters who might do something weird, offensive, or even make crude jokes?

Writers take note– if you write any fictional characters with flaws, those flaws will now be attributed to real life you.

In addition to politics and economics, I also write fiction.

In a serial I wrote called The Gulf, one of the characters sexually assaults another character.

Will I now be dragged in front of the #MeToo mob to answer for my character’s crimes?

Or perhaps it is only the like-able characters we root for who can’t have any flaws.

So no complex struggles with right or wrong. We’ll give the good guys white hats, and the bad guys black hats. 100% pure good, and total evil.

This is actually the same thing the Social Justice Warriors are demanding from real life humans right now. Any transgression, no matter how small, no matter the context, no matter how much time has passed, must be punished by the current draconian standards of mob justice.

These people are Puritans, just like the ones who hanged the “witches” at Salem. Instead of worshipping god, they worship a fluid and evolving dogma based around special victim groups, with new crimes worthy of the gallows everyday.

But here’s the thing: humans without flaws are really boring, whether we are talking about real life or fiction.

And one more thing these humorless puritans miss– humor is what unites people.

People who get along tend to laugh at the same jokes, and find the same things funny.

It is impossible to feel comfortable around someone if you constantly have to watch what you say, or censor yourself. If what you are saying is truly not offensive, this is even worse. And it leads to self-segregation– why stay around people who don’t let you be yourself, who get angry at nothing, who try to control what you say or even the way you think?

Here’s how to deal with the Puritans, the SJWs, the Bolsheviks– ignore them. Feel free to entirely wall yourself off from their world. That’s allowed.

Or engage and troll if that is something you find fun. Keep making jokes, sharing memes, and laughing at them.

But never play by their rules.

It’s a moving target anyway. Meet all their demands today, and tomorrow comes with a new list of ever more asinine criteria for how their idea of a utopian society should be created.

And anyway, I bet you have noticed, as I have, that the real live people I interact with on a daily basis are worlds away from what the cabal and corporate media attempt to convince us is “mainstream.”

Honestly, paying attention to the news these days is as much fiction as my story The Gulf. The difference is, at least my fiction is set in a better future.

And it’s an entirely possible future– choosing our own government, for example, on a floating “Seastead” if we’d like, where we can always exit and join a society with a better fit.

And they still have problems– corrupt executives, cult societies, and prison islands.

After all, the quest for utopia has always ended in dystopia. I’ll take an honest, flawed, live and let live society any day, over the self righteous Puritans out for mob-rule social justice.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
loading
Share via
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap