Testing readers 'morality'

[NoTalentHack]

So, I meant to comment in here earlier, but I was sick as a dog all weekend. I think that one of the possible disconnects sometimes is that people (not saying this of anyone in specific, just in general) confuse "morals" with "ick" sometimes, both in their personal opinions and the wider world.

I'm reminded of the speech Richard Gere's character in Pretty Woman gives about opera, about how people's initial reaction to it is one of two things, either loving or hating it. The people that love it immediately love it. The people that hate it initially may eventually come to appreciate it, but they'll never love it in that same way. I'm that way with a number of kinks; it used to be that I/T was an instant "ew, ugh, no" for me in a story, and, while it'll never be one of "my" kinks, I at least get it now and I don't immediately hate it.

At the time (this was twenty to thirty years ago), I had it tied up in a "moral" way of thinking about, but now I see that's kind of silly; if I had that same kind of moral hangup about it, I should have hated, say, Commando or other 80s action movies for violence, too. After all, I wouldn't want that in real life, right? Murdering people was wrong, yeah? But I don't, because they're not real.

I've spent enough time in LW now that I'm kind of inured to things that were previously hard "icks" for me; I'll never love them, but they don't cause the same visceral reaction they might once have, unless they're really gross (I'm thinking nonconsensual cruelty and the like). The difference between that and my grossout reaction to I/T back in the day, though, I recognize isn't a moral thing; it's just that I don't like it.

Buuuut...

I also think that for some people, depending on their circumstances and histories, their "ick" really is a moral stance. I'm thinking of things like people who have been personally impacted by incest or NC/R hating those categories and thinking them to be immoral. I'm also thinking of the guys who have been impacted by a divorce that blindsided/impoverished/whatever them and their reactions hating certain classes of LW stories.

It's an interesting question, and I'm glad you brought it up. I don't have a hard answer to... well, really any of it, but it's interesting to ponder.

 

[TheLobster]

people (not saying this of anyone in specific, just in general) confuse "morals" with "ick" sometimes,

I wouldn't say that it is a confusion, and the examples you give seem to confirm this.

The feeling of disgust has been one of the primordial sources of morality in the ancient times and beyond. Various precepts around hygiene, cleanliness, menstruation allowed types and states of food, etc. often had moral valence. This isn't to say that all immoral things are necessarily disgusting, but I would hazard a hypothesis that, before ethics became a subject of philosophy and law, the inference went in the other direction -- i.e., everything that was disgusting was deemed immoral.

Perhaps it is a sign of moral progress that we can now disentangle those two concepts and decide that some things may be icky but not necessarily immoral. Perhaps it can happen on both individual and societal level, with examples such as your former aversion to I/T and the abolishment of laws against miscegenation or same-sex marriage.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

I’ve been thinking a bit more about this - specifically, whether readers will be outraged at the immoral behavior of the MCs.

While stories can teach us about morality, any writer who sets out to entrap the reader into rooting for an immoral character is…likely to be quite successful: partly because we love reading about transgression (and not just in erotica/porn) and partly because of the psychology of a reader's attachment to characters. The chances that we will be outraged and complain are extremely small.

It comes back to the old fallacy that an audience needs to like the MC. They don’t. They never have. If they did, the world wouldn’t be obsessed with Hamlet (or, taking it up a notch or three, Travis Bickle or Humbert Humbert or Hannibal Lecter or Aguirre etc etc). When we're reading stories or watching films, we’re not looking for ‘nice’.

Reminds me of Claire Denis, the French filmmaker, when she was asked why she didn’t put more strong female characters into her films and she responded (to laughter and applause) ‘because I’m not a fucking social worker’. She's right of course. She's a storyteller.

So, anyway, what is more relevant, to my mind, is the way every single person sees themselves as fundamentally good and virtuous. I mean, studies show that even prisoners believe they're above average in morality. And this feeling gets translated onto the characters that we read about and empathize with. If someone's in your tribe, you're likely to defend them right to the end (hello political polarization...) and I believe that dynamic plays out for the reader too: once a reader accepts a character into their tribe, so to speak, then you have a huge amount of work to do as a writer to make the reader reject them in moral outrage.

My hunch is that LC68 is surprised/disappointed that the readers didn't overcome this 'tribal' attachment to the MCs that he'd created. It's a fair thing to feel but, I suspect, a very tall order. We're not moral beings, we're tribal brings.

And we absolutely hate realizing that we've been tricked and having to change our minds. We'll do anything to avoid that.

 

[MillieDynamite]

There is also the fact that people can be disgusted and intrigued by something simultaneously. Then again, people can, and sometimes do, find something morally reprehensible yet still enjoy thinking or reading about it. They can know something is wrong and still do the thing that makes them hate themselves.

 

[lovecraft68]

There is also the fact that people can be disgusted and intrigued by something simultaneously. Then again, people can, and sometimes do, find something morally reprehensible yet still enjoy thinking or reading about it. They can know something is wrong and still do the thing that makes them hate themselves.

The Trainwreck effect. They're not just reading they're rubbernecking

 

[SimonDoom]

There is also the fact that people can be disgusted and intrigued by something simultaneously. Then again, people can, and sometimes do, find something morally reprehensible yet still enjoy thinking or reading about it. They can know something is wrong and still do the thing that makes them hate themselves.

I agree, and what's interesting is the greater acceptance people show toward this attitude with respect to violence than with respect to sex. We have no problem with over the top, sadistic violence in movies, but we get much more squeamish about transgression in the context of sex. Consider the movie Unforgiven, where Eastwood plays a murderer. We root for the murderer. One would think that if, as audience members, we cared about morality, we would want to see him get gunned down in the bar at the end. But no, we root for the killer, and he kills more people, shooting some in the back. We don't blink twice about this. We're more judgmental about characters in sex stories who do "bad" things.

I'm less sure about your comment about doing "the thing that makes them hate themselves," because I think more often than not it's pure fantasy rather than a projection of something we've actually done or want to do. But I'm sure for some this is right.

 

[Plathfan]

I agree, and what's interesting is the greater acceptance people show toward this attitude with respect to violence than with respect to sex. We have no problem with over the top, sadistic violence in movies, but we get much more squeamish about transgression in the context of sex. Consider the movie Unforgiven, where Eastwood plays a murderer. We root for the murderer. One would think that if, as audience members, we cared about morality, we would want to see him get gunned down in the bar at the end. But no, we root for the killer, and he kills more people, shooting some in the back. We don't blink twice about this. We're more judgmental about characters in sex stories who do "bad" things.

I'm less sure about your comment about doing "the thing that makes them hate themselves," because I think more often than not it's pure fantasy rather than a projection of something we've actually done or want to do. But I'm sure for some this is right.

Poor example. In popular cinema, violence is typically directed at the "bad guys," thereby whitewashing our subconscious sadistic impulses. When violent, humiliating, or sexually coercive acts are inflicted on a character we identify with, we instinctively recoil. On the other hand, when the villain receives "special" treatment in prison, we accept it with indifference or even satisfaction.

 

[SimonDoom]

Poor example. In popular cinema, violence is typically directed at the "bad guys," thereby whitewashing our subconscious sadistic impulses. When violent, humiliating, or sexually coercive acts are inflicted on a character we identify with, we instinctively recoil. On the other hand, when the villain receives "special" treatment in prison, we accept it with indifference or even satisfaction.

I don't think it's a poor example. In the example I gave, Unforgiven, the movie sets up Eastwood's character as the "hero" and the sheriff as the "villain," but if we exercised any normal moral judgment we'd see it's the opposite. Eastwood's character, Munny, is a villain. Even the task he sets to do in the movie -- gunning down two cowboys who disfigured a prostitute--is a morally unworthy goal. It's a movie that subverts the hero-villain dynamic, and we go along willingly because it's a good story. But also, because there's a part of us that likes rooting for villains.

In many contemporary movies and TV shows since the 1960s, the heroes are antiheroes. They are at best complicated people, and often they're outright villains. The Sopranos, for example. We root for people who are awful, murderous thugs. Part of the appeal is the fantasy of living like a mob character, somebody who has no accountability to morality or societal standards.

Even where there is, roughly, a clearer good guy-bad guy dynamic, in movies we tolerate a much higher level of sadistic revenge and vigilantism than we probably would in real life. Think about Dirty Harry movies.

I agree with your statement that we recoil from the infliction of harmful acts on a "character we identify with," but my point is that we have a fairly liberal ability to identify with characters with an appetite for absolutely awful violence, but we seem to be much more restricted when it comes to characters who are sexually "deviant."

 

[MillieDynamite]

But the good guys, Hackman & Harris, were less noble than the bad guys.

I agree, and what's interesting is the greater acceptance people show toward this attitude with respect to violence than with respect to sex. We have no problem with over the top, sadistic violence in movies, but we get much more squeamish about transgression in the context of sex. Consider the movie Unforgiven, where Eastwood plays a murderer. We root for the murderer. One would think that if, as audience members, we cared about morality, we would want to see him get gunned down in the bar at the end. But no, we root for the killer, and he kills more people, shooting some in the back. We don't blink twice about this. We're more judgmental about characters in sex stories who do "bad" things.

I'm less sure about your comment about doing "the thing that makes them hate themselves," because I think more often than not it's pure fantasy rather than a projection of something we've actually done or want to do. But I'm sure for some this is right.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Dexter is my Hero, no finger Anti-Hero ever!

I don't think it's a poor example. In the example I gave, Unforgiven, the movie sets up Eastwood's character as the "hero" and the sheriff as the "villain," but if we exercised any normal moral judgment we'd see it's the opposite. Eastwood's character, Munny, is a villain. Even the task he sets to do in the movie -- gunning down two cowboys who disfigured a prostitute--is a morally unworthy goal. It's a movie that subverts the hero-villain dynamic, and we go along willingly because it's a good story. But also, because there's a part of us that likes rooting for villains.

In many contemporary movies and TV shows since the 1960s, the heroes are antiheroes. They are at best complicated people, and often they're outright villains. The Sopranos, for example. We root for people who are awful, murderous thugs. Part of the appeal is the fantasy of living like a mob character, somebody who has no accountability to morality or societal standards.

Even where there is, roughly, a clearer good guy-bad guy dynamic, in movies we tolerate a much higher level of sadistic revenge and vigilantism than we probably would in real life. Think about Dirty Harry movies.

I agree with your statement that we recoil from the infliction of harmful acts on a "character we identify with," but my point is that we have a fairly liberal ability to identify with characters with an appetite for absolutely awful violence, but we seem to be much more restricted when it comes to characters who are sexually "deviant."

 

[SimonDoom]

But the good guys, Hackman & Harris, were less noble than the bad guys.

Harris wasn't a good guy. He was a hired gun and a fraud. I wouldn't say Hackman was less noble than Eastwood. He had unsavory methods, but he didn't murder people in cold blood. He beat Ned to death, but recall that as far as he knew Ned was part of a vigilante group to murder two cowboys. The movie presents Eastwood as the hero, but he isn't, really. His only nobility is that he realizes what a load of crap the mythology of the gunfighter is.

If this had been a John Wayne movie, Wayne would have played the sheriff, and in the end he would have shot and killed the bad guy, played by Eastwood, and we would see the sheriff's nobility under his toughness and unsavory methods.

Of course, that wouldn't have been nearly as interesting a movie.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Little Bill Dagget is the most common of racist, misogynistic, stereotypical portrayal of a white authority figure! How can any sane person root for a hero like him? No whores gold, he said. He didn't even give any adequate compensation to the woman who was raped and disfigured. Didn't arrest the man, try him, or try very hard to punish him. In those days, he should've hung for what he did. Had she been a white wife of a white man, she would have. But she was whore with a little gold to spend. His type of law is why vigilantes exist in the first place. Perhaps I view this from an Afro-American perspective, but I still see more nobility in the common thief than the typical bigot in authority.

 

[Voboy]

I agree, and what's interesting is the greater acceptance people show toward this attitude with respect to violence than with respect to sex.

A Serbian Film exemplifies this. The coercive sex and the graphic violence are both deliberately over-the-top, but the violence is not what people talk about when discussing that movie.

 

[MillieDynamite]

If it's the film I thinking off, then the sex is pretty fucking violent.

A Serbian Film exemplifies this. The coercive sex and the graphic violence are both deliberately over-the-top, but the violence is not what people talk about when discussing that movie.

 

[djrip]

Skipping reading this whole thread, but... The story described is a 21 year old adult have a fling with his friend's divorced mom... No underage, no incest, no cheating... Why should anyone consider that immoral? A bit awkward because she's his friend's mom, but not immoral. Certainly not immoral compared to incest with his own mom, which is a very common story conceit here. I don't know why anyone would be expected to clutch their pearls over this. Even in real life it would be weird/awkward/socially disruptive, but not immoral for adults to choose to do this, IMO.

 

[Voboy]

If it's the film I thinking off, then the sex is pretty fucking violent.

Very much so, but there's an enormous quantity of both graphic violence and graphic sex. Nobody mentions the gratuitous blood flying everywhere when the main character overkills a couple of bad guys, because we're at a point in the history of storytelling where gratuitous violence is no longer all that remarkable. Sexual "immorality" still is.

 

[MillieDynamite]

If it is the film I'm thinking of he rapes a woman who's tied face down spread eagle on a bed and the cuts her head off with a machete.

Very much so, but there's an enormous quantity of both graphic violence and graphic sex. Nobody mentions the gratuitous blood flying everywhere when the main character overkills a couple of bad guys, because we're at a point in the history of storytelling where gratuitous violence is no longer all that remarkable. Sexual "immorality" still is.

 

[NuclearFairy]

I personally don't like reading non-smut stories where morally awful people are the protagonist. As in mob bosses, pirates, and the like. But if you throw in enough smut, especially rough kinky smut, then I can turn my brain off enough to not notice the awful morally wrong things they must be doing on a nearly daily basis and just enjoy the smut. I suspect that might be what's happening with your story about the lying liars who lied to their friends and family. Smut was good, morality center shut down.