Writing about the relationship between art and morality in The Yale Review, Garth Greenwell observed:
‘When I work with students now, graduate or undergraduate, their primary mode of engagement with a text often seems to be a particular kind of moral judgment, as though before they can see anything else in stories or poems they have to sort them into piles of the righteous and the problematic. These responses sometimes seem to me an index of an anxiety I see more and more in my students, in my friends and myself, a kind of paranoia about our own moral status, a desire to demonstrate our personal righteousness in our response to art.’
He went on to talk more generally about the wider arts ‘Discourse’ (his capitalisation) saying:
‘In much of our commentary, there’s a desire for art to be exemplary, to present a world the moral valence of which, whether positive or negative, is easily legible; there’s a desire for the work of art to provide an index of judgment clearly predicated on values the reader can approve.’
This reflects what I’ve observed of the ‘Discourse’ as well. I think much of this can be attributed to the proliferation of social media arts discussion, where much of what goes viral or gains traction is short, snappy, unnuanced, polarising ‘hot takes’. Alongside this, the 2010s (or thereabouts) saw the rise of the listicle — a trend towards online media outlets sharing quick- and easy-read articles comprised of lists, often under headlines like ‘10 mistakes X film made’ or ‘5 problematic moments in Y film.’ The online media criticism/discourse landscape has become saturated with hot takes decrying pieces of art for their perceived immorality or the perceived immorality of the artist. This ranges from ‘cancellation’ of authors for real or perceived transgressions to condemnation of pieces of art for the mere depiction of instances of immorality.
Thus, we find ourselves in a period where audiences — at least the vocal, online audiences — seem to want explicitly morally good art made by morally good artists. Not only should the art be morally good, it should be morally instructive. We’ve seen this desire for a while now in the reception of art, but I think we are now seeing it reflected in the art being made and becoming popular.
Oppenheimer
A perfect case study of this trend towards a desire to see explicitly moralising media can be seen in some of the reactions towards Oppenheimer. Some of the main criticisms levelled at the film include that it doesn’t depict the Japanese victims of the bomb, calling it ‘morally half formed’ and citing a ‘lack of responsibility.’
Debates about the artistic merit of including scenes of the explosion and/or its impact on unnamed, undeveloped, anonymous characters created only to be momentary victims of a spectacle of tragedy (maybe you can infer my opinion on that option) aside, suffice to say that not showing it doesn’t mean it wasn’t considered or that the harm was endorsed or overlooked. A position was taken by what was shown: we are told about the impact of the bomb, and we see Oppenheimer struggle to look at the implied horrors on a screen, later struggling with the idea of what he has created. Artistically, it makes sense that we are shown only Oppenheimer’s perspective in a film about Oppenheimer’s perspective. Further, the film isn’t shying away from implicit condemnation of the wider US government’s decision making priorities: when deciding which cities to make potential targets, Kyoto is removed because of its cultural significance and because the decision-maker went there on his honeymoon. This is such a patently arbitrary decision that it is impossible to interpret this scene as anything other than tacit condemnation, but this trend in opinion reflects the belief that a film should be taking a clear moral stance; it should educate the audience while being clear in its condemnation of horrific acts.
While there is obviously scope for a conversation about, and criticism of, whose stories get told and whose get overlooked, that’s a separate conversation from people wanting this film to be a film that it didn’t set out to be. It is telling Oppenheimer’s story. Yes, we can say other stories should be told, other films should be made (about the victims of the bomb for example), of course they should, but that’s not what this film was doing.
Barbie
Barbie, in stark contrast, is a film with an actual didactic interval telling the audience explicitly and directly what they are supposed to be taking from the film. I’m talking about America Ferrera’s monologue, obviously. There is much to be said, and much has been said, about the content of the monologue, the overall messaging of the film and the type and depth of feminism that the film achieves. All that aside, I’m not touching on the substance or the message, but the form in which it was delivered. To me, the almost address-to-audience style of the delivery coupled with the simplistic, easily digestible, non-challenging, entry-level feminist messaging betray a distrust in the audience, as if the filmmakers doubt the audience’s ability to ‘get it’ if it is delivered in a fashion more reminiscent of a whisper in the ear than a punch in the face.
To some people, Barbie was good for this reason. Its champions have celebrated the accessibility of the feminist messaging, saying that its inclusion in such a widely viewed mainstream film has allowed basic feminism to reach people who hadn’t heard anything like that before, allowing them a different perspective on life as a woman — often explicit or implicit in these ‘takes’ is that it is older women who the film is benefitting. I think this is patronising. The assumption that any adult woman couldn’t understand anything more subtle or advanced than the blunt-force teachings of a Mattel-sponsored film suitable for children is nothing other than insulting. But even if we are to assume that this messaging has been life- and politics-changing for many women, we can acknowledge that it is the didacticism of the film that is being celebrated.
The celebration of this basic feminist ‘education’ has formed the basis of a lot of the discussion around the film, including its Oscar nominations, or lack thereof in some categories. The fact that the film was nominated for best supporting actor, but not best actress or best director (it was directed by a woman) was seen as an anti-feminist, and thus anti-the-film’s-message, slight. Let’s leave aside the fact that a woman can’t be nominated for the male category and that Margot Robbie wasn’t overlooked for a man for best actress (obviously) and consider the arguments that Greta Gerwig not receiving a best director nod was anti-feminist and anti-women.
Way more men are given big directing opportunities and awards recognition for directing — that is a fact. But that doesn’t mean any woman director who directs a successful film deserves to be considered one of the top 5 directors of the year. I thought Barbie was good, I enjoyed watching it and it has received a number of Oscar nominations, including best picture. It also enjoyed a lot of success, both with audiences and at the box office. But none of that means it automatically warrants a best director nomination.
I’m willing to accept that the Barbie film taught things to people and voiced something they’d never heard voiced before and even caused some women to have an eye opening ‘eureka!’ moment. But that doesn’t mean it has to be celebrated as incredible feminist media or as a piece of filmmaking or art. It doesn’t mean we are opposed to its existence if we criticise it as a standalone piece either as a purportedly feminist film, critiquing the feminism therein, or as just a film, critiquing the film as a film, especially relevant in the context of whether or not it deserves a best picture or best director or any other nomination.
For some, Barbie was good (and thus deserving of all of the award nominations) because of its feminist messaging and resonance with women. Criticisms of its heavy handedness or the awkward integration of the messaging into the film from an artistic perspective are shut down because of how ‘important’ that monologue is. It's good because of the didacticism, not in spite of it; art sacrificed for moral education.
Heartstopper
This lack of nuance was also seen in series 2 of Heartstopper, the young adult LGBTQ+ Netflix series based on a graphic novel. This series is very nice. And not much more than that. Granted, this is made for a teenage target audience, but I think teens can handle some more challenging media than what the second series of Heartstopper has to offer. I don’t mean it should focus on queer struggle and have the characters encounter endless bigotry and self-hatred. I mean the creators should let their characters be human and trust the audience to think for themselves.
The series is peppered with cartoon graphics which punctuate moments of love or happiness. While this is presumably intended as a tribute to its origins as a graphic novel, it doesn’t add anything aesthetically and instead comes across as a completely unsubtle attempt to ensure the audience is picking up on the characters’ emotions; we are not trusted to infer anything. I won’t spoil anything, but there is a particularly egregious incidence of this towards the end of the series (at prom, in the library) that made me half laugh out loud and half turn inside out with cringe.
The teenagers of Heartstopper live in a communication utopia, where they speak less like young people and more like very clearly authored characters. There is no room for ambiguity: when issues arise, they are Addressed with a capital A. The good guys are all so good — there’s no nuance, no moral iffiness, no messiness, no humanness. They’re all so well behaved in a way that feels both ridiculously unrealistic and unrealistically boring. When going to a nightclub, they are quick to clarify that it’s an under 18s’ night and when one character drinks too much on a school trip, they immediately run to the teachers’ room. God forbid they give the audience any ideas!!!
Books
I read an article in the Guardian recently about the current panic around children and young people reading adult fiction, partly due to social media and partly due to cover art that may appear to parents as suitable for children:
‘Schools have become aware teenagers are being drawn to such books, and at least one London headteacher has written to parents urging them to check whether their children are reading age-appropriate books.
Booksellers have also been trying to make clear when books contain adult content. On the Waterstones online listing of Icebreaker, the first in Grace’s Maple Hill Series, the first review is by one of the shop’s booksellers and says that the novel is a “Spicy romance for readers 18+”.’
By this logic, young people can have sex at 16, but they can’t read depictions of fictional sex until two years later. How can we delineate who should be reading what, what is appropriate for whom and what is acceptably clear marketing of non-PG content? To be clear, it’s not like we’re talking about pornography. Before the rise of ‘young adult' as a genre (or before parents knew about it to get the books for their teenagers), readers graduated from kids’ books to adult books, and it wasn’t traumatising. Obviously adults can be aware of what their children are reading, advise accordingly and provide their children with ‘age appropriate’ books, but I really think it’s going too far to be concerned about a teenager reading a book with sex in it (arguably, there’s scope for discussion about how this line of thinking leads towards book banning, but that’s not for here). As writer Kat Rosenfield is quoted as saying in the same article: ‘It’s normal and healthy for teenagers to be interested in sex, and there’s no safer way to explore that interest than by reading stories about it.’
This is a bit of a tangent from the discussion of specific pieces of media, but this discussion typifies the concerns that pervade media discourse right now around what we want or expect media to provide to us and to others.
Yellowface
The novel Yellowface by R.F. Kuang is intended to be both a satire of the publishing industry and a metafiction about social media, and a lot of people really loved it. I found it to be a quick, propulsive, fun read that I enjoyed zipping through. But my main problems with it were the complete lack of nuance to the story and the extreme didacticism that I thought, again, betrayed the author’s lack of trust in the reader.
The novel is about a white American woman, June, who passes off a novel (mostly) written by an Asian American woman as her own work. The white woman goes on to publish the novel to great acclaim and success, but makes every kind of culturally insensitive gaffe available to her and becomes the subject of online controversy.
June is practically cartoonishly villainous in her racial insensitivity. This would be fine if Kuang was going for an out and out satire, but she doesn’t quite fully commit, instead opting for a combination of industry satire and moral instruction. In her efforts to ensure the reader is understanding the point of the story, Kuang gives June no element of moral ambiguity or complexity. She guides us by the hand through the story, making sure to remind us often that June is Not Good and as such confronts us with nothing that challenges our own biases or makes us question what we think is acceptable. In opting to concentrate on very clearly stating the novel’s themes and message, she narrows the scope of the novel’s impact on its audience.
Conclusion
I think this is just the era of media and media criticism we’re in at the moment. If you like something, you must agree with it. So, to make something audiences will like, make something they will agree with. To ensure audiences will agree with your message, make the art tell the audience explicitly and unambiguously exactly what they are supposed to be agreeing with. To do that, you can’t have morally ambiguous grey areas or morally complex characters.
There will always be people who want morally pure media, but I think the overall trend in this direction is temporary and after this we will probably see a trend in a different direction. Maybe we’ll get fed up with being educated by our moralising media and we’ll see a rebellious trend towards wanting morally questionable stories or media where the messaging is more subtle, allowing us to make our own inferences and draw our own interpretations. I hope so, anyway.