Cognisant
cackling in the trenches
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- Dec 12, 2009
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Our stories reflect our philosophy and if I didn't already have a long list of other projects to attend to I'd spend the rest of this evening devising a multiple choice philosophy test based upon how people expect a given scene to play out.
For example a superhero interrupts a mugging and the mugger takes the intended victim hostage, putting a gun to their head and declaring intent to fire if the superhero comes any closer.
Option 1.
The superhero disarms the mugger without much difficulty.
Option 2.
The superhero is smart enough to understand the dynamics of the situation and backs off, knowing that doing anything otherwise would only endanger the hostage and that it's quite likely that they'll meet the mugger again under more favourable circumstances.
Option 3.
The superhero understands situational dynamics and takes it a step further, rather than creating the precedent that taking hostages is a valid tactic the superhero accepts that the hostage's safety is ultimately a factor beyond control and chooses to act upon factors that can be controlled, either "shooting the hostage" (ideally non-lethally but one can never be 100% sure of such things) to create an opening, or "calls the bluff" by advancing on the mugger, disregarding the safety of the hostage.
Option 4.
The superhero attempts to disarm the mugger but either startles the mugger into firing or accidentally sets the gun off by trying to melt it with heat vision, or something like that, in any case the hostage is killed.
Option 5.
The superhero manages to talk down the mugger and peacefully resolve the situation.
I'm not asking what you would do if you were the superhero, I'm asking you which outcome is more likely to occur, which one feels right to you?
I find it interesting that (at least in my experience) scenarios 2, 3 and 5 rarely occur in modern fiction (again, maybe that's just the genres I read) although if I were the writer I would almost always choose option 3 or 4 depending upon the intelligence of the protagonist. Anyway the apparent underrepresentation of 2 and 5 is an interesting insight into the way society thinks, we seem to be by large too cynical to accept that conflict can be resolved peacefully or that the mugger wouldn't harm the hostage if given the chance to get away. Also interesting is what I suspect is an overrepresentation of scenario 1 which I find to be completely incongruent with reality, granted that is my highly subjective point of view.
Please discuss the above and any other fictional scenarios you can think of, particularly ones that would come as a surprise to the audience, why are they surprising?
E.g. Could you imagine the powerful and stoic Superman/Batman pathetically begging a mere street thug to let a hostage go? It seems unrealistic at first glance, but think about it for a moment, they both have severe hero complexes (less so with Batman, depending upon the writer) that is to say the suffering/incurred-harm of others clearly bothers them far more than their own, which profiles them as exactly the sort of people who would go to pieces in a situation where the hostage's safety is beyond their control.
Indeed in popular culture the word "hero" is practically defined as self sacrifice for the sake of others, so much so that you might think it's the only definition, in actual fact that's far from true, classically the Byronic hero overcomes adversity mainly as a matter of self interest.
For example a superhero interrupts a mugging and the mugger takes the intended victim hostage, putting a gun to their head and declaring intent to fire if the superhero comes any closer.
Option 1.
The superhero disarms the mugger without much difficulty.
Option 2.
The superhero is smart enough to understand the dynamics of the situation and backs off, knowing that doing anything otherwise would only endanger the hostage and that it's quite likely that they'll meet the mugger again under more favourable circumstances.
Option 3.
The superhero understands situational dynamics and takes it a step further, rather than creating the precedent that taking hostages is a valid tactic the superhero accepts that the hostage's safety is ultimately a factor beyond control and chooses to act upon factors that can be controlled, either "shooting the hostage" (ideally non-lethally but one can never be 100% sure of such things) to create an opening, or "calls the bluff" by advancing on the mugger, disregarding the safety of the hostage.
Option 4.
The superhero attempts to disarm the mugger but either startles the mugger into firing or accidentally sets the gun off by trying to melt it with heat vision, or something like that, in any case the hostage is killed.
Option 5.
The superhero manages to talk down the mugger and peacefully resolve the situation.
I'm not asking what you would do if you were the superhero, I'm asking you which outcome is more likely to occur, which one feels right to you?
I find it interesting that (at least in my experience) scenarios 2, 3 and 5 rarely occur in modern fiction (again, maybe that's just the genres I read) although if I were the writer I would almost always choose option 3 or 4 depending upon the intelligence of the protagonist. Anyway the apparent underrepresentation of 2 and 5 is an interesting insight into the way society thinks, we seem to be by large too cynical to accept that conflict can be resolved peacefully or that the mugger wouldn't harm the hostage if given the chance to get away. Also interesting is what I suspect is an overrepresentation of scenario 1 which I find to be completely incongruent with reality, granted that is my highly subjective point of view.
Please discuss the above and any other fictional scenarios you can think of, particularly ones that would come as a surprise to the audience, why are they surprising?
E.g. Could you imagine the powerful and stoic Superman/Batman pathetically begging a mere street thug to let a hostage go? It seems unrealistic at first glance, but think about it for a moment, they both have severe hero complexes (less so with Batman, depending upon the writer) that is to say the suffering/incurred-harm of others clearly bothers them far more than their own, which profiles them as exactly the sort of people who would go to pieces in a situation where the hostage's safety is beyond their control.
Indeed in popular culture the word "hero" is practically defined as self sacrifice for the sake of others, so much so that you might think it's the only definition, in actual fact that's far from true, classically the Byronic hero overcomes adversity mainly as a matter of self interest.
