What social responsibilities do fiction authors have (if any)?
In 1977, Stephen King published a novel about a school shooting called Rage. It is somewhat infamous, as it has been connected to instances of real-life school shootings. King, in response, allowed the story to fall out of print and has never reissued it. The novel has a lot in common with other YA stories and tropes: a disaffected protagonist, meddling/out of touch adults, and newfound social connection with peers. While the main character is undoubtedly disturbed, the novel feels somewhat uncritical (or potentially even supportive) of his actions.
Certainly fiction is a space where authors are free to explore any point of view or theme they wish. The beauty of fiction is that it is limitless and consequence-free. No people are harmed in Rage because there are no people in it. Its characters are merely names and ideas--they are a fiction.
Nevertheless, Rage addresses a real-world phenomenon, and the beauty of fiction is that it doesn't live as a lie. As Ursula K. Le Guin writes,
"In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little..."
We like fiction because it resonates with us, exposing us to themes that can affirm, shape, or challenge our mindsets.
With this dichotomy in mind, I'm torn between whether authors should be free to explore anything they wish from the safety of make-believe, or whether they have a social responsibility because their words carry messages and ideas that directly impact lives. I'm not sure what to think, and I can come up with great arguments for both sides. What's your take? What social responsibilities do fiction authors have (if any)?
My fiction reading has been mostly science fiction. Science fiction, because it's not tied to our current reality, gets a bit more freedom to play with ideas that we wouldn't normally see in fiction. I've read about: legally enforced euthanasia of old people to keep population down; fully conscious clones being grown for parts then killed off; a pro-gun libertarian defending his family and property in a post-apocalyptic world in any way necessary; disabled people being put in canisters and neurally connected to spaceships to become their pilots; a society where people wear glasses that monitor and record everyone's actions; a community where polygamous/polyandrous marriage is the norm; and lots more ideas.
I feel I'm a better person for having been able to explore these ideas. I have a wider perspective. I'm more accepting of different opinions, and more open to new ways of thinking.
The point of fiction is to let us explore people and societies other than ourselves and our own. If I read stories only about me and my life, I'm not going to learn anything. By reading fiction, I can get inside other people's heads, and live in other societies, and learn what it feels like to be someone else. This builds empathy, and openness.
If the only way we can learn about school shooters is to study real-life cases, that limits us. Look at this extract from the plot summary of 'Rage' listed in your Wikipedia article:
This gets us inside the head of a school shooter (albeit a fictional one) in a way that we can't achieve with a real-life shooter (especially because they often kill themselves and therefore aren't available for psychotherapy and interviews after the event). That's extremely valuable. Only by understanding what drives these people to do what they do can we prevent other people from ending up in these situations.
Fiction is valuable because it exposes us to different ways of thinking and a variety of experiences that we wouldn't otherwise have access to.
If anything, I would argue that fiction authors have the social responsibility to write about these taboo subjects and difficult topics, rather than to avoid them.
Certainly fiction enriches us, and my experience with it is largely the same as you. I do not feel that I'm worse off for having read Rage or many other stories with provocative or uncomfortable ideas. In fact most of them have been beneficial. Like you said, they have given me valuable things to consider outside of my own perspective.
On the other hand, you and I presumably have not found encouragement to engage in destructive or harmful behavior based on what we've read. This is not necessarily true for everyone (as we see with the multiple real-life shootings linked to this one novel). What you and I can see as valuable commentary on the potential psychological profile of a school shooter might also be simultaneously read as validation by actual school shooters. What we consider to be important perspective-taking they might consider to be endorsement for their actions. While we can't attribute any of those incidents solely to the book, we also can't ignore its connection (particularly because it has happened more than once).
My question isn't so much whether fiction is a valuable medium for the transmission of ideas but whether its effectiveness in doing so comes with parameters. Basically, are there lines authors shouldn't cross because the costs will outweigh the benefits? Lolita is a classic, but if it has encouraged real-world pedophilia, aren't we worse off for having it? Is the absence of certain fictional perspectives sometimes better than their presence?
Or, from another lens, was King irresponsible for writing his book in the manner that he did? After all, there are many other books that have dealt with the subject that have not inspired similar acts (to the best of our knowledge). Or, was the issue not that he wrote it but that he released it for mass consumption? Once an author releases something to the public, do they have the right to ignore its impact? Or should the author have to live with the consequences, even if they're unintended?
These are the kinds of questions going around in my head right now, and I genuinely don't know where I stand on any of them.
Noone ever went on a shooting rampage just because they read a story about a school shooting. Would you? If you or I picked up 'Rage' and read it, would we become the next mass shooters? Of course not! The ground has to be fertile for that seed to germinate and take root. If we read 'Rage', we wouldn't pick up a gun and start shooting people in our local church or shopping centre or nightclub. To do those things, you have to be already inclined that way. And, if you're already inclined that way, then anything might be a trigger for you: a book, a movie, a television show, a passing remark at school, a comment on the internet, the way someone looks at you on the street.
The only way to prevent possibly triggering people like that is to entirely shut down society and culture, and force everyone to live alone in empty boxes where no outside influences can possibly reach us. Which is obviously ridiculous.
An author (or movie director or song writer or game developer) is not responsible for what other people do in response to their work. Stephen King is not responsible for other people's response to his story, or their actions after reading that story. They are responsible for their own decisions and their own actions. If they're ever taken to court for their crimes, King can not and should not be charged as an accessory to those crimes.
Of course, King is right to be aware of how people are reacting to his work, but there's a difference between being aware of something and being responsible for it. And, if he chooses to withdraw his work from publication, that is his prerogative, but he's not required to do so.
Rather than censoring works of art which might inspire damaged people to do bad things, we should prevent those people becoming damaged in the first place. Remove the explosive from the bomb rather than merely disabling the detonator - because, even if the detonator doesn't make the bomb explode, something else might (a bump, a fall, a flame).
Is there not a very large middle ground between no one even thinking about what impact a piece of art can have and locking up Stephen King? What about the public going "hey dude, what the hell is this?" and pressing him on it? There's plenty of things we generally hold people responsible for through other means that they aren't legally accountable for.
Similarly, is there not a middle ground between not caring at all what kind of content exists in the world and eradicating it entirely? I don't understand this line of thinking. "Our measures will not be entirely effective unless we do something ridiculous, so let's not do anything at all" doesn't seem to follow, at least not to me. It's a complex balancing game and I don't claim to know exactly where a line should be drawn, but the difficulty of that question doesn't justify throwing out the question entirely.
I think we agree that exploring things through fiction is a good way for us to explore what's right and what's wrong without actually doing those things. In my eyes, society in some way shutting those things down when they go too far (whatever too far is, I haven't read the book in question and I'm going to guess that I would disagree myself that it is too far, but we're talking abstracts here) is part of that process.
I recognize that you're responding to a pretty strict idea of what "responsibility" could mean, so I'm sorry if I've just talked past what you were saying to talk about something else.
Yes, there is such a middle ground, and I thought we were exploring it. I am, right here, right now, thinking about what impact a piece of art can have... aren't I? I'm certainly not not thinking about it, and I'm not asking for Stephen King to be locked up. I'm engaged in a discussion about how art impacts people.
What about it? What would that achieve? What be the outcome of this line of questioning? We could have the situation where King takes his story out of circulation, or where he decides to do nothing, or... what? What other outcomes are there?
I'm not throwing out the question entirely. I'm addressing it head-on. Just because my answer might be different to other people's, that doesn't mean I'm throwing out the question.
My point is that an artist is not responsible for other people's responses to their art. If I paint a picture of a sunflower being cut down and harvested, and you go on a sunflower-cutting rampage... how is that in any way my fault? Sure, I've presented you with a picture of a sunflower being cut, but it was something inside you which was triggered by that picture, and it was you who decided to cut down all the sunflowers in the world. Not me. I didn't make that decision, nor did I encourage you to make that decision.
Of course I can choose to not show my sunflower-cutting painting to known flower-abusers, but I can't predict ahead of time which art-viewers are going to see my painting and suddenly decide to pick up a scythe. Should the art gallery where my painting is displayed hand out a questionnaire to all visitors, asking about their possible flower-cutting tendencies? Or, to ensure the safety of all the sunflowers, should I just lock my picture up in a dark room where noone can see it?
I don't see how my showing a painting about a sunflower harvest somehow makes me responsible for you cutting sunflowers. And, the only options I see are:
What other options are there?
I wrote out a lot but I started going in a thousand directions that wouldn't have been useful, so let me keep this simple. Everything I said is based around an assumption baked into something else I said, and clearly the foundation isn't there, so I'll just throw it all out. Ignore what I said before, I was expecting more common ground than there really is here.
I have a question: Do you think this kind of violence in America (as is the case with all of the situations mentioned in this topic) is rooted in nothing beyond availability of weaponry and lack of availability for help with mental health? Do you not think there are any cultural elements at play with how Americans see violence, or how Americans think about violent people? If you don't, I don't really know how to engage with that when it's something I see in front of me very clearly. There's a lot of things that go into that, but I find it hard to ignore the overwhelming fixation with violence and aggression that I see in America.
I think it's easy to lose this issue in cases where it's made out to be direct. Rage probably didn't cause these events any more than Doom caused Columbine, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to think that a culture fixated on cool macho violence might tip the scales, and cultural artifacts like these both result from and feed back into that culture. Similarly, an old comedy that plays into the idea that gay people are predators didn't cause violence against gay people, but it's pretty reasonable to draw the connection and say it played into it. I wouldn't call those comedians murderers, but I think they helped create or maintain an environment that allowed for murder. (Again, Rage almost certainly isn't that clear cut)
I just don't buy that people who were going to do bad things were always going to do it anyway, and it would be really hard to deny culture being one of the factors in that big complex soup.
EDIT: By the way, feel free to take the last word because I don't really intend on making this a long thing. I didn't mean to argue so much as I wanted to take issue with how things were being framed, and I think I got that out already.
Of course violence in America is cultural. It's all part of the mix that goes towards making up a person: who they are, what they learn from their parents, what they learn from other authority figures, what they learn from their peers, what they read, what they watch, what they play... it all contributes to someone's tendency to commit violence. And, America being what it is, an average American's tendency to commit violence is probably somewhat higher than the average Norwegian's tendency to commit violence.
And maybe a story like 'Rage' is one of the drops in that ocean of violent culture.
And now I see where you're going. You think that violent art in general contributes to a violent culture, and reducing violent art will reduce the violent culture. Sure. That would be nice. I, personally, would love to see a world without movies like 'Pulp Fiction' (which I've never seen because someone described it to me as "so violent it's funny!") and stories like 'Rage', and all those violent video games. And we can stop children playing 'Cowboys and Indians' and 'Cops and Robbers', and take toy guns out of stores, and stop idolising people like Ned Kelly or Bonnie and Clyde. I would love a world like that. It's not going to happen, but it's nice to imagine.
However, even within a culture that esteems violence, there are still some people who are more likely to commit violence, and some who are less likely. Not every American who reads 'Rage' is going to end up shooting dozens of people.
So you think someone can be induced to kill people by reading a story like 'Rage'? Either it's internal or it's external, and you don't think it's internal, so it must be external. Yes? No?
Would you be willing to bet your own freedom/life on that? Would you be willing to read 'Rage', and then see if you're able to resist the urge to go out and kill a dozen people - and take the chance you might end up in jail or dead? I'd be willing to bet that I could read that story and not end up in the nightly news. Would you? We don't need to bet money. Whoever loses will automatically pay the price by ending up in jail or being killed, so we don't need to promise $5 on a handshake. Will you take this bet?
Of course you would, because you know you can't lose. No matter how many stories like 'Rage' you read or watch, you won't pick up a gun and start shooting people. (Okay, I am making a big assumption here...) And why is that? Because you weren't going to do that sort of thing anyway. Despite the culture you live in, and the art you consume, you're not a killer. (Again: assuming!) Something makes you different to those people who do commit murder. Maybe it was your upbringing, maybe it was your parents or your priest or your pedagogue or your peers or your personality - but something holds you back from killing random strangers. There is something inside you, some part of you, something about who you are, that makes you not a killer. And no amount of violent stories or movies is going to change that.
I agree that censorship would be a failure. Art should be free. We need a healthy public discourse, not banishment of ideas.
In the case of art, one can choose to ignore.
We are talking about H. sapiens. Mental illness and lesser delusion are common. There are sick people; there are people who will become sick. There are artists who are sick.
Art should be free. Lethal force should not be easy to obtain and use.
Great points.
Your concept of "directions" is very interesting, as some narratives get treated as guidebooks rather than stories. I think that's where my latent discomfort lies, actually, because the book feels very similar to other didactic "issue books" that are common in YA publishing. These are popular because of their social commentary on issues directly affecting kids (e.g. divorce, racism, etc.), and they allow kids to take perspectives and engage critically with topics relevant to them. Rage reads like one of these books, only, tonally, it permits (if not endorses) the protagonist's actions.
I will say that I don't think Rage gives us particularly valuable insight into school shooters. I think King probably intended for it to exist at the level of, as you call it, simple entertainment. When I say that the story has definitely given me a lot to think about, I'm mostly referring to what I'm trying to parse through with this particular thread, as I don't think it's particularly valuable as a psychological profile. You also bring up the great point that King is not an expert, so his take isn't necessarily trustworthy outside of creating an engaging story. In fact, by mistaking fiction for fact, we could do harm by believing a fabrication to be true.
This last point is actually addressed in Dave Cullen's Columbine, which addresses how much of the national narratives following the attack were based on inaccurate reporting and information. As such, people came to believe fictions, and that has shaped our understanding of school shootings ever since. That book was far more valuable for understanding school shooters. Sue Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold (one of the Columbine shooters), also wrote a book called A Mother's Reckoning that is very different but equally valuable.
I think your point about other books that talk about the same subject not having inspired similar acts interesting. I remember reading quite a bit of King's work in my teenage years and connecting deeply with his characters. I think you're basically making the argument that he did too good of a job making his characters with flaws relatable?
I'm making it as an argument, not necessarily my argument (since I still don't have a solid hold on any of this at the moment). You could argue that King created a resonant school-shooter character, portrayed him uncritically/positively, and put him in a story accessible to (if not targeted to) impressionable young adults, several of which went on to enact something very similar to the events of the book.
Part of why I even bring it up is that I also read Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin. This is also a book that deals with a school shooter, but it is written from the perspective of the shooter's mother. The book saves the worst events for the end, and spends significant time characterizing the mother through lengthy adult matters and backstory. In this way, the book is somewhat insulated from being read by someone inclined to identify with the shooter. A reader can immediately identify with the shooter in Rage by nature of its writing, whereas Kevin sets things up such that the reader would have to put in a lot of work before that's possible. Interestingly, Kevin is actually the darker, more horrific story of the two.
If we argue that authors do have social responsibility, Shriver's book feels significantly more responsible than King's despite it being "worse" in terms of outcome. It is very unlikely that a potential shooter would pick up the book and, even if they did, it's unlikely that they would read it through to the end. Furthermore, if they did, it's unlikely that they would identify with Kevin in a way that might affect their real-world behavior. On the other hand, if we argue that authors are free to write what they wish, both novels are equally valuable because they choose to tell two very different stories. One is told from the perspective of a shooter himself, while one is from a shooter's mother. Those are not mutually replaceable narratives.
I guess what I'm trying to figure out is whether there are some perspectives or tones that authors shouldn't take because of their potential for harm? It doesn't mean the author cannot write about a given issue, only that they have to be more careful or strategic about it.
One outcome of this would be that writers can never show possibly harmful actions in a sympathetic way.
Homosexuality is considered harmful by at least some people. In the past, it was considered harmful by a majority of people.
Would it have been acceptable for a writer 50 years ago to write a book in which a homosexual character was depicted sympathetically? At the time, homosexuality was considered deviant and even a mental illness. It was wrong, and it harmed the person indulging in that behaviour, as well as harming society at large. Should a writer have avoided presenting a sympathetic homosexual character, so as not to encourage some poor impressionable young adult to decide to embrace their same-sex attraction? Or should all homosexual characters have been presented as tragic, damaged people who ended up badly (which isn't too far from what was actually done back then).
I'm not trying to equate murder with homosexuality. Far from it! My point is that, if we start telling authors they can't write about certain topics in certain ways because of their potential for harm, we then get into the highly subjective area of trying to define what is and is not harmful.
Some Christians would say that atheism is harmful, because it turns a person away from eternal salvation and damns them to eternal punishment. They would argue that atheist characters should never be written about sympathetically because of this. I personally believe that shooting people is harmful, so I would like to see all literature and movies and television show all gun users as damaged people who reach tragic ends, so that noone is ever tempted to pick up a gun for any reason.
It gets very messy very quickly.
I don't think it's fair to cause a climate of self-censorship among authors. There is enough gate-keeping going on in publishing as it is. The internet may have broken down some barriers, but portal owners, who first allowed nearly unfettered speech are now censoring under the guise of their own rules sets. I find them to be not a whole lot different than any other morality police.
The problem with censorship is always who is to be chosen arbitor that will always remain unbiased?
Those that would enforce their own morality on others speech outside of logic and reason, but within the realms of religion, tribalism, or political ideology are most likely oppressing others with it.
I don't believe we should allow these people to assert their opinions on others. I believe societies should set baseline codes of conduct that would prevent harm to individuals. I think those societies should do their best to educate people about those rules, instill respect for others' autonomy, and that we as a whole should seek to help individuals with mental illness find a way to live with their illnesses or, at a minimum, to improve their conditions at least to the point at which they don't have a hard time defining what is truth and what is fiction.
It's not an author's fault when someone takes their work in a way that was not intended. It's impossible for an artist to know all the ways in which their work will be seen.
I think that the real danger to humanity is in people creating fiction and then trying to sell it as truth.
I read Rage as a teenager in the 1990s. I also played Doom and listened to Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime, which is a rock opera about a junkie who becomes a terrorist.
I didn't kill anybody. Not in the real world where it counts.
That said, I recognize no social responsibility beyond giving the reader their money's worth. You're giving me money, and spending time you can't get back when you read my work. If I've wasted either, then I've failed in my responsibility to you.
However, I would never apologize for writing about a person who tries to fix the world with a gun because somebody tried to do the same in real life and had my books on their Goodreads shelf. The "this is fiction" blurb at the front of the book explicitly says that depiction is not advocacy, and that if you find allegory or applicability you should get your head examined.
People who choose to be murderous assholes need to be held responsible for their own choices and actions. Blaming media is as irrational as saying, "The Devil made me do it."
Stephen King can make his own choices, but I would never pull a book because life had started to imitate art. It's not like doing so would bring back the dead or restore the maimed, and there's no evidence doing so would prevent future atrocities.
I know this isn't specifically what you're asking about, but it makes me think about media depicting suicide.
I'm certainly not anywhere near an authority on this topic, but I've heard that anytime media is made about suicide, we see an uptick in suicides of that type. It's called "suicide contagion"or "copycat suicides." Here's an article from The Atlantic about the early impact of 13 Reasons Why. While suicide contagion is not specific to media (suicides often tend to cluster in families, schools, or regions), I do wonder if authors have a responsibility not to write about it. Or at least to write about it in a way that promotes people with suicidal thoughts to get help, rather than saying "My peers did shitty things to me, and the only way out was suicide, and now they're responsible for my death" (looking at you, Thirteen Reasons Why.)
It's so hard, though, because I'm sure if there wasn't so much shame surrounding suicidal thoughts, we might have more people willing to talk about them. It feels almost impossible to see where the line between erasing the stigma and promoting suicidal behaviors is. Is it ethical to write about suicide at all? Even if it could be argued that it wasn't "my fault," I still would feel awful if my art contributed to a person's death.
This is actually exactly the kind of thing I was trying to get at with my question, but I fear that I narrowed the conversation too much with my example of and focus on Rage. I'm interested in more than just King's book, as there's so much moral difficulty out there.
You identified perfectly that suicide is another topic that might require more reponsibility than most. I'm a teacher, and we had a staff meeting dedicated to Thirteen Reasons Why once it started airing on Netflix. The book was already somewhat controversial in our circles, but the series had so much more reach, including a much younger audience. At the staff meeting we were reminded of signs of depression and self-harm. We were encouraged to monitor and connect with students we felt might be at risk and refer to counselors anyone we felt might benefit. I also know we weren't alone in this: many school districts did similar things, including sending letters home or having parent meetings about the series.
So, in some ways, it was potentially good? It forced the conversation and many parents and teachers probably strengthened their relationships and toolkits. Awareness raising is a good thing and helps to inform and destigmatize. As you identified, this is crucially important. On the other hand, we also don't know the series' negative impact, if any, and whether it validated or accelerated suicidal thoughts in some. Even though we certainly can't blame Thirteen Reasons Why solely for any negative outcome, it's something that seems capable of dealing significant damage, especially given its tone and target audience.