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/lit/ - Literature

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20449803 No.20449803 [Reply] [Original]

>This story isn't good because it sends a bad message

>> No.20449826

>>20449803
True. I hate those.
What’s the point of a story? You want some “realism”? Has to be random, feel bad and be pointless all at once to get your seal of approval? Blah.

>> No.20449860

>>20449826
More stories should be like that! Blah! Blah! Blah!

>> No.20449881
File: 479 KB, 617x1000, based.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
20449881

>>20449803
makes chudcels seeth

>> No.20449916

Life is meaningless and absurd. Cry more.

>> No.20449948

>>20449826
I think the point is that categorizing something as good message bad message as the main criteria of a book being good is a smooth brained take rather than it being realistic or not, you smooth brain.

If something has great prose and explores interesting ideas has a compelling story and is all around cohesive and well put together, but you decide it has a "bad message", and therefor its a bad story, that seems like a major reduction of things. Like, you can apreciate things without agreeing with them.

>> No.20449966

>>20449803
Well yeah, kinda. Although this is more on the mark if you swap '"bad" with the more specific "untrue". You can have a story that hits all the right marks: interesting and well developed premise, engaging prose, rich dialogue, etc. The story can be "good" in every way. But if the message (not the premise, not the plot, but the message) is based around flawed logic then the whole thing feels hollow. Engaging and satisfying at the moment of consumption, but unfulfilling. Like fast food.

>> No.20449971

>>20449966
>food analogy

>> No.20449995

>>20449966
>is based around flawed logic then the whole thing feels hollow
I disagree. Because thats a single aspect of a greater whole. not to mention, usually I wouldn't say a message is apodictically right or wrong most of the time, they are usually more qualitative, so your point seems moot. they tend to be perspectives or beleifs (which by most definitions are not strictly true). And on top of that most shit doesn't spell out specific messages. So there are multiple levels of particularity for your premise to be remotely applicable imo.

>> No.20450075

>>20449971
Food analogies are useful because food is a human universal and so analogies around food are easily understood, even across cultural barriers.

>> No.20450080
File: 71 KB, 800x800, flag_of_sweden.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
20450080

>>20450075
>food is a human universal.

>> No.20450090

>>20449995
I don't really disagree, and I wasn't clear about what I meant so thats on me. I don't mean that my premise is a rule that applies to all stories across the board. I suppose what I was getting at was that there can be specific cases where a story is technically good in every way, but the story has a definite and clear message or angle, and that message is BS, sullying the whole thing.

>> No.20450095

>>20450080
I said human

>> No.20450099

>>20449948
Usually I don't agree with Chomsky Honk but there was something he said about taking what's useful and throwing out the rest. I usually dislike his takes (except his take on Khmer Rouge) but yeah this one seems reasonable.

>> No.20450113

>>20449803
I genuinely can't stand these faggots. I don't understand what attracts these types of people to Tolkien but almost every one of these types I've seen is a huge LOTR fan who bitches about GRRM constantly. Like I get not being a fan of GRRM but when your arguments boil down to "He's a meanie head because he doesn't share the same values as Tolkien and therefore his work sucks", you're practically brain dead.

>> No.20450170
File: 28 KB, 860x968, R (9).png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
20450170

>>20449803
>This story isn't good because it sends a bad message
Yes. Truth is beauty, and beauty truth. Something ugly or hateful cannot be worthwhile.
>>20450113
GRRM is indeed bad because of his repulsive values, and faggots like ypu tolerate it.

>> No.20450195

>>20450170
Very nice and truthpilled.

>> No.20450261
File: 194 KB, 1164x1600, tolstoy.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
20450261

>>20449803
>>This story isn't good because it sends a bad message
This, but unironically.

>> No.20450270

>>20450170
based

>> No.20450292

>>20449803
A story can have an unhappy ending and still spread a good message.

However if a story ends with the message that "Rape is good," and it fails to convince me (because its obviously not) then the story is shit, like most stories like this

>> No.20450320

>>20449881
I will never read a book by a woman as long as I live

>> No.20450363
File: 15 KB, 185x280, On Moral Fiction.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
20450363

>>20449803

The traditional view is that true art is moral: it seeks to improve life, nor debase it. It seeks to hold off, at least for a while, the twilight of the gods and us. I do not deny that art, like criticism, may legitimately celebrate the trifling. It may joke, or mock, or while away the time. But trivial art has no meaning or value except in the shadow of more serious art, the kind of art that beats back the monsters and, if you will, makes the world safe for triviality. That art which tends toward destruction, the art of nihilists, cynics, and merdistes, is not properly art at all. Art is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy. It is a tragic game, for those who have the wit to take it seriously, because our side must lose; a comic game — or so a troll might say — because only a clown with sawdust brains would take our side and eagerly join in.


Most art these days is either trivial or false. There has always been bad art, but only when a culture's general world view and aesthetic theory have gone awry is bad art what most artists strive for, mistaking bad for good. In Plato's Athens or Shakespeare's London, who would have clapped for the merdistes? For the most part our artists do not struggle — as artists have traditionally struggled — toward a vision of how things ought to be or what has gone wrong: they do not provide as with the flicker of lightning that shows us where we are. Either they pointlessly waste our time, saying and doing nothing, or they celebrate ugliness and futility, scoffing at good. Every new novelist, composer, and painter — or so we're told — is more “disturbing” than the last. The good of humanity is left in the hands of politicians.

>> No.20450365

>>20450170
>"Stories must align with my values or else they're bad!"
Who knew that tradfags and progressives would have something in common?

>> No.20450366

>>20450095
You're right, Swedes aren't human.

>> No.20450368
File: 15 KB, 185x280, On Moral Fiction.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
20450368

>>20449803
The traditional view is that true art is moral: it seeks to improve life, not debase it. It seeks to hold off, at least for a while, the twilight of the gods and us. I do not deny that art, like criticism, may legitimately celebrate the trifling. It may joke, or mock, or while away the time. But trivial art has no meaning or value except in the shadow of more serious art, the kind of art that beats back the monsters and, if you will, makes the world safe for triviality. That art which tends toward destruction, the art of nihilists, cynics, and merdistes, is not properly art at all. Art is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy. It is a tragic game, for those who have the wit to take it seriously, because our side must lose; a comic game — or so a troll might say — because only a clown with sawdust brains would take our side and eagerly join in.


Most art these days is either trivial or false. There has always been bad art, but only when a culture's general world view and aesthetic theory have gone awry is bad art what most artists strive for, mistaking bad for good. In Plato's Athens or Shakespeare's London, who would have clapped for the merdistes? For the most part our artists do not struggle — as artists have traditionally struggled — toward a vision of how things ought to be or what has gone wrong: they do not provide as with the flicker of lightning that shows us where we are. Either they pointlessly waste our time, saying and doing nothing, or they celebrate ugliness and futility, scoffing at good. Every new novelist, composer, and painter — or so we're told — is more “disturbing” than the last. The good of humanity is left in the hands of politicians.

>> No.20450613

>>20450368
why did you think thiis was worth posting twice

>> No.20450632

>>20450613
Meant to delete the first thing entirely, sorry, not just the image. It had a mistake; I didn't correct the OCR output sufficiently carefully.

>> No.20450643

>>20450368
You had me until you said art had to be beneficial

>> No.20450715

>>20450643
That's the least controversial thing anyone could say. By definition, it's better than EVERYTHING should be beneficial than that it shouldn't.

People who complain about this just have the wrong idea about what "beneficial" means. Art which is fun and nothing else is clearly beneficial. Art which cheers people up and doesn't screw them up is clearly beneficial.

There's nothing more beneficial to the world than a really good tune, But it has absolutely no "moral message" at all.

>> No.20451650

>>20449803
Who says this?