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teyvats-worst-hero · 4 months ago

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We Need to Talk About Morality in Media:

a serious discussion with teyvats-worst-hero Moon Spice

Sometimes it feels like nuance is systematically ignored in these large fandoms like the Hoyoverse games.

I definitely have thoughts about a lot of things. Very complicated, often critical thoughts. But I don’t think it’s enough to just…. Write everything off as completely acceptable or completely unacceptable. It all feels very reactionary.

And this isn’t me chickening out and going with the most moderate opinions as though lack of extremity makes the correct option. There are elements of Hoyoverse games that I greatly like or dislike, and I want to be able to express those takes freely without the assumption that I’m “one of them,” the malicious opposing side as determined by whatever camp the reader has decided is fundamentally good and correct.

It’s a thought I have again and again, any time there’s controversy over the games’ merits and failings. Some might say that there’s nothing actually stopping me from posting about these regular controversies. There isn’t. That’s true. But if I’m going to roll the dice for that random chance of disproportionate, overwhelming negativity, it’s not going to be just in reference to Twitter drama over the anime gacha games. It’s going to be a far-reaching critique of current fandom/media culture.

So I’ll just preface this lecture with the following messages— if you believe I’m provoking you specifically, then that’s your feeling to bear. I don’t have anyone specific in mind and don’t intend to be directly inflammatory. I care a lot about having real discussions about these issues and don’t appreciate bad faith.

Feel free to scroll here if this kind of thing stresses you out. This will be very long.

Correlation is not Causation

Do you, reader, genuinely have an understanding of the way fiction does and does not affect reality, or do you function off of assumptions of how people react to it? It’s a correlative relationship. Not causal, not independent. Correlative.

Fiction can affect how we view things in real life, but cannot forcibly change our opinions or our actions. It’s a form of cultural influence. The effect is more pronounced the less experience you have in that topic and the more prevalent that particular trope/message/philosophy is. This is a big reason why children’s media is held to a higher standard of clearly identifiable messaging— they have very little experience in a lot of areas and are still learning what “normal” entails.

It’s also why, for example, mainstream media constantly showing fictional relationships with power imbalances while never acknowledging their potential for abuse is considered a toxic standard, but depicting a relationship containing power-imbalance without acknowledgement of immorality is not in itself a dangerous trope that should be banned. Context is everything, including both the rest of the work and the outside world (which includes past, present, and future alongside cultural considerations).

One creator or a fraction of any fandom enjoying disturbing/morally objectionable content does not carry the weight to constitute a moral panic. It isn’t enough volume of content to “normalize” anything unless it’s supporting a movement that is both popular and leading to real-life harm.

I am absolutely going to get side-eye for this from what I’ve seen, but from the limited interaction I’ve had with fandom spaces in my adulthood, this whole pro-ship anti-ship thing seems to be based on this fundamental misunderstanding. It likely started as a distaste for disturbing ship content (Eg: incest, pedophilic), then evolved into the belief that engaging with this content meant you were similarly predatory, then started including less and less serious dynamics (Eg: a problem with weird age gaps becoming a problem with all age gaps), finally reaching a state in which personal discomfort with a fictional idea is tantamount to real life harm.

As I said, I’m not deeply involved with fandom. But based on the timeline of fandom history, conservative political trends in my country, and my own personal experience, I’d hazard a guess that this way of thinking is based on many young people (20’s and under) holding onto a very… victimized worldview. It’s hard to describe, but there’s a pervasive theme of scary sexual deviants and moral corruption. An overt fixation on protecting innocent eyes that don’t really exist.

When to Be Worried

A more nuanced test of moral concern that I’d offer is whether or not the anticipated audience would assume that the idea behind a part of fiction is:

1. This idea is a reasonable message or authorial intention to interpret from that work

(eg: it’s reasonable to interpret that in a horror movie where promiscuous characters die as a result of sexual activities but virginal characters survive, promiscuity is considered a negative trait. This interpretation is not reasonable if their killer is framed as a dangerous religious extremist.)

2. The idea is true (or partially true) in reality

(eg: you may not assume all women are unfathomably attracted to you because you’re like the stereotypical “losers” that always get the girl, but you may assume that they owe you a chance if you’re nice to them)

3. Acceptable and normal to have within their own social groups, not necessarily in the mainstream

(eg: it’s completely fine for Romani* people to be portrayed as criminals because no one you know has ever batted an eye about it)

*more commonly called “gypsies” in my experience, but this is considered a slur by the members of the community I’ve seen. I’m clarifying here because I’m legitimately not sure if many people would recognize their actual name, but I’m not opposed to censoring it if it’s preferable.

4. Something that they should actively participate in or facilitate

(eg: making or allowing racist remarks, attempting BDSM techniques without proper communication or research)

Pick Your Battles

There’s also a spectrum of how seriously these trends need to be taken on their own. Here’s a little chart I’ve created for the occasion.

(Note: Do not take every pixel of color on this chart as my infallible, fully-formed belief. I literally made this on my phone with my finger.)

The blue section (the intersection of mainstream belief and zero harm) is of least concern. These are the non-issues. Think of the most unoffensive show you can, and this is that.

The red section (the intersection of immediate real-life harm and mainstream belief) is of highest concern, because these ideas are both dangerous enough to directly cause harm and popular enough to actually incite people to act on them.

Notice that both these colors curve up and around to also include the maximum heights of “unanimous immorality.” This is because some things that harm no one are vehemently despised by the culture they appear in, and some things that everyone theoretically hates can, due to cultural complications or lack of control by the general public, still happen.

The center of the chart is yellow. This is where things get… Complicated. There’s the capacity for harm, but it isn’t necessarily immediate or tangible. There’s variable or split opinions on the morality of the idea. This zone is, in my eyes anyway, the origin of “problematic.”

It Both Is and Is Not That Serious

Oftentimes the things that fall into this category aren’t inherently bad, but their unanimity makes them so. Maybe there’s competing representation or access needs at play, or maybe there’s a complicated web of good and bad elements that are hard to separate from one another. Either way, it’s hard to decide how to handle the situation.

So we just… don’t.

By throwing out the baby with the bath water, we avoid the uncomfortable experience of examining the borders of our social justice while reframing our hasty dismissals as being unarguably good— “unarguably” being the key term. But to actually rectify the problems in our media, we have to ask what the complete dismissal of a work will achieve.

Will total refusal to engage with it in good faith contribute to solving a certain problem? Sometimes it can, particularly if it’s a work made in bad faith that would benefit from your attention. But many times what it actually does is contribute to a very Puritan view of fiction that only allows us to consume “moral” stories, for fear that any slight sign of immorality is infectious and corrupting beyond our control. Recall my point about fiction being unable to directly control our actions, only influence our ideas of “normal.”

Now, that’s not the only reason people can be overly reactionary. There’s a second part that often goes with it.

It feels good to hate something.

This is something that has always been very prevalent in Hoyoverse fandoms. It’s very socially acceptable to hate on games like these since there’s already a lot to rag on genuinely. But when the more actively destructive elements are done to death, this lingering desire for justice manifests in treating yellow-level issues, ones that are multifaceted and/or mostly informed by context, as orange or red level problems. Then the game is trashed for being irredeemable. It’s very convenient for the content cycle and social media algorithms.

I’m now seeing these tendencies replicated by fandoms and individuals on their own time. It isn’t in vogue to have nuanced takes on our media, especially not when it does have distasteful elements. This can be seen when the creator of a work is outed as being an objectively awful person in some way. It’s not just that this person is bad, it’s that their creations are bad, their creative choices somehow communicated their evil nature, and everyone was stupid for not seeing it or supporting the creator’s actions by not publicly declaring that the work was always bad.

There’s a point to be made in cutting financial support to the creator, but it clearly isn’t about that. It just isn’t possible to identify a bad person simply by how disturbing their work is, even less so by its quality. This way of thinking allows many abusive people to skate by on the grounds that “bad people can’t make good art,” as well as making the worrying assertion that “good people can’t make uncomfortable art.”

And if they do make uncomfortable art, the audience will demand to be spoon fed confirmation that no, the creator doesn’t actually support the actions of the antagonist.

Don’t Think, Just Feel: Ending Remarks

Anti-intellectualism has been on the rise for a while. In the USA at least.

It started with jokes about the curtains being blue. About how English teachers are just making things up and art doesn’t really mean anything.

And now we’re here, unable to figure out for ourselves whether or not an author means this thing or the other, and won’t they just confirm it on social media? If they don’t, simply assume the worst. Simply take the text at face value or make arbitrary connections with little textual evidence.

If you got this far, thank you for humoring me. This topic means a lot. You can probably tell that I’m an English major, and I’ve watched as online discourse has taken a nosedive directly into reactionary Puritanism over the course of my life.

I will never forget that day on the Amino (yes, Amino) of my favorite book series when the moderators (likely preteens or teens) banned any discussion of an important canon couple for one reason:

Via a fanon conversion method, it had been determined that the guy was technically an adult and the girl was technically a teenager when they met…

In dragon years.

Dragon years.

Notoriously one-to-one with human years.

There may have been an interview with the author where she went “oh whoops sorry I didn’t mean for it to come out that way,” but I don’t entirely remember. All I know was that they’d declared it immoral and any talk or art of it would be deleted.

And no one said anything about how ridiculous it was!

It’s a pretty stupid story, but that was really the moment in which I saw with full clarity that such a level of moral panic was not based in real problems. It was some amorphous obsession with virtue and control headed by people trapped in an echo chamber they couldn’t see. And now it’s worse.

A bad feeling does not determine morality. Personal distaste does not determine morality. Your own ignorance does not determine morality.

It’s been hard for me in the past few years. Sometimes I feel a little like I’m going crazy when I see people saying blatantly wrong things and refusing to think about what they’re saying. My own education, I will never ever take it for granted I swear on the very concept of God, seems like forbidden knowledge at this point, and it’s… Terrifying. Deeply terrifying. People are so happy for censorship, and I just….

I couldn’t just watch anymore. I couldn’t.

Thank you for reading. I’d love to discuss this with you all since I’m by no means the final authority on fandom things.

#I may cross post or reblog this on my main blog as well #not my usual post #media consumption #media literacy

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