Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Tolkien, Shakespeare, Dante, Socrates, McCaffery, Chalker, Flaubert and any number of mind candy writers like Jackie Collins have filled many of my days with deep satisfaction.... every single one of them write about people as they are.... flawed, irreverent, difficult, etc. I'm not fond of the human fantasists that do all the heartfelt goody two shoe, do no wrongs... I have never experienced anyone like that... treated like that but not in actuality like that. So give me reality with fantastic circumstances, deep themes, and something to seriously think on and I am a happy camper.
There is always the question of if art should simply show what is or if it should try to give a vision of some kind about what reality ought to be. Western history has gone through periods where one or the other have been dominate but I think neither position can be absolute. There are many examples of how things can get twisted when you go too far in one direction or the other.
In cultures where literature becomes "reality" based and the characters seldom have strong moral positions, readers tend to be uninspired. In other words, without a strong vision of what is "good" the inspiration to be "good" is lacking. Sociologists have long noted cultures responding to strong archetypal characters when things are bad, and more "human" or "tragic" characters when things are good. It's as if we don't care so much about what is right and wrong when things are good, but need some clarification when they are not. The strong moral characters offer more hope than clearly flawed ones. More heros bring more hope.
But art is seldom neutral. It is nearly impossible to display art and not have some kind of moral vision, even if it's one of realizing all people are just people... Most are flawed creatures with a surprising strength to do well in the midst of a general propensity to fail.
Art reflects this dual nature of literature to reflect some reality at the very same time to tell us what that reality ought to be. Take, for instance, the current Netflix offerings. In almost drama at least one set of characters will be homosexual, (though it's often not revealed from the beginning). Does that reflect society as it is or as the writers wish it to be? Please don't bother answering that question except to yourself, because the point I'm making is not about Netflix or homosexuality, but about art in general. And all art reflects the view of the artist(s) in some way. Kenneth Burke once said that we are "goaded by hierarchy" and the hierarchy of "good" and "bad" permeates all we do. We can hardly speak without implying one thing is better or worse than another. So when we view the inclusiveness in Netflix's offerings, is it a conscious decision to be "more inclusive" or are the writers merely reflecting their experience? If the first then they are being a bit didactic, if the later just realists. Since I don't know all the writers I cannot tell, but I can tell you that the inclusiveness has been noted and commented upon. Many think it's "political correctness" run amok, and some that it just reflects reality as it "ought" to be. And that's the point. We often don't know if the art is reflective of what is or of what ought to be.
And even if we did know the writers position, in some places other positions are presented. Dostoevsky has, for instance, his protagonist lay out his reasoning for murder. We might see those opening chapters of Crime and Punishment as a logical conclusion to a long cultural argument and conclude that Dostoevsky intends us to come to the same conclusion as his main character. But then we read on and our opinion of what the writer is saying changes. Another very famous division is in his Brother's Karamazov. In that story the interplay is between a strictly intellectual but morally bankrupt brother, a passionate brother and a more or less socially conforming brother. Each has his comments on right and wrong and, as the story goes, it's sometimes difficult to say which is most representative of humans in general.
Ditto with War and Peace by Tolstoy, Doctor Zhivago by Pasternak, and just about all Eastern European writers of 18th and 19th centuries. And then, of course, the Bolshevik's introduced an era where all writing was in service of the "truth." It wasn't until the 1970's that Eastern European literature began to react and call into question the whole Marxist/Leninist stance. Solzhenitsyn's "Up from the Rubble" is a prime example of this movement...but they are, of course, positing a different "good." And, if one includes other communist writers (or those under it's influence" you can take a look at Trotsky's "In Defense of Marxism" to see one author's view of the necessity of "artistic freedom in service of the truth?" whatever that might mean. And so it goes.
I do think literature is usually in service of a culture and reflects where the writer thinks things ought to be more than where they actually are. It would be very difficult for any writer to actually know his cultures' stance on much since most writers write from their experience, not from scientific surveys. So a writer creating a reality television series and living in San Francisco might very well assume a larger percentage of homosexual presence in his/her story than would be if he/she were writing in some other city. Is he, therefore, reflecting reality or speaking of how it ought to be?
In the end then, art sits in the confusing place of both reflecting "reality" and and sometimes shaping it. It tells us what is, but slanted in the direction, most of the time, of what ought to be as well. And I doubt that will every change.
AJ
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