When I was 21, I went to see a production of Les Miserables. That story is all about poor people, and specifically, poor French people. When I walked out of the theater, I saw a woman begging for change on the sidewalk. I thought, "Hey, I just watched a show about helping poor people, I can spare a little change." I sat and talked to her for about ten minutes after and learned that she was French. Hundreds of people flowing past us on the sidewalk had given a lot of money to buy tickets to watch Jean Valjean help poor French people, but no one else was helping the actually French woman outside.
Charles Dickens's classic A Christmas Carol ends with the miserly Scrooge buying an enormous Christmas turkey for Tiny Tim and his family. There are two calls to action you can pick from that:
1. Give money to the poor on Christmas
2. Buy a turkey
Scrooge's choice to pay for a turkey is a significant one. Before A Christmas Carol, families celebrated the holiday with a Christmas goose. The year after the book was published, goose sales took a hit because everyone wanted turkeys instead. Two centuries later, turkeys are the bird of choice for the Christmas season. It's impossible to make it through the Christmas season without running into Barbie's Christmas Carol, Mickey Mouse's Christmas Carol, The Smurfs' Christmas Carol, etc. And yet, not everyone gives to the poor on Christmas. There certainly is a wide and lucrative tradition of Christmas philanthropy, but not everyone who consumes A Christmas Carol adaptations joins in. It is enough to feel Christmasy by watching a movie or by eating a turkey. Audiences feel no pressure to make Christmas happen for someone else.
I'm always skeptical when I hear it said that consuming media about people of another culture or people from disadvantaged backgrounds can make audiences more empathetic. I can think of times a book had a direct result of inspiring me to do something in my own life, like taking gymnastics lessons after I read a book about a gymnast. But I think for the most part, books produce feelings rather than actions.
Where book do have power is in introducing ideas. In fifth grade, my teacher read the class Or Give Me Death by Ann Rinaldi, a historical fiction novel narrated first by Patsy Henry, oldest daughter of Patrick Henry, and later by Patsy's little sister, Anne. In Patsy's section, Anne is shown to be a brat. In Anne's section, Patsy is tyrannical. I couldn't reconcile the two sisters' images of each other. It showed me, for the first time, that it was possible for more than one person to be right.
And, of course, books have the power to introduce knowledge. If you know nothing about Nepal, a book about Nepal can give you a basic working knowledge of the culture. If you know nothing about the fifteenth century, you can learn about the fifteenth century.
My freshman year of college, my roommate and I took a class where we were given a reading on slavery. I watched her look up from her textbook and say to the whole apartment, "I'm reading about how awful slavery was and I keep wondering, would've I have done something to help if I'd been alive then? Would I have been a conductor on the underground railroad?"
"Did you vote in this last election?" I asked.
"No. I'm not registered to vote. And there aren't any important issues anymore."
People have this idea that they'd be crusaders if they lived in different times, different places, different worlds. But most people are too busy living their lives to do anything.
While one single book probably won't make an impact, it's possible for dozens of books on the same theme to drive a point home. If you read a story about forgiveness, will you go out and forgive those who've wronged you? Probably not. But read twenty forgiveness plots in the span of a few years and forgiveness starts to feel like an inevitability. I largely credit movies and books for deromanticizing communication. There's something thrilling, supposedly, about two people looking at each other and silently deciding the other person wants to be kissed. They never guess wrong in this, somehow. Sometimes this happens in the middle of a fight or other heated moment. Obviously there are a lot of ways for that to go wrong if you try that out in real life.
If there were more stories about people asking, "Can I give you a kiss?" dating couples might prioritize communication. In extreme circumstances, that might prevent situations where one person feels they were assaulted while the other thinks they were making a wanted romantic move. All around, it would save everybody involved from the awkwardness. But because fictional lovers practice pseudo-telepathy, people have picked up that silent romance is a social norm.
While some rare books change minds and hearts, producing broad and sweeping social impact, I'm skeptical of most books' ability to change the mind of even one person for as much of an afternoon. People largely don't seek out books pushing agendas they disagree with, so if a person lives the values of a book after reading it, that's more indicate of values they held before reading it than something new that grew out of the reading experience. Overall, readers are good at feeling the message of a book rather than living it outside the pages.
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