One Step Around the Corner

Creators of genre fiction do not deal with regular everyday reality.  For example, noir or westerns, both of which could be entirely rooted in the real, will not remain there entirely.  There is some shift to the side.  There are considerations for mood.  There are considerations for genre conventions.  There are even considerations for author bias.  Those biases can take the form of the political, patriotically cloaked, and bigoted type discussed last week.  They can be less inappropriate biases than those too.  Then there are the personal biases formed in the direction of enjoyment and excitement where the creator enhances certain aspects for a better story in keeping with their own wants and desires in entertainment.  The bias may also be theme or message related.

Bigoted bias need not be about race or religion.  Some biases are economic--the rich versus the poor.  Some are intelligence motivated--leaning toward the literati or the cognoscenti and away from the ignorant and uneducated.  Some, perhaps too many, are directly political within the same country--Republican versus Democrat, Liberal versus Conservative, Left versus Right.  There is also the one-sidedness and accompanying struggle between capitalism and socialism.  Any of these, singularly or in tandem, form the basis of numerable character archetypes.  In turn these characters confer their views onto the narrative.  This is true whether one or more of them provide the narrative voice or there is an unrelated narrator.  That is unless that narrator provides voice, comment, or contrast otherwise.

Here is where the bias may be purposeful within the narrative.  A story's theme, or the message it looks to convey to the audience, it's very raison d'etre, can exist to illustrate, shine a bright spotlight on the injustice of such a bias, or to perpetuate it. News media isn't the only place where an agenda is pushed by focusing on certain segments of an issue, or group.  Of course angling to create tension within, distort the worldview of, and otherwise negatively influence the audience is a despicable thing to do.  Doing it within the populace of the created fictional world though is an exciting proposition.  Doing it provides the structure upon which to foster enticing plots, character-developing dilemmas, and at the higher level of the audience to forward themes, morals, and message.

Mood: valiant.

Music: Dream Of Mirrors by Iron Maiden and The Gunslinger by Demons & Wizards.

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Freedom Fries and Liberty Measles

The points of view to which people ascribed to are often strange things open to change at the fickle drop of a hat or the frightened switch of political winds.  There are a few historical examples of this that were as swift a change as a fad and lasted just as long before otherwise fading into obscurity.  These changes fall under the scope of propaganda and fit in all friendly-like with nationalism of the dark stripe that shares a bed with rank racism.  The case is made in defending choices like these that the opposed lack patriotism, morals, and make even their grandmother's sick.  Side with them or with the so-called enemy, no fence sitting is allowed.  Of course such cowing is never seen as such, and the possibility that it is an overreaction is entirely outside the possibilities of reality.

These points of view changes hinge on transferring ideas, or exchanging them.  A 2003 political disagreement with France, for instance, led American Congress to force menu changes to include items such as 'Freedom Fries', and 'Freedom Toast'.  They could not do away with such iconic foods as such, but the name could certainly be changed.  A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.  A similar backlash against Germany around WWI led to some people renaming Dachshunds as 'Liberty Dogs' and talk of cases of 'Liberty Measles'.  To untangle the need to change the names from the impression that these are good, wholesome, American things was impossible.  It was convoluted logic to rename the measles rather than use it to lay blame, but the initial base logic was specious to begin with.

The measles example is indicative of the length that was gone to in distancing things.  Changing the name altered its perceived origination and excluded the discoverer's and the disease's heritage.  It also protected any fine, upstanding citizens from the stigma of contracting something from somewhere else, no doubt--in the view of ignorance--from someone who was not so fine or upstanding.  Us versus them paradigms take many forms beyond just these two examples.  They colour and taint perceptions and twist reality subtly.  When they are not so clear, so easily spotted, they can be put to good use to create conflict and tension between characters in plots and settings.  Or in the alternative they can provide otherworldliness to the most mundane of scenes and peoples.

Mood: drained.

Music: Desert Rain by Iced Earth and Ashes to Ashes by Blind Guardian.

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