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| Being Part of the Problem - 8/22/16 | America has a gun problem. We really can’t get enough of them. As a result we die by them way more often than we should. There are a lot of factors that go into that, but I think a big one is that pop culture makes guns sexy. Story after story comes out each year where the hero saves the day by killing a lot of, often nameless, “bad guys.” It would be naive to think that being raised in a culture where the vast majority of our heroes are little more than vigilantes wouldn’t lead a subset of the population to believe that it’s okay to settle grievances with firearms. That means on some small level, we writers are culpable. We may not have given the weapon to the mass shooter, but we may have given him (and let’s be honest here, it’s most likely a him) the idea. Increasingly, this idea bothers me.
I’m not really sure what there is to do about it. I’m strongly opposed to any sort of censorship and I like a well told violent story. Violence is the distillation of a conflict down to its most primal. Kill or be killed is something we all get, and that’s why it works so well for storytelling. I don’t think I’d want to stop telling stories involving any sort of violence (and yeah, I realize violent stories have always been told), but I think I’m going to try and be more thoughtful about who is doing the violence, who is on the receiving end, and what the subtext is. It’s really easy to fall into the action cliches and just kill a bunch of randos as a way of ratcheting up the conflict, but not only is it bad for society, but it’s lazy writing (which is a far worse sin). My hypothesis is that if done right, it will actually lead to better stories and if picked up by enough other writers, a slightly healthier society.
And if I’m wrong, shoot me. |
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