Are Black & White morality still usable in "normal" stories?

Or they're nothing more but an outdated ideas and only "usable" in children stories?

edited 4th Jun '17 7:59:54 AM by SeekerSS

You can make most stories Black & White if you want depending on the scope of the story and if you concentrate on the right things in it. Small stories with few characters are easier to get Black and White than big, complex ones...Take WWII. A nasty buissniess really, but there is room for loads of Black & White:

• The Allied heroes liberating an occupied town or an concentration-camp from the Nazis.
• A squad of Germans fleeing for their lives from the advancing Red Army, atempting to reach the Western allies and surrender to them.
• Your generic spy-story. We are good they are evil.
• An German soldier in an occupied town falls in love with a local girl. Something that isn't appreciated by all...

I've found that black and white morality is still common in most genres. In some (like mysteries), it remains the dominant morality.

To me, black and white vs. gray and grey, is about how the audience is supposed to perceive the characters, not how the characters see it (otherwise all fiction is gray and grey morality). The trick is to give the black side believable reasons for their actions to be believable. Card-carrying villains don't really work outside of comedies.

Eh, I would disagree with card carrying villains working outside of comedies. For instance, the evil cult leaders of the Deptford Mice books revel in their evil (doing things like skinning victims alive and eating them, feed them to giant toads, poisoning them to death with horrific poison, and more), but they're still effective horror villains, and the books are not comedies.

edited 4th Jun '17 8:25:30 AM by dragonfire5000

Thanks for the input everyone

Absolutely.

It just makes it difficult to write interesting characters if that's all you rely on.

I think some people confuse what "black and white" can actually mean, or how it applies at different levels.

A conflict for example, can be relatively black and white on a macro level (i.e one side is much moreso in the wrong compared to the other), but a lot more gray on the micro level (people on the "right" side can have moral flaws or be just downright shitty people, people on the "wrong" side can have redeeming qualities and be decent people in a few respects).

Most superhero story are black and white except for those hero vs hero stories (that everyone is getting sick of)

Bump for more opinions.....

Not for most people. But very light grey vs. very dark grey is seen as plausible, and realistic. But you can get away with very light grey vs. black morality especially with monsters. Honestly, I like black and white morality still. It works for comic books so why not other forms of media.

It really depends on what the tone and focus is on the story you're making.

Generally speaking, you can get away with Black and White morality if the story doesn't put much focus on the antagonists. Maybe the story is very plot centered, and the entertainment comes from a clearly defined hero and villain interacting with each other. Or maybe the story focuses on a group of heroes and their struggles, where the villains take a back seat to said struggles and how the heroes deal with them.

Even if you do put a lot of focus on the "bad guys" as people, that doesn't mean you need to throw Black and White morality out of the window. Grey and Grey is popular because in real life people are messy and complicated. But that doesn't mean real life doesn't have tons and tons of examples of Black and White. There are tons of real life people that are either very altruistic or completely reprehensible. I think the key word here is complicated. Even the most evil person has lived a complete life which shaped them the way they are. This doesn't make that person "Grey" and not "Black". But they still have experiences, hopes and dreams. If you give your villains that nuance, they won't at all feel out of place in your story. (Well written stories about a person's descent into villainy tend to be very compelling and popular, after all.)

As a final note, generalizing groups of people is pretty much always bad. Even if your story isn't interested at all in its bad guys, if all members of Group A are good and all members of Group B are evil, then your audience will probably find it difficult to suspend their disbelief.

Yes, you can. Lots of people operate on Black-and-White Morality on at least some topics, even if they strenuously deny that they ever do.

Just don't give everyone the same dividing line between 'Black' and 'White', and don't forget that most people truly believe they're the White Hats. Your POV characters (if you have any of those) can identify people as "Black", but people who self-identify as on the black side are few and far between (and usually mentally ill).

edited 13th Jul '17 10:49:52 PM by Madrugada

Thanks again everyone

edited 22nd Jul '17 4:01:26 AM by SeekerSS

Just look star wars, is one of the biggest franshine and they put white vs black morality.

if something tought me star wars(and my recient experience were I lived) is that a good way is too fight and evil system rather than just evil persons, in a way you can explain organization make of evil people: the way things are made encourage bad behavior in their higher ups.

Another thing you can do is give the baddies at least one or two virtues or nice trait, not good traits but nices one since even really evil people can be family man or treat people well.

If you throw a dart at all the major sci-fi / fantasy / action / superhero blockbusters of the past 10-20 years, 6 times out of 10 you'll end up hitting something with Black-and-White Morality in one form or another.

Or for a semi-obscure reference, American Sniper comes to mind.

One the other hand, american sniper is not really a good reference since is surrond by controversy about it.

Now I will recomend Winter soldier as good reference of white vs black morality.

As much as I like Winter Soldier, the amount of black and white is ridiculous.