How do the dominant cultural narratives in art and mass media affect our politics?

To make democracy — or even republicanism — look good in fiction, you need to work from the ground up.

Let's start with the cast. Democracies are fundamentally societies of the many, so you can't portray a democracy with any degree of sympathy if you aren't looking at a lot of people. The standard Five-Man Band with the hero at the center isn't going to cut it. GRRM's switching POV style is especially well-suited, as the meta-narrative has the potential to remain more detached and discourage excessive investment in one particular character. Obviously, that failed in ASOIAF, where the Starks still have around 53% of the chapters and enjoy the bulk of the audience's attention and sympathy, but even then, the story still plugs along two or three books after they're defeated and relegated to the periphery.

Then let's look at the story. The story of a knight going into a cave with a dragon to rescue a princess, in metaphorical, proverbial terms is at the root of all speculative fiction, fantasy, space opera, etc, but it's rooted in fundamentally monarchist structures. They're rescuing a princess, royalty, not a member of the elite of a republican society, one rich woman being the same as any other save for the hero's affection for her. Her father and mother are royalty, not a senator and his wife, the hero is The Chosen One, not a deputy of the government. There's just one of each. Monarchism breeds monomania, so everything is in the singular. One hero to follow, one princess to rescue, one king from whom to earn favor. Republicanism is fundamentally about the several, and at its best, about the many. So the story needs to pull away from inherent, singular importance.

When it comes to interpersonal struggle and conflict, the hero is always aided by an individual, while harangued by the collective. He's always at odds with a board of obstructive bureaucrats, but can always count on a Reasonable Authority Figure to help him out, go around the body politic, and more generally, if we're really being honest, abuse his authority on the hero's behalf. Rarely is a hero shown appealing to the body politic, the legislature, or so on for support to overcome the will of a powerful and immovable antagonist.

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Aug 20th 2018 at 11:48:15 AM

Now I wanna do a story about a random guy going to save the First Lady with the aid of all goverment agencies.

We tend to romanticize Monarchies because we have been primed to do so. There are countless stories about the good king who has no other desire than to serve his people - the Arthus Saga being just the most famous of them. And the reasoning behind it is logical if we start with the assumption that there really exists a person like that. A truly good person would be able to protect everyone with absolute power and you wouldn't want such a person replaced.

In reality, though, this truly good person is fictional. It is actually pretty unlikely that someone born into power would develop the necessary understanding for the poor and especially the humility to see himself as their servants. And I am not saying that there haven't been people in power all through history which actually fought for a better world in one way or another. But you find this character trait way more likely in people who got elected into power.

Not to mention that in a Democracy you have at least theoretically the power to vote out the worst people and vote in only the best. It doesn't work that way in reality either, which is why we tend to like the myth of the just ruler in our fiction, but there is a way higher likelihood that you end up with someone competent leading the government in an Democracy than in any other form of government.

Uh. That's not how morality works. Being able to fail a task has nothing to do with the moral slant of someone

Edited by KazuyaProta on Aug 20th 2018 at 11:27:40 AM

Reasonable Authority Figure?

Reasonable Authority Figure includes Reasonable Royalty.

Stories about plucky rebels who are fighting the Good fight have been popular since before Robin Hood. You... kind of have to have them rebelling against somebody awful at a time when any authority above that awful, no-good stinker is unable (or unwilling) to act. So, a period of systemic breakdown it is!

Because... if your daring rebel beats the authorities to the punch when they were just about to give the awful stinker the boot as per regulations... That's a bit of a downer and begs the question of "when is a dashing rebel just a trigger-happy, vigilante criminal?".

Just as a tale about the big dog quite honestly doing its job by smashing the underdog to bits because they didn't have a moral or ethical leg to stand on... Not so easy to sell.

People like exiting police procedures or health and safety horror stories involving people trying (and failing) to get away with mass food poisoning; not "government doing its boring paperwork thing".

Take the Honourable (ha ha ha) East India Company: most of the real horrors it perpetrated? Bureaucratic for most of their nature. Truly horrific outcomes, sure, but boring for the most part to follow. Worse, few in those chains of bureaucratic murder-famines would even think of themselves as the bad guy (heck, got a promotion for streamlining the filing, thanks). And, not a prince in sight to spice things up with... unless you got spectacularly lucky in passing. :/

Edited by Euodiachloris on Aug 20th 2018 at 6:12:54 PM

The Reasonable Authority Figure is notable specifically because he helps the hero and the definition has been warped from that initial meaning to a more-or-less featureless designation of "nice and competent government official."

A fascist dictator could be a Reasonable Authority Figure if he helped out the main character out of a bind because what makes him that trope isn't his overall leadership — we have The Good King, The Good Chancellor, The Wise Prince, The Badass Bureaucrat, and even The Beleaguered Bureaucrat for that — but his personal connection, affinity for, and assistance to the hero. It's an entirely individualistic trope and there's nothing about it that suggests republican allegiance or a pro-democracy bent, or even that he or she is a good person. The entire essence is that the hero can go around established structures and at worst, violate norms by establishing a face-to-face connection with one member of the government, and there's plenty of subtext there to suggest an anti-democracy use.

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Aug 20th 2018 at 1:05:23 PM

Yeah, but that's because the reason why we have tropes like Corrupt Politician is that they are expies of the evil vizier or the evil nobleman or other 'villain with political power' archetypes adapted for our modern democracies.

When a story has a good guy in a position of political power, it tends to focus a heck of a lot less on how they're abusing that power in their specific political system... Because they aren't, so it can't.

So politically powerful good guys in stories tend to be a lot more alike regardless of what political system they're in than politically powerful villains.

Edited by Robrecht on Aug 20th 2018 at 10:06:16 AM

About questionable heroes going against quite reasonable authority figures (and assorted fantastical critters)... How about Kasper and Pulcinella's horrible cousin/nephew?

Punch. To be found in more modern interpretations in places like Breaking Bad, The Office and Shameless? Also... Punch-and-Judy politics.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Aug 20th 2018 at 6:32:46 PM

I remember at the end of Thor: The Dark World, Thor gives up the throne because he'd rather be a good man than a good ruler. Because those two are mutually exclusive.

To be fair, there some grey areas in goverments where a good ruler ins't necessarily a good person, especially in Feudal systems.

I always thought that it was the latter.

I wanted to add some of them to The Alliance in the story that I was writing. While I initially wanted to left it with The Good Captain, I realized the iffyness of making the millitary being the Only Sane Man and thus I added more politicians trying to do their best in the current state of apocalyptic war.

...It actually lead to very interesting moments exposing the civilian POV and how The Hero willingly becomes a Propaganda Hero thanks to the efforts of several goverment officers, even the seemingly Sleazy Politician turned out to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold (the guy was never actually corrupt, just lazy and the presence of literal demons impulsed him to start actually doing his job).

The actual Sleazy Politician ended up being The Quisling, albeit a highly sympathetic one given that he is actually worried for the safety of his extended family.

There a lot of moralities involved here actually. Politicians are people too and have different ideas and personalities.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Aug 20th 2018 at 12:47:36 PM

It isn't. Here's the laconic definition (I love laconic wiki for this; it cuts out all the bullshit): "Authority figure who helps the heroes."

That's not to say that the Reasonable Authority Figure isn't a Lawful Good type that's totally honest and good to the people, but they don't have to be to be the trope: they could be the setting's resident Corrupt Politician or Boss Tweed figure and still fulfill that definition by helping the heroe. It's an entirely individualized trope. How they actually manage the res publica is immaterial.

Think about it this way: if you're making a biopic about Julius Caesar, in the first part, re: his early life, when he was just starting out in the Senate after escaping Sulla's proscription lists, Marcus Licinius Crassus, the nemesis of Spartacus, one of the wealthiest plutocrats of all time, and a thoroughly corrupt politician by the standards of the Late Republic will invariably be played as a Reasonable Authority Figure — because he was Caesar's first benefactor. It's wrong to see the Reasonable Authority Figure, in other words, as an archetype of leadership — it's an archetype of patronage.

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Aug 20th 2018 at 2:13:56 PM

So, how you would write a genuinely heroic authority figure? (call it as you want).

Well, for one, we have to stop valuing authority figures based on how many abnormal or extralegal favors the hero can extract from them.

Yeah, Protagonist Centered Morality needs to die in a ditch.

I want stories where authority figures oppose the hero without automatically being evil or corrupt (but I repeat myself).

Luke Cage did this well I think with the two police chiefs. Both have their issues with Luke but are still herioc and good people even if they're a little out of their depth.

A law obsessed Knight Templar count as corrupt? Is a question in Sincerity Mode.

That was my point. I mean, to your "But I repeat myself" line.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Aug 20th 2018 at 3:06:09 AM

If they're following the rules then they aren't being corrupt, that's just evil (assuming the story views them as evil) via extremism.

Corruption generally implies selfishness, particularly of the monetary variety.

My friend and co-author Michael Suttkus is a figure who pointed out to me a lot of what we think we know about storytelling is actually bullshit. For example, the above "the knight rescues the princess from a dragon and marries her" is a Dead Unicorn Trope. The 19th century is where a lot of previously more complex and more interesting (as well as less classicist) tales got compiled together as well as Bowlderize to be unrecognizable.

The archetypal example of this actually predates it but starts with Robin Hood. The "original" (I'm stretching the definition of original here but go with it please) Robin Hood is a peasant yeoman with a bow who fights the hated Edward the First. He's not remotely friendly to ANY monarch and the general tone of the stories are loathing to any person of power. The whole point of living in the woods is away from power and free. It's Walter Scott who makes it so Robin is a friend of Richard the Third and an exiled nobleman himself because a lot of people hated imagining themselves as peasants once, ironically, the nobility started dying out as a concept in the 19th century.

Saint George the Byzantine knight kills a dragon but he's doing that because it's threatening a village, not a princess.

Indeed, most of mythology where we get our epic stories doesn't really focus too much on protecting the nobility. When a hero does marry a Princess, it's usually as an example of class mobility in myths—Aladdin, the guy who killed seven in one blow, Sinbad (who lost a number of his wives), or they're kings themselves.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 20th 2018 at 1:40:55 AM

The problem with fiction is that IT IS individualistic, is kinda hard to get rid of that.

Why do people think that's a problem?

It's a problem when the general trend is that the authorities, the democratically elected government, and the rules and regulations that are the glue that hold society together are presented as obstacles in the way of The Hero. The Cowboy Cop and the demonization of Internal Affairs are two notable examples of this trend.

Edited by M84 on Aug 21st 2018 at 12:20:36 AM

I think the individualistic fantasy is a lot more appealing to many people. You can see this in a lot of aspects of society actually, like some people seem far more willing to trust one person with all the power than a group of people with power more mindfully distributed, even though it's been shown time and time again how dangerous that is.

Or maybe it's easier and more compelling to focus on only a handful of characters? That said, that wouldn't preclude having a positive portrayal of democracy...

Edited by TroperOnAStickV2 on Aug 20th 2018 at 12:30:30 PM