WHAT WE SEE IS WHAT WE CREATE: META NARRATIVES IN FICTION

December 25th, 2023

C/W: postmodernism

Artistic critique and preference are more complicated than "I liked it" or "I didn't like it" (wow!). Even when we cite surface level reasons for enjoying a story, a lot more is beneath the surface than that. Or shall I say, behind the looking glass.
By 'bias' I mean the types of stories that are most enjoyed and want to be told. This is a series of preferences that are both **conscious and unconscious**. Likewise, some of these trends are easy to notice. As a viewer, I like fantasy. I like it as an author, too. And certain genres are noticeably popular as decades come and go, such as the zombie craze in the 2010s or the superhero genre.
In almost all literature, a bias towards patriarchal storytelling is very apparent. Stories across all forms of media have a higher skew towards male protagonists, and men often outnumber women in character cast. Male characters are given more speaking time, more complexity and insight, and more room for both mistakes and development. They are also noticeably more active. Women in media are often relegated to a role of romantic interest and cannot fall outside culture ideas of allure or female decency too far without being largely decried. As such, female characters are handicapped in their potential for life experience, appearance, demeanor, humor, and even motivation (a cornerstone of female socialization is to put all others before yourself). Especially when written by men, they are typecast into roles and sexualized. They are less diverse, and to a female audience, less relatable. This is all, of course, applicable to other marginalized groups. But female characters are the most readily noticeable.
So, why does this happen in women’s storytelling? (Let me be clear on my expectations from male authors not exactly being high.) Unlike men’s ideas of women, If an author has lived her life in full sentience, and has interacted with other women with real thoughts and personalities, which are sometimes ugly or politically incorrect, ergo not the Approved Scripts of Fictional Women’s Behavior, then why would she write women the way we typically are shown in fiction? I doubt it’s a conscious act of misogyny. I doubt if you ask her about it, she’ll say, “No, we should be living in a world where women act the way they do in fiction”. She may not have thought about it before, because in our minds there is a certain line between reality and fiction: if you’re going to write fiction, then you write fiction. Learn from other fiction authors. If she has only seen women shown in one way in art, even knowing the ways women really act and being able to see the difference when called out, then it’s second nature to duplicate it. After all, there only is one narrative.
'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' is a clear example of this. Joseph Campbell wanted to affirm a certain pattern of storytelling by gathering similar ones across the world. Indeed, many stories fall into his loose archetype. But that doesn't mean others don't exist. I always FUCKING HATED the hero's journey though, and all of its 'X-step Plot Structure' regurgitations. There’s such a strong bias towards this template of storytelling it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you believe this is the only ‘right’ way to construct a story, this is the only form of story you’ll ever write.

Story is Three Panes of Glass

I'm obviously a fan of lists so let's make one bulleting things down. What do I mean with all these damn biases?

So, some of this is just what you like or don't like. But notice how I was being really repetitive about what one is used to, and how in turn that defines what we aren't? I have gripes with postmodernism as a political mindset, but I admit it applies very well to the arts. A core idea to a postmodernist view is considering the negative space that cultural norms leave behind. By figuring out what is known, or the norm, we can find what is *not* known, *not* the norm. That might sound impossible, or psychedelic, but we need to get out of our own heads a bit. Of course, just because we don't know these different stories exist, doesn't mean they aren't out there.
Some fault lies on the artist: There’s a bit of an incestuous cycle for artists and their influences. Many popular genres can trace their roots back to a few seminal works and artists by extension, and in the next generation of that genre’s existence, a new crop of artists create their own work. Some original influences come in, but many of generation 2’s artists take inspiration from generation 1. In generation 3, again you will have some originality as well as inspiration from artists in both generations 2 and 1, especially if the gen-2 artist in question already took inspiration from that same gen-1 artist. This even traces back to folk tales and mythology, as in common folk stories or biblical parables. This creates an artistic bubble, one pleasant for those which enjoy this style as it is similar and predictable in content, yet just new enough to stay exciting. Those outside the bubble might not understand it as they lack the context, or may just find the content too similar and boring.
Consuming stories from a foreign culture will easily illustrate this. Most Westerners won't really know the story of the Journey to the West. You might recognize fragments of it from Asian media that's been made popular over here (Dragon Ball or anime as a whole). Maybe certain motifs, like the strange monkey man with the staff and golden cloud, but without anything to base that in.
As an uninitiated Westerner, it would be hard asf to understand Journey to the West just going into it. I haven't even read it bc I want the right context to do so. Many parts of the story, from common character archetypes, to payoff, to morality lessons, would be culturally informed by the artistic bubble of classical Chinese literature and go over my head. So, these bubbles and more exclusive frames of reference are not just something brought about by artists, but by culture.
And so, despite the connection the Internet has brought us, there are still filters in place based on the context an average reader has. Every genre's tropes are informed by culture, to some extent, but some are more than others. For example, an American audience is more likely to understand and enjoy a coming of age film made in the United States rather than Nigeria. Hollywood movies come with a distinct set of tropes around youth culture (a high school setting, summer jobs, big parties, first relationships, cheerleaders and football teams) that refer to common parts of life and social rites of passage for American teens. Understandably, that makes it more relatable for an American audience. Yet in Nigeria, youths have their own culture as well, and Nollywood certainly has its own tropes around the subject. I don't even know that coming of age is a popular film genre in Nigeria. Part of my point is that what genres exist both inside and outside the US will look differently, and there are entire genres that are largely absent from Hollywood, such as the mythological epic.

What is Lost in Translation is Found in the Eye of the Beholder

A big part of the translation of language is also the translation of culture, and translators do a lot of heavy lifting when they translate works (I respect the fuck out of them). But, a big part of translation is that you can never capture the meaning of the original work in a different language completely, at least not 100%. In a way, writing is always like this. Even in your native language, even when you have spent years finding the right words and the best ways to string them together to express your original idea, the way you communicate this will inevitably stray from your mental image. That is, everyone brings in their own image to the canvas you’ve set forth. Some may not like it, or even feel it very strongly. But others will.

What Does This Mean for Authors?

Wow, you’re such a narrowminded bigot!
Personal bias isn’t a problem all the way down. As an author, you’re ultimately in creative control. You can like what you like and tell the story you want to tell (I spoke more at length on how to do that in Taking Craft Advice). That being said, how do you know what you like when you’ve only been exposed to a narrow slice of what storytelling can do? Seek out things that are obtuse: children’s fables, classic works, oral tradition, religious parables from different cultures. I would recommend things outside the common western sphere of influence as then it will be less related to what you already know of, though more obscure works in the western canon could work as well. Frame of reference is an incredibly powerful tool in the world, for everything from the art we like to the religious beliefs we hold to the politics we believe in.
A book on this subject I would recommend is Craft in the Real World by Matthew Selasses (one of my favorite books on writing). It makes this point in tandem with considering a work's intended audience and their scope of understanding.