{"id":4588,"date":"2010-09-09T23:47:33","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T04:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=4588"},"modified":"2010-09-09T23:52:57","modified_gmt":"2010-09-10T04:52:57","slug":"metaphor-as-a-prophylactic-for-the-id","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=4588","title":{"rendered":"Metaphor as a prophylactic for the id"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title of this post comes from my friend Andy. It was his wonderful response to a question I raised with him about the story I wrote the other day, I miss you. Why do you have to be such a nightmare?<\/a><\/p>\n

I had told Andy that I’d decided, after some wavering, to tell that story as a science fiction story, rather than as an unexplained mystery of human behavior. It was a way for me to make the story’s intimations of cannibalism more, er, palatable.<\/p>\n

Yet after posting the story, I felt that this choice had, in some important way, let my readers down. Yes, I was providing an easier way in. People could read the story, think about its ideas, and not stress out over them too much. After all, a reader could say, it’s just, you know, aliens, SciFi, X Files<\/i> and Dr. Who<\/i>, that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

And that’s where it becomes a two edged sword. Yes, fantasy and SciFi give you a way to talk about things that would otherwise be out of bounds. Famously in this country, the TV show “Star Trek” was able to show an interracial kiss in 1968 — a time when such a thing was considered unsuitable for family viewing. But it got a pass because it was “just” science fiction.<\/p>\n

Arguably that scene did a lot of good. Within a few years the taboo against interracial displays of affection on TV disappeared.<\/p>\n

And yet, something was missing. The science fiction was serving as an excuse<\/i> — a way of getting audiences off the hook.<\/p>\n

And I think I may have done something similar with my story. As Andy so nicely put it, I was using metaphor as a prophylactic for the id. Yes, such a strategy is a way to take people to places they otherwise might not go. But in another way, it doesn’t end up taking them anywhere at all.<\/p>\n

A story about people being devoured by sympathetic aliens who look like people may be intellectually interesting, but a story about people being devoured by sympathetic people<\/i> — well, that forces you to engage much more deeply with what’s going on, and what’s at stake, and what it means to be human.<\/p>\n

And isn’t that what literature is for?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title of this post comes from my friend Andy. It was his wonderful response to a question I raised with him about the story I wrote the other day, I miss you. Why do you have to be such a nightmare? I had told Andy that I’d decided, after some wavering, to tell that … Continue reading “Metaphor as a prophylactic for the id”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4588"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4588"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4596,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4588\/revisions\/4596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}