George Orwell said, “All art is propaganda.”
This quote haunts me. But should it? Propaganda is not necessarily evil; it is just “anything that promotes a cause or idea.” Yet the word feels sinister to me; I envision Hitler Youth posters or soaring statues of communist dictators depicted in “glorious” battle postures.
But Orwell was not just talking about politics; he believed all art was propaganda – which must include his own novel 1984. According to him, propaganda includes every story ever written. His statement is debatable, but even the idea that I am generating propaganda when I write fiction is…creepy.
Themes are an integral part of fiction, and some themes reflect “real life” better than others, which leads me to ask a strange question:
Does fiction lie?
Well, yes. “Writing that lies” is the very definition of fiction. But some fiction stories have “lied” more than others, misleading on a much deeper level than surface details they present. In fact, many of the stories I read as a kid created hopes and expectations that crumbled upon contact with reality – or at least with my experience.
As a kid, I burrowed through stacks of Archie Comic Digests. I loved them because they gave me a picture of what high school would be like. I was eager to get to high school because grammar school was a bully-driven hell.
But according to Archie Comics, high school was all about having amusing capers. All the girls were beautiful, even the rejected ones like Betty. Archie Comics created the expectation that, when I got into high school, I would metamorphose into a care-free Barbie doll.
Life would be amusing love triangles and lazy summer days spent reapplying lipstick on beaches. Conflicts would naturally arise because some characters were selfish and conceited like Veronica or mean like Reggie, but all in all conflicts were light-hearted, and everything would work out fine in the end.
In the Archie world, friendship always prevailed; high school principals were bumbling, lovable goofs that could be out-witted; and proms appeared to happen once a day. And what high school experience would be complete without being in a sexy band?
When I actually got into high school, I realized that the stories were thin. Maybe some girls had lives that resembled Archie Comic books, but for me the chasm was wide. Unlike Betty and Veronica, I had to spend most of my time studying.
Unlike them, I struggled with depression. No member the Archie gang – as far as I could tell – ever experienced mental illness. And unlike voluptuous Veronica, I looked so young for my age that people were constantly mistaking me for an eleven-year-old.
But comic books did not mislead me nearly as much as some of the “nonfiction” I read as an adolescent. While attending a strict Christian school, I read compulsively. The religious novels I loved were fast reads, suspenseful and heart-warming, with charmingly imperfect characters who laughed at their own flaws. The books all ended happily, usually because of a conversion to Christianity. Or if the writer telling her story was already a Christian from the start, her struggle would end with a gracious “sign” from God, such as a paper clip falling on just the right Bible verse the author needed to hear.
From these books, I took away two messages: Conversion to Christianity makes suffering people virtuous and happy, and if a conflict does appear, it only because God is testing you or wants you to “grow” in the faith. I believed both messages and as an earnest, depressed teenager I ended up terribly confused.
Depression had blindsided me as soon as I had turned thirteen, and I could not understand how a Christian like me could be miserable to the point of considering suicide, or why I constantly had “bad” thoughts despite all my desperate efforts to have good ones. I could not understand why the Christians around me sometimes behaved cruelly or pettily. And I was constantly looking for a magical “sign” from God, which I thought would end my conflicts and make me “grow” in my faith.
The Christian literature rang false in the light of my observations; it confused me; something was wrong.
The religious themes led me to keep searching for something, a magical ideal, a resolution that did not exist, and I blamed myself for being unable to attain it. I finally discarded my belief system because keeping it meant holding too many conflicting ideas in my head at once. Letting go of the ones that contradicted my experience was a huge relief.
But comics and religious literature are not the only kind of misleading propaganda there is. Can “serious” literary fiction also be deceptive? In general, it seems that “literary fiction” does its best to be honest; toward that end, it is not afraid to be soul-wrenching or depressing, and it attacks conventional wisdom with relish.
Like all “propaganda,” literary fiction contains underlying themes that address some aspect of life or culture. The play Death of a Salesman sheds light on ugly aspects of the American Dream, shattering the illusion that pursuing wealth leads to happiness, but the theme appears to grow organically from recognizable characters and situations, creating the sense that, “this rings true. This is honest.”
Some fiction is far less subtle.
One of the most heavy-handed writer of “serious” fiction is Ayn Rand. She created and outlined her own philosophy extolling “the virtue of selfishness,” and her egoistic theme drives her fiction, including the first novel I read by her, The Fountainhead.
Although I sympathized with her ideas about the need to be uncompromising as an artist, she appears to draw from the “artistic integrity” ethic the larger conclusion that all “selfishness” is virtuous, to the point that her hero actually rapes someone. She forces her philosophy into every situation, superimposing it over the complexity of real life. Whether her philosophy is “right” or “wrong,” to me her characters seemed like puppets dancing to the tune of her rigid intellectual system, and I lost interest.
Far worse than Ayn Rand is L. Ron Hubbard, who went so far to turn his science fiction into a religion: Scientology.
I love themes in fiction, but after seeing how heavy handed themes can rupture the integrity of a story, I am wary of preaching. If all art is propaganda, I want mine to at least be honest, unforced propaganda. That means, when I write a story, I have to be willing to change, or at least reconsider, my viewpoint if my story rings false.
Regardless of my opinions, a story should be allowed to breathe and take on a life of its own. Writing is not just about telling, but listening. All fiction writers may be liars, but the ones I most admire work hard to tell the most honest lies they can.
If you enjoyed this post you might like my other writing. Take a moment and sign up for my free starter library. Click here. Also my new novel \”The Ghosts of Chimera\” will soon be published by the folks over at Rooster and Pig Publishing.