Machine | Fiction | The Implausibility of Goodness

I quite enjoy being lax about my sense of the word 'fiction' in these articles (as you, er, may have noticed). Because fiction is not, of course, restricted to prose novels and short stories. Fiction is the unreal; the unreal that - as I like to think, in the case of literature - informs and casts light on the real, but that can also be used to manipulate it and, in some cases, to engulf the real entirely.



One of my odd little obsessions, whenever something is happening in the wider world that excites or distresses me, is to go over in my head, again and again, a speech I'd quite like a public figure to make. It could be any public figure, really. Someone with a voice; someone who will be heard. In this case, as you can probably guess, I wanted someone to talk about Egypt. Not a journalist, or a blogger, or any one of us people who don't really matter - but I wanted them at least to admit the great gulf between ideals and practicalities; admit that our countries have been complicit in several cases in doing the unethical thing for the purposes of realpolitik, admit that the West is paralysed by a patronising fear that instability will instantly lead to dangerous fundamentalism and that this is considered a valid reason not to stand up for democracy - and admit that it is no longer ethical or practical to do anything other than demand that Mubarak be removed from office. I wanted the fiction of diplomatic language, with all of its fucking ambiguities and hedge-bets and pathetic insinuations, the use of ambivalence to obfuscate, to disappear just for once, because it's not helping at all. Why are the only people giving direct answers the ones who are lying directly, like Khamenei, hatefully and very deliberately, misappraising the situation as an Islamic revolution in Egypt? (And, of course, there's no point getting started on Berlusconi, who has to be trolling. He just has to be.)


I got what I wanted, sort-of, when Nick Clegg came onto Daybreak and said that he found the Egyptian protests "incredibly exciting" - which reminded me firstly of the trouble he got into when he referred to the illegal war in Iraq as an illegal war in Iraq in Parliament, and secondly of the belief that I do still hold; that he isn't a bad man so much as he is a weak man. Naive, perhaps, but I'm not sure I believe that anyone who's been touched by Beckett can be bad. Complicated, definitely, but not bad. (That does sound naive - even elitist and stupid - but I think I'm going to leave it in). But it troubles me that he was able to show instinctive sympathy and joy for a protest that he was dealing with in a detached, almost abstract sense - but that the same sympathy failed to break through in his spiels about tuition fees. When faced with the pressures of local reality, where was that sympathy for another sort of protest of the economically disillusioned youth against the government?


The saddening thought is the flipside of the Romantic dream; it's all too easy to be good when you're alone - when your actions are detached from personal costs that society will always bring. And goodness within society can never be truly good, because it's too complex; it's measured by one's possibly unconscious motives. It's easy to be good instinctively, like stamping out fires spread by a molotov cocktail as more missiles rain down upon you, or by blurting out how you really feel about a situation you're supposed to be toeing the company line upon. It's near-impossible to be good in a considered way. A hermit who steps away from the world is good in the meannest of ways, because he removes all opportunities to be bad.


A position I've always tried to take is to be good, while wearing life lightly - which I'm aware I'm falling away from with all of this hand-wringing about morality. Irritating earnestness is really uncomfortably close to attempts at sincerity. But, as they're saying Mubarak may go today - as they have, admittedly, said before - I find myself considering that uncomfortable fact that I don't want to be in a country where David Cameron's in charge. But I don't care for Ed Miliband either. All of the smaller parties are, in their own, often horrible way, hopelessly naive. And, more than any of these people, I'm concerned - ethically speaking - with the political system in place and - practically speaking - with any of the alternative possibilities. So, kids...where do we go from here?


Glenn Beck, who's nothing if not direct in his explanations of a given political situation, seeks to connect the economic protests in Greece and the tuition fee protests in London with the situations in Tunisia and Egypt by simply not bothering to give any details, shouting instead that "the fires are spreading". In one sense, he's an imbecile. In another, perhaps he has a point. The Internet is showing signs of a...universality beyond the machinery of politics. The possibility - if I may again be naive - of the goodness of individuals.


P.S. Fans of either actual fiction or sincerity gone wrong should check out Michael Rosen's caustic and slightly pointless comments on the Guardian live feed. He begins very well, with a sarcastic assertion that the women in hijabs protesting clearly can't stand up for themselves, and then goes downhill fast until he ends up making Hitler comparisons for comic effect.

Comics | Fiction | Crimes and Misdemeanours Really Aren't That Different

A month or two ago, after a couple of drinks, I got into a discussion with an esteemed member of the poetry world and started to try and tell him that the definition of black comedy was ‘a situation which ought to be tragic, delivered without emotion, often to the point of absurdity’. He argued that this was, instead, the definition of sociopathy.



He may well be right, but I think it’s also black comedy. And you can split that into two categories. Empathic black comedy, in which the character and characters involved treat the situation with some degree of cynicism or awareness, telegraphing the absurdity to the audience. The characters in Endgame, let’s say, the hero of Kafka’s The Castle. Or, incidentally, Rupert Everett’s hero in the fantastic Italian film Dellamore Dellamorte (Cemetery Man, as it was released in the US).

We just don't get zombies like they do.

Then there’s unempathic black comedy, or, if you like, true sociopathic comedy, in which the characters treat the tragic situation as thoroughly tragic, but we’re encouraged to laugh at them all the same. Often, to make the process easier, the characters’ reactions (and, often, distress) are exaggerated to make them seem more comical. The example I used in my discussion was that of the scene in Korean movie The Host, in which an entire family sobs over the supposed death of the youngest member. This probably didn’t help my case re sociopathy, but it’s an interesting example. All of the family members are in their own way, sympathetic, but it’s the crying that’s pushed, and pushed, for over a minute, becoming more and more frantic – until it tips.


What I find curious is how often in literature the butt of this unempathic black comedy is paired with a genuinely tragic ‘double’. Let’s call this butt ‘the Milhouse’, after its ur-example; the bespectacled dweeb in The Simpsons who is constantly made a mockery of, to the point of utter cruelty, for having an unrequited crush on Lisa. The show constantly lets us know that it’s okay to make fun of Milhouse. It shifts this around, too, with other characters; there was a long period in which it was constantly intimated that Moe wanted to commit suicide. This was always played for gags. Compare that to the tragically played scene early on in the series when Homer ties a rock around his waist and attempts to jump off a bridge.



I pick up on Milhouse because it’s remarkable how frequently ‘the Milhouse’ is unlucky in love. Compare to Gunter from the sitcom Friends, who has an undying passion for Rachel, played by Jennifer Aniston. I’ve never been certain exactly what’s supposed to be so absurd about Gunter, who’s given silly bleached hair and a daft tie but who isn’t even as cloying as the House himself. At some points during the series, he’s probably less irritating than Ross, the ‘hero’ whose love for Rachel is treated with the utmost seriousness. And yet I don’t ever recall Gunter getting as much as a sympathetic ‘Aaah’ from the show’s monstrous, shrieking studio audience, who are a handy divining rod for our purposes here.

Yes, go on. Laugh at his pain. Laugh, you bastard.

The same goes for Roderigo, hapless suitor of Desdemona in Othello, who is near-habitually played as a fool. Like Othello, he is easily tricked by Iago; like Othello, he is scorned by Brabantio, and like Othello, he is willing to kill with remarkable readiness. There’s very little, in these respects, between the two of them. So why are we willing to laugh at Iago tricking Roderigo, but Iago tricking Othello fills us with horror?

Oddly enough (perhaps scarily enough) it seems to be a manliness thing. Milhouse, with his enormous nose and thick glasses – cough – is considered too pathetic a specimen to mate with Lisa. Gunter is weasellish, rather than “handsome in a ugly sort of way,” like Ross, and Roderigo is pitiable not because he attempts to murder someone, but because he’s afraid to do it. With female characters, it isn’t quite the inverse. The hero still pursues the heroine, but he himself will be pursued by a female butt or ‘femme-Milhouse’ who will be characteristically unladylike in some way. Often, she’ll be overweight. Maybe, like Friends’ Janice, she’ll have an irritating voice. Either way, we’ll be expected to laugh at her.

There’s no remedy for it; we’re bound by the rules of tragic-comedy to laugh at someone. If we try to make our Milhouses into tragic heroes, we’ll be forced to turn someone else into a buffoon. Moe, probably.

And I don’t want to laugh at Moe, readers. I like Moe.

Jon Ware
Friction Creditor