“The Message” | The Threat of Cultural Evil (Part 2)
This is part two of our series wrapping up this season on villains. If you haven’t heard part one yet, please go back and listen because I’ll be referring back to it a lot today. Joe and I will close the season out next week discussing the topic. Also, I want to give credit to a YouTuber called “the Critical Drinker” for the title of this episode. This inebriated Scotsman is a very wise observer of cultural trends, and his commentary on “the message” is both insightful and entertaining.
Last week, we discussed the political and legal framework of McCarthyism, but far more important is how it impacted ordinary citizens who were not Soviet agents. McCarthy and HUAC regularly labeled Americans as threats simply for their political beliefs, which were often countercultural at the time. Whether or not their views were correct, they did not deserve the loss of reputation, income, and even personal safety that accompanied a subversive accusation. Hundreds of people lost their jobs, had to move, and even faced legal sanctions for dissenting viewpoints. Some later repaired their reputations as the “Red Scare” faded and its moral panic subsided, but many felt McCarthyism’s lingering effects for the rest of their lives.
America, and in fact much of the developed world, seems to be in a McCarthy-esque moment right now. The evidence is pretty widespread no matter your political or cultural opinions. We’ve talked regularly about the widening social gulf in the United States, and polarization is part of living in a free and open society. The Constitution allows us to hold any opinion we wish and only get information from outlets that confirm our biases. It lets news organizations and social media entities control what information or opinions they allow on their platforms. Of course, changes in laws or regulations after the next could alter these situations, but this is where we stand right now.
More concerning is a growing belief on both sides of the aisle that words themselves are sometimes violent. Objectively, this is more prevalent on the left, but even some right-wingers are starting down this dangerous path. Colleges now ban controversial figures from speaking on their campuses to protect students from triggering speeches. Social media de-platforms those label as “haters.” The lawful opinion that words are violent can, but does not always, lead to actions that are absolutely illegal—mobs bashing opponents with bike locks and pepper-spraying people for the crime of thinking differently. Scholarly essays, interviews with protesters, and social media posts describe the rationale for attacking fellow citizens because of hateful, offensive, but free speech usually make the following claims. People have the right to defend themselves with force against someone trying to assault them; violence can be met with violence. And since some words cause physical harm by creating stress or fear, people are justified in using force against those whose words are an attack.
Without getting into the legal or ethical merits of the “words are violence” argument, it begs a couple of questions. First, where does this stop? Evidence from campus unrest and efforts at legal censorship point to a desire to punish free speech with force. This, historically, does not augur well for social cohesion. Second, which words are violent? That, naturally, depends on people’s opinions and the context through which they see the world. And here we return to last week’s episode and the idea of stories.
What’s In a Word?
To recap briefly, our way of looking at the world depends in part on the stories we know and the lessons we learn from them. A listener reminded me that this is why most great religious teachers from Jesus to Buddha taught in parables, short tales conveying moral truths. Great stories that resonate with people despite preconceived notions or beliefs start with a common frame of reference: a world we understand or truths we know from our youth. Authors then use their work to offer commentary to get an audience to think differently about something important, whether an injustice in society or a path to heaven and enlightenment. But it starts with a good story; not in the sense of “I like it” but “I understand it and see where it’s leading me.” It might offer a glimpse of a better world like a Renaissance or Romantic painting. It could lift our spirits in a symphony or classic rock ballad. And it might even challenge how we live our lives or offer hope in dark times. But the story comes first, and the author lets the audience decide what it means and why it matters.
Other stories out there start from a different place, a message the author wants to convey. These are usually simpler in scope because they often sacrifice narrative to get their points across. A modern example might help illustrate the difference, comparing CS Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia to JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Lewis began with an allegory of biblical tales set in a world he created, while Tolkien started with his fantasy world alone. Readers have differing opinions on each work, but the contrast between them is clear. Works that flow from allegory usually have only one interpretation and application, while those that simply tell a good story have far more depth and breadth. One storytelling approach isn’t neces-sarily better, but they produce different context and understanding in audiences.
Let’s look at how these two types of narratives affect the entire storytelling process. We return to the idea of heroism from last week, and I get to talk about one of my favorite modern stories: Star Wars. A key aspect of heroism is working hard to overcome obstacles and improve one’s abilities; this is a universal idea from Beowulf to Batman. To become a Jedi Knight and save the galaxy from evil, Luke Skywalker had to battle his enemies. He lost friends and suffered defeats until he mastered his own anger and became strong enough to defeat the story’s villains. This is the classic “hero’s journey.” In contrast, Rey from the Disney sequel trilogy never lost a battle, never struggled to overcome weakness in herself, never even trained in the Jedi arts until the last movie. She was a hero because of who she was, not what she did. George Lucas told one sort of story and JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson told another. One began with a universal idea and has appealed to audiences for nearly fifty years; the other took current-day ideas of gender politics—those are Rian Johnson’s words, not mine—and grafted them onto the story. Some people like each trilogy, but every objective standard shows that the original Star Wars movies are parsecs away more popular than their Disney cousins because audiences around the world saw themselves in Luke Skywalker and other heroes in a galaxy far, far away.
So we have different paths to storytelling with their own goals. One is popular with audiences, and the other speaks to issues that authors think are important. Why does this matter? Because they both take root in the reader or viewer’s mind and shape their outlook on life. Someone who understands bravery or sacrifice from heroic tales will behave quite differently from another whose framework for heroism is identity. The former receives praise by doing praiseworthy things; the latter searches for it simply by existing. One takes risks, stands up against injustice, and helps those without a voice by speaking truth to power. The other simply talks about themselves, makes them the story, and demands validation for their heroic life. To put it bluntly, one is George Washington or Martin Luther King, Jr. The other is a TikTok influencer.
The Message: A New McCarthyism
Having established that some people today view words as violence and asking the obvious question, “which words?” we can now take a dispassionate look at some an-swers and see that the current-day culture war has a great potential for evil in society. Universal ideas like right and wrong or heroism and cowardice depend on the context we get from stories. In a free society, we can praise the right and laud the heroes while also condemning the wrong and shaming the cowards. Which of these words might be seen as violent? In many cases, it’s those that offer criticism of stories, their messages, and—in modern times—the identities they praise. This is part of an idea called “intersectionalism,” where one’s ideas on everything from politics and culture to sports and music depend on your identity, whether race, gender, or any other category. Offering criticism of any identity becomes an attack on people, not ideas, and this “violence” must be stopped by any means necessary.
It’s a bit bizarre to me that as societies become more diverse and tolerant, they also become less open to countercultural viewpoints. We saw this in the United States during the McCarthy era, which was also the early years of the civil rights movement. The cultural left, the progressives in those days, saw the evil of segrega-tion and worked to change it. Those in power reacted violently with police dogs and fire hoses, and the halls of Congress echoed with McCarthyite rage labeling opponents as subversive traitors. Both sides within the general population got their con-text on that culture war from stories about how the world should look, different views of culture and society based on the narratives people told themselves. Now, before anyone gets upset, let me be clear in that I am not comparing the importance of racial equality to a desire for better stories on our screens today. I’m saying that our stories as a society mold both our desires for how culture changes and our actions we take to bring that change about. The causes are different, but their roots are the same.
Free speech produces criticism. This is natural and healthy, when done constructively because it often produces better ideas and context. But intersectionalism and the quest for validation of identities makes improvement far more difficult. If a politician criticizes the actions of a country, say for a war it is waging, the immediate response is “you hate everyone with that identity.” If a movie critic says they dislike a film’s message, everyone with the identity it praised piles on that person with accu-sations of hating an entire group. Are there racists and bigots out there spreading hate online? Of course. But one can offer criticism of an idea without attacking people. This was Joseph McCarthy’s great crime, seeing the Soviet Union as a real threat to America’s security and then pursuing anyone who believed in communism as a traitor. The new McCarthyites do the same thing, whether they are on campus when a controversial speaker is booked or they see a film’s audience score drop into the single digits. They feel attacked by words, and since those words are violent in their eyes, they lash out. Maybe it’s with words, which only fuels polarization and turns social media into kindergarten screaming matches. Maybe they try to dox people; I saw this in real time recently when a game developer tweeted asking her followers to find out where a critic lived and worked. That’s not free speech—that is dangerous. And maybe they assault fellow students on campus or storm a building chanting slogans and demanding passing grades. The pages of history offer a warning: societies that cannot debate the merits of ideas often face violent storms in their futures.
All of this leads to degraded storytelling, not based on who likes it but on objective quality. Sacrificing a good story for current-day messages about politics and identity splits the audience, but it also makes the stories themselves shallow and uninteresting. We are creatures who love stories that speak to us where we are, not ones that shout at us for not supporting this or that cause. If people want to be lec-tured on controversial matters, they can watch YouTube and cable news. Modern stories offer simple messages that force audiences to take sides instead of getting us to really think about our beliefs. Only closed-minded ideologues, no matter their side, really enjoy that. The rest of us want to be entertained and like having our beliefs challenged, but we want to be free to make up our own minds.
But in the end, this is not about me. And it may not be about you. It is about the next generation. As we discussed last week, stories shape context and perspective, especially when people are young. Tell old Trekkies like Joe and I that Captain Picard is not a wise diplomat but a broken old man with mommy issues, and we’ll shake our heads and watch the old shows (and season three of Star Trek: Picard). But tell a young person, whose mind is yet unformed and their perspectives on life still evolving, that their value as a person depends on their race or gender and that they should base their entire identity on life choices, and you create a generation that lashes out at even the merest hint of criticism, legitimate or otherwise. As they ma-ture, these stories will frame how they deal with words and deeds alike, and they will become the new McCarthy-ites who insist on censorship or encourage violence.
Who is inserting “the message” into children’s content, what that message is, and how it spreads throughout culture is beyond the time and scope of this podcast. I do not intend to comment on why state governments are banning books in public libraries or billion-dollar companies are funding efforts to get kids to make irreversible changes to their bodies before they’re old enough to get a tattoo. This is not a call for censorship or legal action against artists or their corporate overlords in any way. In most cases, evil cannot be wished away by governments, no matter how well-intentioned. It must be recognized and then opposed by you and I every single day, lest we wake up one morning in a world we do not recognize.
