the delphic expanse

Do some warning labels do more harm than good?

Want to bounce ideas off fellow writers? Need some support? Post here.

Re: Do some warning labels do more harm than good?

Postby panyasan » Thu Apr 03, 2014 7:33 am

Life has been rather busy, but I still like to add something to this discussion.

Part of my study was "models of communication". Most simply put: sender - message - receiver.

Now the sender has a "frame of reference", that means his of her background, morals, upbringing, life experience, education, social network, past and present relationships. All of these elements are part of who the sender is.

The same applies to the receiver, he or she also has this frame of reference.

Then we have the message, send to us by the medium (newspaper, letter, radio, television, website). All around there is also "noise", those elements that hinder the message and take away our attention from the message.

In fanfic, you see that the sender reacts to a creation of some one else. The reasons for reacting to this creation like [i]Enterprise[/i] is that the sender relates to Enterprise on a certain level and this reaction has to do with his frame of reference.

I have lived in Japan and studied a couple of languages and I like to play with language, so I have been asked why I don't write about Hoshi, but about T'Pol (and Trip). Now I have been inspired to write about Hoshi due to this site, but first and most I started to write about T'Pol, because I could relate to her: some one who is different than the people around her and keeps her struggles inside and is in love with some very different as well. Hoshi is for me the popular girl in high school, the girl every one likes, T'Pol the one who finds her way, without many friends.

Any way, back to my theory. Like the sender the receiver also has reasons in his of her frame of reference why he likes to read about Enterprise fanfic and why he or she react to certain elements of the story.

Also this frame of reference is the reason why people choose a certain site and how they see this medium. For example, in ff.net most people can post their stories and there isn't an administrator who looks at the quality of the story. This is the reason I don't get upset with misspelling or just shrug when some one writes a character name wrong, but not so on other sites.

There are sites that started because on general sites the lovers of one ship got ridiculed and they were looking for a "safe place" to express their love for a certain ship. Now when a site also has a community, a forum where sender (writer) and receiver (reader) meet, there comes another element into play: the relationship between the people in the community and how they relate to the community. Most simple example of this is that we also tend to read the stories of the person we "know", our friends in the community and also are more willing to comment on their stories, especially when they have commented on yours.

Then we have the noise, sometimes noise can be as simple as the fact that some people are just bad readers. They looked at a story or label from their own perceptive, frame of reference and interpreted that story through their own eyes and sometimes fears, sometimes reading things that aren't there.

To conclude: labels are part of the communication between writer and reader. But like all communication it can be blurred from other things that have little to do with the actual communication (the label) itself.
Last edited by panyasan on Fri Apr 04, 2014 2:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Avatar by Bluetiger
User avatar
panyasan
Commander
 
Posts: 746
Joined: Mon Sep 13, 2010 10:12 am

Re: Do some warning labels do more harm than good?

Postby jespah » Thu Apr 03, 2014 10:09 am

This interesting take came across my virtual desk this morning, FYI -
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/04/ ... -warnings/
User avatar
jespah
Commander
 
Posts: 516
Joined: Thu Jun 30, 2011 8:05 pm

Re: Do some warning labels do more harm than good?

Postby Aquarius » Thu Apr 03, 2014 11:32 pm

panyasan wrote:My idea is that some people got afraid that the site was going to change its original goal (stories about that certain ship) and that is was never openly discussed. So when the story of Aquarius got published with a warning that it dealt with one side of this ship with other person - on advice of the site owner keeping in mind the previous discussion - the opposite of what was intended happened. People saw this as a confirmation of their fears that their site was going to change to a site they didn't want (no safe place any more) and reacted very strongly.


The problem is - no one said anything about a change. And I gave all the pertinent details: it was a dream crafted for the purposes of adding a dimension of realism and showing a character's state of mind, and the 'ship of devotion was still endgame. Management approved my pitch on those criteria. People had a choice to not read. Instead, they took it as a permission slip to freak out on me. And if anyone is going to claim that this was any kind of "trigger," they've got bigger problems in their lives than what *I* write and would be better served by getting their insecurities under control and learning some manners while they're at it.

jespah - thanks for sharing the article. While the following quote is in reference to the demands that trigger warnings get put in syllabi, it sums up the way I've been feeling about warnings in general the last several weeks:

Engaging with ideas involves risk, and slapping warnings on them only undermines the principle of intellectual exploration. We cannot anticipate every potential trigger—the world, like the Internet, is too large and unwieldy. But even if we could, why would we want to? Bending the world to accommodate our personal frailties does not help us overcome them.


The creation of literature and the reading of it is "intellectual exploration," even if you're doing it for fun. Yes, there's the argument that people read fanfic to escape real life...but seriously? The reader is getting free entertainment. The author isn't getting paid for his or her labor. Even with the best of intentions, labeling can't catch everything; readers should accept more responsibility for the risk. After all, they're getting what they paid for.
Avatar by Misplaced.
User avatar
Aquarius
Site Admin
 
Posts: 5516
Joined: Sat Sep 11, 2010 2:30 pm

Re: Do some warning labels do more harm than good?

Postby Frakme » Fri Apr 04, 2014 5:23 am

Aquarius wrote:
The creation of literature and the reading of it is "intellectual exploration," even if you're doing it for fun. Yes, there's the argument that people read fanfic to escape real life...but seriously? The reader is getting free entertainment. The author isn't getting paid for his or her labor. Even with the best of intentions, labeling can't catch everything; readers should accept more responsibility for the risk. After all, they're getting what they paid for.


Totally, some readers do forget that it is a real life person is writing fanfic as a hobby, giving the time up for free and hoping that others will enjoy what they've written. And people pearl clutching over something they think they should have been warned about can really put some writers off, which is a real shame!
What I wouldn't give to have an Episode of Enterprise where Trip somehow manages to loses his uniform and gets covered in Nutella.

Aeryn: And you say you want to go back to that place of pain and suffering!
John: Well you guys don't have chocolate!
User avatar
Frakme
Commander
 
Posts: 507
Joined: Thu Oct 31, 2013 6:03 am
Location: North East, UK

Re: Do some warning labels do more harm than good?

Postby panyasan » Fri Apr 04, 2014 3:01 pm

Aquarius wrote:
panyasan wrote:My idea is that some people got afraid that the site was going to change its original goal (stories about that certain ship) and that is was never openly discussed. So when the story of Aquarius got published with a warning that it dealt with one side of this ship with other person - on advice of the site owner keeping in mind the previous discussion - the opposite of what was intended happened. People saw this as a confirmation of their fears that their site was going to change to a site they didn't want (no safe place any more) and reacted very strongly.


The problem is - no one said anything about a change. And I gave all the pertinent details: it was a dream crafted for the purposes of adding a dimension of realism and showing a character's state of mind, and the 'ship of devotion was still endgame. Management approved my pitch on those criteria. People had a choice to not read. Instead, they took it as a permission slip to freak out on me. And if anyone is going to claim that this was any kind of "trigger," they've got bigger problems in their lives than what *I* write and would be better served by getting their insecurities under control and learning some manners while they're at it.


Aquarius, my apology! I was trying to think out loud what people may have been thinking to start reacting in such a way. Point is, people filter messages through with their own filter and sometimes read things that aren't there. I edited my post to make that more clear.
Avatar by Bluetiger
User avatar
panyasan
Commander
 
Posts: 746
Joined: Mon Sep 13, 2010 10:12 am

Re: Do some warning labels do more harm than good?

Postby jespah » Sat Apr 05, 2014 6:54 am

Aquarius wrote:....

jespah - thanks for sharing the article. While the following quote is in reference to the demands that trigger warnings get put in syllabi, it sums up the way I've been feeling about warnings in general the last several weeks:

Engaging with ideas involves risk, and slapping warnings on them only undermines the principle of intellectual exploration. We cannot anticipate every potential trigger—the world, like the Internet, is too large and unwieldy. But even if we could, why would we want to? Bending the world to accommodate our personal frailties does not help us overcome them.


The creation of literature and the reading of it is "intellectual exploration," even if you're doing it for fun. Yes, there's the argument that people read fanfic to escape real life...but seriously? The reader is getting free entertainment. The author isn't getting paid for his or her labor. Even with the best of intentions, labeling can't catch everything; readers should accept more responsibility for the risk. After all, they're getting what they paid for.


The syllabus thing really threw me. It caused a facepalm moment. After all (just to pull a recent instance out of thin air), students are generally seen as being right in the wheelhouse for protests - http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/worl ... a/2796005/ And sometimes protests can turn excessively violent.

But in the classroom, these same kinds of people have to be treated as hothouse flowers? I am well aware that people are individuals, and I get that there are some legitimate concerns for people who have truly been victimized. It may also, at times, be a backhanded ploy to push professors to teach to less controversial materials (and thereby removing the teeth from many lessons, IMHO).

In the article about the syllabus, there's a bit about a student jokingly (I hope) suggesting a trigger warning for The Great Gatsby - violence, etc.

It does make one wonder how The Wizard of Oz would be so noted: Trigger warning: character death, temporarily paralyzed character, biting dog, severe weather.

And that's just the film; the book's got Winkie decapitations.

I just started posting a story on FF.net and added one warning (although there's some sex, it's rather mild in this particular story). WARNING: Homophobic character. And I wanted that in there, not so much because I necessarily feel people will be triggered, but more for them to get that something distasteful might be headed their way. I don't honestly expect people to be traumatized by this; I hope they're outraged by this character's behavior and language.
User avatar
jespah
Commander
 
Posts: 516
Joined: Thu Jun 30, 2011 8:05 pm

Re: Do some warning labels do more harm than good?

Postby Aquarius » Sat Apr 05, 2014 9:04 am

panyasan - I understand what you're saying. However, any concerns about the site's mission should have been taken up with management. Given that this was not even close to being the first or only instance of bad behavior there, I don't think that anyone perceived any real threat that the (and I cannot stress this enough) dream sequence in my story foreshadowed any change in the site. Rather, the shipper war that led to the site's creation fostered a sense of entitlement and a culture of intolerance. Somehow Gene's message of diversity was lost on a lot of them.

jespah - Yeah, I found the demand for a trigger warning in a syllabus to be pretty cringe-worthy. I think that a lot of this began with cultural shifts that were in play for my generation - those born in the late 60s and throughout the 70s. With good intentions, our parents and teachers brought us up to believe we could be whatever we wanted, with an eye toward breaking archaic gender roles and building self esteem. I think it worked out okay for my generation, but I think the message got distorted for kids who were born in subsequent decades, to a point where there's been a movement toward things like taking scoring out of little league games (because heaven forbid your child ends up on the side that LOSES!!! :o ), everybody gets a trophy, and we end up with articles like this about millenials. It all breeds a certain culture of entitlement in which we have individuals self-righteously wanting the world to bend to their "personal frailties" (I love how that professor put it!).

Intent and context are hugely important. For example, here, we wouldn't really be inclined to permit a fic that contained potentially objectionable material that was present for the sake of being mean-spirited. Using your homophobic character as an example, if the author's message was clearly anti-gay, we would tell that author what bus to ride and where to get off. We're a pretty tolerant bunch here, but we don't tolerate intolerance.

On the other hand, if the homophobic character existed to provide dramatic tension and to provide the reader with information about the forces other characters are working against or just about the world in general from which they come, I have no problem with that, because that's reality - as much as we don't like it, there are homophobic people in the world; art imitates life.

One of my favorite electronic media professors wanted to show us an episode of All in the Family but hesitated because he was afraid it might offend some of the people in the class. He was going to leave it up to a vote. Having been the only other person in the room who was actually alive during the 70s and had first-hand knowledge of the show, I put my hand up. I felt compelled to say that yes, Archie Bunker is a raging bigot and the things he says would not fly at all today; however, the way it's presented in the show - its context - is CLEARLY in such a way that it is encouraging a *change* in attitudes, and Archie is clearly the buffoon with the archaic world view that is no longer working in society at the time. It was clearly not meant to condone bigotry; rather, it was meant to tell people that if they still think and behave this way, they're morons. Based on that, my prof changed his mind about the vote and went ahead and showed the episode during our next class period. Nobody wilted when they saw it, because they were made to actually think about what was going on. None of the non-white or non-straight students in the room got "trigger" happy. Yes, Archie was mean-spirited, but the *show* was not. There's a big difference, and it's sad to me that critical thinking skills are so lost that people can't even make that distinction when reading a fic and therefore require a warning.

Again, I can't help feeling like it keeps coming back to the same three things: first, certain labels are helpful, even to the author, because you want to attract people who see the show the way you do or appreciate the same favorite parts (ie, characters, 'ships, etc.). It works like a secret handshake of sorts - helpful in like-minded people finding each other. Second, beyond that, in reference to bending the world to accommodate your "personal frailties," if it's not a true trigger and is just something you don't like, oh well. These things happen. While I hope you like my stories, I can't sit around fretting about every single word pleasing someone, because the simple fact of the matter is I can't please everybody; conversely, as the reader, you should accept the risk of being one of the not-pleased. Third, if one truly does have a trigger (outside of the cultural taboos we've talked about, like child abuse), it seems to me it would be more productive and potentially enhance the reader's quality of life to get help with that. Try as you might, you're never going to have complete control over your contact with that trigger.
Avatar by Misplaced.
User avatar
Aquarius
Site Admin
 
Posts: 5516
Joined: Sat Sep 11, 2010 2:30 pm

Re: Do some warning labels do more harm than good?

Postby jespah » Sat Apr 05, 2014 10:22 am

Well said (and yes, the homophobic character is meant to be dramatic tension/creating something for other characters to rise above and defeat - not a personal axe being ground. Gosh, I hope people know that about me. If not, uh, hi).

The banner of helping people who are truly ill is being flown by people who are personally offended, and that's not the same thing. This homophobic character should offend people. That's a big part of why she's in the story to begin with. She isn't the majority of the story, either, but the idea is to present an archaic and nasty view because some characters are nasty. And when characters can defeat that and rise above, characters are more heroic than if they are never tested.

And the helpful tagging that should go on, on the 'net (see Collectors, here, at slide #6) in order to assist people in finding content, is being confused with warnings and is possibly being coopted by others, for purposes for which it was never truly intended.

Eh, we keep saying the same things, I think. I think most people here are pretty much on the same page.
User avatar
jespah
Commander
 
Posts: 516
Joined: Thu Jun 30, 2011 8:05 pm

Re: Do some warning labels do more harm than good?

Postby Aquarius » Sat Apr 05, 2014 10:58 am

jespah wrote:The banner of helping people who are truly ill is being flown by people who are personally offended, and that's not the same thing. This homophobic character should offend people.


I think these are two pretty important points you raise that I don't think we've touched on yet - or if we have, not directly.

We see a lot of instances where people are using someone else's benign/noble/whatever agenda to further their own. I think we see this a lot when it comes to arguments that are grounded in things like "we must do it for the children!" or some such. Last week in my literacy class, we watched this video, I am Not a Pornographer, which was made by a young adult author talking about people wanting to ban his book from a high school on the grounds that it was "pornographic." Those who were loudest about wanting the book banned didn't even have kids in the school that was getting ready to teach the novel. They wanted to take the choice away from the parents who were given permission slips to sign and the chance to opt-out of having their kids read that book. I think that this is closely tied to what I've come to think of as "warning culture" in fanfic - the concept of "I'm not going to enjoy this, so I'm going to take away your chance to enjoy it, too." While the cry for a warning isn't blatant censorship, it does cause the spoiler-y things I'd mentioned earlier, which can diminish another reader's enjoyment of the story because they already know what's coming, or cause other readers to not read because a big deal has been made out of nothing.

Also, this has been a point of contention for me for some time as well - that everyone and everything MUST be likable in stories and film at all times, and if they're not, it's "bad." I go through this every semester with the film students when their professors show Citizen Kane, particularly when Charles and Susan fight. They find Susan shrill and shrew-ish, and they don't like Kane. It's a challenge to get students to reevaluate their value judgements. They're not SUPPOSED to like Kane; maybe it's okay to feel a little sorry for him because he was once likable but became old and bitter, but we're not supposed to want to invite him to our next kegger when the film's over. As for Susan, I have to drag them along in my imaginary time machine and ask them how, exactly, do they believe a 1940s-era woman is supposed to fight back against all that manipulation and control? She stuck up for herself as best she could until the consequences for leaving weren't any worse than the consequences for staying. They are SUPPOSED to be uncomfortable with how that relationship plays out, and getting them to make the leap in reasoning that if the director accomplished what he set out to do, then it's actually a GOOD film. If you can't handle complexity, fine - but don't demonize those who produce it. I get so dismayed when I hear "But I don't want to think!" when discussing media and literature.
Avatar by Misplaced.
User avatar
Aquarius
Site Admin
 
Posts: 5516
Joined: Sat Sep 11, 2010 2:30 pm

Re: Do some warning labels do more harm than good?

Postby jespah » Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:47 pm

Aquarius wrote:
jespah wrote:The banner of helping people who are truly ill is being flown by people who are personally offended, and that's not the same thing. This homophobic character should offend people.


I think these are two pretty important points you raise that I don't think we've touched on yet - or if we have, not directly.


Thanks!

Aquarius wrote:We see a lot of instances where people are using someone else's benign/noble/whatever agenda to further their own. I think we see this a lot when it comes to arguments that are grounded in things like "we must do it for the children!" or some such. Last week in my literacy class, we watched this video, I am Not a Pornographer, which was made by a young adult author talking about people wanting to ban his book from a high school on the grounds that it was "pornographic." Those who were loudest about wanting the book banned didn't even have kids in the school that was getting ready to teach the novel. They wanted to take the choice away from the parents who were given permission slips to sign and the chance to opt-out of having their kids read that book. I think that this is closely tied to what I've come to think of as "warning culture" in fanfic -...


Amazing that people would take away parental choice so blatantly like that (and they might even be screaming FOR parental choice in any number of other areas. Weird. When I was in High School (you know, we rode dinosaurs each way. Uphill. Six miles. In the snow.), I do recall a classmate's mother being upset that we were going to read Catcher in the Rye. Her daughter (and a few of the other kids) read something else, the rest of us read Catcher ... (I don't think it was permission slips. It may have been a school board meeting? My memory is hazy here), and the world didn't end.

Aquarius wrote:Also, this has been a point of contention for me for some time as well - that everyone and everything MUST be likable in stories and film at all times, and if they're not, it's "bad." I go through this every semester with the film students when their professors show Citizen Kane, particularly when Charles and Susan fight. They find Susan shrill and shrew-ish, and they don't like Kane. It's a challenge to get students to reevaluate their value judgments. They're not SUPPOSED to like Kane.... If you can't handle complexity, fine - but don't demonize those who produce it. I get so dismayed when I hear "But I don't want to think!" when discussing media and literature.


Er, if you don't want to think, why are you in a film class to begin with? And don't tell me it's for an easy A. Cripes.

How the hell can characters grow and change without conflict? How can characters have depth if they don't have shades? How can there be sophisticated meaning when the evil are - if they exist in a story at all - impersonal, easily defeated, and don't cause moral conflicts? How can the good be relatable if they don't have flaws? Perfect people don't exist. They aren't believable.

PS Folks - watch the video if you get a chance - it's only about 3 1/2 minutes long.
User avatar
jespah
Commander
 
Posts: 516
Joined: Thu Jun 30, 2011 8:05 pm

PreviousNext

Return to Idea Space

  • Who is online

    Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests