fascists and communists are united in their hatred of "degenerate" art, so i'm fine with it. if exposing the citizens of the USSR to Modern American art advanced the fall of the soviet union then w/e, if it also happened to give Rothko money to paint then that's a solid win.— cognitohazard (@bryanarchyNOW) June 3, 2021
I refuse to believe that the concept of "show dont tell" is a CIA op designed to discourage leftist thought. Fucking hell, it encourages critical thinking by making you figures out what's happening, it fosters creativity for both the reader and the writer.
Laying thick with no file is the fucking hallmark of reactionary literature, like Atlas Shrugged's ideology is only the secondary reason why it was ass. The primary reason is the pages long word vomit that only becomes worse by its ideology. A leftist word vomit is going to be tolerable because at least I agree with them.
If every leftist fiction literature is going to have a segment where a side character recited the entirety of Marx's body writing for the 10th time in one chapter alone, I'm going to commit liberalism and reads hentai.
I refuse to believe that the concept of “show dont tell” is a CIA op designed to discourage leftist thought
It was ostensibly coined by Anton Chekov although he seems to have meant it in terms of set dressing or plot points like you don't make awkward dialogue about the surroundings if you can make the set show those details to the audience directly (IIRC he gave an example about a full moon, like you wouldn't have the actors show up and go "WOW THAT MOON SURE IS SOMETHING HUH? SURE IS FULL AIN'T IT? BEAUTIFUL NIGHT IT IS WITH THAT FULL MOON UP THERE!" to paraphrase, you'd instead try to imply the presence of a bright moon through light reflecting on glass in a window or something).
Extending that to meanings and ideology, however, was 100% a CIA thing: those guidelines came from CIA associated academics and went alongside a lot of other formal and informal censorship of leftist politics in media. It can't be looked at in isolation: it was just one piece of a larger concerted effort to purge the left from every platform that could be used to propagandize and to ensure that new artists and writers were taught from the outset to not make blunt political statements and to instead simply portray a world that was in line with capitalist thought. It's the sort of thing that created capitalist realism as such a culturally hegemonic phenomenon, where nearly all art under capitalism simply reflects capitalism as the natural state of being with no direct commentary or contradiction (hence how pervasive the liberal "showing things that are bad, and acknowledging that they are materially bad, but not extending to an ideological critique or offering any alternatives other than 'wot if capitalism but good ceo?'" trope is).
I'm not familiar with the usage of "show don't tell" against directly politically ranting (although hell, if it was written well enough -- Grapes of Wrath was so overtly political it was banned for being communist) -- the way I've seen it used is more in the vein of Chuck Palahnuik's article:
From this point forward – at least for the next half year – you may not use “thought” verbs. These include: Thinks, Knows, Understands, Realizes, Believes, Wants, Remembers, Imagines, Desires, and a hundred others you love to use.
Instead of characters knowing anything, you must now present the details that allow the reader to know them. Instead of a character wanting something, you must now describe the thing so that the reader wants it.
Instead of saying: “Adam knew Gwen liked him.”
You’ll have to say: “Between classes, Gwen was always leaned on his locker when he’d go to open it. She’d roll her eyes and shove off with one foot, leaving a black-heel mark on the painted metal, but she also left the smell of her perfume. The combination lock would still be warm from her ass. And the next break, Gwen would be leaned there, again.”
Chucky helpfully makes my point for me by giving an example of precisely why it's bad advice and leads to less subtle writing, shallower characterization, inability to make a quick point without needing to set up an entire scene, etc.
But to be fair, I don't think the modern incarnation and those who advise it are influenced by the CIA (as much as the rule may/may not have roots there). It seems to me that since the massive rise of visual media, some people see literature as this sort of sub-art to film & television. It's implicitly lesser to them because they do not see the benefits literature has over every other medium; it does the most liftinwith 'mere' words, not images/audio, the co-imbuement into characters & description is on a level beyond even videogames, poeticism and character depth because it can tell.
Coincidentally, Chuck's novels do not display any of this.
Amateur writing communities & art critics use easy rules to shortcut their own lack of knowledge, and so the rule spreads. They devalue their own craft through this view of it as sub-art, and that literature should only be moving pictures, able to be quickly adapted to a screen in a Netflix movie or Amazon series. After all, what other goal could it have?
I refuse to believe that the concept of "show dont tell" is a CIA op designed to discourage leftist thought. Fucking hell, it encourages critical thinking by making you figures out what's happening, it fosters creativity for both the reader and the writer.
Laying thick with no file is the fucking hallmark of reactionary literature, like Atlas Shrugged's ideology is only the secondary reason why it was ass. The primary reason is the pages long word vomit that only becomes worse by its ideology. A leftist word vomit is going to be tolerable because at least I agree with them.
If every leftist fiction literature is going to have a segment where a side character recited the entirety of Marx's body writing for the 10th time in one chapter alone, I'm going to commit liberalism and reads hentai.
It was ostensibly coined by Anton Chekov although he seems to have meant it in terms of set dressing or plot points like you don't make awkward dialogue about the surroundings if you can make the set show those details to the audience directly (IIRC he gave an example about a full moon, like you wouldn't have the actors show up and go "WOW THAT MOON SURE IS SOMETHING HUH? SURE IS FULL AIN'T IT? BEAUTIFUL NIGHT IT IS WITH THAT FULL MOON UP THERE!" to paraphrase, you'd instead try to imply the presence of a bright moon through light reflecting on glass in a window or something).
Extending that to meanings and ideology, however, was 100% a CIA thing: those guidelines came from CIA associated academics and went alongside a lot of other formal and informal censorship of leftist politics in media. It can't be looked at in isolation: it was just one piece of a larger concerted effort to purge the left from every platform that could be used to propagandize and to ensure that new artists and writers were taught from the outset to not make blunt political statements and to instead simply portray a world that was in line with capitalist thought. It's the sort of thing that created capitalist realism as such a culturally hegemonic phenomenon, where nearly all art under capitalism simply reflects capitalism as the natural state of being with no direct commentary or contradiction (hence how pervasive the liberal "showing things that are bad, and acknowledging that they are materially bad, but not extending to an ideological critique or offering any alternatives other than 'wot if capitalism but good ceo?'" trope is).
I'm not familiar with the usage of "show don't tell" against directly politically ranting (although hell, if it was written well enough -- Grapes of Wrath was so overtly political it was banned for being communist) -- the way I've seen it used is more in the vein of Chuck Palahnuik's article:
Chucky helpfully makes my point for me by giving an example of precisely why it's bad advice and leads to less subtle writing, shallower characterization, inability to make a quick point without needing to set up an entire scene, etc.
But to be fair, I don't think the modern incarnation and those who advise it are influenced by the CIA (as much as the rule may/may not have roots there). It seems to me that since the massive rise of visual media, some people see literature as this sort of sub-art to film & television. It's implicitly lesser to them because they do not see the benefits literature has over every other medium; it does the most liftinwith 'mere' words, not images/audio, the co-imbuement into characters & description is on a level beyond even videogames, poeticism and character depth because it can tell.
Coincidentally, Chuck's novels do not display any of this.
Amateur writing communities & art critics use easy rules to shortcut their own lack of knowledge, and so the rule spreads. They devalue their own craft through this view of it as sub-art, and that literature should only be moving pictures, able to be quickly adapted to a screen in a Netflix movie or Amazon series. After all, what other goal could it have?