Fairness in Life and Art
By Brantley Thompson Elkins
SPOILER ALERT:
If you havenÕt seen the movie version of Atonement, or read the book, but want to, please be advised
not to read any further, as I have to reveal the ending to make my argument.
Based on the novel by Ian McEwan, the acclaimed movie
tells the story of Briony Tallis, a spoiled 13-year old well-born British girl
with literary ambitions who ruins the lives of her older sister Cecelia and
CeceliaÕs boyfriend Robbie by falsely accusing Robbie of raping another girl.
Robbie is sent to prison, from which he is freed only to join the Army at the
outbreak of World War II.
Cecelia, the only one to believe in his innocence,
pines for Robbie as we see him waiting for evacuation from Dunkirk after the German
blitzkrieg. Briony, like Cecelia, has become a nurse, tending to the wounded
and seemingly trying to expiate her sin. She finally bites the bullet, it
seems, calling on Cecelia and Robbie after his return to express remorse. They
donÕt exactly roll out the red carpet for her, but she agrees to set the record
straight, and it looks as if the lovers will live happily ever after.
S
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Cut to 60 years later. Now a successful novelist but
suffering a fatal illness, Briony is being interviewed on TV about her latest
novel – based on the story of Robbie and Cecilia. Only, in the course of
the interview, she reveals that she made up the happy ending: Robbie died at
Dunkirk from a septic infection, while Cecelia was killed in the blitz. Briony
never called on them, never lifted a finger, never said a word, when it would
have done them any good. Yet she seems to think that her novel is a form of
atonement.
Velvet and I both found the revelation heartbreaking.
But commentaries on both the movie and the novel (which I havenÕt read yet
although I have it at hand) tend to be very cerebral; in an essay on the
latter, one Brian Finney starts off thusly:
I want to concentrate on the self conscious use of
narrative in Atonement, as this
aspect has been seized on by a minority of reviewers to criticize what they
understand to be an essentially realist novel that at the end inappropriately
resorts to a modish self referentiality. My reading of this novel is of a work
of fiction that is from beginning to end concerned with the making of fiction.
But Finney himself is caught up in critical fashion:
there is nothing more modish than to think of fiction as being about nothing
but itself. Yet there has to be some connection between fiction and life. For
Finney, it is a matter of Briony treating life as if it were fiction: ÒWhen she
makes public her confusion between life and the life of fiction the
consequences are tragic and irreversible except in the realm of fiction.Ó
But the motivation for the lie – BrionyÕs own
silly crush on Robbie, and her jealousy towards Cecilia after catching her and
Robbie having a quickie in the family library – could have been that of
any spoiled brat, without any experience of literature, let alone a vocation
for it.
One can easily imagine Briony not having been a writer, and having committed the same
appalling act. Making her a writer – she turns out to be the ostensible
writer of the novel itself – makes for a better story, but doesnÕt change
the nature of her crime. If there is a lesson to be learned from Atonement, it has nothing to do with confusing reality and
fiction, but rather with how actions in life as well as fiction have consequences. That is what makes the denouement so devastating,
instead of being merely a clever literary/cinematic trick.
On a blog at The New York Times, for an online piece that irreverently and
irrelevantly tried to tie the movie version to Hillary Clinton as a
ÒpresumptiveÓ candidate for honors, I ventured the opinion that the title of
the movie was ironic – there was no way Briony could atone to the dead.
One J.H. Russell agreed in spades in a response at the same blog:
Briony is NOT a sympathetic
character - she is a hugely selfish character, and my take is that she never
felt genuine sorrow for what she had doneÉshe never grewÉthe old Briony was
just as selfish as the young BrionyÉshe wrote that book for herself and no one
elseÉand she fictionalized the story with a Òhappily ever afterÓ to make
herself feel better about everythingÉwhat a bitch Briony wasÉfeeling sorry for
her is the last thing in the world anyone should feelÉpity, maybeÉcompassion,
definitely notÉ
We donÕt know what would have become of
Robbie and Cecelia but for that malicious bitch. Perhaps they would have been
killed in the war anyway, but at least theyÕd have shared some years of
happiness. Then again, they might have lived full lives. Yet the uncertainty of
these fictional characters is no different from our own: none of us knows what
tomorrow may bring – any of us might die of a stroke or a heart attack,
or be the victim of a murderer, or get run down by a drunk driver.
While life is indeed chancy, however,
it would be foolish to dwell on that, to be obsessed with mischance, with all
that might go wrong. It is our job as human beings to live the best lives we
can despite the chanciness of existence, and to let others do the same –
helping them when we can and, if we cannot, at least not adding to their woes.
Sufficient to our days are those sufferings we cannot foresee or prevent. That
is something Briony never really seems to learn, and if Atonement truly judges her as Russell argues, it
is a fair judgment.
If life cannot always be fair, art
should be. But there are different kinds of fairness. One is fairness in the
broad sense. Art should be true to life, we are often told – but
different artists have different ideas of what ÒlifeÓ is. The most we can
expect of them is that they express their own visions of life as honestly as
they can. We may love what they say or hate what they say, but we try to give
them a fair hearing. By the same token, they should play fair with us if they
want to get that hearing. They should even reach out to us by any means
necessary.
This is especially true of people who
write message novels. When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle TomÕs Cabin, she wasnÕt trying to write great
literature; she was trying to arouse anger against slavery. She went for the
heart, her story full of shameless sentimentality. When Upton Sinclair wrote The
Jungle, he wasnÕt trying
to write great literature, either; he was trying to arouse anger against Big
Business. He went for the stomach, his story full of shamelessly disgusting
details, especially about the meat industry. Stowe and Sinclair alike,
obviously, wanted to reach the greatest possible audience, and did.
Message novels can be great literature. In Les
MisŽrables, Victor
Hugo set out to write an epic of social injustice, yet we remember it now not
just for its message but for the story of the redemption of Jean Valjean, his
pursuit by the relentless inspector Javert, and his dedication to his ward
Cosette. In 1984,
George Orwell exposed the true nature of totalitarianism, but we remember it
now for the story of Winston Smith, his doomed romance with Julie, and his
fatal confrontation with his confidant and betrayer OÕBrien. Both novels were
best sellers in their time; they did their job. They have since been filmed
more than once, and HugoÕs novel even became a long-running musical.
But high art or low art, honest message
novels have to reach a broad audience. And when writers donÕt do that, they
arenÕt playing fair by their own supposed standards. Thomas M. Disch, an
avant-garde science fiction writer, edited an anthology called The Ruins of
Earth, which was
presented as an effort to Save the World by warning mankind of its sundry
follies. But the stories in it, like DischÕs own, were calculated not to appeal
to anyone outside a small and snobbish elite. They were preaching to the choir
of a very small church, and thus served no real purpose beyond making the
writers feel good about themselves – no nobler a purpose than that for
which the fictional Briony Tallis wrote her novel.
Intellectual snobbery motivates any
number of literary sins. L. Sprague De Camp, in The Science Fiction Handbook (1953), knew that it wasnÕt playing
fair with the reader to tell a story in which spacemen are marooned on a
strange planet after their ship is hit by a meteor, repair their ship by heroic
efforts – and then get wiped out by another meteor as soon as they take
off:
Young writers sometimes commit this
kind of fictional mayhem not to entertain the reader but to show what
devilishly clever, superior, cynical, ironic fellows they are, who really grasp
the blind hostility of the universe. But they merely annoy the reader, who
knows about the blind hostility of the universe already and wants a story in
which the actions of the people bear some causal relation to the outcome, happy
or tragic as the case may be.
I donÕt know what specific examples De
Camp may have had in mind. But more than a decade later a young writer named
Marc Geston wrote Lords of the Starship (1967), in which the desperate people of a devastated
future Earth struggle for generations to build a huge starship to make their
escape – and the ship destroys itself on takeoff, as apparently planned
by the ancient forces of Darkness. No doubt Geston (then all of 20 years old)
thought he was a devilishly clever, superior, cynical, ironic fellow. He is now
a lawyer.
The annals of modern literature are
full of novels that pretend to express ÒcompassionÓ for humanity when they
actually express contempt. The same is true in the visual media: Dennis Potter,
who suffered from a disfiguring skin disease, showed the same sort of contempt
in Pennies from Heaven,
a cynical send-up of feel-good Hollywood musicals. Now perhaps this could be
excused by PotterÕs own suffering, and yet Stephen Hawking has suffered a worse
affliction without concluding that it was his solemn right and duty to try to
make everyone else miserable.
But stupidity and sheer incompetence
are more prevalent in popular entertainment when it doesnÕt play fair with, and
even shows contempt for its audience. This is especially evident in
poorly-conceived movie sequels. Take Legally Blonde II: Red, White and
Blonde – please.
Legally Blonde itself was an intelligent comedy that
turned the dumb blonde clichŽ on its head. When we encounter Elle Woods, we can
tell from the outset that she is frivolous and irresponsible – but not stupid: nobody can fool her about
things like fashion. SheÕs got a first-class brain; she just hasnÕt used it for
anything important. Her efforts to get into law school to pursue a boyfriend
who has jilted her are shallowly motivated yet brilliantly executed. ElleÕs
transformation into a dedicated student of the law, and defender of a woman
falsely accused of murder, is a joy to behold – yet true to her
character.
In the sequel, however, itÕs as if
sheÕs forgotten everything she ever learned. The story not only goes back to
Square One, but never gets to Square Two.
ItÕs even worse in the sequel to Revenge of the Nerds. The first Nerds movie could hardly be
called high art, and yet it had an integrity to it – the nerds overcame
their tormentors by being true to themselves. But in the sequel, they forget
that and become assholes like all the other assholes. I never wanted to see
another Nerds movie after that. There are less troubling but still annoying
examples, as in the Indiana Jones movies. One of the most appealing elements of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
was Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood – just the right woman for a man of
action – but in the sequel, she was dumped for a ditzy blonde.
But the worst example of betraying the
audience IÕve ever seen was Alien 3. In James CamersonÕs Aliens, Ellen Ripley, having returned to
Earth too late for a reunion with her own daughter as she had vowed in Ridley
ScottÕs Alien,
makes it her business to save Newt – sole human survivor of a colony
world infested with the aliens. That commitment, and the heroism Ripley shows
in standing by it, makes Aliens an action movie with heart, a rare thing indeed.
Only in Alien 3, we learn that Newt has died in a
crash on yet another planet. In real life, this would have been tragic. In
drama, it was a crime.
If we accept it as real, it makes the entire plot of the previous movie
pointless. Yet it was not a matter of Hollywood writers or directors trying to
be devilishly clever, superior, cynical and ironic; simply a matter of studio
politics and turf battles – the movie went through several writers and
directors, all set on putting their own stamp on it. But the effect, if not the
intent, was to show contempt for Ripley and Newt -- and for the audience.
One of the reasons, although not the
only one, for the decline of daytime soap opera has been the cynicism and
contempt shown by producers and writers for characters: not just minor players,
but long-established leads like Luke and Laura on General Hospital. One story line during the past couple
of years involved the return of Robert and Holly Scorpio after many years
– in a story line which so trashed the characters that angry fans got up
a petition of protest. It was similarly trashing characters that sank Port
Charles, a GH
spin-off. A common syndrome on
soaps is musical beds – arbitrary pairings and re-pairings of couples for
no other reason than to keep the pot boiling. With the headlines on soap opera
magazine covers so much like those on tabloids about celebrity scandals, itÕs
small wonder that fans abandon fiction for Òreality.Ó
People in fiction deserve the same
respect as people in real life. Good fiction is one of the places we learn
about respect, and integrity, and values. That is not its only purpose, and may
not even be its primary purpose. But surely, as with Briony Tallis in Atonement, it can show us graphically how not to live our own lives, and how the
kind of lives we lead affect other lives, whether for good or ill. That the way
we live our lives matters.