They can, at least. That is what Noël Carroll argued in his closing presentation at our SCSMI conference. In a spirited defense against “situationists,” Carroll argued that, when we admire Gregory Peck’s character’s measured response to violence in The Big Country, we learn an important lesson about self-restraint. Even if the movie does not actually make us more self-restrained, it teaches us to value self-restraint, which is a good thing.
I like Carroll’s logic. I want to believe it. The problem is, if movies can, indeed, make us more virtuous, they can just as easily make us less virtuous. Take Pulp Fiction. If there is any moral take-away from that movie, it is entirely eclipsed by the celebration of bad behavior. Does watching Pulp Fiction therefore make me less virtuous? I certainly hope not, because I enjoy the movie and show it to my students.
My question is, how can one defend movies like The Big Country on the ground that they teach virtue without condemning movies like Pulp Fiction on the grounds that they teach immorality?
Dirk, I believe you have misunderstood Carroll’s argument. Carroll was not arguing that “movies make us virtuous.” Rather, he claimed that fictions provide socially useful information about normative behavior, i.e., how we should behave. This does not entail that we do (or don’t) become virtuous as a result of consuming fictions. We may model our moral judgments of real people on the virtuous behavior of characters in fictions, yet continue to act immorally ourselves.
Moreover, Pulp Fiction is not a good counter-example. Like most films that appear to “celebrate bad behavior,” several major characters in the film behave virtuously when it is not in their interests to do so. Butch, for example, saves Marsellus from Zed and Maynard, while Jules allows “Honey Bunny” and “Pumpkin” to escape.
This does not mean I think Carroll is right. One objection to his argument might be that if consumers of fictions do not distinguish between the epistemic and the normative–i.e., if they confuse the information about normative behavior they receive from fictions for fact, thereby believing that people in reality behave like characters in fictions–then fictions would be deceptive, as ideological critics have often claimed. This, however, is an empirical issue, and I have no way of knowing whether consumers of fiction routinely succumb to this confusion.
Malcolm Turvey
On the first point, I know you’re right. My title is tongue in cheek. On the second, you may be. One can find “virtue” in any movie. (Think of the “virtuous” racism in Birth of a Nation.)
My real concern has to do with the Aristotelian defense of fiction as moral education. If we look to Hollywood movies to teach us values, I fear we are in trouble.
Here’s my understanding of Noel’s argument:
Fictional representations are a way in/by which cultures perpetuate themselves. One reason we attend to fictional representations is that they let us take pleasure in learning about others (social knowledge, new social worlds)–an adaptive process driven by our innate curiosity that cultivates insight and understanding.
Following Aristotle, Noel distinguishes between the poet and the historian; the poet describes what MIGHT have happened (universality statement, versus the historian’s singularity statement). The poet’s “might-have-happened” is rooted in character; in fiction, it’s character that’s determinative (largely, not necessarily entirely) of behavior and the course of events (narrative).
Acknowledging character as well as narrative to be constructs, Noel asserts a “new common view” that, although literary/fictional characters are “not like” real people, we–as a part of the perpetuation of culture and its ethos–seek functional, accessible and TRANSFERRABLE models from/in them. As models of how we’re SUPPOSED to behave, “aspirational” normative characters like McKay in The Big Country are also useful by providing a basis for judgment/evaluation.
But McKay doesn’t stand alone; he’s part of narrative fiction’s “wheel of virtue”–one spoke in a wheel containing a structured set of attention-directing comparisons and contrasts.
I can’t remember if Noel stated it directly or not, but he seemed to me to be suggesting that one reason why and how we (spectators) are able to “read” (and subsequently discuss) a film like The Big Country at all (though necessarily in the same, but instead proximate, ways) is that we DO sufficiently share the very cultural perpetuation he concluded with.
It stands to reason that a certain measure of that culture, having some measure of stability, informs human behavior in certain normative ways, even across a variety of encountered situations.
Even at the risk of invoking concepts from cultural studies, one could say that Noel’s “wheel of virtue” in narrative fiction characters also allows/explains negotiated and oppositional readings.
Following from this, Noel seems to suggest that spectators (for the most part) are, indeed, able to distinguish between the normative and the epistemic with respect to fictional character. (Of course, as Malcolm suggested, empirical confirmation of this is another matter; but the logic of Noel’s theory, based as it is in the “ultimate” asserted effect of cultural/ethical reproduction, is pretty compelling…)
So, with fictional models like McKay in discursive circulation, can the situationism prevalent in the social psychology literature suffice to explain human behavior? Are experiments like Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s also fictional constructs?
A few questions I’d pose to Noel: Can you provide an example of situationism from literature or narrative fiction film? Or is this an impossibility, as films/literature have to have fixed/stable characters in order for their behavior to drive the narrative situation? Obviously, “authored” events framed as beyond characters’ control impacts them, and they in turn respond–both drive a narrative. Also obvious is that not all artistic representation is narrative or temporal; how does/can the “wheel of virtue” obtain in painting or non-narrative works?
i take that we’ll all agree that we can learn virtue or vice by example from observing actions of living people in the world? if so, and if (at least some) movies tend to imitate living people in the world, then why wouldn’t we be able to learn from those imitations?
also, i have it (maybe naively) in mind that humans tend to lean toward the virtuous at least in principle/theory, if not in action. even bad guys will have some form of right-behavior code? anyway, if you have a story that glorifies the bad (pulp fiction? natural born killers?), wouldn’t even that story take on its meaning as a glorification of, precisely, the bad, in plain contradiction with the usual sense of good? in other words the thrill of the film would in part be attributable to the feeling of how shiningly wrong/bad it is, contentwise?
some thoughts…
tony e. jackson
university of north carolina, charlotte
Good points. They apply to video games, too. The things players do in Grand Theft Auto are truly awful. That’s part of what makes them fun. But the value(s) of the game, such as they are, have little to do with what it teaches us about virtue.
I am sorry that I missed Carroll’s closing presentation (and the conference in general). I am a new member of SCSMI, but I have been impressed by the work of Carroll, Bordwell and many other scholars who are combining psychology and film studies.
As a clinical psychologist however, my interests tend to be at the levels of meaning making, identity, and therapy (as opposed to the majority of the work being done here that attempts to establish connections between certain cognitive concepts and narrative comphrehension).
I therefore found Dirk’s summary of Carrolls’ speech very exciting. While it makes sense that a philosopher is interested in virtue, it is a bit of a departure from the things that I most often see associated with SCSMI.
The way I have characterized an approach to film that would encompass the impact of film on virtue is “Movies as Equipment for Living” (stealing a phrase from the rhetorician, Kenneth Burke; I use the phrase from the culminating chapter of my recent book, Psychology at the Movies {Wiley-Blackwell} and in a blog I recently started for Psychology Today {http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/movies-and-the-mind}). Following Burke, I would tend to see films as containing potentialities for virtuous (or non-virtuous) action that are played out in the lives of individual viewers.
There is a bit of a gap between the relatively precise and discrete approach to the mental processes of interest to cognitivists and the fuzzier concepts of identity development, but I hope Carroll’s presentation indicates a renewed willingness among film scholars to work in that space.
Skip Dine Young
Professor of Psychology
Hanover College
I would like to weigh in, since we are bringing up “learning” from movies and this is a particular interest of mine.
I know that this discussion was likely focused primarily on adults, but I want bring children into the conversation, since we are talking about learning from movies. I think this is especially relevant if you look at the latest statistics on how much time children are spending in front of a television. We do know that children are looking for and learning from the messages that they are receiving in various story formats. We also know that school-aged children are still working on distinguishing fiction from reality in TV and Movies. It does seem that many children (in my experience as a Child and Family Therapist) are learning more from TV and movies than they are directly from their parents. I wonder if this could also have implications for how these children, once they become adults, interpret or are affected by the movies they watch. I would love to hear more discussion from filmmakers about being intentional, even from a moral perspective, with the messages that they are trying to share.
Michelle Ellisor
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Associate
Austin Psychotherapy Associates- Austin, TX