barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
The Value of Vile
He claims that most children have moments where they want to do terrible things -- like kill their parents. They know it's wrong, and just as importantly, they know they can't pull it off. Frustration sets in and desires get sublimated, possibly to turn up unhealthily later on. Fairy tales smooth that process over. The child, hearing the story of Hansel and Gretel, thrill to the vicarious notion that their mother hates them and their father is willing to abandon them. Just as they always suspected! And when they snap the witch into the oven, it's a cathartic murder of their own mother they're experiencing.
Horrible stuff. Not good guys at all -- or rather a paper-thin justification for good guys and bad guys, all existing solely to set up the chance to murder one's own mother.
And children get it. They know what's going on, better than adults who have been socialized to gloss over these terrible crimes. They know perfectly well they can't toss their own mother into an oven -- no matter how much they may want to sometimes. They know it's wrong. But they want to do it anyway, and without fairy tales (or some similar outlet) they have no way to actualize those desires, to see that it's normal in some sense to feel this way. They repress the desires, never allowing themselves to confront them -- and trouble begins to brew.
Now, whether you buy this specific case or not, there still exists the possiblity that catharsis provides a psychologically healthy process. And vileness in some fashion (it might be time to start defining this term) will always be a part of that. And there will always be a fuzzy line between cathartic engagement and dangerous obssession. I argue that that risk, the risk of slipping over the line between (let us say) catharsis and obssession, is essential to the cathartic nature of the experience itself. Without the risk, and the survival of the risk, no catharsis can occur, no healing.
Only by looking evil in the eye and withstanding it will we ever know how much evil we can withstand. The risk that this time we will not be able to withstand it is an essential part of that learning and healing experience.
My thoughts on the value of vile.
Has anyone here read Bruno Bettleheim's The Uses of Enchantment? He's a psychologist whose theory is that fairy tales are full of horrible, horrible things -- especially CHILDREN performing horrible acts (murdering their parents, most commonly). His idea is that fairy tales have remained popular all these years precisely because they fulfill a very important socialization need -- they allow young children the chance to express feelings they have -- and KNOW are wrong.Mallus said:
He claims that most children have moments where they want to do terrible things -- like kill their parents. They know it's wrong, and just as importantly, they know they can't pull it off. Frustration sets in and desires get sublimated, possibly to turn up unhealthily later on. Fairy tales smooth that process over. The child, hearing the story of Hansel and Gretel, thrill to the vicarious notion that their mother hates them and their father is willing to abandon them. Just as they always suspected! And when they snap the witch into the oven, it's a cathartic murder of their own mother they're experiencing.
Horrible stuff. Not good guys at all -- or rather a paper-thin justification for good guys and bad guys, all existing solely to set up the chance to murder one's own mother.
And children get it. They know what's going on, better than adults who have been socialized to gloss over these terrible crimes. They know perfectly well they can't toss their own mother into an oven -- no matter how much they may want to sometimes. They know it's wrong. But they want to do it anyway, and without fairy tales (or some similar outlet) they have no way to actualize those desires, to see that it's normal in some sense to feel this way. They repress the desires, never allowing themselves to confront them -- and trouble begins to brew.
Now, whether you buy this specific case or not, there still exists the possiblity that catharsis provides a psychologically healthy process. And vileness in some fashion (it might be time to start defining this term) will always be a part of that. And there will always be a fuzzy line between cathartic engagement and dangerous obssession. I argue that that risk, the risk of slipping over the line between (let us say) catharsis and obssession, is essential to the cathartic nature of the experience itself. Without the risk, and the survival of the risk, no catharsis can occur, no healing.
Only by looking evil in the eye and withstanding it will we ever know how much evil we can withstand. The risk that this time we will not be able to withstand it is an essential part of that learning and healing experience.
My thoughts on the value of vile.
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