{"id":9141,"date":"2007-05-22T11:38:01","date_gmt":"2007-05-22T18:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9141"},"modified":"2007-05-22T11:38:01","modified_gmt":"2007-05-22T18:38:01","slug":"misery-porn-and-the-linguistic-turn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9141","title":{"rendered":"Misery Porn and the Linguistic Turn"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Book publishers often claim that misery memoirs are popular because they provide life-affirming stories of survival. In truth, the reason why they sell in millions is because they give permission to the reader to enter into a supposedly private world of intense degradation, appalling cruelty and pain. These memoirs confess to so much that they take on the character of a literary striptease. They provide titillating and very graphic accounts of traumatic pain which actually turn readers into voyeurs. And, as in real porn, there is a lot of faking going on, too.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nSo writes Arts and Letters’ Frank Furedi<\/a>, who sees in “misery memoirs” potentially dire cultural consequences.\n<\/p>\n

\nMe, I tend to view this type of analysis with suspicion, not least because I think turning readers into voyeurs is what writers often intend to do—some more artfully than others, naturally, and some with the express intent of signaling the performative (see, for instance, Alain Robbe-Grillet’s The Voyeur<\/i>).  In fact, even those writers who wish you to “interact” moreso than “watch” are using techniques to guide you along—making you “see” what they want you to see.  Which has the effect of creating of you unwitting voyeurs—not necessarily to the story<\/i>, but rather to the author’s design.\n<\/p>\n

\nThat aside, Furedi’s real complaint is not so much the voyeurism these books compel but rather the toxic effect he thinks such misery porn has on the readers it targets:<\/p>\n

\n

In line with today\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s prevailing cultural outlook, people are more and more expected to blame their personal failings on their parents or siblings. Stories of childhood misery continually inform us that regrettable events in our formative years determine our future destinies. Expressions such as \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153scarred for life\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 or \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153damaged for life\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 give us the impression that, no matter what happens to us as adults and no matter what we achieve, we remain prisoners of past events.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nI think this is true to a point, but I’m not sure Furedi has the sequence here quite correct.  Because I suspect that the “misery memoirs” he chastises are simply a reflection of a culture that has for years tried to turn personal responsibility into a “conservative” bromide—while ironically promoting the more toxic bromide that virtually none of our failings are personal, but are rather the product of a culture that inscribes us.  Which means, naturally, that those who’ve surrounded us—and what we’ve read and seen and heard and internalized—are the raw materials of our agency.  When “we” fail, the argument goes, the dialogical web that created “us” is therefore responsible, leaving us to tease out those moments and actors culpable for planting the seeds of our later troubles.  We self edit in retrospect.\n<\/p>\n

\nAn elaborate component of the self-esteem movement, this procedure culminates in the “grouping” of those who’ve been similarly poisoned, so that they can commiserate over similar wounds, and gain the confidence to pass the buck, knowing that others will not only validate such an emotional crutch, but will turn it into a brazen defensiveness that actually strengthens the fierceness of the blame and the demonization of its object.\n<\/p>\n

\nOf course, there are legitimate instances of scarring caused by prior events, but for the most part, these “misery memoirs” are elaborate attempts to explain away personal failures.  Which, when you think about it, expresses a rather bold teleological view of the universe—and mimics, in that regard, certain religions in its attempt to find explanations for what may simply be accidents in a world governed by philosophical naturalism.\n<\/p>\n

\nOr, to put it another way, this is but another secular religion that the left has constructed to take the place of a God they have intellectually killed off.  It is of a kind with the very type of anthropic reasoning that gives us such concepts as “intelligent design”—making its adoption by many in the “social construct” crowd doubly ironic.\n<\/p>\n

\n“Misery memoirs,” therefore, are probably less a cause<\/i> of cultural problems than they are a way of reinforcing the ease with which we are capable of letting ourselves off the hook for our own problems.  Which, though we aren’t always responsible for the problems’ proximate causes, we nevertheless have more power to correct ourselves<\/i> than we like to admit to.\n<\/p>\n

\nWhich is not to say that everyone who reads or writes “misery memoirs” does so for the same reasons.  In fact, a case can be made that reading a misery memoir and becoming a “voyeur” to problems that aren’t one’s own can be a cathartic experience—and could have the effect of helping a reader dispense with self-pity rather than embrace it.  (Stephen King makes a similar argument for horror novels and violent impulses; Brett Easton Ellis?  Not sure what he thinks…).  Similarly, one can write a misery memoir for any reason—including to take advantage of their current popularity.\n<\/p>\n

\nIf Oprah didn’t exist, we’d have to invent her.\n<\/p>\n

\nAt any rate, an interesting read.\n<\/p>\n

\n(h\/t Brian Doherty<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book publishers often claim that misery memoirs are popular because they provide life-affirming stories of survival. In truth, the reason why they sell in millions is because they give permission to the reader to enter into a supposedly private world of intense degradation, appalling cruelty and pain. These memoirs confess to so much that they take on the character of a literary striptease. They provide titillating and very graphic accounts<\/p>\n

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