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Amazon’s Influence on Literature

photograph of Amazon package with Smile logo upside down

According to Amazon lore, Jeff Bezos abandoned a cushy hedge fund job after reading The Remains of the Day, Kuzuo Ishiguro’s melancholy tale of wasted energy and missed opportunities. The young entrepreneur was so moved by the novel that he committed to a life of “regret minimization,” and struck out on his own to start a small online bookstore. Bezos’ then-wife claims that he didn’t pick up Ishiguro until after he started Amazon, but it still makes for a potent founding myth. Though Amazon’s virtual marketplace now offers far more than books, the nascent mega-corporation was influenced by literature on a fundamental level, and perhaps, for better or for worse, it has come to influence literature in turn.

Mark McGurl, a literary critic who teaches at Stanford, traces the influence of Amazon on the fiction marketplace in his new book, Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon. McGurl sees Amazon as a black hole with an inescapable gravitational pull, sucking everything from highbrow metafiction to niche erotica into its dark maw. He makes the bold claim that “The rise of Amazon is the most significant novelty in recent literary history, representing an attempt to reforge contemporary literary life as an adjunct to online retail.” Every book is neatly codified by genre (often incorrectly) and plugged into Amazon’s labyrinthine algorithm, where they become commodities rather than texts. “As a lit­erary institution,” he writes, Amazon “is the obverse of the writing program, facilitating commerce in the raw.” In other words, online retailers nakedly prioritize the market over artistic individuality, which ultimately homogenizes the literary landscape. McGurl acknowledges that Amazon has democratized self-publishing, in-so-far as it’s possible for Amazon to democratize anything. Through Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon pays hundreds of millions of dollars a year to authors around the globe, and though few writers make enough to support themselves through the platform, we have never been more inundated with things to read.

McGurl’s argument does have some weak spots. For example, Kyle Chaka objects that McGurl “doesn’t present any evidence that Amazon’s algorithm incentivizes novelists like Knausgaard or Ben Lerner to write in a certain style, or that it even accounts for their popularity, relative to other, lesser-known contemporary novelists.” If the argument is that Amazon has changed every aspect of literary production, shouldn’t we be able to see that impact in the style and form of bestselling novels? McGurl also oversimplifies the broad range of stories that Amazon promotes. He believes that all commodified fiction can be categorized in one of two ways. A story is an “epic” if it takes a cosmic perspective on life, uplifts the human spirit, and creates (in McGurl’s words) a sense of “cultural integration.” Alternatively, “romance” stories involve interpersonal drama, intimate worlds, and soothe us rather than puff us up. These categories flatten the diverse array of fiction published by Amazon and its subsidiaries, and how can we be sure that the company created our desire to be soothed or aggrandized? They’ve certainly profited off such desires, but there isn’t evidence that we’re increasingly relying on these narrative models or that Amazon alone is driving that change.

Amazon certainly is a problem for literature, but as Chaka points out, the problem has more to do with business than genre trends. Amazon’s low prices endanger small bookstores and the traditional publishing houses that stock their shelves. When negotiating contracts with independent publishers in the early 2000’s, Bezos advised his company to “approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.” This predatory attitude towards traditional marketplaces has hardly changed, and does affect the literary landscape in tangible ways. Whether the democratization of online publishing has come at the expense of traditional publishing is difficult to say, and it’s even more difficult to determine whether or not this is necessarily a bad thing, given how extremely homogeneous the publishing industry is.

Beyond the publishing industry, it might be said that Amazon poses an existential threat to writers. When so much content is available online, and millions of writers are forced to compete for the public’s attention and money, is there a point in writing at all? Parul Sehgal notes “a certain miasma of shame that emanates from much contemporary fiction,” even fiction produced by successful and well-known authors, and wonders if this despair arises from the online marketplace Amazon has created. Given the general mood of self-doubt and ennui, it’s worth celebrating how many people continue to be creative without hope of material reward. Amazon can hardly take credit for the vast output of such writers, but if Amazon has altered the way we approach and consume fiction, they certainly haven’t crushed the creative impulse.

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Jane Austen and Moral Instability

portrait engraving of Jane Austen

“Instability” is not a word many would associate with Jane Austen. Film and television adaptations have cemented her reputation within pop culture; we picture rolling hills, country balls, and restrained drama played out in charming domestic interiors. She seems uninterested in the Napoleonic wars, which were playing out just across the channel, or any of the weighty political matters that concerned the more “serious” writers of her day. She does seem interested in social unity, usually represented by a wedding, which punctuates the end of each narrative. Just desserts are always doled out by the narrator, and we always know which characters to root for. For these reasons, her name has become a byword for moral stability, and her version of the English countryside has come to represent a time when society wasn’t subject to rupture and confusion, as it is today.

If the wide array of contemporary Austen-themed conduct books indicates anything, she’s still seen as a touchstone for moral behavior. Her words have been used to demystify cooking, sex, and everything in between. This flourishing industry casts her as a sweet and world-savvy aunt, and further suggests that her novels can be pulverized into idiomatic quotes without context to serve a unified (if somewhat patchwork) Austenian ethic of the everyday.

And yet, beneath this seemingly tranquil surface lies a battleground for radical and conservative academics. Looking more closely at her works, it’s easy to see why; what at first appears a unified moral vision is anything but.

Attributing a single moral philosophy to Austen is notoriously difficult. There are overarching moral messages that connect her novels, but what may be the subject of mockery in one text is celebrated within another, or even within the same text. The unstable positioning of the Gothic in Austen’s first published novel, Northanger Abbey, is just one example. The novel’s heroine, Catherine Morland, is a voracious reader of pulpy romances, which leads her to commit a series of social blunders. She suspects that her love interest’s father murdered his own wife, in a plot lifted directly from the sensational literature of her day. But even though Catherine’s suspicions are proven false, the widowed gentleman proves to be cruel in other ways, which indicates that there is a glimmer of insight in even the most ridiculous Gothic fiction.

Even Austen’s engagement with class is hardly as black-and-white as it may appear. Often cited as the most fundamentally conservative element of her fiction, social and economic distinction are generally portrayed as the natural state of society, even beneficial to those at the bottom. Members of the landed elite like Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice and Mr. Knightley from Emma especially embody this paternalism. And yet Austen’s final published novel, Persuasion, celebrates the meritocratic royal navy, and denigrates the landed elite as undeserving of their wealth and privilege.

Academics from both sides of the political spectrum have claimed her as one of their own, a conflict which came to a head with queer theorist Eve Kosofky Segwick’s groundbreaking article on Austen, “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl,” in which she explores the cultural history of masturbation through Austen’s Sense & Sensibility. The mere title (the actual paper had yet to be published) prompted conservative academic Robert Kimball to write Tenured Radicals, a pearl-clutching polemic on the moral bankruptcy of leftists in the academy, who dared link a bulwark of old-fashioned English morality like Austen with such a depraved topic. Kosofy’s article, and Austen by association, clearly came to represent something much larger within intellectual discourse. Both Kosofky and Kimball had completely different views of this body of work, which again speaks to Austen’s versatility as a writer and as a moral touchstone.

Like all great literature, her work opens the way for a myriad of interpretations. She was a novelist, not a philosopher, and was therefore not obliged to lay out her understanding of the world in treatise-form. As Thomas Keymer mentions in his book Jane Austen: Writing, Society, Politics, Austen recoiled from moralizing novels of her contemporaries, like those of Hannah More, for their Evangelical zeal and purely didactic approach to fiction. She herself wrote to her sister Cassandra, “I do not write for such dull Elves As have not a great deal of Ingenuity themselves.” She is not calling for moral and imaginative complacency, but for wide-ranging sympathy and understanding.

Helena Kelly’s 2016 book Jane Austen, the Secret Radical, is described by Google Books as “A brilliant, illuminating reassessment of the life and work of Jane Austen that makes clear how Austen has been misread for the past two centuries and that shows us how she intended her books to be read, revealing, as well, how subversive and daring — how truly radical — a writer she was.” The impulse to claim her as a “secret radical” is perhaps as misguided as Kimball’s attempt to claim her for conservatives, compelling as Kelly’s interpretation may be. We can never completely reconstruct how Austen understood the world through her novels and surviving letters, but we can understand her as a three-dimensional person who may have had radical thoughts while still being a product of her time. When we move past our preconceived notion of her as a fixed moral touchstone, we can engage with her work in exciting new ways, which ultimately sharpens our understanding of how to be a person in an increasingly complicated world.

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Morality on the Side: Peter Handke and the Nobel Prize

photograph of Peter Handke

Debates about separating the art from the artist are not waning. In the last couple of years, we have seen the rise and fall of many artists. Yet, with some of the artists the fall seemed less imminent, and perhaps even unlikely. The world was fast in condemning the actions of Kevin Spacey, praised for his role in House of Cards. While on the other hand, Woody Allen’s work seems to experience little hindrance, despite allegations of sexual abuse. This is certainly not an isolated case, as Michael Jackson and Johnny Depp prove. But how do we decide which art and what artist to condemn, and which art we ought to separate from questionable morality of its creator. Can we appreciate art in isolation from moral considerations?

The Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Literature Prize of 2019 to Peter Handke, Austrian novelist, playwright, translator, poet, film director and screenwriter. What followed was an explosion of moral outrage, with vast number of individuals and institutions condemning the Nobel Committee’s decision. Handke is widely known for speeking at the Slobodan Milosevic’s funeral, espousing strong nationalistic views and refusing to acknowledge the crimes of Milosevic regime during the war in the Balkans. When NATO decided to react to the ongoing massacres, Handke wrote an open letter stating:

“Mars is attacking and since March 24th, Serbia, Montenegro, the Republika Srpska and Yugoslavia are the fatherland of all those who have not become martial, green butchers.”

Thus, it ought not come as a surprise that many consider Handke a person of deplorable morality. Rafia Zakaria described his work as “represent[ing] so well the right side of the political divide in Europe, the one that seeks to revitalize an imagined past and perceive the present as a moment of victimization by encroaching others, women, minorities and particularly the irksome migrants.” Many commentators do not find value in separating Handke’s literary works from his politics. Can we even understand an artist’s art if isolated from the views they publicly espouse? Should we?

There are several ways to answer that question. First, the simplest answer would be: yes, one must separate the art from the artist. The reasoning for such an argument might be based on the claim that truly great art is transcendent, it “can stand on its own outside of history and speak to anyone from any place and time,” and if it cannot “it’s not really great.” In case of Handke, this would mean that we foremost need to look at Handke’s work in isolation from the author, and if the work has some kind of value for us, then appreciation is warranted.

Another potential answer derives from the Roland Barthes statement that the author is dead. This viewpoint holds that it is the reader who assigns the meaning to the text by engaging with it, rather than the author’s internal considerations. Hence, the author is irrelevant for understanding of the text and “has no control over … final interpretation.” As Swift and Hayes-Brady put it “engaging critically with a work of art is completely different from endorsing the morality of the artist.” Looking at how this fits into our consideration of Handke’s work, one might say that it is fundamentally understanding that we assign to a certain work that matters, and not some sort of a universal meaning assigned by the author.

In addressing the question of whether we can separate art from artist, we might also ask, as Constance Grady puts it, whether the “work of art is asking me as a reader to be complicit with the artist’s monstrosity.” In appreciating the art, are we also forced to acknowledge traits of artist’s deplorable morality and actions in his/her art? Is the art asking us to be complicit or adopt their particular worldview? Depending on one’s answer, engagement with the work of art might need to change.

Lastly, by engaging the art of morally questionable artists, one might be providing economic benefit to the author. We have reason not to show this kind of support and to avoid public sponsorship (for discussion see Benjamin Matheson and Alfred Archer’s “Should We Mute Michael Jackson?”). By buying Handke’s book we are awarding the work that is based on the perpetuation of immoral viewpoints.

Regardless of the ongoing debate on separating art from the artist, Peter Handke’s statements, worldview, and actions that serve to minimize the genocide which occurred within living memory, and even go so far as deny the existence of concentration camps, must be condemned. There is no debate or question regarding that. As such, one must wonder how we should regard the Nobel Committee’s controversial decision? As Handke takes the stage in Stockholm to receive the prize, it will not only be him who will be awarded but also his professed views. One is no longer talking about separating the artists from their art, but supporting and condoning the artist in their totality. When Albert Camus was accepting 1957 Nobel Prize for literature he proclaimed that there are two roles of a writer: “the service of truth and the service of liberty.” Handke does service to neither. Not only did Handke himself show willingness to defend a war criminal but his art did, too. In Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia “he went out of his way to give credence to mass murder and, in this context, as importantly, to lies.” Handke even offered to testify on Milosevic’s behalf at the Hague. Hence, Handke is both a person of dismal morals and an artist who uses art to profess his viewpoints. The Nobel Committee erred badly this time by deciding to silence the voices of genocide victims and instead gave credibility to, and encouraged, an apologist of genocide.

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Iris Murdoch and the Moral Dimensions of Literature

gouache and ink painting of Iris Murdoch

“Literature” wrote Iris Murdoch, “is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.” This year marks 100 years since her birth; presenting an opportunity to reflect upon her unique philosophical perspective and the things it can still teach us. She published over 25 novels, but also made a significant contribution to moral philosophy, arguing for a kind of paradigm shift in the way the subject is understood and treated by philosophers.

One of the outcomes of her view on morality is that it bears a much closer relationship to art and literature than most philosophers would dream of affording it. But literature does not, for Murdoch, have a moral function in any straightforward sense which might be suggested by the notion of its bearing a kind of moral message – suggested, for instance, by the familiar phrase “the moral of the story.”

The moral dimension of literature is tied, rather, to Murdoch’s sharp critique of the commonly accepted view of the goals and methods of moral philosophy of her own day – tied, as they had become, to those of science – an orthodoxy which retains significant influence in contemporary moral philosophy.

Murdoch did not try to work out a system of ethics. Her critique questions the view of moral philosophy in which an absolute universal and objective ethical perspective is sought and in which the central concern of moral philosophy is the action of the individual moral agent in a moment of decision made against a background of facts. Murdoch thought that the sphere of the moral was broader and deeper than this traditional picture suggests.

She was particularly critical of the behaviorist model of the human being in which anything other than observable behavior is philosophically unintelligible. The behaviorist view is roughly that we cannot know anything about others except what we can see in their behaviors or actions, we therefore cannot attribute complex inner mental states to them, or at least we cannot talk about such states – rendering the “inner life” epistemically and philosophically off limits.

Murdoch thought this was a reductive and unrealistic picture of the human being and she advocated for a re-emergence of the “inner life” as a potent and central part of any adequate understanding of the moral dimension of life, and therefore of our understanding of ethics. This meant for Murdoch that many more concepts than just the usual suspects of moral evaluation, such as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ or ‘good’ and ‘bad’ have important moral dimensions; concepts for instance with which we judge others or reflect upon our own experience, like grief, sentimentality, wonder, admiration, pity, love, or humor can also be understood as important ethical concepts.

Bernard Williams applied the descriptive designation ‘thin’ moral concepts for those which are empty or general – like “good” or “right” and “bad” or “wrong.” He applied the term ‘thick’ to moral concepts which are more descriptive, and which usually require moral evaluation that considers individuals and contexts that don’t operate at the same level of generality. Such concepts are important ‘secondary moral words,’ and yet more generalized formulations of moral philosophy will tend not to recognize them as moral concepts at all because of their relation to the particular characteristics of individuals and contexts.

Murdoch thought the moral work was done at precisely the level of these kinds of concepts; it was not to be found in isolated decisions in particular moments, but in the work of attention, sustained by one’s efforts to see things with clarity and justice. The aim was to shake off, as far as possible, what she called ‘the fat relentless ego’ which could cloud our vision and hamper the moral effort.

In an essay called The Idea of Perfection Murdoch gives a famous example of a mother-in-law (M) making an effort to change her view of her daughter-in-law (D) whom she does not like, and has a tendency to see in an uncharitable light. Of the kind of effort M must employ, Murdoch says: “Innumerable novels contain accounts of what such struggles are like.”

The concept of moral progress is of vital importance to Murdoch – her view is not that morality consists in arriving, in full possession of all the relevant facts and theories, at the right decision in a moment of choice, but that there is an ongoing process of engagement that one enters into, which is a process of coming to better understand things by the quality of one’s attention.

In the example of M and D, M makes an effort to see D in a better light, by getting beyond her own biases she tries to see D for who she is – and for Murdoch this kind of effort of attention is moral progress, because M is trying to see D in a just and loving way. Because of this, the nature of the moral task is endless. That is, morality does not begin nor end with a decision or action, but is a sustained effort in one’s life and one’s outlook. As Murdoch says: “Moral tasks are characteristically endless not only because ‘within’, as it were, a given concept our efforts are imperfect, but also because as we move and as we look our concepts themselves are changing.”

As such, Iris Murdoch’s work centralizes the notion of ‘attention’ as a moral concept, and argues for the importance of the ‘inner life’ to morality, suggesting that the locus of morality is not the moment of choice, but the reflective attitude one takes to the situations and people around us. The work of attention, she says “builds up structures of value round about us, [so that] at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over.”

Attention, here, is not a matter of what will be illuminated by finding out more accurate information. It involves ‘being present to’ what one sees in a way that implicates oneself in the activity of seeing and thereby implies an activity in oneself – where I am morally ‘at issue’ in the way I apprehend the world and in the spirit in which I see others and myself.

In her essay Vision and Choice in Morality Murdoch suggests that:

When we apprehend and assess other people we do not consider only their solutions to specifiable practical problems, we consider something more elusive which may be called their total vision of life as shown in their mode of speech or silence, their choice of words, their assessments of others, their conception of their own lives, what they think funny…”

Yet many of the things listed here would not usually come into the sphere of what most moral philosophers would count as moral at all. Murdoch is suggesting that many of the concepts with which we think of people and of various aspects of life, which are not usually considered as having to do with morality, are in fact related in various ways to the moral life.

If we take this seriously, and want to reflect on what Murdoch calls the ‘total vision of life’ as morally active, then literature is one tool we have to do that with – again a tool which is not ordinarily thought of as part of the moral philosopher’s toolkit.

A moral interest in literature can help the work of attention because it gives us access to a vast reservoir of learning, thinking, and evaluating human situations and human lives; because literature involves imaginative effort and because works of literature can provide a form and a context in which to navigate the moral possibilities of concepts like wonder, admiration, pity, love, and humor.

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Banned Books: Why the Restricted Section Is Where Learning Happens

photograph of caution tape around library book shelves

The books included on high school reading lists have not been discussed nearly as widely as the books not included on those very lists. For years teachers and parents have debated which texts students should be able to read, and what parameters should be utilized to determine whether a text is appropriate for a certain age group. However, this debate has moved far beyond whether books are appropriate and has begun to explore how this form of censorship affects students. An article published in The New York Times discusses the banned books of 2016 and how their banned status reveals important facets of the current American psyche. In fact, the author states that the most prominent themes associated with the banned books of 2016 related to gender, LGBTQIA+ issues, and religious diversity, all of which were themes heavily discussed during the election year.

James LaRue, the director of the Office for International Freedom, illustrates his experience receiving reports from concerned parents who worry about the appropriateness of certain texts in their children’s school libraries. However, LaRue does not agree with this method of parenting and states, “They are completely attached to the skull of the child and it goes all the way up through high school, just trying to preserve enough innocence, even though one year later they will be old enough to marry or serve in the military.” This point is echoed by author Mario Tamaki who expresses that deeming books as inappropriate marginalizes groups of individuals and can adversely hurt students who relate to their characters. He states, “We worry about what it means to define certain content, such as LGBTQ content, as being inappropriate for young readers, which implicitly defines readers who do relate to this content, who share these experiences, as not normal, when really they are part of the diversity of young people’s lives.”

Both of these individuals relay their concern for the influence of banning books on young readers and this point is reiterated by Common Sense Media a non-profit organization which seeks to provide education to families concerning the promotion of safe media for children. Despite their specialization in appropriate media for children they encourage parents with the article, “Why Your Kid Should Read Banned Books,” which outlines how the most highly regarded pieces of literature were at some point banned in mainstream society. However, their banned status says nothing of the important messages held between those pages. They make the statement, “At Common Sense Media, we think reading banned books offers families a chance to celebrate reading and promote open access to ideas, both which are key to raising a lifelong reader.” This organization’s support for encouraging  a conversation regarding censorship and the importance of standing up for principles of freedom and choice is a critical facet of this continued debate.

On the other side of this debate are concerns of not only violence, language, and substance abuse, but questions about how explicit stories of suicide and self harm may influence young readers who are depressed or suicidal themselves. This concern was heightened due to literature such as the popular young adult book Thirteen Reasons Why, which revolves around a teenage girl’s suicide. Author Jay Asher has been outspoken regarding why censorship of his book specifically is harmful to teenagers. In an interview he describes knowing that his book would be controversial: “I knew it was going to be pulled from libraries and contested at schools. But the thing about my book is that a lot of people stumble upon it, but when it’s not on shelves, people can’t do that. Libraries, to me, are safe spaces, and if young readers can’t explore the themes in my book there, where can they?” Asher acknowledges that it is nearly impossible to create a book which will be appropriate for all readers. He outlines his experience talking to a student who was overwhelmed by the contents of the story. The student decided to refrain from finishing the remainder of the book until she felt completely comfortable, effectively self-censoring.

These attitudes towards censorship reveal troubling social implications when considering which books are chosen for exemption from libraries, as an article published in The Atlantic describes. There is a clear separation themes of violence and fantasy in comparison to the highly-censored themes referencing race or sexuality, which reveals a larger issue of the struggles of minority authors getting children’s books published. According to The Atlantic, “this means the industry serves those who benefit from the status quo, which is why most scholars see children’s literature as a conservative force in American society.” The author reinforces the ideas discussed by adults concerned about the limited access to a broad range of ideas in children’s literature, and concludes by stating,“This shared sensibility is grounded in respect for young readers, which doesn’t mean providing them with unfettered access to everything on the library shelves. Instead it means that librarians, teachers, and parents curate children’s choices with the goals of inspiring rather than obscuring new ideas.”

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Afrofuturism: The Beginning of the End for Stereotypical Black People in Media?

Art piece showing dark backdrop with pinpricks of light creating a 3D image of a woman and a kind of landscape

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

The box office hit Black Panther is important for a variety of reasons. Not only is it the next story in the revolutionary Marvel Cinematic Universe, but its racial implications are significant as well. A film showing a black superhero who is one of the wealthiest and smartest characters in the Marvel Universe being presented to the masses is powerful in regards to representation. But what might not be so well known among the masses of moviegoers that saw Black Panther is the genre that the film is rooted in. The Marvel Studios film has shed light on Afrofuturism, a genre where writing, film, and even music are shown through the lens of an African American. According to The Washington Post, Afrofuturism incorporates science fiction and fantasy into the history of the African diaspora. It ranges from writing to music and portrays black people in a more positive light, framing its black characters as incredibly intelligent and as visionaries. Although the Afrofuturism movement has acted as a catalyst for the empowerment of black people, should it be an indicator to white people to cast aside the stigmas and negative stereotypes associated with black people? Continue reading “Afrofuturism: The Beginning of the End for Stereotypical Black People in Media?”

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The Digital Humanities: Overhyped or Misunderstood?

An image of the Yale Beinecke Rare Books Library

A recent series of articles appearing in The Chronicle of Higher Education has reopened the discussion about the nature of the digital humanities. Some scholars argue the digital humanities are a boon to humanistic inquiry and some argue they’re a detriment, but all sides seem to agree it’s worth understanding just what the scope and ambition of the digital humanities is and ought to be.

Continue reading “The Digital Humanities: Overhyped or Misunderstood?”

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Did Bob Dylan Deserve a Nobel?

Bob Dylan has won countless music awards throughout his career, but his most recent award – a Nobel Prize in Literature – has left many confused. The debate boils down to what can be considered “literature.” Webster’s Dictionary defines literature as “written works (such as poems, plays, and novels) that are considered to be very good and to have lasting importance.” Although Dylan’s poems were performed musically, the actual lyrics seem to meet this definition. However, many still debate both the eligibility of Dylan’s work, as well as the reasoning behind awarding him over up-and-coming writers.

Continue reading “Did Bob Dylan Deserve a Nobel?”

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Should Musician’s Intent Matter to Political Campaigns?

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

One should never underestimate Donald Trump’s taste for showmanship. Long synonymous with his brand, the candidate’s tendency towards spectacle was on display throughout the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week. Seasoned politicians like Paul Ryan shared stage space with sports stars and soap opera celebrities. Highly stylized film trailer-esque clips emphasized the nominee’s expertise in a variety of areas. And, when Trump made his first appearance, he walked onstage to blinding lights and fog, a podium rising from the floor in front of him. In the background, Queen’s “We Are the Champions” sounded throughout the convention floor.

For a convention with no shortage of controversies, music choice probably seemed unassuming at the time. Yet observers were quick to note the irony of a candidate with strong conservative support using a song by an openly gay man who supported progressive social causes. Television host John Oliver, for instance, devoted a segment on Last Week Tonight to lampooning the campaign’s poor music choices throughout the convention – choices that also included playing The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” as the nominee and his family took the stage. And as Queen released a statement condemning the campaign’s unauthorized use of the song, it became clear that the seemingly innocuous choice had become a controversy of its own.

While Trump’s use of Queen’s music drew scorn from many commentators, his campaign is hardly the first to breach the norms of unauthorized song use. In recent years, prominent candidates like Mitt Romney, John McCain and Paul Ryan have all used or referenced music in a manner that ran afoul of the works’ creators. Perhaps most famously, Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign attempted to embrace Bruce Springsteen and his song, “Born In The U.S.A,” despite the lyrics’ blatantly anti-government themes. Springsteen himself disavowed Reagan’s fondness for his music, noting that he strongly opposed the economic policies that the campaign juxtaposed with the song. In this context, it seems that controversies over music choice have practically become a perennial issue for political campaigns, especially when the music’s creators disagree with the politicians walking onstage to their songs.

But was Trump’s campaign wrong to appropriate Queen’s music for their own ends? Your answer probably depends on how you read literature.

Legally, of course, the practice of using music in political campaigns without permission has its own problems. The permissions needed to play a song at a rally vary depending on the specific use and the publisher’s policy, a fact that has not stopped some politicians – including Trump – from using unauthorized music regardless.

Legal issues aside, however, the question of music at political campaigns speaks to a greater context in which we view creative works. And while examples like Reagan’s use of “Born In The U.S.A.” are no doubt relevant, misunderstanding of lyrics alone is not always at the heart of the issue. Of particular note is the ideological divide undergirding tensions between musicians and the politicians who use their songs. Contemporary examples – Paul Ryan citing Rage Against the Machine, Donald Trump walking out to Queen – make clear that the use of this music is controversial not because of its lyrical content, but of the context created by author’s intent. As musical guests put it during Oliver’s segment, misinterpretation of a song is another matter; at the heart of the issue is whether “you used it wrong,” as one of his guests sang. And as another artist in the segment put it, “we didn’t write these songs to make your campaign stops seem cool.”

Clearly, then, the debate around campaign use of songs is about more than licensing or misinterpretation. Author’s intent and the musicians’ own political views also matter; indeed, both are used to condemn the  politicians who ran afoul of musicians hostile to their policies. Using musician’s intent in this manner might seem like second nature. Yet, when other forms of media are examined, the role of creator’s intent is not so easily parsed.

Take literature, for example, where it is commonly argued that a work should be considered irrespective of author’s intent. While the author’s intentions traditionally have held some sway in literary analysis, some argue that consideration of a work should be partitioned from such considerations. According to this viewpoint, literary works are “boundless “texts,” to which no fixed or final meaning could be assigned,” as put in The New York Times. Writers and philosophers alike continue to argue whether the notion is accurate, but the issue of author’s intent continues to provoke controversy. For example, J.K. Rowling’s 2007 reveal that she wrote Albus Dumbledore as a gay character sparked debate around to what degree the revelation should play into readings of the Harry Potter books. Even in literature, then, such ideas are hardly settled. Yet applying such questions to campaign music choices reveals how much the debate is influenced by authorship itself.

Introducing the comparative lens of literature to understand unauthorized use of music also reveals how differently we treat the art form compared to other media. With music, lyrics are generally thought to be understood or misunderstood, not interpreted. There is usually a recognized and largely fixed meaning to many popular songs. And musician’s intent, unlike that of the author in literature, is seen as paramount in decoding what a piece of music might mean. Certainly, there is flexibility in this regard, especially in certain genres of music. Yet the boundaries for interpretation seem to be narrower for songs than literary works, explaining why the unauthorized use of music by politicians has proven so controversial.

It would seem, then, that the morality of using certain songs in political campaigns largely depends on one’s view of authorship. On one hand, it seems ironic that a politician as mainstream as the current Speaker of the House can espouse support for a decidedly anti-government group like Rage Against the Machine. So too would it be unethical to represent the interests of the two as one and the same, a point central to the view that juxtaposing certain songs with political campaigns is ethically suspect.

However, if debates around author’s intent from other media are taken into account, politicians’ use of certain songs could reasonably seen as a reflection of the disconnect between the creator and her work. Legal issues aside, if author’s intent is no longer central in interpreting a work, could the use of music in political campaigns be seen as justified? Or should the style of interpretation of music be considered, allowing musician’s intent to guide use of a work?

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This and That: The NRA’s Firearm Fairy Tales

Last week, the New York Times reported that, thanks to a set of fairy tales creatively recreated by the National Rifle Association, children can now read their favorite fairy tales from the perspective of if the characters had guns.  

In the retelling, Little Red Riding hood confidently tromps through the forest with a rifle across her back, and Hansel and Gretel hold the wicked witch off at gunpoint.  Even the Grandma, the unfortunate first casualty of the traditional Little Red Riding Hood story, now has a shotgun she makes use of to hold the wolf at bay.

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Whiteness and Go Set a Watchman

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The release of author Harper Lee’s long-awaited second novel, Go Set a Watchman, has sparked controversy even before hitting the shelves. Central among these controversies is the revelation that Watchman’s Atticus Finch, a celebrated character from Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, is portrayed as a harsh racist, more akin to the Ku Klux Klan than the defense against racism with which he is associated. As parents reevaluate naming their children after the character and others raise suspicions about the book’s publication, it is practically ensured that the text will be one of the most controversial publications this year.  Yet, for others, the publication of Lee’s latest novel has provided the opportunity to air longstanding grievances that existed long before Go Set a Watchman – grievances that stand to change the way we think about To Kill a Mockingbird’s legacy.

Foremost among these criticisms are concerns about both novels’ depiction of racism, especially in light of characters like Atticus Finch. A recent op-ed written by Colin Dayan noted that To Kill a Mockingbird’s plot, traditionally praised as a stand against racism, contains more problematic elements in the way its black characters are presented. In Lee’s novel, Dayan argues, black people are either victims or are simply dragged “humbly in tow” behind white characters like Atticus. Characters like Tom Robinson, he argues, are primarily used to draw attention to the heroism of these white characters – to the point where many of the non-white characters are included “only to be helped or killed by whites.”  Others, including acclaimed author Toni Morrison, have also drawn attention to the damaging “white savior” narratives upon which Mockingbird operates, presenting a reading of the work not often considered by white audiences.

While the dehumanized black characters in Mockingbird are certainly a problem, it may not be entirely the fault of the author. After all, Mockingbird is told largely from the perspective of a white child, a move Lee has said is grounded in her own experienced reality. The autobiographical nature of the book means that this white perspective certainly factors in prominently, which could be one reason the book exhibits the trends that Dayan describes. In some ways, then, establishing black characters like Tom Robinson as relatively dehumanized victims could have been central in building the worldview of a young white girl at the time, as Scout Finch is in the book. It could also be argued that the book may not have been as poignant if told from experiences and perspectives unfamiliar to the author. Personal writing is often incredibly powerful, and without its use in Mockingbird, the book may not have risen to prominence in the first place.

Regardless of author’s intent, however, Dayan’s points about the relatively dehumanized black characters still stands. In light of these points,  it is necessary that we reconsider Mockingbird’s foundational role in educating about racism. For many students today, especially white students, reading To Kill a Mockingbird may act as a foundational early element of understanding racism. Within this educational process, characters like Atticus are too often held up as heroes, while texts focused on non-white characters fighting racism do not receive nearly the same focus. These trends are not isolated; in an op-ed for The Huffington Post, John Metta writes that discussions about racism in the United States are overwhelmingly considered through the feelings of white people – a trend certainly not helped by the “white savior” narratives like those in Mockingbird.

In this regard, countering the “white savior” narratives in Mockingbird necessitates that students be introduced to more varied representations. An excellent example would be Morrison’s books; works like Beloved and The Bluest Eye offer powerful anti-racist narratives from the experiences of non-white characters. Exposing students to these texts not only diversifies the experiences about which they are reading, but also helps counteract white-focused narratives that hinder discussions about racism. And while the legacy of Go Set a Watchman has not yet been cemented, it has become clear that white-centric accounts of racism like its predecessor can no longer act as the definitive source material on race.

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The Poetry of ISIS: Is it Literature?

Since it first began capturing Iraqi towns in 2014, the militant group ISIS has become notorious for its widespread use of violence and atrocity. However, as Robyn Creswell and Bernard Haykel point out in The New Yorker, this violence is only one of the qualities defining the Islamic State. For the brutal acts of violence for which ISIS have become famous is juxtaposed with something decidedly more elegant: Arabic poetry. Such poetry, written by militants and figures like Ahlam al-Nasr, the so-called “Poetess of the Islamic State,” offer a key look into the narratives and art forms involved in the Islamic State’s spread.

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