A Bystander in a Dangerous World
Tayari Jones's blog had a link to this piece by Walter Mosley on why people like crime stories. His thoughts on guilt and salvation are not startlingly new, but I like his insight about the feelings of powerlessness and distrust that motivate readers/watchers of crime narratives.
"Crime shows, mysteries, and films speak to the bystander in a dangerous world," writes Mosley. "[M]ost of us see ourselves as powerless cogs in a greater machine; as potential victims of a society so large and insensitive that we, innocent bystanders in the crowd, might be caught at any time in the crossfire between the forces of so-called good and evil."
We want to identify with the heroic character who does the right thing, who blows the whistle, tracks down the bad guy, or solves the puzzle just in time to save innocents. Or, as in Mosley's formulation, we want to believe that someone would do that for us.
What motivates people to write crime stories, I wonder? The desire to invent such do-righters? The urge to avenge ourselves on paper on the type of person ("Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental," wink, wink) who wronged us or someone we loved? The need to make a tidy clockwork narrative, beginning-middle-end, out of the tentacled, massy sprawl of real-life violations?
I don't know. And I don't know that I want to cater to or foster feelings of powerlessness and distrust, if Mosley's right.
I just know that I woke up on Friday with a rare morning of nothing to do, and instead of enjoying some of that nothing, like a sane person, I wrote chapter one of the sequel to THE DESIRE PROJECTS.
And then I sat there, staring at my notebook, with that feeling like you're going to cry, but you don't. I'd thought Nola, my protagonist, was done with me. I thought she'd said her piece, done her deeds, and moved on. Ridden into the sunset and all that.
Yet there she was, full of trouble and ready to go.
"Crime shows, mysteries, and films speak to the bystander in a dangerous world," writes Mosley. "[M]ost of us see ourselves as powerless cogs in a greater machine; as potential victims of a society so large and insensitive that we, innocent bystanders in the crowd, might be caught at any time in the crossfire between the forces of so-called good and evil."
We want to identify with the heroic character who does the right thing, who blows the whistle, tracks down the bad guy, or solves the puzzle just in time to save innocents. Or, as in Mosley's formulation, we want to believe that someone would do that for us.
What motivates people to write crime stories, I wonder? The desire to invent such do-righters? The urge to avenge ourselves on paper on the type of person ("Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental," wink, wink) who wronged us or someone we loved? The need to make a tidy clockwork narrative, beginning-middle-end, out of the tentacled, massy sprawl of real-life violations?
I don't know. And I don't know that I want to cater to or foster feelings of powerlessness and distrust, if Mosley's right.
I just know that I woke up on Friday with a rare morning of nothing to do, and instead of enjoying some of that nothing, like a sane person, I wrote chapter one of the sequel to THE DESIRE PROJECTS.
And then I sat there, staring at my notebook, with that feeling like you're going to cry, but you don't. I'd thought Nola, my protagonist, was done with me. I thought she'd said her piece, done her deeds, and moved on. Ridden into the sunset and all that.
Yet there she was, full of trouble and ready to go.
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