Does Enjoying GRRM Make Us Sociopaths?

[Cantabile]

After having seen a copy of "A Game of Thrones" sitting on our bookshelf all these years, the other day my wife finally decided to pick it up and give it a whirl. We have always had very contrasting tastes in literature, and I expected her to dislike it from the start since darker things have never been her cup of tea, but I was completely taken aback when it wasn’t my tastes she attacked for loving it so much, but rather my mental health.

Her argument was simple: why does a reader enjoy a story in which the characters they are meant to become attached to are crippled, murdered, raped, and in general suffer? When the writing itself is meant to evince feelings of heartbreak, tragedy, and trepidation, why do we derive pleasure from the experience?

Enjoyment of tragedies and morbidity can be traced into nearly every major culture, as far back as recorded history allows, so there can be no argument that the joy of artistic depictions of life's darker sin shatters cultural barriers, hinting at something more innately human. But the question remains, thobbing: Why do we enjoy these things? Is it truly harmless and a simple artistic taste, or does enjoying stories in which suffering and atrocities are centerstage touch upon something more than harmless pleasure? How fine is the line between enjoyment from true bloodsports such as bullfighting, gladitorial combat, or watching our fell human beings be hanged, rather than simply enjoying stories in which those things exist in prose or pixels rather than flesh and marrow?

I suppose it depends upon what one believes the purpose of literature is, and what the author is trying to achieve in their work. If Orwell's "1984" were to be stripped of violence, misery, and the macabre it would be a puddle of ink rather than a novel. Morbidity was necessary to illustrate a dystopian society, and if Big Brother was just a fluffy panda bear the novel would have never made such a profound impact upon much of Western culture's views towards totilitarianism.

Personally, I have always believed that art's purpose is to make us feel, and if an artistic is to ignore the negative emotions in life––and only write stories meant to evoke happiness in the reader––then art becomes as monochromatic as if painters were to deny half of the hues in existence. Dissapointment, loneliness, depression, rage, loathing, betrayal, tragedy, are all a part of the emotional spectrum, and are equally valid expressions as love, pleasure, trust, comfort, excitement, and joy.

But even if one were to accept the reason for reading stories as the simple but profound "we read to learn what happens next" then is there not merit in the macabre? One of my largest reasons for loving SoIF, and works like Prince of Nothing, was that the realistic portrayals allowed me not only to be swallowed by the story and characters, feeling for them far more empathy and attachment than for cardboard cutout characters that are in many stories, but that I never knew what would happen next. When there is no black and white, but only grayscale, predicting the story can become as impossible as predicting life. Anything goes. And that, for me at least, is a major reason for my love of darker literature. How can we "read to learn what happens next" when most entertainment follows such basic tropes that we can predict how the entire story will play out? When tropes are not only drop-kicked off a cliff, but the very notion of "good guy" and "bad guy" is pissed on by the author, it's a different playing field entirely.

Yet my wife has rejected all of these arguments, disgusted that human beings take pleasure in negative emotions evoked through literature, and it's the simplest line of thought of all that I cannot truly answer: Why do we choose to experience negative emotions rather than happiness? What makes us tap our feet impatiently for the next Bakker or GRRM novel rather than trying to get cheap smiles from stories written to make the reader merely happy? When so much of the world population seems so content with generic tales where the good guy always wins and lives happily ever after with his princess, what gives us such a fine appreciation and joy for dark literature?

[Jacen]

It's because deep down we know that the overly happy, Disney-esque fluff is exactly that, fluff. We enjoy tragedies and sad stories because that is more closely in alignment with our own realities. It also touches upon feelings of empathy and camaraderie with the characters. Everyone has lows and has suffered, it's much easier to feel a connection to that realistic character than other fictional characters that have it made.

That true to the world we live in realism, that "playing for keeps" aspect, is what attracts people to dark subject matter. I want to read stuff that has high stakes, that is true to life, that is ambigious and unknown, and uncertain. It just is more hard hitting and compelling and more fascinating that way. Fluff, cotton candy entertainment is fun for the moment, but because its so inherently unrealistic and shallow, it just has no chance as moving or touching or intriguing us as much as the dark stuff.

It's also a little twisted side of humanity that we like to focus on the negative, we are fascinated by it. Dante's Inferno is one of the most well-known books in existence but I doubt the average person ever heard of his Paradiso. To cite Bakker, as you mention, think of the Non-Men. Why do the negative memories of their lifes stick, while the joy fades?

Another example would be... take a relationship or friendship. You can have 40 years of amazing great times, but one really bad negative moment can end all of that, and all the good is forgotten in it's wake. In the cosmic scale, negative shit just counts more than the positives.

Also, enjoying GRRM makes one a masochist, not a sociopath. You have plenty of time to balance out the dark side of entertainment with fluff before you get his next book. :P

[delete this account pls]

I like the parts where dudes fuck up other dudes with swords and shit.

[Wras]

For me, getting through the bitter makes the sweet parts sweeter. It's far more satisfying when you see even the slightest bit of a happy ending (or even just a happy moment) come to the characters that have suffered. Besides, good writing is good writing.

[Trebla]

Really I'm in it for the dwarf porn. :smoking:

[Old Nan]

More like sociopaths (or as Jacen correctly corrects, masochists) enjoy GRRM. I have a hard time enjoying the plot because I'm much more of a hedonist.

[Ski the Swift]

For me, getting through the bitter makes the sweet parts sweeter. It's far more satisfying when you see even the slightest bit of a happy ending (or even just a happy moment) come to the characters that have suffered. Besides, good writing is good writing.

I agree, we enjoy all the shitty times because when something good comes along you savour it all the more.

Also I think the OP mentioned something about all fluff with good things happening the entire time and no one is hurt. This for some reason reminded me of Aldous Huxley's feelies in 'Brave New World'. Where all they do is fly in helicopters, take soma and have giant orgies.

I think there is another interesting point in Brave New World where one of the characters ( can't remember his name off the top of my head, think it starts with the letter H) is being sent away from the conditioned world and he requests to be sent somewhere with bad weather. He wants to feel bad times and have problems so he has something not boring to write about.

[The_BlauerDragon]

I think it has more to do with a reader's depth. GRRM fans may enjoy reading through the typical fluff on the market as much as most others do, but what they crave is something much deeper. Think of the endings that most fantasy characters get. Then think of what we've all speculated about as being the possible futures of the characters still alive in aSoIaF. Character endings that would seem like a horrifying let down in most other fantasy books (where no one has ever been in any real danger, or had to experience any true hardship) seem like such amazingly sweet possibilities in Martin's works. We enjoy reading about triumph over adversity, about trial and hardship, and about the real struggles that occur in the process of living. It's not that we want to see the characters suffer. It's that we want to see them earn their survival.

[Errant Bard]

Yet my wife has rejected all of these arguments, disgusted that human beings take pleasure in negative emotions evoked through literature, and it's the simplest line of thought of all that I cannot truly answer: Why do we choose to experience negative emotions rather than happiness?

Because happiness doesn't exist without its counterpart. Even carebearland has to have problems for anyone to even care. Disney films always do have some sort of big bad and bad things happen.

Now, because Mufasa is assassinated in "The Lion King", does it mean all those who watch it "take pleasure in negative emotions"? Like hell. No. It's the same for ASOIAF, nobody takes pleasure in "negative emotions", it's just that these things bring the good emotions in sharper view, when they happen.

And alternatively, it may carry a message. Your wife needs to read Brave New World.

[Horza]

I was going to suggest she read Medea. Or Macbeth.

All those yucky emotions are as integral to who we are and what it means to be human as all the happy fluffy ones. Viewing characters suffer and harm each other creates a bond as we share those violent emotions and the pain they bring. By exploring these through art we develop and probe our own beliefs and emotions on this fundamental aspect of ourselves.

The Greek playwrights knew this, storytellers have been doing it stretching back into prehistory. Contest and struggle are integral to human life from the family to the national level and so it is with good storytelling. Without adversity, without suffering we don't develop our own morals and identity.

[lacuna]

Imagine a human that is happy all the time. Happy, happy, happy. Happiness shines out of this person's every orifice, day in and day out, forever.

Is this a healthy human being?

[TrueMetis]

Imagine a human that is happy all the time. Happy, happy, happy. Happiness shines out of this person's every orifice, day in and day out, forever.

Is this a healthy human being?

Doesn't matter, eventually someone going to kill said person.

[A wilding]

I think there is another interesting point in Brave New World where one of the characters ( can't remember his name off the top of my head, think it starts with the letter H) is being sent away from the conditioned world and he requests to be sent somewhere with bad weather. He wants to feel bad times and have problems so he has something not boring to write about.

Distinctly relevant, because H (Helmholtz) is a frustrated great artist. He writes the Brave New World equivalent of Disney fluff, but wants to do more. But the bland happiness of the BNW gives him nothing to work with. He sees this, yet is sufficiently a product of his culture that when somebody reads him some of Romeo and Juliet he bursts out laughing at the absurdity of a society that allows such ridiculous events to occur.

Indeed one of the themes of the whole book is that great art is incompatible with happiness.

[Horza]

Doesn't matter, eventually someone going to kill said person.

I'd buy that book!

[Old Nan]

Because happiness doesn't exist without its counterpart.

Sure it does. The world is not some Hegelian dialectic. In a pertinent example, Westeros has a very, very great deal more of the "counterpart" than it does of happiness.

Imagine a human that is happy all the time. Happy, happy, happy. Happiness shines out of this person's every orifice, day in and day out, forever.

Is this a healthy human being?

It sounds like a good thing to be.

What is it "emo" children say? They cut themselves to feel the pain? Bah. Capacity to feel pain has absolutely nothing to do with capacity to feel pleasure.

[Horza]

It sounds like a good thing to be.

At a funeral? Strolling around Auschwitz II-Birkenau? Watching the nightly news?

Now there's yer sociopath...

[Galactus]

It's not done as often.

Seriously "grim'n'gritty" can and does quickly get just as formulaic, but as long as the *chance* of bad things happening is kept real it's still interesting.

The grimnss of ASOIAF does not interest me: The fact that anyone can die, and that I have very little idea of how exactly it's going to turn out, does.

Generally speaking, if a work manages to genuinely *surprise* me I'll have a higher opinion of it than if it didn't.

[wolverine]

It's not done as often.

Seriously "grim'n'gritty" can and does quickly get just as formulaic, but as long as the *chance* of bad things happening is kept real it's still interesting.

The grimnss of ASOIAF does not interest me: The fact that anyone can die, and that I have very little idea of how exactly it's going to turn out, does.

Generally speaking, if a work manages to genuinely *surprise* me I'll have a higher opinion of it than if it didn't.

:agree:

Also it is just written very well with great characterization and plotting. Many of the same people who love ASOIF also like The Hobbit and LOTR, I do not see a ton of darkness to those books.

Even if a book is fantasy it is much more interesting to me (and most others I believe) if it seems real.

[Kraken]

OP, you should read Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces. Aside from being a great book, he has a chapter on why tragedy is appealing (specifically using Anna Karenina as an example). Essentially, tragedy is meaningful because we know it to be true -- both in the literal sense that the world is full of suffering and in his psychoanalytic approach that we know our lives, and everything else, ends in death. Super happy fluff stories, while occasionally enjoyable, are false and forgettable.

I'm not explaining this well. I have the relevant passage saved on my home computer but I'm at work. If I remember, I'll post it when I get home.

[The Pita]

I like the parts where dudes fuck up other dudes with swords and shit.

Really I'm in it for the dwarf porn. :smoking:

Both of these reasons.

But I'm kinda surprised this took this long to come up with you and her. I mean, everyone I know knows I read sociopath books.

Also, reading is supposed to evoke emotions, some positive, some negative. We read to feel, and to think. And limiting ourselves to Bearenstein Bears so we only feel relief when reading is limiting ourselves to the whole experience. If you limit yourself to dark books, you'll go crazy. Which is why I read Terry Pratchett in addition to GRRM. As well as a plethora (I love that word even though I have no clue what it means. Plethora plethora plethora) of other authors.

But also the dwarf porn and the sword fucking.