The Three Types of Fiction: Art, Entertainment, and Propaganda · 10:19am May 5th, 2014
Note: this blog post consists mostly of musings, not substantial critique or advice. You were warned.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about the point of art. As both a consumer and a producer of fiction it is a hard thing to avoid. Why people consume fiction is a question as old as fiction itself. Pigeonholing and categorizing fiction is a complex endeavor that even marketing executives have yet to fully complete.
To try and approach this question in a different way, I came up with three general categories. These categories are based on purpose and intent, rather than tropes or setting or other similar conventions. The categories I chose are as follows:
Art: Art's purpose is to ask a question. Its goal is to make you think, to explore and find your answer to that question.
Propaganda: Propaganda's purpose is to give an answer. Its goal is to convince you that said answer is the right one, to convert you to its worldview.
Entertainment: Entertainment's purpose is to distract. Entertainment doesn't have an overarching goal like the other two categories, consuming it is the goal.
I intentionally made these categories broad, so that they could encompass all types of fiction. Art can be a painting that describes a mood, and asks you to explore your relationship with that feeling. It can also be a short story or film that explores a character, and asks you examine that character's motivations and beliefs in relation to your own.
Propaganda can be a poster or advert that encourages you to join the army or use Burma-Shave shaving cream, either by tugging at your emotions or relating the product to something pleasant. It can also be a story that attempts to glorify a certain ideology or political position, by conflating the characters with certain viewpoints, or by dramatizing an argument between two opposed viewpoints (a common tactic is making the opposition's character look less competent than they do in real life).
Entertainment can be a by-the-numbers movie or book, with lots of actions scenes or sex scenes or whatever else. It can also be a multiplayer videogame, where the act of playing tests your abilities, but doesn't have any themes for the player to question.
So what does this have to do with fanfictions about pastel ponies? The seed of this blog post was actually planted in my head a while ago; a moderator for the Conversion Bureau-22 group rejected one of my fics because it didn't align with their ideology, and because it did not "represent" their message and views.
This was, at the time, an epiphany for me. As a writer with lofty, naive ambitions, I had assumed that every single piece of fiction and every writer was fundamentally predisposed to Art. Sure, I was well aware of FIMfic's bias towards Entertainment, but until that moment I had never had my own goals as a writer clash so severely with a (sub-)fandom's.
That is not to say that any of these categories are inherently bad or good; Art can be confusing as well as enlightening. Entertainment can be shallow as well as comforting. Propaganda can be misleading as well as eye-opening. But until this encounter, I simply had not been prepared for the creative bankruptcy and jarring hostility that my ideas could provoke. I had assumed that everyone valued these categories the same way I did, and the shock of being shown otherwise was a profoundly unpleasant experience.
In closing, I think that this system of categorization is too indistinct for serious use--a single work can have moments or scenes covering every one, and they all rely heavily on reader reaction. Looking at my own story gallery, it was obvious that many stories meant as one were received as another. Fiction written by someone with stronger ability and intent than I has the same pitfalls. I've been a fan of Death of the Author for some time, yet this system relies too heavily on authorial intent to be a proper categorization tool. Still, it was an interesting mental exercise.
Thanks for reading. Any scathing rebuttals, clever critique, or corroborating evidence are welcome. As with all my blog posts, being horribly incorrect is well worth starting a discussion.
those categories all heavily overlap each other
2079039 Yes, I was trying to get at that in the second-to-last paragraph. I edited it a bit for clarity
Sounds like a decent system of categorisation to me.
I can't believe I've never thought of this. This is a great system of catagorization. I would say that rather than having them be conflicting categories, I would rather have them sort of as amounts, the question is what amount of each of the three does your story have. Much like how any color can be described as the amount of each of the three primary colors.
It also gives me another way to state the fact I've come to terms with, that I seem to get more success writing entertainment than writing art, but occasionally I do have overlaps.
The most interesting aspect of this system is using it to analyze Friendship is Magic itself. The show is Propaganda (a toy commercial) disguised as Entertainment (a cartoon) that has moments of true Art. Neat.
2079211 Huh, never thought of that--would definitely solve the problem of it being too vague.
And yea, I think that every writer needs to come to terms with that at some point. I mean, they don't call it "mass marketing" for nothing
2079215 The show is also Propaganda because it tries to shoehorn in a lesson at the end of every episode. The fun comes when the message doesn't match the story. "Too Many Pinkies" and "Lesson Zero" in particular come to mind--the latter's conflicting message turned it into Entertainment, and the former's turned it into Art.
2079154 upon reflection, I think it works better as an analysis tool than a strict way of sorting things. While there are some works that are mostly one thing, there is so much overlap that it can't really pigeonhole anything (as 2079039 and 2079211 already pointed out)
2079215
Hah!
There are a lot of stories on this site that entertain within an established theme: shipping, clop, and forgiveness-and-acceptance are common ones. There are also stories that serve to explore a particular topic, like how Estee's "Five Hundred Little Murders" uses first-person narration to examine how a cynically mean-spirited pony perceives Fluttershy. You look like one of the authors that specializes in exploring a topic. I guess that is art?
Lots of stories will take you for a fun ride, but art leaves a lasting impression.
2164736 I think I see it a little different; one of the nice things about fiction is that themes/topic are separate from execution. Yes, they inform each other, but topic doesn't imply genre or intent. You could have a serious prison drama about a wrongfully accused inmate, but you could also have a light comedy or introspective character study about the same setting and person.
It depends on the author and story, of course. I've had stories where the goal of being propaganda was more important than theme, and others where over-focusing on theme had actually made the plot less focused. I've never read anything by Estee, but one of my prereaders pointed out a lot of thematic similarities across all their stories (despite the variety of genres).
Perhaps another one of the problems with this system is that it can't exist a vacuum; it needs other metrics and attributes to help really catalogue a story
Can you post that rejection? I'd like to what their ideology is, though I probably can predict what it will say. There's no Conversion Bureau-22 group on fimfiction or in google. Was this Chatoyance?
2079211 I agree. I think many of my stories are all three. Entertainment, to keep the reader reading. Propaganda, in that they present one outcome as being inevitable, or one answer as kinda sorta the narrator's answer. Art, in that the answer is nasty enough that the reader doesn't want to accept it and keeps trying to find a way around it.
2167556 TCB-22 is what I call the earlier TCB group (because of the group ID #), since there is another group with that name (TCB-26). Probably should've explained that in the post...
If you are curious, I can PM the relevant parts of their private message to you. I'd rather not post it here, both because it is long and because I'd rather keep this blog away from the topic of TCB and creative bankruptcy (I did consider making a separate blog post about just that, but there's enough criticism and vitriol directed at TCB that I didn't feel the need to add to it).