Patrick,
> I'm speaking, for the most part, about
so-called
> escapist entertainment. The world of escapism
has
> become much larger for producers in the last
thirty
> years than it was in the previous thirty. When
Doyle
> and Christie and Edgar Wallace were writing,
they
> expected to be writing for an English public who
were
> familiar with English conventions. They did not
expect
> their little works to become world popular.
Likewise,
> Poe, who invented all these genres and a few
others,
> was writing for a 19th Century American audience.
Few
> writers of popular fiction take the chance
of
> un-identifying a character by setting them up
as
> something with which any reader might refuse
to
> identify. It's just good business.
But the evidence just doesn't support that assertion.
Christie and Wallace were not just writing for an ENGLISH
public, but for a British one, and Britain, at that point,
included a wide-ranging empire.
C of E may have been the Big Dog in England, but
Presbyterians ruled the roost in Scotland and Ulster and
Catholics in the rest of Ireland. By your logic, it would
have been the kiss of death for Christie to make Miss Marple
so obviously an Anglican in her debut and, consequently, risk
offending Presbyterians in Scotland or Catholics in Ireland,
to say nothing of non-Anglicans in Australia, Canada, India,
and the rest of the Commonwealth. And that's to say nothing
of the clear, though understated, Catholicism, not to mention
the upfront FOREIGN-ness, of her most popular character
Hercule Poirot.
Yet she did.
> Chesterton was
> successful because he was always on the Catholic
Book
> List as "acceptable" reading entertainment.
Millions
> of Catholics in the US & Britain followed that
list.
> Millions more people, however, did not follow it
and
> some Catholics were especially attracted to books
on
> the "other" list, book that were forbidden
for
> Catholics to read. Robert Travers' Anatomy of a
Murder
> proved this to publishers. A of a M was banned by
the
> Church in 1957 and became the biggest best seller
of
> the year. "We" may be discerning reader, able
to
> analyze and examine the bigger picture behind
stories
> designed for entertainment. But the people who
make
> these books and films the huge successes they
become
> tend not to think beyond their own sloping roofs.
If
> you want to sell millions of copies, it's better
to
> let the reader fill in the more controversial
aspects
> of a protagonist's life.
You misstate the case here. There was a "recommended" list
and a "forbidden" list, but it didn't follow that anything
not on the "recommended" list was automatically on the
"forbidden" list.
I don't recall hearing that ANATOMY OF A MURDER was on the
forbidden list (though the film may have gotten a "C" rating
from the Legion of Decency), but even if it was, it didn't
get on that list just by failing to make the recommended
list.
And the point you still haven't addressed is how much
"popular entertainment" had characters, both sympathetic and
unsympathetic, who subscribed to specific religious
doctrines, or specific political opinions, or were members of
specific ethnic groups, going back decades, any of which
might have caused a reader or viewer to "refuse
identification." This directly contradicts your assertions
that such opinions and backgrounds on the part of fictional
characters are a fairly recent phenomenon.
JIM DOHERTY
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