Artistic license: thoughts?

[analect]

All righty... in the interests of leaving some discussion open for those who want it, I have a question. How far do you take artistic license when dealing with something in a fictional context, and how much knowledge - either of the thing itself, or in terms of acknowledgement of the license you're taking - do you expect your audience to have?

I'm sure we all have different approaches here, so I'm curious.

As a kick-off point, I recently posted a story of mine that's been kicking around for a while to my journal. The Red Man is a horror short that involves references to Celtic druidism [click to read]. Though I researched a bit for the story, I don't know a lot about either historical or modern practice - however, I do have a few druid friends.

Their religious/philosophical slant is very different to the angle the story explores (notions of Awen and bardic tradition, while awesome, are not terribly horrific). So I guess you could say, here, I've taken the same kind of artistic license that The Wicker Man (the proper film; let's pretend the 2006 remake never happened) took with ideas of preserved pagan practice; i.e., it could have happened that way.

Is this something you do with different ideas? Or are you a stickler for realism and research? Does artistic license always (or ever) mean pandering to stereotypes, or is it a useful tool for playing 'what-if' with?

Comments

[holyschist]

Oh yeah, definitely. Although even though the Tain is written in a Christian era, it doesn't have the Official Church Line on women at all, which I find rather fascinating. But there's always going to be a lot of extrapolation that far back, barring the invention of a time machine.

(I love really good, interesting magic systems where the magic is coherent and comes with a price--or small and everyday and like tech, but not deus ex machina useful--but those stories seem to be rather rare.)

With fantasy there's definitely more leeway. Bump the invention of velvet earlier? Sure! Base a culture on a culture with slavery but remove the slavery? Sure (although consider the ripple effect this will have--fantasy Rome without slaves would look quite, quite different from just Rome without slaves, and that could be interesting to explore)!

(One of my irks is alternate history like "Rome never fell" that assumes that slavery still exists, but so does pretty much all the modern tech we use now. I'm not at all convinced that a society dependent on slave labor would ever develop all the labor-saving tech we use, or that a society that developed that labor-saving tech would need slaves--or want to deal with the drawbacks of having them, like the constant threat of slave revolts. Machines don't revolt or require expensive wars to acquire large numbers of captives to operate them when you could pay a few poor people to do so instead. It's all about thinking through the logical effects of changes to society, and how real societies work.)

I could buy a Roman lady who has a problem with slavery--there are people in very era who question the underpinnings of society--but it really depends on how it's done. And "self-esteem" and ball gowns had better not come into it.

[niniane]

Yeah, the Tain is definitely fairly different than a lot of other Christian documents. (Although even when you say "official Church line" you have to be careful, as Catholicism was not practiced the same way in Ireland as it was in Italy, even in the same era. One could argue that it's still not, although most things are somewhat more homogenous now due to communication, etc.) But, yeah, you never really know...you just kind of guess and try to remember that people are human, but do come with a lot of different notions.

I do like magic that is coherent and makes sense. But to make magic really work, you have to put a lot of thought into it - something that a great many writers don't do. But you can get away with stuff like "yeah, we figured out buttons in a different era. Roll with it." (Although I agree that Rome...really wouldn't have worked the same without slaves/some form of cheap labor.)

I do agree that a lot of the problem with alternate histories for me is that they do overlook how technology and economics drive change. I 100% agree that there wouldn't have been much of a reason for industrialization in a world where labor was cheap and plentiful (it's telling that a lot of industrial innovations were really adopted post black plague in Europe - and that some of them might have been lost if the Americas weren't discovered before Europe could entirely revert, thus likely keeping the somewhat unusual labor to capital ratio that was established in the plague. It's not certain, but it sure wouldn't surprise me if an unbalanced labor to capital ratio led to the industrial revolution.). The challenge, though, is that we're not even 100% sure why history happened the way it did now...far less how things would change. So I can get some strange stuff happening - but there's a point where my tolerance vanishes.

I could see a Roman lady not liking slavery, but probably for very different reasons than a modern woman would. It's one of those things where I'm willing to go, "Sure, she can question the underpinnings of society" (a lot did). But she probably at some level, too, realizes that her entire well being resides on, you know, having really cheap labor around. (Unless she's dumb, which could be kind of hilarious to play with. Ala, "Oh, let me free my 60 year old slave. It's wonderful to see him free!" just to have the poor guy starve on the streets as he can't find work at that age, etc.) And I'd see it as more likely that the sympathetic lady would question going into new territories and running off with captives to be enslaved, or abusing her slaves, or whatever, than necessarily questioning the institution that her entire world is based upon.

[holyschist]

Although even when you say "official Church line" you have to be careful, as Catholicism was not practiced the same way in Ireland as it was in Italy, even in the same era.

I'd argue that at least some of that is probably due to influence of the underlying culture--I mean, that's part of why we have lots of forms of Christianity.

And I'd see it as more likely that the sympathetic lady would question going into new territories and running off with captives to be enslaved, or abusing her slaves, or whatever, than necessarily questioning the institution that her entire world is based upon.

Yeah--or she might question it, but that doesn't make her willing (or able) to check out of the system, just as modern westerners may question the global inequality that makes the western lifestyle possible, but most can't fully check out of the system even if they truly want to. And of course a Roman lady would be very limited in her ability to advocate for any kind of social change (and a Roman man wouldn't be much better off, although you certainly get social critique).

[niniane]

Oh, yeah. Different forms of Catholicism (esp. in the Middle Ages) really did vary a lot, generally due to the established religion. (Although sometimes even due to their founders or other influences. Ireland took a hard line against slavery long before the Catholic Church as a whole did because of the influence of St. Patrick.) So while there were commonalities, even then, it's hard to say "Christian attitudes towards women" as there wasn't a standard attitude. (It would be like saying, "Classical Greek attitudes", which is rather goofy, as the experience of an Athenian woman was radically different from that of a girl off flashing her thighs in Sparta.)

It's virtually impossible to check out of any established social system. (Note all the people, like me, who fully believe in global warming, accept that it's going to destroy the world, yet still drive. I wish I didn't have to, but there's not really a viable alternative.) The same is true in all...

I'm willing to give some leeway for historical characters. But so many writers decide that their heroine is going to be this...I'm not sure...like, feminist, anti-slavery zealot. Which I suppose she could be, but this would totally alienate her from the rest of society and probably get her locked away in some tiny room in her parents' estate rather than win her supporters.

That said, it would be kind of funny to see someone write a historical novel where their hero/heroine did behave like a modern person, with modern views and then was treated as such by the people around her. ;)

[holyschist]

Well, hmmm. Modern stereotypes (allowing for variation between cultures) that have their roots in classical and medieval Christian thought, such as the beliefs that women make decisions in emotion (and that this is bad), or that women should be sexually restrained and chaste, for example. I've read Celtic-era fiction where people expressed those kinds of opinions and--well, the male heroes of Celtic myth make hot-headed decisions all the time, and the women blithely sleep around without censure (and even allowing for exaggeration on the part of the Romans, the latter is backed up with earlier historical sources). So then I find myself thinking "why do these Celts sound like medieval Englishmen/modern misogynist jerks?" and I'm thrown out of the story.

[niniane]

Some modern stereotypes have their roots in classical and medieval Christian thought. But not all. *shrugs* Definitely the idea that women are more emotional seems to come from classical thought. As did the idea that women (and men) should be restrained and chaste. (Although women often weren't assumed to be all that chaste - it was more that they should be than that they were. Many medieval primary documents seem to point out that men need to help women restrain themselves from their bestial impulses, as OMG were they ruled by lust, those crazy women!)

The Celts (or at least the Irish) definitely seemed to go for the hot headed men (who were regularly pretty stupid. Oh well...). I'd argue that the Myceneans probably did too, considering that Achilles is their main hero. And, yeah, women do sleep around (not always without censure, although sometimes), which is different. But, yeah, lots of differences. And I agree that when you get a pagan Celt behaving just like a modern day person (or Elizabethian Englishman) that it really does throw things.