Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow #2

"Von Trenck ran for eight months on Broadway. I had the attention of the public for nearly a year, and I taught it nothing."

This is something I wrestle with on every project I come across. Is it adding value to the world in some way?

Should people come away from my work feeling like they discovered something new? Should they walk away knowing how to treat others better? Should I care and just give them what they want?

My favorite example of this comes from working in China.

Chinese people hate the Japanese for what happened in Nanking and the lack of an apology that has followed after.

So when it comes to antagonists and evil people it's easy to pick the Japanese. It taps into a deep cultural hatred and gives people an excuse to feed that hatred. Like in the original Star Wars Trilogy, all that German Nazi-ish feel was done on purpose. As a culture we were primed to dislike anything that reminds us of Hitler and the Nazis. So when we see the storm troopers all lined up and hear guys talking about blowing up innocent planets with the voice of the reich, we already know what to feel. It's sneaky and it's good story telling.

Which is why defaulting to Japanese villains seems like an easy choice.

But there was always something niggling in the back of my head wondering if we had the responsibility to help make that hatred go away.

Should I push for sympathetic Japanese characters that will make people question why they hate Japanese people who had nothing to do with Nanking? Is that my responsibility at all? As a story developer and writer how much of that is my responsibility?

It's easy to say "Hollywood needs to be more responsible" but the truth is there are hundreds if not thousands of people who make those projects come to fruition. Which one has the most responsibility? The producers? The investors? The actors? Directors? Writers? None of them have final say but all of them have a part. If one of them tries to start making moral statements the other ones are likely to shut it down for countless valid reasons. So where does the buck stop?

There is nowhere to actually pin it. Too much changes from day to day.