I wanted to get a fresh perspective on my essay so I asked my dad to look at it and give me some feedback, he used to be an English teacher and lecturer. I found the feedback very useful, I have been trying to fine tune my bit by bit and had lost sight of the overall format. He gave me some suggestions on the order I have included quotes which I have taken on board and tried to remodel my essay to make it easier to understand and to show the progression of my essay question and research. I have removed some of the quotes that either didn't completely fit the structure of the essay or were similar to other quotes that I think communicated my research more effectively. So far I have trimmed my essay down from 5000 words to around 3500 and don't think it has had a detrimental effect. I am still struggling with the order of a few sections of the essay and think I need to improve the way I have summarised my research in certain sections but overall I feel I am making some good progress and that the essay will work as an effective summary of my research.
Saturday, 31 December 2016
Tuesday, 27 December 2016
Refining essay
I have started to refine my essay, I have been using my research as a template to work from. The essay is far too long at the moment and needs to be refined, I also need to change the way it is written. At the moment a lot of the essay is written as if it is a blog post, lots of paragraphs starting with "I think" and lots of quotes that need to be trimmed down to specific sections that I want to refer to. I have been working through the template using my research blog posts as a reference and structure then reworking the wording and content as I go. I think I will need to refine the essay a number of times to make it flow, I have ordered the research in a way that I think best communicates my research and findings but want to make sure the information doesn't seem like separate chunks of information. during my research I have focussed in more and more onto fiction and really enjoyed the process so would like this to be evident in my essay. I am also going to conduct more visual research to see if it gives me more of an insight into my subject.
Saturday, 24 December 2016
Evaluating Research
I copied and pasted my research for this essay into a word document and wrote some extra paragraphs to segue between them. I wanted to see how many words it would be to get an idea of how to plan my essay. The total word count was just over five thousand so I need to trim it down a lot to meet the criteria. this have given me a good idea of what it is I have to do and I think it will make it easier to plan my essay. A lot of the research is me trying to find out where the research is leading me and what it is I want to know so I think I can condense it down a lot without having to leave out anything I think is important. I want to essay to flow through the research and be easy to read and not feel like clumps of information that have been forced together. I have really enjoyed the research for this project and want my essay to show that. I think the research I have done follows a logical path that should make sense to the reader although I may have to separate and reorder some of my source material to make my points as clear as possible.
Sunday, 18 December 2016
Lists
I decided to make a list of the research I have been doing for my essay and try to arrange the information into an order that would help me structure my writing. I don't want to just go through each individual piece of research one by one, I want to go back and forth between the various sources as the research becomes relevant. Much of the research backs up theories or offers alternatives and I would like to use the contrasting opinions to explore my subject. My question is still based on escapism but as the research has progressed it has become more focussed on fiction. I have found that fiction offers the most complete and interesting studies and has had the biggest impact on society out of all the escapist activities I have looked at.
Sunday, 11 December 2016
Why is fiction good for you
I have just found a really good article from the Boston Globe titled 'why is fiction good you'
The article starts off talking about the negative public perception of fiction at different times in history then goes on to try and explain why we have come to this hold these views. The article then looks at recent studies that shed light on how we are affected by reading fiction and the positive effect it has on us and society. I have just found this article while at work so will give it another more detailed read later and research the sources that are quoted in it.
The article talks about fiction being able to change peoples ideas and beliefs even more so that nonfiction. research has shown that when we read nonfiction we are sceptical and keep our guard up but when we become immersed in a story we let our guard down and become more impressionable.
"perhaps the most impressive finding is just how fiction shapes us: mainly for the better, not for the worse. Fiction enhances our ability to understand other people; it promotes a deep morality that cuts across religious and political creeds. More peculiarly, fiction’s happy endings seem to warp our sense of reality. They make us believe in a lie: that the world is more just than it actually is. But believing that lie has important effects for society — and it may even help explain why humans tell stories in the first place."
For a long time people have debated whether fiction is detrimental to society, these debates have culminated in events such as book burnings. Plato tried to ban fiction from his ideal republic. it is possible that one the reasons that fiction been attacked on so many occasions is just how powerful it is. The average American spends 4 hours a day watching television. The content could be another reason that fiction has been condemned is the subject matter. From television to novels to plays there has always been a tendency for fiction to tackle morally repulsive behaviour and with the impact that we are starting to understand it can have on a persons views, should we be worried?
psychologist Raymond Mar writes, “Researchers have repeatedly found that reader attitudes shift to become more congruent with the ideas expressed in a [fictional] narrative.”
The article states that studies have reliably shown that "when we watch a TV show that treats gay families nonjudgmentally (say, “Modern Family”), our own views on homosexuality are likely to move in the same nonjudgmental direction."
History has also shown us how much of an influence fiction can be on the morals of a society either in a negative or positive capacity. two polarising examples of this are "Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” helped bring about the Civil War by convincing huge numbers of Americans that blacks are people, and that enslaving them is a mortal sin. On the other hand, the 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation” inflamed racist sentiments and helped resurrect an all but defunct KKK. "
Fiction can be incredibly influential on society having a positive or negative impact. But is it down to the author to determine the moral values of their work. I don't think it is entirely possible to guarantee that people will react to a piece of fiction the way it was intended and there is also the possibility of the story being misused or misunderstood. For example 'The Protocols of The Elders of Zion' was written as a work of fiction but 60 years later it was used as propaganda by the Nazi's and some people to this day still don't believe the book is a work of fiction. This must be a scary thought for anyone who writes fiction.
One thing that fiction manages to do that should be able to unite all sections of society is increase our capacity for empathy. Studies have shown that people who spend a lot of time reading fiction out perform nonfiction readers on tests of empathy.
"novelist George Eliot, that one of fiction’s main jobs is to “enlarge men’s sympathies.”"
"As Oatley puts it, fiction serves the function of “making the world a better place by improving interpersonal understanding.” "
"one study showed that small children (age 4-6) who were exposed to a large number of children’s books and films had a significantly stronger ability to read the mental and emotional states of other people."
"Washington & Lee psychologist Dan Johnson recently had people read a short story that was specifically written to induce compassion in the reader. He wanted to see not only if fiction increased empathy, but whether it would lead to actual helping behavior. Johnson found that the more absorbed subjects were in the story, the more empathy they felt, and the more empathy they felt, the more likely the subjects were to help when the experimenter “accidentally” dropped a handful of pens — highly absorbed readers were twice as likely to help out. “In conclusion,” Johnson writes, “it appears that ‘curling up with a good book’ may do more than provide relaxation and entertainment. Reading narrative fiction allows one to learn about our social world and as a result fosters empathic growth and prosocial behavior.” "
"As the Brandeis literary scholar William Flesch argues, fiction all over the world is strongly dominated by the theme of poetic justice. Generally speaking, goodness is endorsed and rewarded and badness is condemned and punished. Stories — from modern films to ancient fairy tales — steep us all in the same powerful norms and values. True, antiheroes, from Milton’s Satan to Tony Soprano, captivate us, but bad guys are almost never allowed to live happily ever after. And fiction generally teaches us that it is profitable to be good. "
"In Appel’s study, people who mainly watched drama and comedy on TV — as opposed to heavy viewers of news programs and documentaries — had substantially stronger “just-world” beliefs. Appel concludes that fiction, by constantly exposing us to the theme of poetic justice, may be partly responsible for the sense that the world is, on the whole, a just place.
This is despite the fact, as Appel puts it, “that this is patently not the case.” As people who watch the news know very well, bad things happen to good people all the time, and most crimes go unpunished. In other words, fiction seems to teach us to see the world through rose-colored lenses. And the fact that we see the world that way seems to be an important part of what makes human societies work. "
The article talks about fiction being able to change peoples ideas and beliefs even more so that nonfiction. research has shown that when we read nonfiction we are sceptical and keep our guard up but when we become immersed in a story we let our guard down and become more impressionable.
"perhaps the most impressive finding is just how fiction shapes us: mainly for the better, not for the worse. Fiction enhances our ability to understand other people; it promotes a deep morality that cuts across religious and political creeds. More peculiarly, fiction’s happy endings seem to warp our sense of reality. They make us believe in a lie: that the world is more just than it actually is. But believing that lie has important effects for society — and it may even help explain why humans tell stories in the first place."
For a long time people have debated whether fiction is detrimental to society, these debates have culminated in events such as book burnings. Plato tried to ban fiction from his ideal republic. it is possible that one the reasons that fiction been attacked on so many occasions is just how powerful it is. The average American spends 4 hours a day watching television. The content could be another reason that fiction has been condemned is the subject matter. From television to novels to plays there has always been a tendency for fiction to tackle morally repulsive behaviour and with the impact that we are starting to understand it can have on a persons views, should we be worried?
psychologist Raymond Mar writes, “Researchers have repeatedly found that reader attitudes shift to become more congruent with the ideas expressed in a [fictional] narrative.”
The article states that studies have reliably shown that "when we watch a TV show that treats gay families nonjudgmentally (say, “Modern Family”), our own views on homosexuality are likely to move in the same nonjudgmental direction."
History has also shown us how much of an influence fiction can be on the morals of a society either in a negative or positive capacity. two polarising examples of this are "Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” helped bring about the Civil War by convincing huge numbers of Americans that blacks are people, and that enslaving them is a mortal sin. On the other hand, the 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation” inflamed racist sentiments and helped resurrect an all but defunct KKK. "
Fiction can be incredibly influential on society having a positive or negative impact. But is it down to the author to determine the moral values of their work. I don't think it is entirely possible to guarantee that people will react to a piece of fiction the way it was intended and there is also the possibility of the story being misused or misunderstood. For example 'The Protocols of The Elders of Zion' was written as a work of fiction but 60 years later it was used as propaganda by the Nazi's and some people to this day still don't believe the book is a work of fiction. This must be a scary thought for anyone who writes fiction.
One thing that fiction manages to do that should be able to unite all sections of society is increase our capacity for empathy. Studies have shown that people who spend a lot of time reading fiction out perform nonfiction readers on tests of empathy.
"novelist George Eliot, that one of fiction’s main jobs is to “enlarge men’s sympathies.”"
"As Oatley puts it, fiction serves the function of “making the world a better place by improving interpersonal understanding.” "
"one study showed that small children (age 4-6) who were exposed to a large number of children’s books and films had a significantly stronger ability to read the mental and emotional states of other people."
"Washington & Lee psychologist Dan Johnson recently had people read a short story that was specifically written to induce compassion in the reader. He wanted to see not only if fiction increased empathy, but whether it would lead to actual helping behavior. Johnson found that the more absorbed subjects were in the story, the more empathy they felt, and the more empathy they felt, the more likely the subjects were to help when the experimenter “accidentally” dropped a handful of pens — highly absorbed readers were twice as likely to help out. “In conclusion,” Johnson writes, “it appears that ‘curling up with a good book’ may do more than provide relaxation and entertainment. Reading narrative fiction allows one to learn about our social world and as a result fosters empathic growth and prosocial behavior.” "
"As the Brandeis literary scholar William Flesch argues, fiction all over the world is strongly dominated by the theme of poetic justice. Generally speaking, goodness is endorsed and rewarded and badness is condemned and punished. Stories — from modern films to ancient fairy tales — steep us all in the same powerful norms and values. True, antiheroes, from Milton’s Satan to Tony Soprano, captivate us, but bad guys are almost never allowed to live happily ever after. And fiction generally teaches us that it is profitable to be good. "
"In Appel’s study, people who mainly watched drama and comedy on TV — as opposed to heavy viewers of news programs and documentaries — had substantially stronger “just-world” beliefs. Appel concludes that fiction, by constantly exposing us to the theme of poetic justice, may be partly responsible for the sense that the world is, on the whole, a just place.
This is despite the fact, as Appel puts it, “that this is patently not the case.” As people who watch the news know very well, bad things happen to good people all the time, and most crimes go unpunished. In other words, fiction seems to teach us to see the world through rose-colored lenses. And the fact that we see the world that way seems to be an important part of what makes human societies work. "
Saturday, 10 December 2016
Refining Essay Question
I need to refine my essay question and come up with an essay plan, the subject of escapism is extremely broad and I want to make sure I research in relation to society. Escapism activities are often viewed as negative, timewasting and running away from problems. Names of characters that are thought of as escapist have been used as insults by high ranking political officials. I think that escapism is not as simple as running away and hiding from 'real life' , I think there are many benefits that can be gained through escapist activities. I think through these activities we can learn how to make sense of the complexities of the world around us. There are theories that suggest we have developed empathy through literacy, especially fiction. Fiction allows us to see through the eyes of other people. In the past we only felt empathy for a small group of people, friends, family. Through fiction we have been able to learn more about other cultures and see things from a wide variety of perspectives. if these theories are correct, fiction (which is essentially an escapist activity) could have had a huge impact on society. I think my question should be
Why is escapism viewed in a negative way and are these views justified?
I want to start the essay looking at psychological studies of escapism and exploring the possible positive and negative effects. Next I want to look at the way escapism is portrayed in popular culture such a television and film. Then look at genres in fiction and how they have changed over time: I want to explore whether genre can have a positive or negative effect on how the book is viewed. Then I want to look at theories relating to escapism and empathy looking at their effects on the individual and society as a whole.
Wednesday, 7 December 2016
Empathy
This article from the guardian is an extract from Steven Pinker's book 'the Better Angels of Our Nature'. In the book and in this article Pinker talks about the effect the printing press has had on society. His focus is on the drop in violence over time and the changes in society that have effected it. He talks about the invention of the printing press having a big effect on society, literacy became more common and reading allowed people to develop empathy by seeing the world through another persons eyes. This development of empathy coincides with violence levels dropping.
"The power of literacy to lift readers out of their parochial stations is not confined to factual writing. We have already seen how satirical fiction, which transports readers into a hypothetical world from which they can observe the follies of their own, may be an effective way to change people's sensibilities without haranguing or sermonizing."
"the full-strength causal hypothesis may be more than a fantasy of English teachers. The ordering of events is in the right direction: technological advances in publishing, the mass production of books, the expansion of literacy, and the popularity of the novel all preceded the major humanitarian reforms of the 18th century. And in some cases a bestselling novel or memoir demonstrably exposed a wide range of readers to the suffering of a forgotten class of victims and led to a change in policy. Around the same time that Uncle Tom's Cabin mobilized abolitionist sentiment in the United States, Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (1838) and Nicholas Nickleby (1839) opened people's eyes to the mistreatment of children in British workhouses and orphanages, and Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea (1840) and Herman Melville's White Jacket helped end the flogging of sailors. In the past century Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, George Orwell's 1984, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Elie Wiesel's Night, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse- Five, Alex Haley's Roots, Anchee Min's Red Azalea, Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy (a novel that features female genital mutilation) all raised public awareness of the suffering of people who might otherwise have been ignored."
Although Pinker is not talking about what is known as 'escapist fiction' all fiction is a form of escapism and his writing points out some of the possible benefits not just to the individual but to society as a whole. Not small benefits, huge society changing benefits that may well have moulded the way we live today. I am starting to try and find a clearer focus for my essay. Escapism is a broad term and has so many guises and implications. I want to look at the pro's and cons of escapism and why it has a bad reputation. I think I should focus on fiction as my escapist activity and see where it takes me. I have found some interesting opinions on escapism from psychologists and authors, I think it is time to revisit my research and try to formulate a more detailed essay plan.
"Fiction is empathy technology."
Pinker
"Fiction is empathy technology."
Pinker
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