Art has the option of imitating history, bringing a sphere of reality to an otherwise fictional world. The writer extols the benefits of history, that from which we do not learn, to accomplish this. He or she works with a limitless tableau, an escape route that secures some literary license along the way. It is however a two-way thoroughfare, and history can imitate art. George Orwell's book 1984 comes to mind as a shining example of this. Written in 1948, the book's message. It is a “dark mirror” (hence 1984) of a totalitarian government, a reflecting narrative on the ways in which man could choose to adapt to and use technology. It is a disparate telling of the future, a chilling testament to the manipulative capabilities of man. I remember it as one of the most depressing, disturbing books I have read.
In Agents of Orange historical events lend a sense of realness, urgency and depth to my characters. I depict the female protagonist, for example, as a naive accomplice who takes the punitive fall for privileged Patty Hearst for a bank robbery. It happens during the short-lived, and somewhat obscure, Symbionese Liberation Army of the mid-70s. But the story of the main protagonist references a lesser-known act of the Holocaust. The Rheinlandbastards of Hitler's “Commission #3” were the Mischlinge, the mixed race offspring of French army personnel in the Rheinland region of Germany following WWI who coupled with German women. There is evidence of unions between German men and African women in the former German colonies in Africa. After 1933 Nazi policies mandated a compulsory sterilization program aimed at these people of mixed race.
In fiction, I employed history as a sound board. It allowed my characters with their conceivable flaws and attributes to react to, use history and perhaps learn from it better than their real, existing counterparts have. It occurs to me though that the past is often the unwitting soundboard, even template, for a subconsciously derived future. Art mimics a life replete with warnings, be it a dystopia that's been matched in almost every way but rats in cages, or the ego driven sinking of a ship in 1912. The originally titled Futility (1898) is a novella by Morgan Robertson. It characterizes the mega ship Titan sinking with striking similarities to RMS Titanic 14 years later. In either case, I surmise that, subliminally, ideas work themselves into society, the wider audiences for these books. In 1984's case movies were made based on the book, once in 1956 and again in 1984. Art, stories, movies, have an insidious nature of becoming self-prophesies. It takes decades, but just a plurality of society to run with the idea. At least the last four generations were born with a big brother figure watching them. “Orwellian” begged to enter the American lexicon and increasingly describes the direction the social climate is headed. Double speak and non-person are coming to fruition thanks to the current political situation. The NSA, foreign cyber-hacking, and wiki-leaks are extreme examples of how Orwell's exculpatory vision has matured, possibly further than he ever dreamed. Human instinct, perhaps for lack of adequate diversion, a perverse unconscious impulse to follow the antithesis, often is shaped by art, by what is seen as a curiosity. Metropolis (1927) pits the working-class against city planners. A romance between a city planner and someone from the working-class develops. It is this lower class who, as a prophet, predicts the coming of a savior to mediate the differences among them. It is a Christ reference and plays into the human consciousness, even if subtly veiled.
The line between historical fiction, science fiction and nonfiction is tempting to cross. History has brought them closer, increasing the intrinsic value to humanity and consumption of art by doing so. Art, cinema, literature, are all we have to express ourselves. If those disintegrate with technology, posing a sterile, electronic, robotic world, in which human thought, action and reaction are muted, I submit that society will cease to grow and eventually die. And what an irony, as the musings of one man over half a century ago were allowed to sublimate society, to dictate what could be its fate. In Agents of Orange I super-impose nothing. I simply use historical events to tell a fictional story in the real time period of their occurrences. I touch on racism, its victories and defeats, how the Civil Rights Movement has buoyed society and how it has impeded it. I touch on the issue of sexism in America at the time of its revolution and how it is seen by my characters from Europe. As long as art is produced, created, inspired by instinct alone, life may well choose to imitate it, if only to tell a better, more compelling story that has that modicum of reality.
Yorumlar