Over the past four weeks many things have changed. I'm starting to get organized in as many ways as possible, people are starting to think about whether history and fiction are essentially the same, and I don't know maybe someone in our school got a new dog. The one thing that hasn't changed in this month has been the persistence of one idea in our discussion. Now, I'm not saying everyone brings this topic up constantly (mainly it's just one person) but that repeatedly it overrides whatever we are talking about.
This topic is bias.
Now bias in itself is not a bad topic. Everyone has bias' and everyone should have something to contribute. But there is one specific aspect of bias that has really been irritating me. Every once in a while, one particular student will say that when composing a piece of history, fiction, or any source of media that the author should alert the reader towards their personal bias'. Hmmm...that's intersting I suppose. The strange thing is that this student thinks this will make the media more immersive.
That's my problem.
Postmodernism is great to think about in a controlled setting but if we use it in every story it would become maddening. You're reading a history book composed by a white man and at the beginning of every chapter he must preface it with this:
"Note: I am a white male American. I may misrepresent the following groups in this chapter on Railroads: Women, Immigrants, African Americans, Non-Americans, People of Asian descent, Native Americans, People of Eastern European Descent, People of Jewish Descent, Extremely Wealthy People, Extremely Poor People, Elderly People, Children, Railroad Workers, Steel Workers, Animals, Trees, Trains, Several Biscuits, and etc. All of these will feature prominently in the story of American Railroads."
Every chapter.
Every book.
Every single time.
Now I don't know about anyone else, but to me that sounds awful. The entire point of reading a story is to immerse yourself in it and take in the meaning in the words. If someone tells you every single bias (which I believe no one can know themselves that well, but that's a topic for another time) then it rips you from the story and plops you right back into your chic twenty-first century living room. What a drag. So much for escaping reality.
Or how about this, you're at a party and someone is telling you about this time that they went to nice restaurant in Chicago, JUST KIDDING! BEFORE THEY DO THAT, THEY HAVE TO LIST THEIR BIAS'!
Would that ever happen? No of course not. We're not robots. We're human and we have bias'. The fun part of any analytical media is to find the creator's bias and examine why that is there and how we can interpret the story differently. That's what I perceive as postmodernism.
Food for Thought.
On the idea of plainly stating one’s bias, I was immediately reminded of shitty trailers that give away the entire plot of the movie. Not only do they leave nothing to the imagination, but they also tend to warrant a disproportionate amount of dislikes. In contrast, an effective trailer is strategically selective in its content, if only for the purpose of persuading people to watch the movie. Similarly, an author or historian must make a case for their narrative so that the reader considers their accounts valid. While this isn’t a perfect analogy, I think it’s important to note that in both cases the value of the product depends on how the audience evaluates the bias. For example, was it a good movie? If history is truly just narrative, isn’t it our duty as conscientious individuals to already carry the assumption that history is never truly objective? Shouldn’t we identify biases on our own rather than rely on an author to tip us off? Furthermore, how can we even be certain that an author is aware of all of his or her biases? Self identification as a white male is easy enough, but I think we all know that such declarations only scratch the surface. And in that sense, I completely agree with you.
ReplyDeleteAs for your passive aggressive rant, the source of your consternation is completely lost on me. I can only imagine who this student could be.
I agree with Athena's statement in that as viewers or readers or whatever, we should examine the story and theoretically be able to critically think ourselves whether or not the story is biased. As we've been discussing in class recently, from young ages we are not necessarily taught to critically think about history. Not until we are in maybe middle or high school for some. So is it our teacher's job to teach us how to critically think about a story and consider the bias within? And maybe people can acknowledge their bias without being so blatant. Like a character in the movie slips in a line saying "I wouldn't know" or something in regards to a situation they wouldn't have experience with as a white man or something. Like in the new movie about Jesse Owens, at one point a white man is yelling at him for potentially giving up an opportunity to run in the Olympics where Hitler is and Jesse Owens yells back that it is easy for him to criticize because he is white and doesn't have to worry about being killed because he's black. So in a way, that can be acknowledging biases within a movie without hardcore just saying it at the beginning. Ya feel.
ReplyDeleteI think that maybe, possibly, perhaps your portrayal of the vision of incognito student's is overdone. Obviously there would be ways to state bias in situations where it matters without a disclaimer. There's a way to walk the line between bringing the reader's attention to bias and telling a good story. I would say that the main problem with stating bias -- in a classroom setting -- is not that it detracts from the story somehow but that a disclaimer runs the risk of becoming a sort of butt-covering for flagrantly pushing one point of view as the truth. Furthermore, if we view history as competing narratives, a statement of bias would be gratuitous because it is already understood by the readers. Also, an author pushing their bias sort of cheats us out of an opportunity to use their critical thinking skills, and since bias often exists without its owner even knowing about it, the author would probably miss acknowledging a consequential bias. So, the responsibility should really be with the reader. A historian stating their bias sounds good in theory, not so much in practice.
ReplyDeleteooops. I meant "Our" critical thinking skills, not "theirs"
DeleteFirst off, thanks for your defense of the incognito student. Second, I think bias does fall to both the reader and the author to think about. I'm not trying to nuder anyone's critical thinking skills. If anything, I thought more critically about Furious 7 after noticing its bias. Besides, we've done the "its the readers job to notice bias" thing forever, lets try a different approach. I think it would bolster critical thinking.
DeleteYeah, I don't quite recognize our recent class discussions in this narrative, at least as I've experienced them (and I have been paying pretty good attention). I don't recall talking about "bias" all that much in either section, and elsewhere on the blogs I've commented that I don't like the word "bias" to describe the kind of subjective limitations and inherently provisional aspects of historical writing. There are times when the word does apply, but it implies something more deliberate and demonstrably skewed than the postmodernist view of history would have it. (Because how do we assess how "skewed" a particular narrative is, without a point of reference against which to compare it?)
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't know that anyone is calling for the kind of constant disclaimers you're talking about here. (Disclaimers don't mean much, anyway--all these wild pomo historical novels all claim that the "historical" characters they depict only "coincidentally" bear certain "similarities" to "real people, living or dead," which, really, who believes that?
In my own notes on the question "What might a postmodernist history look like?" I listed "a historical narrative that itself challenges/deconstructs earlier metanarratives." History can (and often is) written in a way that treats the metanarratives of previous historical accounts as objects for critical scrutiny--so, like, an apologetic, minimizing account of the slavery era could be called out for reflecting a metanarrative of white supremacy and black acquiescence, as *part* of the larger historical narrative being offered. And authors can (and do) make a point of representing multiple points of view in their accounts of historical events--often adding underrepresented voices to conversations they hadn't been a part of previously. So now when we talk about domestic policy during WWII, the experiences of Japanese Americans in our own concentration camps are emphasized, brought into the "homefront" picture, in ways they generally weren't in earlier periods.
I agree with you in that one of the most important parts of trying to understand a text is to try to understand the author's point of view through it. In fact, it is perhaps the case that one of the most important reasons to read in the first place is to open oneself up to new perspectives and metanarratives, and this is something that simply cannot be done without bias. Setting this aside, though, it can often be difficult for a person to simply state any bias they may have. Because they truly believe their own personal metanarrative, they don't see it as a bias - rather, they see others who don't believe in their metanarrative as being biased. For this reason, as well as the many others you presented, I agree that a disclaimer at the beginning of every book warning that there may be some particular bias is probably impractical.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in that one of the most important parts of trying to understand a text is to try to understand the author's point of view through it. In fact, it is perhaps the case that one of the most important reasons to read in the first place is to open oneself up to new perspectives and metanarratives, and this is something that simply cannot be done without bias. Setting this aside, though, it can often be difficult for a person to simply state any bias they may have. Because they truly believe their own personal metanarrative, they don't see it as a bias - rather, they see others who don't believe in their metanarrative as being biased. For this reason, as well as the many others you presented, I agree that a disclaimer at the beginning of every book warning that there may be some particular bias is probably impractical.
ReplyDeleteI agree that notes of the like would take away a bit from the experience of reading or otherwise consuming content. On the other hand (playing devil's advocate), even in a more postmodernist writing style, it's hard to imagine a warning as played out as the example, and large part of the annoyance at that example (at least for me) was the sheer quantity of the writing devoted to express every possible bias; it read like a guy intentionally being overly literal to be irritating. A minor note about bias would be easily ignorable. Again, I don't actually see the necessity of such a warning, but the problems with it are overemphasized I think.
ReplyDeleteI agree that notes of the like would take away a bit from the experience of reading or otherwise consuming content. On the other hand (playing devil's advocate), even in a more postmodernist writing style, it's hard to imagine a warning as played out as the example, and large part of the annoyance at that example (at least for me) was the sheer quantity of the writing devoted to express every possible bias; it read like a guy intentionally being overly literal to be irritating. A minor note about bias would be easily ignorable. Again, I don't actually see the necessity of such a warning, but the problems with it are overemphasized I think.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to hear more on your personal idea of postmodernism. You brought it up on the end of this "bias examination", of it having to do entirely with analyzing biases, and that seems pretty interesting. Are you saying that postmodernism is essentially the breaking up of these biases? Does it apply to every form of media? Does every media have "bias" that can be picked apart or analyzed?
ReplyDeleteAlrighty Johnny. Here we go finally. Bias isn't a game that we can lightly just play with. Every time we have to look for any analyze bias, we're wasting time that could be spent ACTUALLY LOOKING AT THE TEXT. Bias is the first hurdle we need to jump over before we can get to the the meanings and implications. Take my Fast and Furious example, if you will. Because the product placement took us out of the film for thirty seconds, when I left the theater I could spend more of my time debating Vin Diesel's motivations and story arc (which were both hilarious, by the way). Bias will always interrupt immersion, it's just a question of when and why. When the author or filmmaker is straight with the reader or viewer, then bias becomes a nonissue. We're consuming media to understand its meaning, not to deconstruct the author first, then the story.
ReplyDelete