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IcaroRibeiro on 30 October 2024
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Mnementh said:
IcaroRibeiro said:

Brandon Sanderson’s characters often see their own worlds and time spans through the lens of modern perspectives. Shallan is a good example of this, and Jasnah Kholin as well. HoloDust’s point is disingenuous: every piece of fiction is written through the historical perspective of its creator. You can't entirely remove your historical perceptions and sensibilities when writing. For instance, Frodo and Sam’s relationship differs between the books and movies, as they were created in different time periods. In the books, there's a clear master-servant relationship between the two, while in the movies their relationship is more equal in terms of social standing.

Similarly, the way stories depict women and social minorities will always mirror how contemporary society views those groups. One of the biggest indicators of this is how sex is portrayed in media. When society was predominantly Christian and opposed to nudity, stories tended to be less graphic. Over time, as people became less bothered by nudity, media simply adapted.

There are few historically accurate books and movies, and they tend to be niche. The Northman comes to mind, an excellent movie inspired by Norse legends, showcasing various Northern European cultures that are often (wrongly) clustered as vikings. Interestingly, many viking fans disliked the movie because deep down people don’t necessarily want historical accuracy: they want fiction and scapist fun.

It is true that every story also mirrors the world of the author. But there are levels to it, and there is a difference that readers/viewers/players can feel but often don't clearly describe in the difference if the author has an artistic vision and cares and have passion for their work, or if they do it to just please the masses. I think this video describes it well, even though it is made for cinema, but the issues are the same. He calls it storytelling entropy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tmxfVWDgMM

We can feel when something is done with caring and quality, and it's not necessarily related with passion to art, sometimes it's just collective work to make sure things are well done. I think Pixar movies are good example, they always have really tight and well designed world-bulding even when the screenplay is kinda sanitized (their movie Elementals is a good instance of it)

However the way I see it, even a well made movie, game or books still attracts same levels of criticism. I like using Star Wars The Last Jedi as exemple. It's an incredible well made movie, specially in technical and artistic level. Direction, visual effects, art direction and film editing comes to mind as being among the sharpest in the franchise 

But still faced criticism because the story and philosophy of the director wanted to show us did not meet what the fandom expected from a Star Wars movie

I believe more than anything the subjective value we give to art pieces is how well we can digest it. If the media is a hard pill to swallow because it causes discomfort on us, we are more likely to reject it. Think you are like me, a console gamer who has really hard time to adapt to motion controls or playing with mouse and keyboard, if a game need me to re-evaluate how I need to do even the basic things the odds is I will never like it (that's basically why I hate Nintendo Wii lol). I don't think it's any different with stories in fiction, if a story somehow start triggering your buttons it's a sign you're not going to like it