Abdelouahab Hammoudi's Blog - Posts Tagged "social-function"
Does fiction have a social function ?
There is no doubt that fiction is an artistic act and its social product is the emotion.
Another undeniable fact is that fiction appears to always cope with a hidden social and psychological demand and need.
Fiction is not the reflection of the reality. It is a facet of this reality, a component that comes to enrich it.
Fiction (in book as well as in movies) is the dream of the human societies.
We dream while watching a film or reading a good novel.
The isolation and loneliness of the reader (or the obscure theatre in movies) recreates a dream-like state of mind.
Everything, in the ceremonial of reading (or screening) participates in deactivating the relationship of the reader (or the spectator) to his immediate reality.
The calm, the sitting position, the comfort preceding the reading (or the darkness preceding the projection) induce a passivity that increases as the reading moves on.
Slowly, the book (or the film) asserts itself as responding to the same imaginary need of the dream.
Aren’t - we therefore entitled to wonder if, like the dream at the individual’s level , the book (and the movies) have not got a repairing function of the spectators’ psyche?
Forbidding books (or closing for any reason a theatre) in any society, would not that amount to a displacement of the spectacle to the street , to satisfy the need that the book (and the theater) can no longer satisfy?
Could we not consider the stories contained in books (and spectacle in theatres) as a means for the audience, to unload their excess of energy of all sorts that has not yet, found its way in real life?
It seems that there is really this social and psychological function that we seem not to acknowledge yet and that keeps a healthy balance on the human psyche.
On the other hand, in the world of the fiction, could we not class it according to the objective that it aims to reach?
So we will have, for example:
1 – The Beacon fiction (orientation).
2 – The Warning fiction.
3 – The Pedagogical fiction.
4 – The Mobilizing fictions.
5 – The Therapeutic fiction.
Another undeniable fact is that fiction appears to always cope with a hidden social and psychological demand and need.
Fiction is not the reflection of the reality. It is a facet of this reality, a component that comes to enrich it.
Fiction (in book as well as in movies) is the dream of the human societies.
We dream while watching a film or reading a good novel.
The isolation and loneliness of the reader (or the obscure theatre in movies) recreates a dream-like state of mind.
Everything, in the ceremonial of reading (or screening) participates in deactivating the relationship of the reader (or the spectator) to his immediate reality.
The calm, the sitting position, the comfort preceding the reading (or the darkness preceding the projection) induce a passivity that increases as the reading moves on.
Slowly, the book (or the film) asserts itself as responding to the same imaginary need of the dream.
Aren’t - we therefore entitled to wonder if, like the dream at the individual’s level , the book (and the movies) have not got a repairing function of the spectators’ psyche?
Forbidding books (or closing for any reason a theatre) in any society, would not that amount to a displacement of the spectacle to the street , to satisfy the need that the book (and the theater) can no longer satisfy?
Could we not consider the stories contained in books (and spectacle in theatres) as a means for the audience, to unload their excess of energy of all sorts that has not yet, found its way in real life?
It seems that there is really this social and psychological function that we seem not to acknowledge yet and that keeps a healthy balance on the human psyche.
On the other hand, in the world of the fiction, could we not class it according to the objective that it aims to reach?
So we will have, for example:
1 – The Beacon fiction (orientation).
2 – The Warning fiction.
3 – The Pedagogical fiction.
4 – The Mobilizing fictions.
5 – The Therapeutic fiction.
