Does the imperative of identity “representation” in fiction lead us towards an anthropological regression?

In 2007, psychologist Paul Slovic attempted to answer the following question: why do we have this unfortunate tendency to remain indifferent to genocides and mass murders? […] His answer: a mechanism of “psychic numbing.” Our behavior, he explains, is not guided solely by our reason but also by moral intuitions. Instantaneous, sometimes imperceptible emotional reactions (“affect”) imbue the information we receive with meaning, influence the interpretation we give it and the reactions we choose to adopt. Now these moral intuitions, since they have been selected by evolution, are those that have allowed us to survive in pre-industrial societies, to effectively protect our family and our community from immediate dangers. We are therefore not programmed to have much empathy for strangers whose fate, however dire, has no negative consequences for us. (This was also Adam Smith's intuition, expounded in Chapter 1.) 

Should we accept this state of affairs?

No, obviously not. Reason must be exercised against our intuitions, must tell us that moral apathy, in certain situations, is immoral. But how can we effectively combat this collective numbness? Paul Slovic conducts and lists a series of experiments: he shows that as soon as a victim becomes “identifiable,” we cease to be insensitive to their fate. Giving victims names and faces allows us to “trick” our moral intuitions, to activate our capacities for empathy. And the more information we have about a victim, the more their fate touches us. When, on the other hand, the singularity of the cases dissolves into the mass, we struggle to feel compassion. Slovic shows that paradoxically, the greater the number of potential victims, the less value we give to each life lost. In one experiment, volunteers were inclined to give less money to help two children in need than to help a single child. The reason? In the first case, imagining two children, they did not focus on the singularity of each; they saw the concept of a child, multiplied by two. In the second, they represented themselves un child to whom they attributed a face, a personality, projects. An idea captured in various ways throughout the ages. We obviously think of the phrase falsely attributed to Stalin: "One death is a tragedy, 100 deaths, a statistic." Or that of the Nobel Prize winner in chemistry Albert Szent-Györgyi: "I am deeply moved when I see a man suffering, to the point of being ready to risk my life for him. Then I discuss lightly the potential pulverization of our great cities by a nuclear war. I am incapable of multiplying the suffering of one man by 000 million." Or that of Mother Teresa: "If I look at the mass, I will never act. I must concentrate on one case." 

What does this have to do with fiction?

Fiction reminds us that 100 deaths are 000 times one death. Fiction fuels our empathy. Slovic quotes the American writer Barbara Kingsolver. “Fiction transports you to make you someone else. A newspaper might tell you that a hundred people, say, on an airplane, or in Israel, or in Iraq, died. You’ll think, ‘How sad!’ and turn the page to read the latest sports scores. But a novel can take just one of those hundred lives and show you what that person felt like getting up on the morning of their last day, watching the sun glint off their door and their daughter’s cheek. You’ll eat their breakfast, learn to love their family, be troubled by their worries, and understand that their death will mark the end of the only life that person will have. A life as important as your own.” "Perhaps fiction helps to make life in society possible, to cultivate the feeling that each individual is an individual, that he has torments, sorrows, hopes, qualities, defects, a subjectivity, a family, friends. That his suffering and his happiness are not only theoretical. "Art is the remedy for moral numbness, because it builds our capacity to suffer for one another," writes Kingsolver. 

Let's go further. Fiction, because it is concerned with the particular, is also an antidote to ideology. It tells us the story of singular characters, teaches us that behind ideological discourses, simplistic narratives, community oppositions, there are men and women of flesh and blood, too complex, too nuanced, too diverse to be reduced to categories, placed in boxes, accused or pitied by default. "All art worthy of the name," wrote Aharon Appelfeld, "tirelessly teaches that the world rests on the individual. […] The great object of art will always be the individual with his own face and his own name." If, in politics, we must often ignore the singularity of cases and dissolve the particular into the collective, fiction reminds us that the individual is not an abstraction. It tempers the enthusiasm of those who would like, in the name of the general interest, to inflict harm on him. Ideology – a telescope through whose prism Man is but an ant in a vast system – shakes our capacity for empathy; fiction – a microscope of the human soul – reconstructs it. Alain Finkielkraut: “There are two antidotes to the disappearance of the particular in the general: literature and law. Attention to differences and the refusal to think in masses, which characterize the judicial approach and the literary approach to existence, preserve us from ideology.” And Philip Roth on the mission of literature: “Keeping the particular alive in a world that simplifies and generalizes is the battle to engage in.” 

In this regard, how does the acceleration of the woke paradigm of representation embody a threat? For empathy to be cultivated, the individual must be singular: he cannot be the interchangeable representative of a group. However, when characters are chosen to “represent” society, they cease to be individuals and become the standard-bearers of an identity, the delegates of a community. The Black team has its representative (he speaks on behalf of Black people), as do the women’s, homosexual, transgender, Muslim (etc.) teams. The character becomes, according to Alain Finkielkraut’s formula, a prototype. And fiction ceases to play its role: it no longer probes individual destinies but replays the dominant macroscopic narrative. Rather than keeping the particular alive in a world that generalizes, it disguises the general as a particular. Rather than combating mass thinking, it transforms masses into characters. It goes from the general to the particular rather than from the particular to the universal. 

The disappearance, in the collective imagination, of the individual in favor of the collective seems well on the way. Today, the news items that sadden us the most are often those that allow us, according to our ideological biases, to generalize our emotion beyond the particular case and to suffer for a group. However, the suppression of empathy – and the barbarity that it makes possible – takes place precisely when each persecuted individual is no longer perceived as a singular being, but as the prototypical representative of the group to which he is attached. When the individual fades behind the collective, when he is no longer defined except by his belonging to a community, and when this community is depreciated, even dehumanized. Because if it is possible to put oneself in the place of a individual executives, team leaders and professionals, trying to see things from his point of view, we cannot put ourselves in someone's shoes WITHIN GROUP. Groups can be dehumanized, not individuals. Timeless recipe for disaster: 1) Cut society into groups, pit them against each other through victim and accusatory narratives; 2) Turn each individual into an interchangeable prototype. The paradigm of representativeness contributes to the acceleration of the second stage.

Flawless women… supposedly inspiring

Scottish critic and screenwriter Will Jordan notes that one type of scenario is increasingly recurring. The story of a woman – endowed from the beginning of the film with an incredible talent in a field – who confronts the reluctance and prejudices of those around her to earn the right to practice her passion and assert her genius. She must neither overcome her own flaws (which would imply the need to train hard, to consent to certain sacrifices) nor defeat antagonists or formidable rivals (which would imply the need to think, to find bold solutions or to cooperate with other characters) but fight against “society” which prevents her from giving the full measure of her potential. In this type of film, the protagonist is often not very endearing. Why? Because she does not experience an inner transformation. She presents herself as she is (i.e., perfect) and it is up to others to change so that she can show the world how exceptional she is. Yet attachment to a character often comes from the compassion we feel when we see them fail, then from the admiration we feel for their willingness to evolve and grow, for their ability to face obstacles with resilience and humility. When, finally, they triumph, we rejoice because we know that their success is deserved. It is this narrative arc that humanizes certain characters, makes them memorable and endearing. 

Frailer and weaker than all the other recruits, she is at first a poor fighter, struggles to gain the esteem of her superiors and is on the verge of being dismissed from the military ranks. Determined, she progresses, compensates for her physical shortcomings with superior tactical intelligence, and ends up gaining the respect of all. In the remake twenty-two years later, Mulan is, from the beginning of the film, the best warrior in China. She must no longer Win respect from others, this respect is due to her. She no longer needs to evolve, it is all the other characters who must stop underestimating her. With this new Mulan, the scriptwriters probably think they have created a female role model; in reality, the 1998 Mulan was probably much more inspiring: she taught the power of surpassing oneself and perseverance. In France, the film Flo's by Géraldine Danon – a biopic of the famous sailor Florence Arthaud – begins with a scene in which the character of Florence, aged about ten, easily wins a sailing race against boys. During the course of the film, we almost never see her training, pushing her physical and tactical limits to become one of the best sailors in the world. The viewer is asked to accept that Florence Arthaud was gifted with a kind of divine gift that did not need to be maintained and cultivated: she could spend her time partying, all she had to do was get on a boat to easily dominate her rivals. In the film, the only obstacles Florence faces are social in nature: she must first overcome the misogynistic attitudes of her family (her father would like her to go back to school), then of her sponsors, who are reluctant to offer her a quality boat (they do not believe she is capable of beating men). It is up to others – and, this is the problem, only others – to question themselves to allow Florence to win the Route du Rhum.

By wanting to show that women are just as competent as men in traditionally male fields, some screenwriters end up creating flawless women, that is to say women who do not evolve, therefore uninspiring women. Because it is not the intrinsic qualities of a character that inspire us (it is impossible to suddenly become a genius in a discipline) but their life path (their choices, their sacrifices, their progress, etc.). In addition, if the heroine is almost invulnerable, there is little suspense, little dramatic tension, little stakes. 

In some recent American blockbusters, a young superheroine undergoes an inner transformation, but it is not about acquiring skills or correcting her bad choices, but simply about becoming aware of her own value and daring, finally, to deploy her qualities. In these scenarios, "society" - accused of pushing women to set mental barriers - is once again the only obstacle to the realization of the character's projects. In Doctor Strange 2 (Marvel), the character played by Benedict Cumberbatch goes back in time to talk to America Chavez (a young lesbian superheroine of Mexican origin, raised by two women) and give her the key to saving the world. Her advice? "Trust yourself, trust your powers - that's how you'll stop them." It's possible that this philosophy, supposedly emancipatory, is on the contrary enslaving, because it tells young women that they have nothing to learn, that they are perfect as they are and that their failures are always linked to others, never to their own inadequacies.

Combating the interference of wokeness in institutions: a path.

In 1946 in Politics and the English Language, George Orwell discussed the words "democracy," "socialism," "liberty," "patriotism," and "justice." "These words," he wrote, "are often used dishonestly. The person who uses them has his own definition, but lets the other person think he means something else." For several years, what has allowed wokeness to creep into institutions, fiction, and the business world without being challenged is that it disguises itself as causes with which it is impossible to disagree: "diversity," "inclusion," "social justice," "feminism," "antiracism," "fight for LGBT rights." Everyone understands that France TV Slash—a public service channel—does not have the right to produce only far-left fiction. But France TV Slash can produce antiracist fiction. Antiracism—in its classic sense—is beyond political divisions. This is not the case for anti-racism in the sense given to it by woke activists. Semantic confusion – the one Orwell denounced in 1946 – allows regressive ideas, packaged in positively connoted words, to disguise themselves as apolitical and universal struggles, to gain ground thanks to well-intentioned useful idiots. And for wokeness to become institutionalized, to the point of being confused with neutrality. 

Today, would the French find it normal for the government to require all film producers in the country to undergo ideological re-education training every year, given by political activists? Obviously not. Yet that is precisely what it does. Since 2020, the AVFT association – whose website is written in inclusive writing and whose Twitter account relays the words of decolonial activists – has been educating, at taxpayers’ expense, all producers in France in the (militant and highly contested) theory of the “continuum of violence”. Why is this not shocking? Because the training is called “Acting against sexist and sexual violence at work”. “Political language,” wrote Orwell, “is designed to give lies the appearance of truth and murder the air of respectability.” 

At a Disney shareholder meeting, a shareholder unhappy with the fate of actress Gina Carano (fired for her conservative political views) asked former CEO Bob Chapek a question: "It seems clear that there is a blacklist to punish conservatives in the entertainment industry. […] Disney and the blacklist: do you confirm?" Chapek's response: "Disney is neither left nor right. We defend universal values. Values ​​of respect, decency, integrity and inclusion. […] We want to live in a world where we can all coexist together in peace and harmony." Wokeism, since it is not the campaign of this or that candidate but the defense of a world where we can all live in peace and harmony, succeeds in passing for a form of neutrality. And aversion to wokeism becomes opposition to human rights.

First, because racism is not an opinion but a crime; and if cultural appropriation is a form of racism, the fight against cultural appropriation is a civic duty, not activism. Second, because of a phenomenon that biologist Bret Weinstein calls “idea laundering.” In recent decades—first in the United States and then in Europe—woke academics, who have become dominant in their departments, have used the university validation system to transform opinions into knowledge, to give academic legitimacy to activist theses. Today, patriarchy, white privilege, ecofeminism, or critical race theory are often notions that woke activists have studied in class, that they have read in academic books, that they have heard from qualified professors. This gives them a double legitimacy (moral and epistemological) to censor what they dislike, to impose their criteria of purity even in fiction. These criteria, from their point of view, are not subjective but anchored in a conception of the Good supported by social science. 

This is probably why the notion of "wokeism" annoys the wokes so much, and why it is fundamental. Since the term - as imperfect and imprecise as it may be - appeared in the public debate, it allows us to name an ideological movement other than with the virtuous labels that its activists adorn themselves with. And therefore to fight it effectively. It revives the debate where it seemed to have died out. If the new selection criteria instituted by the Academy of Oscars are anti-racist criteria, there are on one side those who welcome them and on the other racists. On the other hand, if they are woke criteria, there is an ideological opposition; neither side is beforehand disqualified. In the same way, a producer may be more reluctant to multiply script choices described as woke (the disapproval of some viewers when faced with ideologically marked scenes would be legitimate) than to multiply these same choices described as anti-racist (the disapproval would constitute a form of retrograde intolerance).