The Danger Of Soul Games

The Danger Of Soul Games

A soul game is defined by me as the villainous usage of pictoral representations to represent a human soul as a structure or object with parts, followed by a rendition of violence and destruction committed against the structure, with the stated intention to trick a victim into thinking that their soul has been damaged. So for example, let us say that a villain described a victim's soul as a crumbly rock and then the villain proceeded to supposedly 'crush' the rock in their hand, in an effort to trick the victim into thinking that their soul had been 'shattered', 'broken', or 'rent'. This is trickster lies and is not true. This is dark arts, meaning art that is used to describe the supposed victory of evil or celebrate madness. The dark arts may be either in written form, drawings, paintings, dance, stage or any number of other media. Soul games are among the worst of the dark arts and should be treated with grave concern. What would the reader consider to be dark arts? Would they consider a movie where the villains win in the end to be dark arts? Would they consider gratuitious violence in a comic book to be dark arts? Please weigh in on this.

Author: David Elkins

 

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This seems better suited to Religion than E,M,&J.

 

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Sometimes evil does win. So why shouldn't art show us that truth every now and then? Why shouldn't plays and film and literature portray the dark side of life? Do you want to censor art in accord with some fantasized G-rated reality?

 

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The idea that evil wins and does so completely and even regularly with definitive, lasting, long term consequences with no punitive damages to evil in any way is hard for most of society to believe even though its a very real and regular reality.

 

Stories are not told to reflect real life; they are told to illuminate the essence of life. (trivially, this is why we don't have stories that are 1/3rd sleeping, 1/12th eating and 1/48th toilet ablutions.). The point is, stories worth being told are stories with a message - an illumination of what is meaningful in life.

It is hard to rationalize why one would try to tell a story that does not have some sort of constructive message. It doesn't have to be positive, as long as it evokes thoughtfulness and hopefully, eventually, change. Change is constructive.

That is why we tell stories, and part of what makes a good story good and a forgettable story forgettable. Even if they are about a tragedy, the storie's legacy is how one deals with the tragedy (thus, a constructive message).

A story where evil wins doesn't really have a reason for being told, or a reason for being heard. (unless one finds, in the story, a constructive life lesson, such as life is not black & white or somesuch).

 

Dark stories are so uncommon in the media that I'm having trouble recalling any. Would Game of Thrones qualify?

 

There's oodles of dark stories. Gotham, Grimm, etc.

But again, the darkness is the milieu - against which the characters show their mettle. The stories tend to follow the good guys.

 

Should the jockeys in unicorn races wear Kevlar?

 

I think every film up for an acadamy award this year was based on a true story. I don't agree that stories are not told to reflect real life. Ofcourse they are. Even when they are fictional they usually reflect the realities of life and the drama of moral conflict. The "meaning" is generated from that drama.

 

You miss the point. The films tell the essense of the real life story. If they were supposed to reflect real life, they might include all the dull bits and add no meaning, such as sleeping, eating, pooping, the days of work where nothing meaningful happens, the days of work where lots of things happen but do not support the story being told. Sometimes, these things are included - but only if they set the stage, or otherwise further the story. Essentially, anything that does not in some way support the message (even if it's tangentially) is removed, otherwise, you have a story that meanders and get lost in pointlessness.

This is very apparent when one goes to write a story. One has a limited duration in which to tell it, and one must pare away anything that is not essential to the message.

 

Yes, they reflect the realities of life as a canvas agianst which the story gains meaning. They are not in there simply because they reflect reality. Eight hours of someone sleeping does not benefit a story.

 

The strange part is stories are not told where the antagonist is the hero usually unless they are like mob stories or its glamorized such as the recent mini-series about the life of a call girl etc. But in real life, there are plenty of people who dont identify with the good guy, dont care for it or even if they do, dont reflect their values. And in real life, they make quite a mess (for other people) and its not cool or glamorous.

You can see myriad ways trash is injected though with trying to make thug life, profanity, hypersexuality, slutty dress, aloofness, rudeness, stupidity, alcohol/drugs, materialism etc seem cool.

 

Yes they are there to reflect reality. Why do you think movies and books are based on true stories? Why is there a whole school of film theory called realism that says it is the goal of directors to capture reality? Why is there cinema verite, or reality TV, or documentaries, if people aren't trying to express reality in the medium of film?

 

The film depicts the events and facts that are relevant to the story. Events and facts that really happened. That's reality. It's expressing real life situations with real life events that happen to real life characters. You don't need to see people pooping or sleeping to appreciate a true story. It is reality, and it is art expressing what is real.

 

So what is being debated here? Whether this is real or not?

The morality of storing telling?

I'm not following.

 

As near as I can tell, the topic post proposes to define for the sake of argument an observed phenomenon according to particular perspective and criteria in order to frame a psychomoral question seemingly derived from professional work associated with the name David Elkins.

But one of the keys is that in order to properly address the question one must first learn the associated basic belief system.

 

Well my interpretation of "dark arts" is more or less the celebration of evil and it's various forms. Keyword celebration.

I wouldn't relate the teaching of dark arts, for the sake of increasing awareness to be the same.

And some forms of it are acceptable, for instance in the "warhammer" universe I like to role play in, to be an orc and kill for the sake of killing is a good thing, and celebrating it is fun lol.

 

Yes. That's the essence of reality.

'Reality' is things that are relevant to the story and things that are not relevant to the story. (sleeping, pooping, scratching one's butt, dozing on the train)

A story-writer's job is to find the essence - to distill relevance from irrelevance.

 

Ooo...the mysterious "essence" of reality. Yeah right. You said stories and films aren't made to reflect reality. I said they in fact do so all the time as evidenced by many being based on true stories. You have so far failed to refute that single fact. Invoking metaphysical essences won't help your case any.

 

Reflecting reality and being based on true stories are not the same thing.

In those true stories, people slept and pooped and paid their taxes, yet the accounts generally do not contain those real, but non-constructive events.

There is nothing mysterious or metaphysical here.

The essence of my day was puttering around in my yard, mixed with light reading and checking my emails.
If I were to describe the reality of my day; I would not eliminate the menial, irrelevant parts. But why would anyone want to read that?

And there's no need to be sarcastic; this is a civilized discussion.