The Gentle Art of Hypocrisy

With a general election looming, my thoughts turn to those of hypocrisy. This sounds like a neat way to burst into social commentary, but as I’m sure you are aware I am woefully under-qualified to make even such a broad political statement. My own political views are a sloppy amalgam of laissez-faire liberality and socialist tendencies, mixed with a cynical view of humanity I got from reading too much Hemingway. Nope, in predictably solipsistic fashion it is my own hypocrisy I’m going to be talking about.

I have been struggling of late to resolve two different concepts in my mind. They have been dredged up by my own actions (which, as always, have been less than spotless recently) and the fact that I just read through all my old Preacher comics again and found the protagonist struggling with similar issues.

I like to consider myself a feminist. Whether I actually am or not is probably a matter for someone else to decide, but I give it a jolly good try. It comes naturally to my thinking that people should be treated equally, and in situations where contextual evidence suggests otherwise, allowances should be made. We live in a society with the ability to level the playing field of achievement in the majority of cases. We don’t use that ability often enough, but it is there. Therefore, the idea that someone might find their ability to achieve and be fulfilled limited by something as non-specific as their gender strikes me as ludicrous.

But, gentlemen walk on the outside of the pavement. My granddad always used to say that (R.I.P. mate), and I do it without really thinking. When I’m walking with female friends I walk on the outside so if someone gets hit by a bus it’ll be me. I go out of my way to help ladies in distress, even at the times (admittedly few and far between) when I’m not trying to get into their knickers.

Are general ideas of chivalry incompatible with a true understanding of the feminist movement? Am I being misguided and a little patronising? This question gave me pause. I was perturbed to realise that I might be being hypocritical and condescending even when trying to do a good thing for other people (even when I WAS trying to get into their knickers).

It is upsetting to realise how far this double-think extends into your everyday life. I say ‘yours’ meaning, of course, ‘mine;’ I am sure you lot are paragons of clean-living consistency. As far as I am concerned, I seem to be operating under several contradictory operating parameters at pretty much all times. My attitude to meat is one: love burgers, but consider myself an environmentalist. My attitude to narcotics is another: generally disapproving of the effect they have on social units (families etc), and won’t specify my own usage in case my Gran is reading this (since when do you use the internet, Nanny?).

For someone with a pretty high opinion of themselves (admit it, I AM pretty amazing), all this was a severe prod to the old ego-balloon. Can you still be a good person if you say one thing and do another? Are you being ridiculous if you persist in holding beliefs that you know to be contradictory to other beliefs you actually hold? I spent a solid five minutes feeling like a bit of a ballbag, I can tell you.

Luckily I came to a few conclusions that made me feel a bit better. When I sat down and thought about it, I was perhaps jumping the gun in condemning myself (either than, or my ability to rationalise my own failures has increased to monumental proportions, and I’ll never be self-reflective again).

Firstly, well, at least I’m practising, rather than preaching. I consider myself a relatively amiable dude, and I’m definitely not going to push my choices onto anyone else. If I say I think one way and then act another than it may be something I have to work on, but I’m not telling anyone else how to think or act. True hypocrisy occurs when you demand of others what you fail to deliver yourself (there’s a political comment in here too, but I sure as hell can’t find it).

Secondly, and most importantly, things are always more complicated than you imagine. My chivalrous intentions are not limited to the lay-deez. I make an attempt to do nice things for everyone, but the realisation of these attempts takes different forms. If I got out of my car and ran round to hold the door for a male friend, they might look at me strangely. The attempt at chivalry would backfire in awkwardness. If society were a little different, maybe I MIGHT do it. I think, or at least, I hope, that my attempts at chivalry are not made because they are what woman need or deserve but are what they will accept, and I’d like to do as much for everyone as I can. Most men wouldn’t mind me holding a closing door for them, and so I do that for everyone.

So perhaps I can consider myself a feminist and still help people with their shopping, and perhaps I’m still a hypocrite, but I’ve put a fair bit of thought into it. The alternatives? Either live a life of extreme consistency (apparently impossible for me) or ignore it, and risk being caught out and justly judged by others. Neither of these is particularly gratifying to me.

So I’m a hypocrite, as there are surely examples of incongruous thinking that I’ve yet to realise or deal with. But I feel a little better knowing that in areas where my own actions wander out into moral and societal grey areas, I’ve at least had a good think about why I act the way I do. If I come across something too inconsistent to rationalise then I need to do something about it.

In the meantime, I shall continue to walk on the outside of the pavement, I’ll just do it for the dudes I like as well.

flaw

We partly define our reality by its flaws, by its inconsistencies and their effect on our own suffering. As we struggle for satisfaction and fulfilment, it seems obvious that the hurdles on the way to said satisfaction should be part of the framework we use to measure truth and what is real.

Remember in The Matrix where Smith tells Neo about the first matrix construct, in which reality was designed to simulate humanity’s idea of perfection? The people held within the construct could not process a reality that filled their every want, and their minds rejected it, leading to their death. (If you don’t remember the scene you could always go and watch it, but to be honest I’ve pretty much spoiled it for you now.)

This is an extreme example of the cliché ‘too good to be true.’ Something or someone who appears too close to accepted ideas about perfection is deemed suspicious, potentially false. An offer or transaction without a sense of balance, without some caveat of loss to weigh against the gain, is rendered fundamentally suspect.

Obviously this concept extends to our attempts to render reality. When we create a facsimile of the real it has to include facsimile faults, or something appears… off. Fictional characters need fictional flaws to be convincing, unless their perfection is a conceptual part of the story. My buddy Nash has, as always, explored this concept to humorous effect. Man, I hate that guy.

Flaws need not refer solely to character points. A good old-fashioned injury might easily suffice, at least in part. If you read the introductory chapters of several novels in a row you’ll see what I’m talking about, everyone has a wine coloured birthmark on the back of their neck, or a scar on their chin from falling through a screen door, a slight crook in their finger where they got it caught in a bike chain, different coloured eyes after a head injury as a toddler. Or a… never mind, you can see what I’m driving at.

It’s a good start because physical injuries are easy to envision in comparison to other, less palpable flaws. Readers have a tougher time understanding and relating to, say, a slowly developing inferiority complex than a gammy eye or a chin scar. Unfortunately the need for verisimilitude extends beyond facial disfigurements. In fact, many of us do have a slowly developing inferiority complex or something equally baffling, and so creating a rounded fictional character means taking a swing at that as well.

There are a few easy ways out of this requirement. This first is to include a personality flaw that is the mental equivalent of a physical injury- one that is easily graspable and has effects that are immediately obvious. These faults are often most obvious in genre fiction, where a character can be as much a plot solving device as they are dynamic creations in their own right. For example, several famous fictional detectives have foibles that are easily explained and can be consistently transplanted from one tale to the next. In most cases these fatal flaws are nothing more than vaguely antisocial vices: alcoholism, drug use etc. Huh, I think I just referred to alcoholism as a ‘vaguely antisocial’ phenomenon, I’m sorry about that. But in most cases the problems faced by Rebus, Holmes et al are not the socially crippling addictions and psychological problems faced by proper people. Phillip Marlowe drank too much fine scotch while playing chess- he never woke up in a bus station covered in his own sick.

The second way to create believable characters with believable flaws is to simply pick one that seems truthful or relevant and then tell the reader as much.

“Johnny was a handsome twenty five year old with a creeping inferiority complex and a scar in his eyebrow left from when he had ploughed through a glass coffee table as a toddler.”

That covers all the bases, but it feels a little forced, doesn’t it? Well actually I made sure that paragraph sucked to prove a point, and because I’m a horrible human being, but I think the theory stands.

If you attend a creative writing class for any length of time, someone will eventually bring out the old favourite: ‘show don’t tell.’ This refers to the belief that good writing does not rely on telling the reader what is happening, telling them what to think, what conclusions to draw. Instead good writing should simply describe, show the reader what is happening, and if the quality of the prose is high enough then your intention might shine through.

So in order to provide a plausible demonstration of a character’s flaws, a writer has to rely on their actions. If your protagonist is a stifling egomaniac then he’ll have to act like one. Or more importantly, if you WANT your protagonist to BE a stifling egomaniac then you’ll have to MAKE him act like one. On the other hand, if you keep making your character act like a stifling egomaniac then that is how the reader will see him, regardless of what you intended.

So really there are no flaws, only flawed actions. A bit like real life, which obviously is what we’re trying to emulate. To be honest, I forget what I was going for here. I’m a forgetful guy. As I just demonstrated, hey wait, THAT was it.