Does Entertainment Need to Return to Black and White Morality?

Earlier in the month on August the 3rd, the game news website, Polygon posted an article on the subject of videogames needing to return to black and white morality. The article started with discussing the fact that stories more often these days have morally grey characters, and this point I do wholeheartedly agree with them. The popularity of the tv show Game of Thrones has given rise to the grimdark morally ambigious characters, even though that existed before the show with books like the Witcher novels, The Darkness that Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker (2003), Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erickson (2003) and of course the Song of Fire and Ice, that the GOT show is based on. Even before the show there was a slow increase with books like Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (2006), The Blade itself (2006) as being two very popular in this genre. Since the show however, there has been explosion of grim dark fantasy novels with books like A Crown of Cold Silver (2015) Beyond Redemption (2015), Blackwing (2017) Nevernight (2016) The Court of Broken Knives (2017) The Grim Company (2013) and The Poppy War (2018). These are just the books I’ve read apart from A Crown of Cold Silver, there is presumably plenty of others I have not even read or come across yet or ones I’m forgetting from my own reading list. These fictions in general move away from the clear-cut moral good vs bad stories that we are familiar with such as Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, which is not a bad thing in and of itself. I do like these types of stories to a point. I do like the murkier, grittier types of worlds. Even with the grittiness in a lot of them they do have some morally good characters for instance Game of Thrones had Robb Stark, Ned Stark, Jon Snow, as flawed but what you could call morally good characters but also for the most part well written characters and storylines that make sense. It certainly is appearing more in films and tv shows like Breaking Bad, Gone Girl, Joker (2019) Nightcrawler, Watchmen. Morally ambigious characters and stories hasn’t escaped videogames and the article mentions Bioshock Infinite, and the more recent controversial Last of Us 2 game, where gamers or viewers or readers are left with a sense of uncertainty. In the Last of Us 2, the game was nothing more than misery porn and torture porn, it only leaves the person feeling depressed and empty as well as leaving the ending uncertain. This game certainly crossed the line not only in its moral ambiguity, and violence but also bad writing. Like scenes were forced just to get a character in a particular position such as Joel dying even though narratively it made no sense nor did it make any sense for the characters. There was little build up to his death and then he’s dead for shock values, like a Walking Dead or Game of Thrones type scene but what this game lacked at least one well developed character you could get behind and root for as even Ellie more or less acts out of character for the entire game. It’s this type of story that goes even further into that nihilistic, depressing world with no hope whatsoever. So, the article then goes onto to discuss despite this push for morally grey stories, that stories are generally moral as it is hardwired into our consciousness. I certainly won’t complain with that when we know when we have done something wrong and feel guilty for doing it. There are still plenty of stories that have these types of stories such as the Marvel films, the Jurassic World films, but in terms of gaming, there’s been A Plague Tale Innocence, Jedi Fallen Order, Horizon Zero Dawn and many others. These types of stories can have flawed characters but also be dramatic and tense, but also enjoyable and rewarding to the gamer. I largely agree with the article right up until halfway or more before the end where it brings in real life. It’s where the real crux and point to the entire thing comes to the surface. The article then says that real life is different to fiction, so that there should not be the same kind of moral dilemma of both sides. It even discusses examples such as photos of police kneeling with protesters that may give people a sense of a moral dilemma. The article goes even further and explicitly says that games end up being so morally ambigious and that all character’s matter—both heroes and villains so that means the moral of that story is all lives matter. A few more paragraphs and lines and its pretty clear when it’s talking about black and white morality it is not in the Christian or Aristotle’s virtues, and various beliefs that were held through out the ancient period, it’s meaning their version of morality. They use Bioshock Infinite as an example; Daisy Fitzroy from BioShock Infinite. She’s a flawed character just like everyone else even though she was apparently fighting for own people’s emancipation from slavery and in that it frustrates the author of this article in the sense, if your not fighting in the correct way, you will be discredited as much as those that are on the other side. It all comes across as using it as a way of justifying being violent to those who don’t agree with them and not just being made to feel guilty for it, but even seen as heroes, which is radical, in every sense to be able to fight against others and use every tactic in the book and be seen as justified. No matter how the media paints it, it’s still not morally right, and certainly isn’t in God’s eyes. The more you must reinforce and telling yourself that it’s the right thing and require other people to tell you the same, usually means it is not the right thing. No one should have to justify ‘good’ behaviour such as helping an elderly neighbour with their groceries. I think for gaming you can have a mixture of the traditional, Christian morality with flawed characters such as Jon Snow, Robb Stark or Luke Skywalker with equally morally grey characters like The Hound. Good v bad has worked for many stories like LOTR, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel and can certainly work for franchises in the future. If the option however is a choice between miserable, moral ambiguity or their twisted version of morality then it’s the moral ambiguity for me.