Story, and delusion

I’m not going to dig into this. I will stand two examples. They’re my favourites.

Here is a base you need to know—I know moors well. Moors are an uplift of land. The uplift can raise the land high, sometimes several hundred metres. Measured from sea‐level, the rise can be near a mountain. A small mountain, but a mountain. But moors are not mountains. They are flat. They have no pointy top. In England, there are a few patches of moor. The most well‐known, and largest, starts in Derbyshire, ends near Scotland, and runs up the centre of the country.

Let’s get to story shall we? Do you know the book Wuthering Heights? I’m going to tell you what the Wuthering Heights has to say about moors. It says that moors are dangerous when they are under snow. It says that moors are sometimes wet, and that when wet, they can be hard work. The book also mentions that moors are rocky. It does this here and there, through a few appearances. There is a crag near both the houses mentioned in the book—I havn’t checked if the crag can be seen, but it is noted. Also, walls are mentioned a few times. If you know the land, the walls must must be dry‐coursed and of rough stone. And the book notes that stones stand by the paths.

I will stand for the accuracy of those features—moors under snow can kill. The moors near where the writer lived are often wet—as the book says, a walk across them is hard work and will put you in a bad mood. On the shoulder of moors, not on top, they are rocky. And that’s it. That’s all. That’s all that Wuthering Heights has to say of moors. You can check if you like, read the book and decide if I am right. Yes, I’m being ingenious—the differences between the two houses in the book, the travel between them, the features, are noted and used as signs. The features have ‘symbolic’ meaning. But that has nothing to do with moors.

So why is the book Wuthering Heights associated with moors? Because the sister of the person who wrote the book, by the name of Charlotte Bronte, constructed a beauty of moors. The sister linked that beauty with the book Wuthering Heights, and her sister as she knew her. And this construction has persisted for well over a hundred years. Wuthering Heights is not a popular book, and never could have been. But in England, once the book found a place, it has been popular with teachers in schools. Academics at universities write about it. There have been adaptions to stage and film, and a few revisions and parodies. It is a book that found a niche across cultures. Yet the association with moors lives on.

When I say this, we should consider that this delusion, created by the sister of the writer, is powerful, has endured, and has at times replaced the book that summoned it. It, the delusion, is an entity of it’s own, as real as any story.

My second example is from a different place. Think on a policeman. His methods are sometimes off‐beat. He is low rank. Then a case comes to the city. An unknown person, in cold‐blood, kills people. He will not stop. So the policeman looks for people who can give him information. The people are not policemen. They are low‐life and are scared of him. They fight back. The policeman defeats them. Stood in front of the defeated, the policeman pushes his gun into their face. He says, roughly, “If you try to escape, I will shoot you. I will enjoy that.”

This scene has been replayed a thousand times—in conversation, through re‐printed photos, copied into text. It is associated with the idea of being at the end of your rope. But there is something else. The people the policeman seeks are poor. They get by using criminal means—small‐scale, but criminal. So these scenes are associated also with an idea that the poor are failures of no worth. Let them live or die as they can! This idea, people think, is fair. At it’s furthest extent, people think that poor people should be driven from cities.

What I would say is, these late constructions are delusions. They are built on the script, but are not of the script. Consider this. The script is from an older film. Except in comedy, poor people are not in scripts from rich countries. So the appearance of the poor is at least a thought for them. If you look at the scene, you see the policemen goads the poor people, dares them to act. The poor are being told, “Live as you will, with no help, die as you will, with no help. Should you try to live by means we disapprove of, should you push us, we will shoot you.” I wouldn’t say that was an unsympathetic comment on poverty. I would say it is a practicality of a drama. I would say the idea of poverty is handled evenly.

Now, a script for a film is a work of short thought—I’ve argued elsewhere there is no more thought in a script for a film than in a short story (less words, but more construction). But in this script consider that the policeman is poor. There is too much to discuss in this—how policeman are drawn from less educated and monied classes, how policemen understand their role, how they are cut from their origins. The script can not expand on these possibilities, but I say they are there. And have you considered that the killer is not poor? He buys expensive binoculars and rifles. He targets rich people? Why? What does he represent? Like the killer in the story from the film ‘M’, is his fate to be hunted by both sides? As I find the film, I would suggest that, no, the story does not think that—it is an unsketched area—but unsketched is possible. I don’t hear anything in this film that would justify cruel treatment of the poor. But, like the delusion built by Charlotte Bronte, this delusion is powerful and has endured.

At this point you may well ask, “Do you, like some philosophers, feel the delusion is reality, or do you by your use of the word ‘delusion’ believe there are provable truths?” Or you could ask, “Why do these delusions exist?” I’m going to duck both questions. I offer short‐cut semantics—I say these delusions are real or, as J.G. Ballard once wrote (I don’t have the quote to hand, so off the cuff), “Fictions are the way we construct reality.” And the reason why these fiction‐realities endure is because, especially in the Western World, we have a weak understanding of the mechanism of story. And I say that weak understanding is deliberate. But that is a story for another day.