does mean that some groups('cause if I'm the only one I'll eat my copy of Heinlein in Dimension ) will find the art damaged and lessened by the choices he made.

Sure, but I think a writer shouldn't give more weight to those issues than they give to the story they want to write.

I'll eat my copy of Heinlein in Dimension

Which is where I can point at a story and say "No, not reading that ever again, thanks" with regard to Farnham's Freehold. That's my example of being repulsed by narrative choices.

BTW, really nitpicking here, but Hec there are exceptions - writer who produced really good literature that was propaganda or didatic literature. Shaw. But I'll admit that Shaw was an exception - a didactic artist, a truly literary propagandist.

When I'm watching Shaw I can't help but feel like I'm listening to the most sophisticated guy in the world and his failure of imagination to see that the most erudite nation on Earth (Germany at that time) was gathering together monumental evil. And I don't really agree with him in Major Barbara and other plays, anyway.

He has a very narrow depth to him which I think the surety of his moral stances creates.

Yeah the ideas he was propagandizing for often were proven wrong - but that did not stop his plays from being good (well many of them - given the quantity, some were awful of course - especially some of his later and mercifully forgotten works). But his best plays were both very good plays indeed and effective propaganda for the ideas he was trying to promote. Major B. is a good example - ideas I think totally proven wrong by history, but a damn good play and very effective propaganda.

I think I'm just going to mention I was definitely NOT saying art should take a specific ethical stance, just that I think it's a good idea for the artist to consider what the implications of the story he's telling are.(Like, hi Bob, what are the implications of you finishing Campbell's racist future-war story for him?)

....and call it a night. See you in the mozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......

just that I think it's a good idea for the artist to consider what the implications of the story he's telling are.

I think this is generally true, though it's not the first standard I apply to a work. I mean, I did like it quite a bit when Grant Morrison's Invisibles went back and told the story of a random security guy who got offed. That's not exactly stunt storytelling, but it's really picking out one thread and writing from a kind of narrative prompt (imagine the story from the POV of a minor character.)

Though as Joss notes (citing William Defoe), no character thinks they're the bad guy or a minor character. They're the lead character in their narrative.

But...would you say it's worthwhile if it keeps the art from being damaged?

That is a big if, and it's predicated on a concept of "damaged" that I don't understand. I'm sorry I keep coming back to this but: what do you think fiction/art is for? I think that's an unstated premise that determines all of these secondary questions.

The ethical position of a work(and all of them have one, even if it's trivially good or trivially bad) is PART OF the nature and quality of the art, as much as the POV, perspective, etc of a painting is.

I genuinely doesn't know what this means. I don't know what it means to say a creative work has an ethical position. Or a nature. I would like to understand, but for me this reads as: the spiciness of a piece of art is part of its width. I know what the words mean individually; I don't know what they mean in this context.

It shouldn't advocate an ethical position, because that's what bad art does.

I don't know that I agree with this, either. I don't think art that advocates is inherently bad. But it isn't inherently good either. For me it's like saying "art that is tall is inherently bad." Whether or not it is advocacy/propaganda/whatever has nothing to do with its merit as art.

I've quit reading far fewer books because of something I found troubling or upsetting than I have ones that bored me or felt like the author was Hammering Their Message Home.

This.

I think it's a good idea for the artist to consider what the implications of the story he's telling are.

Okay, but what does "it's a good idea" mean in this specific instance? Are you convinced that Gaiman failed to consider the implications? Because "consider" doesn't necessarily lead to "act on." Is it possible he thought that the implications were the cost of writing a story that had other, contradictory implications? Do you think that someone reading Murder Mysteries could plausibly come away thinking, "I wasn't originally planning to rape and murder my ex, but now that I can convince myself that insane spree killings against chicks who don't love me back is A-OK with Neil Gaiman, I'm all in!"

I believe that in order to interpret the story that way -- not even act on it, just decide that this was the point of the story -- the reader would have to have some fundamental problems that Neil Gaiman, with all of his magic powers, is not capable of solving. What do you consider to be the artist's obligation? I think an artist is only obligated to their art.

My impression is that you think an artist has a social obligation that supersedes that. Am I right in thinking that?

Whether or not it is advocacy/propaganda/whatever has nothing to do with its merit as art.

Yes we agree. I will say (and you by quoting Jilli also implicitly say) that being able to make good art that is also propaganda or advocacy is much rarer than being able to make good art.

Again, though it is often lazy and a sign of bad art to accept stereotypes or to build a story around tropes that reinforce and take for granted marginalization of marginalized groups, or that reinforce the existing social hierarchies. Again, I don't think that is what is going on in "Murder Mysteries". I think it is portraying an existing hierarchy, and comparing it to a more universal injustice.

I will say that in my opinion "Murder Mysteries" is highly flawed as art, one of the weakest of Gaiman's stories. Part of it is that I don't think the comparison of the two murders works well. Part of it is that I think the characters are driven by plot rather than the other way around. The angelic murder does not seem to me sufficiently driven by the character of the angel. And we really are not shown enough in the man the leads to the murder. Of course insufficient motivation is one of the points that Gaiman is making - a flaw in everything (but not one that lets the light in). But by making the point in this particular way he weakens the story. If you show a character is boring by giving him or her a long boring speach you still bore the reader. If you make a didactic point by having characters act without sufficient motivation you still weaken the story by having the charactes act without sufficient motivation.

Heh. In essence I'm arguing that this story has some of the same flaws as propaganda when it is NOT good art. It subordinates art to message; as a result both suffer. (Yes, in this case "message" is artistic rather than intentionally political - but the result is the same.)Gaiman is not Shaw, He can be an intellectual writer, but privileging ideas or arguments over story or character is not his talent.

I will say (and you by quoting Jilli also implicitly say) that being able to make good art that is also propaganda or advocacy is much rarer than being able to make good art.

This is true by definition. Art that is X and is also Y is going to be less common than art than is X.

But I think it is also pretty easy to argue that most, if not all, art is advocating something.