Last Wednesday, the cable channel Comedy Central
censored a moment on the show "South Park" in which the image of the Muslim prophet Muhammad was to be portrayed. But here’s the thing – "South Park" has already portrayed the image of Muhammad. In July, 2001, there was an episode of "South Park" in which magician David Blaine tried to create his own religion, and the Super Best Friends, a group made up of Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Buddha, and other religious figures, tried to stop him. Not only was Muhammad portrayed, but he was able to spit fire out of his hands.
[Caption: See, here he is. Did you ever notice that he is always called The Great Prophet Muhammad, as if we weren’t sure to which prophet they were referring and weren’t positive that he was, in fact, great at it?] The Muslim community seemed to have no problem with this. Maybe because the Muslim community doesn’t typically watch "South Park." I’m just throwing it out there.
And yet, on Wednesday, Comedy Central refused to air an image of Muhammad, thereby censoring a group that has said “shit” 162 times in one episode, showed hardcore sex with penetration, and had Jesus Christ defecate on George Bush and the American flag. Oh sure, you can make the case that the Super Best Friends episode aired prior to 9/11, and prior to the Danish comics debacle, and that the world is different now. That’s fine, except I’d say that post 9/11, having Jesus poop on the flag is much more offensive to America than showing Muhammad (When did America start caring more about other countries than it did about its own? Where did our selfishness go?).
Oh, and one more thing:
Muhammad was in the opening credits of the episode in which he “wasn’t allowed” to be shown. They did portray the image of Muhammad. And nobody seems to care.
[Caption: As seen on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Southparkseason10opening.png] What’s my point? Why am I telling you this? Other than to stir up controversy, it’s because when you write your fiction book, you need to keep in mind that it’s all about the details, and it’s all about consistency. If you become a hypocrite in your book, or if you write one thing and then a few hundred pages later contradict it, you will lose your reader. You will lose your credibility. You have to remain consistent with your message.
In a similar event, Morgan Spurlock, the award-winning director of the Oscar nominated documentary
Super Size Me, spoke at a school a few weeks ago. During his speech, he dropped the “F” bomb twice, and when he couldn’t hear a kid’s question, he called himself retarded and then pretended that he was mentally challenged for a moment.
In the following days, the
Associated Press,
Washington Post,
New York Times,
Philadelphia Inquirer, and other credible newspapers
reported that there were mentally challenged kids wearing helmets in the back of the auditorium. The stories then went on to say that Morgan singled out those kids and picked on them, and that they were immediately escorted out of the building. That never happened. The newspapers printed faulty information.
I was listing to a sports talks radio show in my area the morning after, and the host said, with great certainty as if he had been there and witnessed it for himself, that every third word out of Morgan’s mouth was the “F” bomb. That was wrong. He reported faulty information.
Now I can’t trust that show. Whenever the host of the morning show is talking about a news story, I can’t believe that he is getting the facts right. The next time I read an article in the
New York Times, I can’t be sure that what I am reading is true. I can’t trust those media sources anymore.
What’s my point? you ask again. My point is that the same theory holds true for fiction work. Yes, you are inventing characters and fabricating a story, but you still need to get facts and information right. If you are referencing a true event, make sure you reference it correctly. If you are mentioning a real place, make sure you describe it accurately. Otherwise, the readers’ BS detectors will start squawking, and you will lose their interest. Readers want to get lost in the story. Even though they know it is fiction, they want to get sucked into it, and believe it, as if it were true. If you get information wrong and they realize it, it will pull them out of the story. They will become aware of you as a writer and what you are trying to accomplish and they will be taken out. Your story won’t work.
I traveled to Paris last summer, partly because I wanted to be in Paris with my girlfriend, but partly because I wanted to conduct research for my next book. I wanted to study the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre first hand, so that I could write about these two structures more accurately.
In the book, I’m going to have a couple eat at the Jules Verne restaurant in the Eiffel Tower. For the book, I wanted to know what that restaurant looked like inside. I wanted to know the views a patron has outside the glass walls. I wanted to know what it smells like and how the wait staff interacts and whether the male customers get handed menus with prices and the women customers don’t (that’s true, I didn’t know that until I ate there). Reading books and seeking information on the Internet couldn’t tell me these things. I had to witness them for myself.
But my friend, when he heard what I was doing, said, “you need to make sure you have all the details right for a made up story? That doesn’t make sense.” This may be true. Maybe I don’t need to get my facts straight when writing a fictional story. However, when I discussed
Angel of Life with him I told him I was dissecting religion, he said, “Have you done enough research? You better make sure you have everything right.”
Why? Why does it not matter what the Jules Verne looks like inside, but I better make sure I get every last detail of my religious references correct? Because everyone cares about the detail of something. He might not care about the consistencies of my descriptions of a restaurant in Paris, but he is a history major, and I bet he’d be infuriated if I had one character telling another about an incident during WWII, and I got information wrong. He’d think I couldn’t be trusted. Thus, he wouldn’t be able to trust the rest of my story. He wouldn’t buy it. He wouldn’t get it. He would be lost to me.
Similarly, if I got the name of the Eiffel Tower's restaurant wrong, or if I printed wrong facts about the Morgan Spurlock incident, you wouldn't bother paying attention to any other points I make. I would lose my credibility.
The details are really what matters. One way to make yourself and your story seem more credible is to include small details. If one of your characters is driving in a car, name the make and model of the car and give it a real color. Mention an Apple or a Dell instead of just writing “a computer.” Call a cooking pot a Williams-Sonoma edition 18/10 stainless steel All Clad sauté pan. If your story is taking place in a particular city, include real streets and real locations. Make your story true, even when it's made-up.
The details keep the story more believable. Even though it is fiction, the readers need to understand the world. They need to believe it and be absorbed into it. They need the details.
Do you think if Dan Brown described the Mona Lisa incorrectly in
The Da Vinci Code that anyone would have cared what he said about anything else? Tell me when he reveals that the person sitting next to Jesus in The Last Supper is a redheaded woman you didn’t run to the nearest computer and search for an image of the picture. If an effeminate looking redhead were not sitting next to Jesus, your interest in the rest of the story would wane. Do you think if he had gotten some of the minor facts about Catholicism wrong that an entire nation would have believed his revelations? Do you think millions of people who have bought into his story's mythology? No, his book would have been completely ignored. There would be no need for other books called
Breaking the Da Vinci Code and
Cracking the Da Vinci Code and
The Truth Behind the Da Vinci Code to exist.
It’s all about credibility. For me, when the most important newspapers in the country printed a story without getting all their facts straight, or when Comedy Central refused to show an image of Muhammad even though in the opening credits they were showing an image of Muhammad, they lost credibility for me. The newspapers have no excuse, but Comedy Central seemed to think that the audience is so dumb that because they didn’t say, “this is Muhammad, take a look at him,” that nobody knew or cared that it was him.
And sadly, they were right. Don't make the same mistake in your fiction.
*By the way, you know how the blogging software always suggests tags for you based on your entry? One of the suggested tags was Muhammad Ulmer. Do you find that to be a little weird?*
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