Does art about abuse need to make us comfortable?

Shelfies is a column by writer Alicia Elliott that looks at arts and culture through the prism of the books on her shelf.

In the first lines of Liz Harmer's novel Strange Loops, 32-year-old high school teacher Francine nervously punches in the lock code to sneak into her mother's vacation home. There is this sense something ominous is about to descend. Then she turns back: "The young man — the boy — was still in the passenger seat, his face illuminated by his phone."

Francine, we learn, is this 18-year-old boy's teacher, and she's brought him here with the sole purpose of starting an affair. Almost immediately we understand: the ominous thing waiting to descend was, in fact, her.

This boy, she expects, will "somehow save her." And so she risks her career and family, as well as any harm she'll bring to the boy himself, to continue this predatory relationship, replicating an affair she had as a teenager with a much older pastor. The novel moves back and forth between that long-ago affair and this present-day one, switching between Francine's perspective and that of her twin brother Philip, who has seen Francine as "evil" since high school. 

It's hard not to agree with Philip as we watch Francine's continually disgusting behaviour. Given the immediate correction to "boy" and the insistence on using this term to refer to Francine's student throughout the novel, as well as the immediate shock and revulsion Francine's friend shows when she finds out about the affair — "How do you not know this is wrong?" she asks — the author is clearly intentionally trying to create this disgust in us. Even Francine herself admits to her friend that she's "behaving badly," that she doesn't want to and cannot stop; her justifications throughout the book are so flimsy they ultimately become delusional.

But even with those signposts, I couldn't help but wonder if all readers would understand that. Francine's situation, after all, isn't so different from the one chronicled in the 2022 Todd Field film Tár. The fictionalized biopic, which follows a wildly famous and influential conductor named Lydia Tár as she is publicly accused of sexual misconduct after the suicide of one of her mentees, sparked endless online discourse. People debated whether the film was endorsing Lydia's actions by giving viewers a fully dimensional picture of an accused abuser without ever letting us see the actual abuse. Viewers might see enough of Lydia's actions in the present to make the accusations plausible, but without seeing the actual situation at the heart of the film, there is enough room for doubt. 

It seemed clear to me as a viewer that Field intentionally left what happened between Lydia and her mentee ambiguous, just as it seemed clear to me that Harmer was not endorsing Francine pursuing a sexual relationship with her student. But the fact that so many people didn't understand the first made me wonder whether those same people, if they read Strange Loops, would understand the latter.

This type of media literacy — or, perhaps more accurately, media illiteracy — has been on my mind a lot these days. There is a long history of people labelling certain art as "dangerous" or "evil," insisting that, if this art isn't censored or outlawed, it will negatively influence or "corrupt" the public. This sort of unfounded public hysteria pops up regularly throughout history; it led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority, Hollywood's infamous Hays Code (which transformed into the movie ratings system we still see today), and Parental Advisory stickers on albums, particularly rap albums. And the legacy continues today, with Republican governor Rick DeSantis leading the charge to remove books that feature LGBTQ+ characters from schools under the threat of criminal charges, as well as banning high school students from learning about Black history.

But this kind of shallow reading and false equivalence isn't only done by conservatives. It seems that more and more, people on all sides of the political spectrum automatically assume art that depicts bad people is not only "bad" art, but also art that supports bad people and actions. I think it's related, in part, to media illiteracy. But deeper than that, I think it's an extension of a puritanical notion that art should, above all, be moral.

What exactly is meant by "moral" is often taken as a given — something we're inherently expected to understand and agree on. But the more I've thought about it, the more I've come to believe that what many of these people really don't like about "immoral" art is that it makes them uncomfortable. They don't want to watch characters they've come to like, and therefore consider "good," do anything that might make them reconsider their initial judgment. They certainly don't want to engage with a character who they consider "bad" or "unlikeable," because what if they started to actually relate with that "bad" character? That might make them feel confused or even wrong, like they're wearing an itchy sweater they can't take off. 

Art that tries to instill or model easy morality for its audience is certainly safer and more comfortable than art that doesn't. And of course there are artists who enjoy providing that sort of ease and safety to their audience, as well as audiences who specifically search out that work. 

But should we really expect all art to do this? Should we value art based on how comfortable it makes us — how much it adheres to ideas we already hold about the world and ourselves?

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In his 1962 essay "The Creative Process," James Baldwin argues it is the artist's duty to "actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone." Society requires us to be social animals, continually engaging with others — and continually ignoring those things we are most afraid of: suffering, love, loss, loneliness, death. This includes our own dark thoughts or impulses that we must actively make the choice to suppress in order to function more easily within society. Though all of us know inherently many of these fears will eventually manifest in our lives, Baldwin writes, "we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we fall prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge." 

In essence, then, artists are there to slow us down in the endless, churning chaos of our lives. It's an artist's job to force us to consider whether our inherited beliefs and customs, which we've been told are absolute and unquestionable, really are. And if they're not? Then the art that disrupts these ideas has the unfortunate task of not only exploding our comforting, lifelong illusions, but also our most ardent hopes. It requires us to stop pretending and look at the world and ourselves as we truly are, for, Baldwin writes, "the truth about us is always at variance with what we wish to be."

Harmer seems to be mining this exact type of internal conflict with her novel. Watching Francine struggle to maintain her belief that she's good and right despite her selfish, cruel actions is part of what makes Strange Loops so horrifically fascinating. There are many shallow reasons Francine offers to justify her affair with the boy: he's just turned 18 and is technically no longer her student; he's so "self-assured" he's clearly "[not] a victim, hardly a boy at all"; he makes her feel electric, desired with complete desperation bordering on dependence. But, as her friend bluntly points out, she's primarily "using him to feel something" about her similarly lascivious high school affair with that much older pastor. ("Maybe to forgive yourself?" the friend suggests.)

Francine convinced herself all the way into adulthood that this pastor was her first love, that their relationship was pure — that she pursued him, and therefore she could not be a victim. The pastor's decision to suddenly stop talking to Francine was, she believes, the worst heartbreak of her life. 

It's Francine's determination to see this abuse as "love," to see herself as an equal participant in a loving relationship instead of a vulnerable victim of a selfish man's lust, that allows her to inflict the same loop of abuse on the boy that was inflicted upon her. To keep that delusion strong, to keep from seeing herself as a victim then and an abuser now, she must not consider the negative effects of her adult behaviour on those around her, nor the trauma she's carried from her high school affair. She must only focus on her own animalistic pleasure, no matter the cost. And she must convince the boy that this animalistic pleasure is love, the same way she allowed herself to be convinced by the pastor.

All of it is, of course, a delusion. This is not love; this is not equal; this is abuse. But this is how people who do awful things sleep at night: by believing strongly in delusions of their own making, convincing those around them of those delusions, and ignoring the very real consequences of their monstrous actions. 

In spite of the many moments I was repulsed by and furious with her, I did find myself variously understanding and empathizing with Francine. Most often, it was in those moments where she was depicted as a fully dimensional human being, beyond the simple characterization of an abuser or someone guilty of sexual coercion. It's a testament to Harmer's writing that I had these conflicting feels about Francine — but it's also the point.

People like Francine, who take advantage of those they have power over for their own gratification, aren't two-dimensional villains who conveniently tell us about their most monstrous acts or desires as soon as they have them. They hide those things from us, making sure we only see what they let us. They're people we've known for years, have grown up with, are related to — people we assume are good, because we all like to think we are good people ourselves who would only ever be friends with other good people. 

Harmer's book tears away these comforting illusions to lay bare the unforgiving truth: monsters don't look or act the way we expect them to, because "monster" is not an intrinsic, immovable, perpetual identity. Monstrous actions, on the other hand, are very real things we are all capable of making at any time. And if we can't even handle seeing fictional characters make monstrous decisions, how can we be expected to react when we realize that all of us hold those possibilities within ourselves, too? How do we respond when people close to us reveal themselves to have done the same — or when we realize that we, too, have the potential to become the type of person we publicly, loudly claim to despise? That we are always only one small choice away from becoming the worst version of ourselves?

When you're engaging with the topic of abuse — as Harmer is in Strange Loops, as Field is in Tàr — there is no way to make everyone comfortable. And perhaps, given the way that our society so poorly handles abuse in every regard, maybe we shouldn't want art about abuse to make us comfortable. Maybe the problem is we're already far too comfortable with abuse — at least as it actually manifests. After all, as the New Yorker's Tavi Gevinson points out in her essay on Tár, it's easier to call artistic depictions of abuse "immoral" than it is to grapple with actual abusers, or the ways we fail victims in our own lives.

It's easier to claim people who like a piece of art that depicts abuse are "immoral" or "bad," to self-righteously distance ourselves from that immorality as we pick at every awful thing anyone else has ever done, down to the most seemingly inconsequential detail, than it is to admit that we each hold that possibility inside ourselves, too. As if there is something intrinsic and unchangeable separating us from those we criticize than the fact that they have said "yes" when they knew they should say "no." 

Our individual decisions to engage — or not engage — with these ugly, uncomfortable truths mean we must also decide to either face or turn away from the ugly, uncomfortable truth of ourselves. Because regardless of the reality or unreality of the art we consume, once we put the book down and turn the movie off, we are still, ultimately, here: inside the real world, with all its beauty and danger and joy and tragedy.