Show, Don’t Tell

No, I don’t mean “weave exposition into the narrative.” I mean “insert academia into your art.”

Let me explain. You’ve heard of Freud, right? The man who wrote hundreds of influential essays regarding the study of psychoanalysis – but who is known in popular culture as the guy who talked about sex a lot and presumably ruined the mood at a lot of social gatherings?

You probably actually know several of Freud’s theories without realising it. Countless of films/TV shows/books feature a dream sequence where images symbolic of the protagonist’s struggle flash before him/her, and you’ve probably seen a film/TV show/book where a protagonist has attempted to repress either a memory or an aspect of himself. Dexter is all about a man struggling to be loveable and a functioning part of society when in reality he’s a psychopath. He even has a job with the police where he analyses crime-scenes – as though the duality of his character wasn’t clear enough. More broadly, Bruce Wayne is an attractive millionaire who at night dresses in his pyjamas and beats up young working-class men. Superman is a god descended from space who works under the guise of the hapless Clark Kent. You get the idea…

These days, unless someone has an exceptionally original paper that demonstrates a breakthrough in science – be that corporeal science or the science of the mind – we don’t really need academia. Instead, we incorporate academia into our art. And that is an incredibly good thing to do.

Instead of sitting around at a table debating the meaning of life, why not write a novel that explores the meaning of life through an allegory of some sort. Because audiences are more intelligent than we give them credit for. They might not pick up on Fredian themes, but if someone were to bring up Freud to them, they could link it back to that scene in Top Gun. The human brain loves connecting. The human brain is primarily made up of connections.

The audience will know sub-consciously if you implant a critical idea into them through your work. These days people don’t need to read academic papers – they can just read a nice piece of fiction that contains strong Marxist themes. Animal Farm is studied in schools, and it’s used to introduce kids to communism without having to go into a long lecture about communism. You don’t have to all be like George Orwell (though, you could do worse) but implanting critical ideas into creative work would not only improve art as a whole, but would mean we won’t ever have to read those really boring yet well-meaning essays.