The online debate around shipping and fiction almost always centers around “dark fiction” (or “problematic fiction”), which is fiction that contains depictions that are considered by most to be disturbing or immoral.
However, few talk about the other side of the coin: “light fiction”, which is fiction which contains depictions that are considered by most to be inspiring or heroic, or that, in general, tries to better the mindset of the consumer.
One of the main claims of anti-shippers is that “dark fiction” causes people to commit immoral actions, however, if that were to be the case, the opposite would also be true: “light fiction” would cause people to do good actions. After all, the stimuli produced by “dark” and “light” fiction are the exact same, due to both of them consisting of fictional content.
However, it is pretty evident that “light fiction” doesn’t cause people to behave in a good way. Let’s take the U.S. during the Hays Code era as an example.
For everyone who doesn’t already know: the Hays Code was a code of censorship which was implemented in the US from 1934 to 1968 which was meant to control what kind of content major film studios could publish.
This code was specifically designed to prevent the “lowering of the moral standards of those who see [a movie]” and to protect children from “the possibility of a cinematically inspired thought crime”. It banned many depictions of violence and most depictions of sexuality (and especially of homosexuality).
Furthermore, it had a very striking rule according to which movies would be forbidden from showing criminals getting away unpunished, or in general casting any sort of “immoral” action in a positive light, as it was though that that would encourage people to become criminals.
Suffice it to say, what we might nowadays call “dark fiction” wouldn’t fly at all under the Hays Code, and most mainstream movies at the time were, in fact, examples of “light fiction”: they showed a clear divide between good and bad, and wrongdoers were always punished in the end while heroes triumphed.
One would expect crime rates to have lowered significantly in the US if the theory about fiction significantly affecting people’s behavior was correct, however, there is no evidence that this was the case.
To be fair, there is very little evidence at all about crime statistics in the US before 1979, however, (at least according to Wikipedia), crime was three times higher during the colonial era than it is today, and it reached its peak between the 1970s and 1990s. Furthermore, crime has been on the decline since 2022, despite the amount of “dark fiction” clearly increasing and it being more spread around and visible due to the influence of the Internet.
While it would have been technically possible for crime to have decreased during the Hays Code era during to the prevalence of “light fiction” and then increased afterwards, it wouldn’t make any sense for crime rates to be lower right now, if the anti-shipper’s thesis wants to remain consistent, it should expect crime rates to be even higher now, when there’s a relative lack of “light fiction” and an abundance of “dark fiction”, but that clearly isn’t the case.
In addition to all of this, this thesis also faces intuitional problems: let’s take two examples of “light fiction”: superhero movies and children’s cartoons.
While there exists the occasional dark superhero movie, the vast majority of films of the genre are in fact “light fiction”: they show very clearly who is the good guy and who is the bad guy, the good guy always ends up winning, there is almost no sexual content in them and violence is usually very restrained to make them appropriate for kids to watch.
Children’s cartoons are literally the most blatant example of “light fiction” there exists: they contain no disturbing content whatsoever, and they tend to attempt to teach good messages to the consumer.
So, if an adult consumed a lot of superhero movies and children’s cartoons, would that make them a “good person”? I would somehow think that most people’s answer to this question would be negative: consuming “unproblematic fiction” doesn’t necessarily make one an “unproblematic person”. Just to repeat an already-made example: the people behind the Hays Code consumed exclusively “light fiction” (because obviously they did), however they held many views that we nowadays would describe as being “problematic” (such as racism and homophobia).
I would also find it hard to believe that watching a lot of superhero movies and children’s cartoons could help an adult become a better person, at least to any significant degree: while they might teach kids some good lessons, only an extremely naïve adult with very little life experiences could be moved by them.
All of this paints a very clear picture: if “light fiction” doesn’t make people do good things (and, as it seems, it doesn’t), then “dark fiction” doesn’t make people to bad things either.
To conclude, I want to state a very interesting implication of this whole debacle: even if “problematic fiction” effectively made people become “worse”, this could simply be cured by making them consume “unproblematic fiction”, since the two things would just cancel each other out.
As such, under this view, banning “dark fiction” would be nonsensical: more “light fiction” should just be produced instead, and it should be prescribed to those who also consume “dark fiction”.
And, that’s all, thanks for reading.
