Perhaps the only advantage that people who deal with story professionally have is that we know (or ought to) when we're indulging in movie-plot-thinking.

Posted June 7, 2008 11:49 AM by Madeleine Robins

Some people have turned photographs into a macguffin. Alice thinks photographs are important to terrorist plots, so photographs (or stopping photographers) become important to Alice.

The problem is Alice forgot she is the narrator for the story in her mind, she forgot that she's the one who told her that photographs were important to terrorists in the first place.

Understanding "point of view" and narrative voice is probably one of the hardest things for a lot of new writers, because it is a distinction outside our normal observation. We see images and hear facts and watch the news, and we create a narrative in our mind. And for the most part, we don't even know we're doing it. The narrative is simply "true".

And when the narrative doesn't line up with reality, it's reality that usually loses.

Find someone who was convinced in Feb 2003 that Iraq had WMD's and no amount of objective evidence would alter their view. And a lot of that is because they can't see their own narrator. They think they're seeing truth.

I think "suspension of disbelief" and the disappearance of the narrator are opposite sides of the same coin. An indicator of a good story is that you immerse yourself into the story, you forget that youre reading a story, the narrator disappears, and you take it on as true.

Posted June 7, 2008 11:52 AM by Greg London

Cognitive psychologists call this the availability heuristic. We're wired to judge how common something is based on how easy it is to bring examples to mind. No exceptions if they're easy to bring to mind because one real clip got repeated 50 million times on the news, or because that episode of 24 was really vivid and memorable. Basically, we're set up to assume that the best way to learn about the world is to hear your tribemates telling stories around a campfire.

The photographers have a fighting chance against this, because stories about people being falsely arrested for snapping pictures of national monuments are themselves vivid and dramatic if we can just get a good one circulating. What worries me even more is that on every cop show and every terrorist drama, the "good guys" torture and intimidate accurate information out of the captive bad guys just in time to save the day. The rest is left as an exercise for the student--including the solution, because I haven't got a clue. Reality, in this case, is unfortunately non-dramatic.

Posted June 7, 2008 12:15 PM by R. Emrys

In the subway, the other day, there were a couple of guys with a camera on a tripod, taking pictures. The (viewing by remote camera) security was getting really loud about it, because 'you're not supposed to be taking pictures and if you don't put it away RIGHT NOW the sheriffs will be called'. (That isn't posted anywhere in the subway system, but other forbidden things are.) The other people around them on the platform weren't panicking or anything else: the guys with the camera weren't a problem as far as we could tell. They didn't appear to be shooting the trains, just each other.

Posted June 7, 2008 12:23 PM by P J Evans

I took broadcast studies in college (pre-9/11) and one thing I remember is how paranoid mall security was over any type of pictures. For a short assignment, we went to a local mall, stood outside on the public sidewalk, shot maybe 60 seconds of film, and security came out to question us before we'd even had a chance to pack up.

I'm personally of the opinion that at least half of the OH MY GOD YOU CAN'T TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS is a simple power trip, security forces for whatever group deciding they can Stop the Horrible Photographers— and that "terrorism prevention" is just a handy excuse. They acted like that before with little justification.

Posted June 7, 2008 12:57 PM by B. Durbin

I'm less concerned about potential terrorists taking pictures (which, as stated, doesn't seem to be something that happens in real life) than with things like Google's street-level photographs being an invasion of privacy...or possibly worse, depending on who uses said technology and for what purpose. (That the satellite view can show if my car is or is not in the back yard weirds me out just a tad, although I have no idea whether the refresh rate on those photos is one hour or one year.)

Taking government-level paranoia out on photographers just strikes me as a colossal waste of time from the standpoint of actually making people safer--but boy, is it ever designed to make people think Uncle Sam is on the case.

Posted June 7, 2008 12:58 PM by Syd

Syd @6: The refresh rate on those photos is at least a year. They're not satellite photos, mostly (and certainly the ones that show your car aren't); they're aircraft overflights. And they'd happen and be available in some fashion whether or not Google published them, probably, and certainly they happened before Google got into this business (given that they bought existing photos). It's just that they weren't as easy to get ahold of earlier.

Posted June 7, 2008 1:08 PM by Brooks Moses

Meanwhile, the government is taking pictures of us. Nekkid pictures too!

Yes, it's those backscatter radiation scanners, the ones that see through clothes. 10 more airports have them installed now.

No word on whether the computers the images are displayed are running windows, or are networked. Not much outcry over taking pictures of minors, too, which is an odd omission in paranoidland.

Posted June 7, 2008 1:17 PM by don delny

I'm sure a similar thing is going on with the widespread conviction that anything having LED lights on it could be a bomb. Real-world bombs don't generally have lights on them, but bombs in the movies and on TV do.

Posted June 7, 2008 1:25 PM by Avram

Re: Google Maps: Satellite data is expensive enough when it's just one set of data; the cost of live, streaming data covering all of the US with resolution to the level Google Maps is currently at would be insane. And some (most?) of the time the images would just show cloud cover, anyway.

There was a similar aerial photography dataset available on terraserver-usa.com before Google Maps launched, but their coverage was based on the Urban Areas photography set from 2003 and was much more limited. They also had 1990s photographs, which had excellent coverage, but much lower resolution.

I've run into a number of people who thought Google Maps data was live, and I've always wondered why that would be the default assumption.

Posted June 7, 2008 1:30 PM by G. Jules

It's a problem in judicial proceedings, too; lies are, paradoxically, often more plausible than truth, because lies are neat stories, while truth is messy, with loose ends. Many people are persuaded simply be the presence of story, because of its formal qualities, without regard to truth, which has, usually, a formal structure harder to perceive. By the way, there is discussion of article this over at The Online Photographer. Some good stuff, but beware of the trolls.

Posted June 7, 2008 2:01 PM by Randolph

Every so often I've been in conversations that included discussions regarding what would cause the worst damage/how to cause the worst disruptions. Some of them were casual, some were professional (I've been in and out and in the defense industry and involved with stuff designed to cause/try to defend against massive disruption weapon systems, and participated when in the Air Force in Let's Play All-out War exercises.. "there's a report of a mushroom cloud 20 kilometers away, and oh by the way the communications links to X and Y and Z have failed, and there are reports of..." and half the people in the facility you're in just ran out of the room clutching at their stomachs....

Those scenarios, however, were prior to following-in-ancient-traditions-of-my-lineage-I-do-NOT-invoke-the-abominable-by-unvillified-name

==========================
Start excursion...

(ever been to a Purim service? He who in legend which may or may not be historical truth whose name is attacked by every kid with a noisemaker, who had an agenda of genocide, seems to not have effected a fraction of the "collateral damage" deaths effected by the falsehood-laden premeditated invasion and occupation of Iraq. And not, I am not claiming that Saddam Hussein was a nice guy, far from it, he was a mass murderer, presided over atrocities and brutality, was a lousy Muslim in all sorts of different ways, executed members of his own family even.... but the pretexts and fabrications and effects of the US-led actions in Iraq, have caused enormous gratuitious misery and suffering and loss of world heritage and uncounted deaths... and tarred every person in the United States of America with the sordid slime associated with being a citizen of the country which effected such appalling consequences and mismanagement and malfeasance.

Apparently lots of Iraqis remain grateful for the ejection of Saddam Hussein and his cronies from their governance of the country and their brutality, however, what's replaced it has drastically worsened the quality of life for millions of people, caused ten percent of the population to leave the country for as long as they had funds for, dramatically eliminated the self-determination of the women of the country and of people of different religious background and values than the majority in the local area (that is, Christians attacked for being non-Muslim and selling alcohol, Sunnis attacking Shi'ites, Shi'ites attacking Sunnis, etc.)... but apparently according to people I've met who been in the country within the past couples years, the view is that much of the violence and atrocity is not of the same quality as it was under Saddam--it was targeted differently. Much of the current situation is that one gets attacked randomly being out, that it's not generally premediated at the individuals selected by Saddam's goon squad as either individuals or as representatives of the class.... apparently it's sort of like the chances of being killed in a car accident in the USA, being blotted out on the highway by a semi gone out of control is one of the hazards of daily life that is there, being attacked in New York's Central Park is one of the hazards of being out in the park, etc.)

End excursion
======================

reworking the US Government from the top down, with the collusion of an aligned Congress, which started the reworking when the Democrats ceased having effective power in US Congress--that is, the US military and defense industry has undergone, along with much of the rest of the US Government, a massively debasing revolution over the past couple decades.

I've been appalled at what I consider a debasing of federal specifications and standards, with replacement of public domain guidelines and standards, with "Pay the IEEE hundreds to thousands of dollars for these IEEE documents which replace SOME PARTS of MIL-STD 2167 (which was replaced replaced by a different MIL-STD, 498 or some such, which was stupider in my opinion than 2167A, before the Republican-remove-all-effective-controls-and-oversight-etc. dumped the MIL-STD which replaced 2167A and said, "go pay lots of money for the proprietary IEEE documents...." Worse still are the documents written by contractors for contractors, that leave out information about what the specification is supposed to do and why, what the values mean, what the context is.... it's WORSE than looking at badly written source code that lacks documentaton!!!!

That's just what I am personally dealing with these days, comparing what things used to be like at the end of the Cold War, to the contemporary situation.... it makes filleted color-added farm-raised fish fillets five days in the display case at the supermarket market down for lack of freshness, look like whole swimming wild salmon....

Posted June 7, 2008 2:03 PM by Paula Lieberman

Anyway.... the current regime and its initiatives have wreaked massive debasement and profound de-intellectualization and massive dumbing down in the USA, taking away the boning and nervous system and -aliveness- and responsiveness and thoughtfulness and clueful analysis--removing the analyticial capabilities, and the entire mindset of intellectual analysis and actions based on analysis, with a mindset of All The Traffic Will Bear And Then Some corporatism and profit and greed and religious credo supporting that mindset...

The kneejerk arrest and punishment of photographers belongs to the anti-intellectualism and kneejerk follow the fascist credo and don't ask ANY questions about logic or efficaciousness.

Posted June 7, 2008 2:09 PM by Paula Lieberman

Jules@10: I've run into a number of people who thought Google Maps data was live, and I've always wondered why that would be the default assumption.

Probably part because that's what the movies show ("Enemy of the State") and part because that's what they want to believe (we can find any terrorist any where).

Posted June 7, 2008 2:13 PM by Greg London

Playing a bit of devil's advocate here:

Could part of the "terrorists will photograph their targets" meme be because that's what WE do!

Consider how widespread the use of photography is in intelligence and military planning. Aerial drones fly over enemy territory to scout out training camps, headquarters, supply caravans, etc.

(Hmmm... IIRC, the first "commercial" use of hot-air balloons was for military reconnaisance in the US Civil War. I wonder if any of those balloonists went the Matthew Brady route and took up a camera with them?) (Googled: Yes, 1862, at the direction of General George McLennan.)

And it's a cliche, but one somewhat based in reality, that spies use disguised and miniaturised cameras to photograph valuable information.

(There's even the science fiction connection, through Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree Jr, whose work for the military and CIA was largely in the field of photographic intelligence.)

If we do it, why wouldn't they?

Posted June 7, 2008 2:15 PM by Bruce Arthurs

Of course, people with eidetic memories, people with notebooks, people who have old maps and update them, aren't any sort of threat, nor are GPS receivers to note locations and triangulations of "I know where X is, I know were Y is, I know where Z is, and I can figure out where A and B and C are very accurately by interpolation...."

The old USSR knew -precisely- where Cheyenne Mountain and the Pentagon and the missile fields etc. etc were, the only questions involved were such things as the accuracy and precision of their weapons and probability of hitting what their targets were, how susceptible the targets were to Soviet attack, and how much damage would actually occur in terms of response to an attack and reconfifugaton/reconstitution how quickly from what sort of attack....

Posted June 7, 2008 2:17 PM by Paula Lieberman

Bruce #15
If someone's got a sopisticated miniaturized spy camera, the Keystone Kops of DHS aren't likely to notice.

Posted June 7, 2008 2:20 PM by Paula Lieberman

I've often thought that perhaps the reason Republicans want to ban all disturbing or titillating art is that they are particular susceptible and think that everyone is as well.

Posted June 7, 2008 2:33 PM by bryan

It’s disturbing to contemplate that the same species-specific brain wiring that makes us create and enjoy stories might also be responsible for the insane “security” panic that’s eating our culture alive. But the idea has an awful plausibility.

Before it was terrorists, it was satanic cultists. Before satanic cultists it was communists. Along the side, right the way along, it's been space aliens.

These are all types of one another.

The terrorists taking photos of their targets are just the commies putting secret marks on the backs of road signs, wearing a different costume. They exist in the subtext.

Posted June 7, 2008 2:34 PM by James D. Macdonald

I realize Schneier was writing for the Brits, but on this side of the pond, the attacks on photographers fit nicely into ShrubCo's War On Reality.

Remember what the protagonist of 1984 did for a living? Imagine how much easier his job would be if private citizens weren't allowed to take unauthorized photographs!

Also q.v. Rodney King and all the other cases of police brutality exposed by amateur shutterbugs -- all very inconvenient, for an administration that wants to write their own news, and history to boot,. (Not to mention the police forces that might have to answer for attacking people on the street!)

Posted June 7, 2008 3:01 PM by David Harmon

James D. Macdonald #19: So the real danger is going to come from Ivan bin Laden Dracula from Zeta Reticuli?

Posted June 7, 2008 3:08 PM by Fragano Ledgister

If Bruce's theory about why photographers are getting hassled is true then my theory (that security guards don't know the law, are scared of losing their jobs and are behaving like bullies because it's what employers expect of them) goes out the window.

Posted June 7, 2008 3:10 PM by Tamara

The other day, my boss explained to me that several people from his former employer joined our fair corporation at about the same time. All of them held the same title and did the same work at the former employer, and all of them did it well.

However, they got hired into positions at five different levels in our corporate hierarchy (meaning, among other things, that the lowest of their salaries was around one-quarter of the highest).

He attributed the discrepancy quite literally to "the different stories that they were able to tell about what they had done." And he thought the outcome was perfectly reasonable, never wondering whether the story was more likely to be compelling if it was embellished than if it was a simple recounting of actual events.

To me this is just more evidence to support my opinion that the qualities we select for when hiring are rarely the qualities that will be most helpful in performing the job. This is even more true (and significantly more disturbing) when it comes to electing our government officials.

------------------------------------

Not only does it not matter what the odds are that any given photographer is a terrorist, it doesn't even matter how anybody feels about the issue - except for the guy whose job it is to keep anything bad from happening, ever. I suppose it's no wonder that guy doesn't want anything happening in his corner of the world that could possibly lead to some occurrence that somebody might think of connecting (however tenuously) to the idea of an Evil Plot.

After all, he's being judged on the basis of the stories people tell.

Posted June 7, 2008 3:30 PM by Tesla

Malls and stores get upset about photography and video because they are worried about industrial espionage, and/or unflattering exposés (think hidden-camera 20/20 report.) They are worried about their profits. It's always struck me that security guards for public areas who want to forbid photography seem to be acting on that model. The reaction just feels more like a property owner asserting his property rights, rather than a public servant attempting to ensure public safety.

I think there's a lack of understanding that some places are public, and we have a right to be there not at the pleasure of the owner, but because we are the owners. Corporations seem to own more and more of the "public" space in the U.S. -- malls made to look like city streets, amusement parks, etc. We've become socialized to understand that it's someone else's space and we have no rights there.

Terrorism is a handy excuse -- probably because of the movie plot. But I think photography bans are fundamentally about asserting that this space is owned by someone else and you have no rights here. You can stand here, but you can't take a piece of it home with you. In some cases there is still some kind of profit motive (postcards, for example). In other cases, like train stations and subways, it just seems to be a vague sense that it's someone else's property, and photographing it is somehow like stealing it.

That doesn't actually make a lot of sense, so security thinks "Photography is like spying, spying is like terrorism, 9/11 9/11 9/11!"

Posted June 7, 2008 3:30 PM by Caroline

#19: And before that it was witches, fairies and demons. That's pretty much what The Demon-Haunted World is about. (Because of its age, it doesn't say much about terrorism, but it clearly fits right in.)

As far as I know nobody has yet claimed that a terrorist made their cow dry up. But only as far as I know.

P.S. This is also why terrorism itself works, to the extent that it does work. Killing one out of every 100,000 people in a country isn't really all that impressive a threat, even if you could do it again anytime you wanted (which they can't really - surprise was essential). But if you do it *dramatically*, in a way that makes people overestimate the chances that it could be them next time, then you might actually affect their behavior (if not necessarily in the way you wanted).

Posted June 7, 2008 3:44 PM by Chris

Greg #14 and Jules #10: exactly - the number of movies that have shown live 'satellite' images of the bad guys is huge - I blame Powers of Ten for that one. Having worked on 3D atlas with satellite imagery, what everyone wats to do is find their house, then a few other places, then they get bored. It's nice that Google is funding this so anyone can do it (disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on maps/earth/street view). When I had a technical demonstration of the possibility of globally zooming satellite imagery delivered over the net in tiles in 1996, we couldn't find anyone to back it. I was pleased when keyhole did it again, 5 years later, and even more so when Google took it over and made it free.
I wrote about the tyranny of the storytellers before and indeed it's what started me blogging - wanting to learn how to convey truthful ideas in a way that is as plausible as the false ones (though admittedly I was talking about the DRM myth and not the terrorism and torture ones).

Something else along these lines is the all-pervasive 'business as war' narrative of the tech media that I have seen. We really like war stories, and stories of the positive-sum co-operation embodied in Open Source don't get told.

Posted June 7, 2008 3:53 PM by Kevin Marks

If you were to GoogleMap my current address, Street View would show my neighbor walking down the sidewalk across the street from my building and shooting odd looks at that slow-moving car with the weird Thing on its hood.

I'm astounded at how thorough GoogleMaps has become. I recently had to find our local CSA's farm for a volunteer orientation; they're sorta north of Niwot and sorta south of Longmont out among other farms, ranchs, and etcetera ruralania. But GoogleMaps Street View had been there. I was able to get a good look at the silo and the parking lot sufficient for recognition when I finally drove out there. Ditto for the farmstand where my volunteer shift would be, and the bus stop where I'd be getting off that morning.

The privacy issues notwithstanding, I *heart* GoogleMaps Street View.

Also, it makes a good argument (for those inclined to be swayed by such) against the phototerrorism fears of our nation's security. I rather think that any potential terrorists performing reconnaissance would simply pull up the relevant address in Google and use the tools available there. Why send a spy with a camera when the pictures are already online?

Posted June 7, 2008 4:31 PM by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

Google Maps puts our address at immediately behind the apartment buildings on Cherry, we're the third house to the south.

don't know how to fix it either (or if I want to).

Posted June 7, 2008 5:13 PM by Paula Helm Murray

Syd, #6: My concern in that instance would be that if I were sunbathing nude in my completely private back yard, and one of Google's flyovers happened to snap that area at the wrong moment, I could either be the Next Hot Porno Pic (which I wouldn't mind if I got paid for it, but...) or get arrested for "indecent exposure".

Or am I behind the curve again, and this has already happened to somebody?

Randolph, #11: "Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense."

Carolyn, #24: Better watch it. The last time I said something along those lines, and opined that in some cases there might even be justification for it, I got a dogpile.

Nicole, #27: An excellent point, and one that every photographer should have in their toolbox of arguments!

Posted June 7, 2008 5:24 PM by Lee

When I was first dating the woman I eventually married, there were times when it became hard to shake the feeling that I was going to die soon, because in movies, an extended depiction of a happy loving relationship without major conflict is the lead-in to somebody dying.

Posted June 7, 2008 5:51 PM by Matt McIrvin

I am reminded of my visit to Sydney last autumn. Near to U Sydney, there's a two-house four-story shopping arcade that I visited quite a bit. At the top floor, there was a shop selling, IIRC, stationery designed by a Swedish designer. They announced the name and nationality of the designer quite prominently in the shop logo.

Intrigued by all things related to my dear home country, especially if they appear abroad, I pull out my camera, snap a single shot of the store window and walk away. I got my parents to give me the camera for a recent Christmas explicitly in order to be able to take snapshots of things that amuse me.

Two stories down and halfway over to the other building half, I'm caught up by the store manager - running to catch up with me, and who tried to bully me into erasing the camera pictures and never ever use my camera again on Australian soil. I don't know how much legal support she had for the claims, and I pretty much ignored them as politely as I could. She didn't escalate.

I am very glad I haven't ran into more nuts participating in the War on Photography - but by the time I move across the Atlantic, I probably will print out one of those photographer's fact sheets and carry in my wallet.

Posted June 7, 2008 6:42 PM by Mikael Vejdemo Johansson

Kevin @26 - I second that. I get the same feeling with politics. Surely the story of democracy (real democracy) should be more powerful than pretend-democracy-but-mean-authoritarianism? You'd think. It just requires some better storytelling, that's all.

What if a movie, just once, had a hero who was into democracy? Live Free or Die Hard almost did this, with the sidekick. Seeing a technoliberal in that role, well, it sent a shiver down my spine. (Not to mention the clear passing-the-baton frame there.) I'm wondering if Hollywood isn't sniffing the wind a little on that.

It could be done. America tells all its stories as movies. Maybe we just need some better movies.

Posted June 7, 2008 6:43 PM by Michael Roberts

Lee @ 29
I can assure you that at the current maximum level of resolution they wouldn't be able to recognize you in an aerial. You're lucky if you can see something that's less than a foot across. I'd worry more about the government seeing you - they have better-quality imaging. If you're really worried, have an awning over you. Or a tree.

Posted June 7, 2008 6:51 PM by P J Evans

Lee @ 29, I'm not sure what you mean. I don't think there's a justification for treating public spaces like private property. I can accept a photography ban on truly private property, like an American indoor mall, even if I think it's silly. But I don't like the trend of privatizing public space.

Posted June 7, 2008 6:53 PM by Caroline

I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that sometimes terrorists will take reconnaissance photographs--after all, regular military does. The problem is that everyone takes photographs, or at least an awful lot of people do, and you're not going to prevent acts of terrorism by harassing every visible photographer, especially since there are so many images on Flickr, and since cameras can be made so small. The fear is simply an excuse for bad policing.

Posted June 7, 2008 7:21 PM by Randolph

Caroline #29, Lee #24:

I think this development (more and more "public" spaces are privately owned) has to do with at least three big cultural developments:

a. Some liberals and libertarians came to believe that enforcing any rules on public spaces was somehow oppressive. In practice, this meant that bums and small-time criminals could take those spaces over without consequence. And that led to the rise of privately-owned alternatives.

b. Many mainstream folks (left and right) really like the idea of "public/private partnerships." This often involves using government money and powers to build public spaces that are privately owned.

c. Some conservatives and most libertarians came to believe that all spaces should be private, and so didn't mind these developments.

All this led us to a bad place, IMO. Property rights are important, but they aren't the right model for city streets, sidewalks, parks, etc., because property-owner-level control over public spaces gives the owners a lot of power to do bad stuff.

Posted June 7, 2008 7:30 PM by albatross

albatross, I agree with all your assessments. Couldn't have said it better.

Posted June 7, 2008 8:58 PM by Caroline

Paula (#28): Google Maps will let you move the marker if you search for your address (you may need to be logged in to google to do so).
You can also make your own map labels and lines, share them, and review businesses - the Maps team is trying to encourage people to add things.

Posted June 7, 2008 9:14 PM by Kevin Marks

James D. Macdonald #19: So the real danger is going to come from Ivan bin Laden Dracula from Zeta Reticuli?

If he's running a day-care center you get a perfect storm.

Posted June 7, 2008 9:35 PM by Madeleine Robins

Paula @28,

You can fix that through Google Maps itself--they'll let you drag the pin to where it ought to be*.

This works quickly if GMaps is less than 200 meters off. Our house was 500 meters off**, requiring incremental fixes.

If you-the-Fluorosphere find GMaps is off, then footnote three may apply to you.

----------
* fair warning that you'll lose a tiny bit of privacy as they display part of your edit name with the edit history.

** not just them--most GPS software programs have the same mistake in their data***. We constantly have to tell drivers

"Don't believe your screen. Please don't. I'm on the curb of this very house in which I've lived for 10 years and you've never been, I'm quite certain you aren't here. Do you see no one on the phone in front of you? Then that's not me."

*** reminding me to tell the neighbors that if they're directing emergency services to my house they'll have to insist on the intersection, etc.

Posted June 7, 2008 10:18 PM by Kathryn from Sunnyvale

I couldn't find the WashPost article from last year that enumerated the number of photographers killed in war, but the number was very high. So "worse" is not worst.

Posted June 7, 2008 10:32 PM by Marilee

Kathryn from Sunnyvale, #40, I used to have to tell delivery guys that no, they could not get here from Douglas Street. If you look at any of the online maps at a resolution other than the finest, it looks like the roads are connected. There's actually not only six feet full of pyracantha and fence between us, but about 12 feet of height. The delivery guys have apparently figured it out now.

Posted June 7, 2008 10:36 PM by Marilee

Albatross #36: a. Some liberals and libertarians came to believe that enforcing any rules on public spaces was somehow oppressive. In practice, this meant that bums and small-time criminals could take those spaces over without consequence.

When did this happen? I think I missed it.

Posted June 7, 2008 10:39 PM by Avram

Madeleine Robins #39: I forgot about that stuff from the 80s. You're right.

Posted June 7, 2008 10:39 PM by Fragano Ledgister

The Google Maps aerial photo of my office building is clear enough that I can recognise the minivan belonging to one of my colleagues. And it places the address marker accurately.

However, if I put in my home address, the pin is several places down the street (and the photograph is about 18 months old). Mapquest, for some reason, can't find my home address.

Posted June 7, 2008 10:50 PM by Fragano Ledgister

In re Google Maps here in Puerto Rico -- and maps in general in this least-documented of nations -- they don't work here. Oh, they're better than Mapquest, and they do manage to get things right 90% of the time, but for that last 10%, well, they just plain don't.

I fondly remember the time I tried to get my daughter to a party on time, using a shortcut which was clearly visible on both the map and the satellite view. But that road was no longer there.

My daughter was not amused.

Posted June 7, 2008 11:01 PM by Michael Roberts

A related example of "seeing the world through the stories we're used to" is what Kit Whitfield calls the "Macho Sue":

Macho Sue's storyline follows a certain trajectory: he begins by acting egregiously, picking or provoking fights and causing problems. However much the ensuing difficulties can be laid at his door, Macho Sue is not about to apologise, in any way. So the problems continue - only to be salvaged by some immense reversals that give the impression that he was right all along.

Posted June 7, 2008 11:07 PM by Doctor Science

I just wanted to note that the idea that something like Google Maps is real time, or near real time, is not at all strange or mysterious to anyone who happens to watch weather reports regularly, or even is just aware of them.

Posted June 7, 2008 11:18 PM by Bruce Baugh

Holy schemoly - that Macho Sue link is great! I have to think about this.

Posted June 7, 2008 11:36 PM by Michael Roberts

Avram, #43: I believe that Central Park is the canonical example, but there was a period when a lot of parks in cities all over America were not good places to be unless you were looking for a dope deal. There has been a significant shift back in the last 15 years or so; it seems to be running side-by-side with the reclamation of the downtown area in many places.

Bruce, #48: Good point! Yes, I'm used to seeing the radar map running in almost-realtime on WU.

Posted June 7, 2008 11:43 PM by Lee

Kevin Marks writes in #:

Greg #14 and Jules #10: exactly - the number of movies that have shown live 'satellite' images of the bad guys is huge - I blame Powers of Ten for that one.

Dwayne Day, known for his work on the history of early spysats, once wrote a nice article rounding up Hollywood's use and abuse of reconnaissance satellites.

Bruce Baugh writes in #48:

I just wanted to note that the idea that something like Google Maps is real time, or near real time, is not at all strange or mysterious to anyone who happens to watch weather reports regularly, or even is just aware of them.

It is indeed a reasonable idea, to anyone unfamiliar with how aerial or satellite imaging actually works. A little technical knowledge spoils it, as Kevin suggested.

Posted June 8, 2008 12:08 AM by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

Kevin Marks writes in #26:

Greg #14 and Jules #10: exactly - the number of movies that have shown live 'satellite' images of the bad guys is huge - I blame Powers of Ten for that one.

Dwayne Day, known for his work on the history of early spysats, once wrote a nice article rounding up Hollywood's use and abuse of reconnaissance satellites.

Bruce Baugh writes in #48:

I just wanted to note that the idea that something like Google Maps is real time, or near real time, is not at all strange or mysterious to anyone who happens to watch weather reports regularly, or even is just aware of them.

It is indeed a reasonable idea, to anyone unfamiliar with how aerial or satellite imaging actually works. A little technical knowledge spoils it, as Kevin suggested.

Posted June 8, 2008 12:09 AM by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

Back in comment #3, R. Emrys wrote: "We're wired to judge how common something is based on how easy it is to bring examples to mind."

When there's a big scary story about something, that builds the reservoir of examples that can come to mind. It doesn't matter if it's fiction. Surprisingly, when a story is used as a counter-example, the setup part of the story can go into the same reservoir of examples. (I think of Maher Arar's story as an example of injustice, showing an innocent man wrongly detained and unable to defend himself against torture. My mother sees it as an example of why torture is necessary--Arar being one of Those People, and his behavior being so suspicious, how else could he be made to confess his links to terrorism? (The detail of Arar's innocence, even the detail that he did not confess under torture...those don't change the emotional weight the story has for my mother.) It should go without saying that my values are different from my mother's, but I'll say it anyhow, because they are so different it hurts.

Ruth: "What worries me even more is that on every cop show and every terrorist drama, the "good guys" torture and intimidate accurate information out of the captive bad guys just in time to save the day."

It's not just cop shows and terrorist dramas. I don't watch cop shows or terrorist dramas, and read relatively few stories along those lines. Yet I've lost track of how many times I've re-read a book in the few last few years, and been shocked to discover that a character I'd loved before Abu Ghraib had suddenly become somebody I had to recognize as a torturer.

Posted June 8, 2008 1:01 AM by Adrian

Madeleine Roberts @ 1: “Perhaps the only advantage that people who deal with story professionally have is that we know (or ought to) when we're indulging in movie-plot-thinking.”

And then there’s Orson Scott Card. I can never get over the fact that the man who wrote Xenocide fervently backed every excess of the post-9/11 regime. Oy. Which brings me to this:

Doctor Science @ 47: [quoting Kit Whitfield’s “Macho Sue”] “Macho Sue's storyline follows a certain trajectory: he begins by acting egregiously, picking or provoking fights and causing problems. However much the ensuing difficulties can be laid at his door, Macho Sue is not about to apologise, in any way. So the problems continue - only to be salvaged by some immense reversals that give the impression that he was right all along.”

There’s another, complimentary story that goes with the Macho Sue: the weary soldier, who fully knows the horrors of war. Despite his reluctance to engage in what he knows (oh how well he knows!) is a horrific endeavor, he nonetheless Does What He Must Do to Protect Home and Country.

Instead of beginning with the hot-headed young asshole picking unnecessary fights, the Reluctant Soldier’s story begins by establishing how happy he is to avoid violence—backing down from confrontations, even with stupid young punks who he could easily take out.* No, he is too wise (and weary) for that. But the offenses against Civilized People simply grow more and more intolerable, until finally some climactic event (his girlfriend is assaulted, his son is killed, his home is invaded, etc.) Forces Him to Take Action.

This is the storyline that John McCain is living. “War is despicable, which is why when I advocate bombing Iran you know it’s totally important!” It’s a storyline that was near and dear to the Cold Warrior’s hearts, making them into noble, hard men Doing Whatever Needs To Be Done to save democracy, even including destroying democracy. That’s why it’s so important to make terrorism into an existential threat—the Reluctant Soldier’s actions are only justified in the extremist of emergencies. (To complete the circle, it’s also the story that gives OSC shivers, I think.)

*Much like Macho Sue, the Reluctant Soldier’s victory in any purely physical contest is all but assured. That’s what makes his reluctance to fight so gosh-darn noble.

Posted June 8, 2008 3:18 AM by heresiarch

29, Lee: Or am I behind the curve again, and this has already happened to somebody?

Already happened to this poor Dutch woman, though nobody was sure whether she was au natural or not.

Posted June 8, 2008 3:22 AM by Martin Wisse

B. Durbin @ 5: "I'm personally of the opinion that at least half of the OH MY GOD YOU CAN'T TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS is a simple power trip, security forces for whatever group deciding they can Stop the Horrible Photographers— and that "terrorism prevention" is just a handy excuse. They acted like that before with little justification."

I think Caroline's post @ 24 answers the question of why: "Malls and stores get upset about photography and video because they are worried about industrial espionage, and/or unflattering exposés (think hidden-camera 20/20 report.) They are worried about their profits."

I don't think it's a lack of understanding of public and private on the companies' part, as much as it is that they know they will get away with it. The companies feel that much more secure about espionage,* the guards get to power trip, and everyone's happy. Oh, except for the consumers.

*I think that keeping consumers and academics from examining them too closely is just as important, if not more so, than keeping their competitors from figuring out their precious trade secrets.

Avram @ 9: "I'm sure a similar thing is going on with the widespread conviction that anything having LED lights on it could be a bomb."

Very true.

Michael Roberts @ 32: "It could be done. America tells all its stories as movies. Maybe we just need some better movies."

I saw Shooter on a plane a while back, and while it was a very by-the-numbers Reluctant Soldier revenge story, I was struck by how incredibly pissed off it was at pretty much everyone. The enemy was basically the entire military-industrial complex, and he hated them for sending him off to die so they could make more money. And this was a standard boilerplate macho drama, not a Noam Chomsky documentary.

Sample quotes: "There's always a confused soul that thinks that one man can make a difference. And you have to kill him to convince him otherwise. That's the hassle with democracy."

"There are no sides. There's no Sunnis and Shiites. There's no Democrats and Republicans. There's only HAVES and HAVE-NOTS."

"This is a country, where the Secretary of Defense can go on T.V., and tell the American public, oh, that "This is about freedom! It's not about oil!" And nobody questions him, cuz they don't wanna hear the answer, because it's a lie!"

Posted June 8, 2008 3:40 AM by heresiarch

Adrian: "Yet I've lost track of how many times I've re-read a book in the few last few years, and been shocked to discover that a character I'd loved before Abu Ghraib had suddenly become somebody I had to recognize as a torturer." Me too, a lot. I find myself really not able to enjoy a lot of old comfort-food reading and viewing, because I see in it the seeds of this "we can do anything 'coz we're the heroes" mentality. I'm in the early stages of fleshing out a fantasy series in which the good guys' power depends on holding to a very, very strict moral code even in the face of extreme crisis, to see if I can get some good drama out of it.

Posted June 8, 2008 5:06 AM by Bruce Baugh

Reading all this, I suddenly remembered something the late insane William S. Burroughs used to say: if you want to ruin a business, just go stand outside and take pictures of it, and record the ambient sound outside it, every day. (Nowadays a videocamera could do both at once; that tells you how long ago -- the 60s and 70s -- Burroughs was doing this spiel.) He recounted how he did this to a merchant he had some obscure grudge against, and described with relish how the merchant came out of the store and yelled at him, because he knew what Burroughs was doing, but there was nothing he could do about it. Within a few weeks his enemy went out of business.

I think I found this material in that old collection of interviews with WSB, "The Job", but I'm far from my books and can't check now. It reminds me just how batshit-crazy Burroughs was, and how incomprehensible it is to me that anyone ever took him seriously. But it also shows that paranoia (and I mean Burroughs's) about having your image stolen goes deeper, and is older, than today's 9/11 society.

Posted June 8, 2008 7:22 AM by Duncan

Adrian: "Yet I've lost track of how many times I've re-read a book in the few last few years, and been shocked to discover that a character I'd loved before Abu Ghraib had suddenly become somebody I had to recognize as a torturer."

Oh. This comment just caused me to come to some rather unpleasant realizations about fast-penta. I mean, in theory the realization that Barrayar is not a nice place for the non-Vors is old news, but... Hrm.

Posted June 8, 2008 8:42 AM by Daniel Martin

Duncan @58 - perhaps Burroughs was right -- doing that caused the merchant to come out and make an ass of himself in public, after all. And who would give a public ass their business?

Daniel @59 - yeah. Miles considers more traditional techniques when fast penta doesn't work. With distaste, to be sure. And I love Miles like a brother, but still. He's a Barrayaran, all right.

Posted June 8, 2008 9:10 AM by Michael Roberts

Heresiarch, #54: If you'd care to write that analysis up in a little more detail, I'd be interested in linking to it. I think it's important to give people the tools to see the sleight-of-hand happening.

On a slight tangent, I was recently given the first season of Eureka on DVD, and I'm finding it to be quite subversive in its own way. The lead character is an absolutely classic Macho Sue, but his reality doesn't support it; he keeps getting slapped down again and again, either by the other characters or by the world not working the way he thinks it does. The heart of the Macho Sue character is that it takes an author to make everything come out right for him, and if the author doesn't cooperate...

Adrian and Bruce: That's exactly the sort of epiphany that leads to social change. Unfortunately, if you're on the leading edge, it's also extremely frustrating, because it feels as though a switch has been flipped in your brain and you're the only one who Gets It.

Posted June 8, 2008 10:05 AM by Lee

Three observations on the photography thing:

First, are there really very many movies where innocent-looking photography turns out to be the prelude to terrorism?

Second: My first theory about the photography ban is that they don't want any damning evidence of their sins, even if they don't know what those are.

Third: My second theory is that they think you're going to steal the corporate soul with your magic box.

Posted June 8, 2008 10:19 AM by C. Wingate

Isn't the reason for the flashing LED=bomb meme that the bombs in question are likely to be improvised, using whatever consumer electronics is at hand to make the fusing mechanism - and yes, lots of stuff has winking LEDs on it?

Of course, it used to be an alarm clock and duct tape - there's even a Dubliners song with the refrain "it was I who put the gelignite in the ould alarm clock".

Posted June 8, 2008 10:48 AM by Alex

Bruce Baugh @ 48: I just wanted to note that the idea that something like Google Maps is real time, or near real time, is not at all strange or mysterious to anyone who happens to watch weather reports regularly, or even is just aware of them.

In the movie Deja Vu, the protagonist is shown footage of a crime victim, indoors, in high resolution, with sound. The investigating team give him some technobabble about amalgamating data from a variety of spy satellite feeds, security cameras, and other sources. My immediate reaction was a total failure of suspension of disbelief. I was somewhat relieved when, a little later in the film, the protagonist also calls them on the bullshit.

Posted June 8, 2008 11:12 AM by Joel Polowin

Alex@63: And thus any ticking object in fiction was a bomb. Or maybe a crocodile.

I don't think the "improvised device" logic works as well for LEDs, though, at least not since the invention of duct tape. I think it's just an equation of blinkenlights = active technology. If it's lit up, following movie plot logic, it's the thing you should focus on.

Posted June 8, 2008 11:15 AM by David Wald

Bruce@48: I just wanted to note that the idea that something like Google Maps is real time, or near real time, is not at all strange or mysterious to anyone who happens to watch weather reports regularly, or even is just aware of them.

Except for resolution. Weather satelites are extremely high orbits so they can get the big picture. Spy satellites are as low as possible so they can get high resolution.

Actually, the "Physics for Future Presidents" course devoted a good chunk of time explaining the limits of what spy satellites can do. I can't remember which lecture it was in, though, so you'd have to google around for it. But he basically said that due to atmospheric issues, optical issues, and minimimum orbits, you'd never be able to get more detailed resolution beyond a certain limit. I think he specifically said you'd never be able to read a license plate from a satellite, but my memory about this is at least a year old and subject to bad DDR refresh and radiation-enabled bit flipping.

Posted June 8, 2008 1:04 PM by Greg London

Speaking of movie-induced bomb-making bullshit, I actually laughed out loud in the theater while watching Lethal Weapon 1. A bomb had gone off, I believe, and amid the wreckage, they found a high tech firing device used only by serious terrorists: A mercury switch.

And all I could think of was that every house in the US (at the time, at least) probably had a mercury switch in their thermostat, available at nearly any hardware store and Radio Shack.

Posted June 8, 2008 1:10 PM by Greg London

At work we were able to figure out that Google Earth was using pictures from about 6 or 7 years ago because their photos of Bellshill showed no containers in the bottom car park. The containers had been there for about 6 years. That was my first real introduction to Google earth, and after I'd seen that, it was obvious that it was using old databases.

Posted June 8, 2008 1:57 PM by guthrie

You can buy aerial photos with really good resolution, but the higher the resolution, the more the photos will cost.

There's a company called GlobExplorer that will cheerfully sell you a picture, and they'll also tell you the date of it. Usually they're a year or so old; urban areas are generally both more recent and higher resolution. (You can browse on their site.)

Posted June 8, 2008 2:07 PM by P J Evans

guthrie @68 -- I know they've updated, though. We re-did our terrace 4 years ago, and up until a few months ago, Google Earth was showing the old, ugly one. Hmph!

Posted June 8, 2008 2:07 PM by Debbie

guthrie #68:

Is there any way to find out from Google Maps how old the images are? A map and aerial or satellite image of a city I'm planning to visit has a very different value, depending on whether it's from a couple months ago, or five years ago!

Posted June 8, 2008 2:19 PM by albatross

David #65:

Yeah, terrorist bombs have blinking LEDs for the same reason futuristic weapons fire visible line-like rays which advance toward their targets at human-perceptible speeds, and magical powers involve cool sounds and interesting visual effects.

By contrast, check out real technological magic. Note the disappointing lack of cool visual effects from an MRI, the uninspiring sight of a successful attack on a computer system ("Hey, what's with this stupid blank blue screen?"), or not-especially-dangerous looking UAVs that have apparently had a huge impact on war in the last few years.

Movies (and TV media, unfortunately) need to be able to tell a story. It needs to be easy to distinguish good guys from bad guys, keep people straight in a complicated visual scene, and intuitively get what the magic technology is supposed to be doing. People whose entire understanding of unfamiliar areas of the world comes from movies and TV subconsciously expect things to work like they do in the movies.

Posted June 8, 2008 2:43 PM by albatross

In the Google streets image of my apartment building, I can see my parked car. The thing is, it is parked in such a way that I can tell that I had simply stopped and was running inside to grab something quickly before running off. (I can tell because my car is parking in my landlord's car, which I only do for temporary stops.)

Somehow the nature of the "I was almost right there" moment in the photo fascinates me, in a way that just seeing my car parked in its normal spot would not have.

It reminded me of the video by The Vacationeers.

Posted June 8, 2008 3:14 PM by Kayjayoh

I just realized this topic connects very closely with something I've been thinking about for at least a decade - the social danger that "realistic" crime movies and TV dramas present.

People will justify all sorts of crazy stuff to themselves - such as feeling it's essential that everybody raises gnus - because they perceive that they're always in terrible danger of being murdered by some random stranger. Why? They've seen it on TV, and in the movies, over and over and over again. In particular, they've seen it in shown in settings that look just like their own surroundings.

They will persist in believing that street crime is getting worse and worse, even though it's been declining for over 20 years, because during that period they've seen more and more movies. What's more, they'll believe that the '50s were a golden age of domestic peace and little crime, because the movies they watch about the '50s don't depict violence as graphically - even though the '50s had relatively high rates of juvenile violent crime and murder. [citation needed!]

It doesn't just affect Americans, of course - I've noticed it particularly in some British people's comments, wondering how Americans can stand to live with the incredibly high crime and murder rate here. The answer, of course, is that while we have a much higher murder rate than the UK, it's still not anything the average person runs into day to day, unlike in the movies. (Other than of course hearing it run over and over again in the TV news...)

Posted June 8, 2008 3:15 PM by Clifton Royston

Adrian @ 53

Everything old is new again. This story has been part of the American internal narrative since the beginning; certainly all of my life and before that. It's the basic Cold Warrior story, "We're the ones who make the hard choices" as Ollie North loved saying. It goes back at least to the Indian Wars in the 19th Century ("We do what we have to, to protect Civilization, and the women and children" and the railroad and the cattle ranchers and ...). And our literature has supported it all along. from the Penny Dreadfuls to the Mack Bolen series.

C. Wingate @ 62

First: Every example I can think of shows reconnaisance, almost always with a camera, and often with two terrorists, so they can talk about their plans while photographing. It's become a conventional plot device to allow a few minutes of location setup and/or infodump.

Second: I agree; corporations are by their nature paranoid, and most of them have skeletons in the closet; it's an easy jump to worrying that you've done things wrong you don't even know about.

Third: Also agreed; most managers in my experience are seriously steeped in magical thinking.

Industrial espionage is a given in most corporate cultures; they're out to get everyone else, after all, so the converse surely must apply. It's such a pervasive meme, that the company I work for, which makes church organs and other musical instruments, has attempted to install some rather draconian rules about cell phones, cameras, and other electronic devices on the manufacturing shop floor to prevent industrial espionage. This despite the fact that their business in general and their new models in particular are lagging behind their major competitor in sales and marketing, so there's not much motivation to steal their secrets.

Alex @ 63

The blinkenlights on a bomb are a convenient (and horribly overworked) device to ratchet the suspense up as the time runs out, and provide a cheap set of shots to use as cutaway. It's a cheap and easy way to both lengthen the screen time of the climactic scene and make the hero's attempts to stop the catastrophe seem doomed to failure, so the final triumph is that much more exciting. It's a narrative, not an electronic, device.

Posted June 8, 2008 3:50 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Clifton Royston @ 74: I've noticed it particularly in some British people's comments, wondering how Americans can stand to live with the incredibly high crime and murder rate here.

This goes back a long way. IIRC, in Wodehouse's 1933 story "The Luck of the Stiffhams", the male protagonist goes off to America to seek his fortune, but his sweetheart is convinced that he'll be shot as soon as he arrives, because such events are so common there. I'm pretty sure that the same thing came up in other stories -- exaggerated and played for laughs, of course, but the concept is there.

Posted June 8, 2008 4:47 PM by Joel Polowin

Clifton @74,
And our brains are so easily taken over by what we see, vs. what we know.

When I was a kid, at one point I went to a school where... 1. I walked 1/2 mile to a bus stop located on a busy street, 2. took the city bus one mile, walked across a mall's parking lot to transfer 3. took the 2nd city bus several miles to the school. This was fine by my parents and me.

The same parent now gets worried about a grandchild walking 1 block from one house to a friend's house. They know that things are just as safe, there's just more sensational reporting. But the knowing can't overtake the feelings caused by that reporting.

We believe what we see, and if a scene is repeated 20 times on the TV, deep down we'll feel that it's happened 20 times.

Posted June 8, 2008 6:47 PM by Kathryn from Sunnyvale

Lee @ 61: "If you'd care to write that analysis up in a little more detail, I'd be interested in linking to it. I think it's important to give people the tools to see the sleight-of-hand happening."

Hmm, I hardly have anything for you to link to. I've posted to my blog all of three times in the years since I got it, and once was just a comment pasted from here. You'd be better off linking to that comment.

To add a little, I'd say that the basic conceit of both Macho Sue and the Reluctant Soldier is the belief that violence really is necessary, and those saying otherwise are naive, cowardly, or trying to trick the rest of us.

...this is a conceit shared by a great deal of science fiction and fantasy.

Posted June 8, 2008 7:07 PM by heresiarch

heresiarch #78:

Surely the issue isn't whether violence is sometimes necessary, but whether it's sometimes necessary to "take the gloves off" or abandon law and morality. And that's a philosophical question I don't claim to be able to answer once and for all, but which most action movies seem to answer in the positive, with very little thought appearing to be given to the bad consequences of that answer.

Posted June 8, 2008 7:22 PM by albatross

"We believe what we see, and if a scene is repeated 20 times on the TV, deep down we'll feel that it's happened 20 times."

Which, I think, may have been one contributing factor - however minor - to how so many people went a bit bonkers after 9/11.

Posted June 8, 2008 8:13 PM by Dan S.

Dan: Yes, that was one reason I began consciously avoiding TV in those days; I realized I needed to avoid traumatizing myself, as I was seeing a lot of people doing. To this day, I think I've seen that footage once, maybe twice?

Posted June 8, 2008 8:41 PM by Clifton Royston

Kayjayoh #73: 'I can tell because my car was parking in my landlord's car'. I'd love to know how you did that

Posted June 8, 2008 8:49 PM by Fragano Ledgister

albatross @ 79: this is exactly one of the reasons I enjoyed Star Trek: TNG and DS9. I don't recall if it was explicitly stated in either show (I suppose not being able to quote episode name and dialogue means I'm not a real Trekkie, but I'll survive :), but there was a strong indication that resorting to violence meant you'd already lost the argument.

Posted June 8, 2008 8:57 PM by Syd

Heresiarch@78: I'd say that the basic conceit of both Macho Sue and the Reluctant Soldier is the belief that violence really is necessary, and those saying otherwise are naive, cowardly, or trying to trick the rest of us.

i.e. see Charlie's thread about alternative boondoggles instead of blowing 3T$ on Iraq.

It didn't take long for the conversation about the cost of the war and is it worth it to draw out some trolls who tried to accuse folks of wanting to lose the war.

Posted June 8, 2008 9:04 PM by Greg London

albatross @ 79: I don't quite understand the distinction you're driving at, so I'll simply try to explain my own point of view a little more clearly.

I think the Macho Sue conceit is that there's a sort of special zone wherein violence shifts from being categorically bad to being categorically good. Sure, you shouldn't kill people, but if the mobster murders your family, then taking bloody revenge on his entire organization is worth supporting. Once stuff shifts to the Macho Sue zone, all those asshole traits--aggressive, violent, antisocial--become virtues. That's the payoff for his earlier struggles: now that the shit has really hit the fan, everyone realizes how much they needed him!

The Reluctant Soldier view is different. Violence is always bad but, sometimes, necessary. Sometimes the weak need defending, and the hard choices need to be made. Doing these things hasn't become a moral good; they still taint the person who does them. Thus, making these hard choices is an actual sacrifice. Their burden is unique--they have accepted corruption to save everyone else. Now, in my moral universe, this isn't entirely insane. Some fights do need to be fought, and the noblest of causes doesn't make it any less awful. PTSD doesn't care why you fought.

That doesn't mean that the Reluctant Soldier archtype isn't harmful, though. As a storyline, the violence is inevitably necessary. The moral of the story is less "Let's avoid violence as much as possible" than it is "Look how awesome he is for being so self-sacrificing and noble!" So in the end, the Reluctant Soldier archetype is still about glorifying violence and the men who do it--just like the Macho Sue. Both are designed to make the case that violence is necessary.

Another problem is that Macho Sues (who are never right) love to pretend they are Reluctant Soldiers (who are sometimes right). It transforms their asshole machismo into noble, Christ-like martyrdom. But they aren't really making any sort of sacrifice; they love deciding who will live and who will die. They love the violence, the power. The Reluctant Soldier is just their sheep suit.

Posted June 8, 2008 9:32 PM by heresiarch

#85:

The moral of the story is less "Let's avoid violence as much as possible" than it is "Look how awesome he is for being so self-sacrificing and noble!"

Part of the problem is that the times when violence is necessary and the times when you *think* violence is necessary aren't necessarily the same times. The people who just want a fight will try to convince you that it's necessary even when it isn't. (I hardly need to detail the historical and current-events examples.) But even the people who aren't actively hoping for violence can screw this up.

E.g.: Ender's Game. Warriors don't come much more Reluctant than Ender. He's actually *frg hc* gb svtug gur jne orpnhfr ur jbhyqa'g qb vg vs ur xarj vg jnf sbe erny. Ohg gur crbcyr jub frg uvz hc sbe vg ner znxvat rknpgyl guvf zvfgnxr - gur jne vfa'g arprffnel ng nyy.

Posted June 8, 2008 10:22 PM by Chris

Lee@61: Heresiarch, #54: If you'd care to write that analysis up in a little more detail, I'd be interested in linking to it. I think it's important to give people the tools to see the sleight-of-hand happening.

Lee, analysys of the ways in which an author can create sympathy for a pro-war viewpoint character was something I tried to hammer out on the war pr0n page.

The links on the right hand side include a "complete description" and a "short form" page. The "complete description" is CC-BY-SA if you want to put it on your own site or create a derivative.

It doesn't go into the tricks of how the author explains why the reluctant soldier must bring himself out of retirement (usually its a specific form of the "out of whack" event. i.e. they "killed my father, raped and murdered my sister, burned my ranch, shot my dog, and stole my Bible!"), but it does try to go into the number of ways that the author will try to minimize any realistic negative impact from violence (such as colateral damage) and maximize the justification for violence.

Basic author tricks include othering and distancing.

Othering simply means presenting the enemy as evil incarnate, mindless minions, irredeamable rubbish, things which do not feel, do not have families, do not live day to day lives as we know it.

distancing means the author puts distance between the reader and the violence performed by the sympathetic character. As an example, lethal rube goldberg machines are everywhere in fiction once you start looking for them.

Contrast this distancing of the effects of violence committed by the sympathetic character with the intense focus of the damage done by the violence of the antagonist character. This goes back to the "out of whack event", showing how traumatic the death of the protrag's wife was to the reluctant soldier, versus the lack of emotional cost when the protag kills the antagonist's evil girlfriend.

And so on.

Posted June 8, 2008 10:43 PM by Greg London

for example, with regard to Iraq, contrast the Bush Administration's intense focus on the damage done (or could be done, or maybe, might be done) by al queda or terrrists, invoking 9-11 whenever possible, versus their complete unwillingness to look at the damage their policies inflict on everyone else.

that's controling the distance of the narrative

Posted June 8, 2008 10:49 PM by Greg London

Bruce #57: The twist the new incarnation(s) of Doctor Who have on the Reluctant Warrior fits in very well with this view of having a code of non-violence. The Doctor's distaste for guns is a big part of this. If you haven't watched the whole 4 series, do so. Or we can tell you which episodes are best ones (*ahem* Stephen Moffat *ahem*) -but no Spoilers.

Firefly is an interesting American attempt in the same direction - the Macho Sue character Jayne is the butt of their jokes, but it doesn't quite hold it up as well as Doctor Who does.

I wrote about this theme in Stardust before.

Posted June 8, 2008 11:33 PM by Kevin Marks

Greg #87:

As an alternative to this, look at the reluctant soldier in Munich. Ol gur raq bs gur zbivr, vg'f cynva gung gur znva punenpgre unf fhpprffshyyl pneevrq bhg fbzr ynetr cneg bs uvf bssvpvnyyl-fnapgvbarq iratnapr zvffvba, naq gur whfgvsvpngvbaf sbe gung ner irel pyrne. Naq lrg, vg'f nyfb pyrne gung ur vf qrrcyl, cebonoyl creznaragyl, shpxrq hc ol jung ur'f qbar, ol gur qrnguf bs olfgnaqref naq greebevmngvba bs enaqbz sbyxf jub unccrarq gb or va gur jebat cynpr ng gur jebat gvzr, naq ol gur rkcrevrapr bs orvat obgu uhagre naq uhagrq.

Posted June 8, 2008 11:34 PM by albatross

heresiarch #85:

I agree on the Macho Sue character and its problems. Being an asshole who's willing to hurt or kill people who get in the way just can't be made okay, no matter how bad the bad guys. I think there's a certain image we have of Mr. Macho Sue as being a thug, but "our" thug--someone who is fearsome to the enemy (and women and children dear to him), but not to our people.

As far as the second part, I think we just have a fundamental disagreement. I don't think violence is inherently a bad thing, I think its rightness or wrongness is based on the surrounding situation. A policeman using violence to stop a robbery in progress is a good thing, even though it would be still better if he could stop the robbery without it.

IMO, there's a big danger in glorifying violence, because that encourages it where it's not necessary. But there's also a big danger in categorically condemning it, because we can no more run a working society without violence than we can without farming.

Posted June 8, 2008 11:48 PM by albatross

(* * * ) Is this thinge onne?

Posted June 9, 2008 12:27 AM by Takuan

ah, excellent. If you don't like the story being told, tell your own. Do the righteous outnumber the bad? Perhaps instead of trying to counter lies with facts it is better to tell stories. Why does the Warofterror Industry have such legs in the demographic? Are they delivering what people WANT to hear? How can we deliver what they NEED to hear in a manner that they will hear it?

Posted June 9, 2008 12:40 AM by Takuan

Daniel Martin at #59 writes:

> Oh. This comment just caused me to come to some rather unpleasant realizations about fast-penta. I mean, in theory the realization that Barrayar is not a nice place for the non-Vors is old news, but... Hrm.

I'd been reading the Barrayar books for quite a while before it really clicked that the "good guys" were a bunch of militarist racist classist thugs. Which doesn't mean I stopped loving the books, but it made my head spin around a couple of times.

Posted June 9, 2008 2:08 AM by Steve Taylor

Chris @ 86: "I think this varies greatly depending on who is telling the story. The Sharing Knife comes to mind as a counterexample. (It's not finished yet, but if the main characters change the world for the better in the last book, I bet it won't be by violence.)"

Well, archetypes can be used in different ways--just because a story is has a Reluctant Soldier in it doesn't mean it will be a typical Reluctant Soldier story. The Sharing Knife, in my humble, isn't about Dag's reluctant soldieriness--among other things, he isn't that reluctant about fighting the blight. It is really about recovering from the horrors of violence, and about learning how to be a human again.

And like I said before, the Reluctant Soldier archetype isn't inherently awful. There are some very good stories about Reluctant Soldiers (Road to Perdition, A History of Violence, Transmetropolitan,* etc.). The problem is that they often serve as a seemingly-reasonable pretext for Macho Sues looking to prove something.

*I don't think it's a coincidence that the three reluctant soldier stories I thought of first came from the comic book tradition--the justifications and ramifications of violence are a major theme in that realm.

albatross @ 91: "As far as the second part, I think we just have a fundamental disagreement. I don't think violence is inherently a bad thing, I think its rightness or wrongness is based on the surrounding situation. A policeman using violence to stop a robbery in progress is a good thing, even though it would be still better if he could stop the robbery without it."

That is a major disagreement. While I agree that the surrounding situation is very important in cases of violence, no matter how justified violence is, it still causes pain and is therefore undeniably bad. It is never a good, only the lesser of two evils. Surgery is often a good thing on the whole, but that goodness doesn't make the knife inflict any less damage, or the cuts any less likely to get infected. You're still getting cut up, and you still end up with scars.

Posted June 9, 2008 2:48 AM by heresiarch

Hi, Takuan! Nice to see you joining the conversations over here.

Posted June 9, 2008 3:13 AM by Clifton Royston

One of the reasons I love Lost so much is that it often runs contrary to these myths, and does it well. So far I can think of very few examples in Lost where violence proved to be the 'correct' solution, and quite a few cases where it proved to be a very bad choice. Rot’d for many, many spoilers:

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