Those would be called news stories. When they cease to portray the conventionally real, the actually existent — that’s what we call fiction.

On the other hand, there are stories and dramas about things that might be.

Yes, that would be mimesis, where what is being portrayed is not conventionally real, not actually existent, but could be. It is logically, physically and temporally possible. All fiction is mimetic to some extent in so far as it portrays unreal objects of classes that have real world instances — tables, chairs, laptops, writers. Sometimes however it deals also with things that could not be. Sometimes that’s could not be ever. Sometimes that’s could not be here and now.

When it’s in the latter camp, that means we’re dealing with things that could be elsewhen — e.g. in the future. If they’re only possible elsewhen though, that rather means they’re not actually existent.

Moral questions about situations that don’t exist have no significance.

The future does not exist, not yet. So moral questions about the future have no significance if one accepts your logic. I don’t.

Rather, all those stories and dramas that portray the unreal, the not actually existent, they offer situations that, like the fictional objects — tables, chairs, laptops, writers — are unreal instances of classes that have real world instances. Those situations (which don’t exist by definition, being fictional and all) are, in fact, unreal instances of unreal objects interacting. The idea being that what one articulates in terms of relationships of desireability and duty in the unreal situation is a comment on desireabilities and duties in the real world analogues.

These kind of stories can exercise great power because they take a position (or possibly provoke the reader to take a position,) on things that matter precisely because the essence of the story, despite the ficitonal incidence, is real.

In other words, what matters is not the fact that the situation is unreal. What matters is that the interactions of unreal objects in unreal situations accurately models the interactions of analogous real objects in real situations.

This is how fiction can be relevant despite the fact it isn’t true. It is figuratively applicable. Since relationships are not concrete things, you see, we can render them in our renderings of entirely imaginary things. Crazier still, there’s this thing we can do called abstract thought, where we can render the relationship between two objects in our rendering of two objects of completely different classes! This is called metaphor. Or allegory, if we do it on a grand scale, in prose or verse. Or just fiction, if we simply render the two unreal objects with their relationship between them, the interaction, and leave the reader to decide exactly which two real-world objects the relationship we’re rendering is figuratively applicable to.

Like, you know how we use the term “Catch-22” to apply in all those crazy double-bind situations we might find ourselves in, the way the book we take the idiom from manages to model absurdities in the relationships of human beings, in part because of that conceit, the way we can abstract relationships from the unreal situations and unreal objects in that book and find them all too applicable in our life despite us not actually being airmen in the Second World War?

That’s what’s going on there.

Seeing McKellen and Curry as Anglo-Saxons instead of scientists is exactly the same as seeing Roy as an Asian instead of a scientist, even though his scientific knowledge is helpful.

No, it isn’t. Seeing Roy as an Asian-American is rather a logical part of a column examining how Asians are rendered in the movie as part of an essay on exoticism. Seeing McKellen and Curry as Anglo-Saxons is apparently offered in the attempt to negate the criticism emergent from that examination.

Your arguments are getting unhinged.

They simply point up that your quibbles read as denials of prejudice in the renderings of Asians in the movie. Those quibbles are hardly relevant, after all, as anything other than “If these characters are also rendered fools, the rendering of this character as a fool can’t be born of prejudice.” Feel free to argue this if you want. Hint: “Crazy talk!” isn’t really a cogent rebuttal; if you wanted to try, “That’s not what I meant,” my response would be, “Well, what exactly is your point then?”

Fortunately, the movie wasn’t successful, so it isn’t a compelling topic for discussion.

And yet you seem compelled.

“Our” stance might reflect our judgment of the truth- value, save the notion of truth-value seems to be anathema? Or it might be “our” refusal to accept the narrative stance? It’s not clear that any text or drama can survive such a deeply hostile reading, meaning all such readings have the same result, meaning they do not need to be discussed at all. We can just skip to the bottom line. Whatever it means, plainly the “actual model” isn’t in my grasp. So, I’ll go to what I meant in my crude but easily grasped terms.

I doubt any one holds all the conventional readings of literature and drama, to the exclusion of any idiosyncratic ones. Nonetheless, in a rough and ready fashion, most people have a a fairly clear idea of what is supposed to be, here and now, even if it’s out of sight.

There are stories and dramas that explicitly, implicitly, tacitly aim at portraying the conventionally real, the actually existent. Some of them are concerned with moral questions, matters of duty. These kind of stories can exercise great power because they take a position (or possibly provoke the reader to take a position,) on things that matter precisely because the essence of the story, despite the ficitonal incidence, is real. Moral questions about situations that don’t exist have no significance.

On the other hand, there are stories and dramas about things that might be. These kinds of stories are in disrepute because the prevailing tendency amongst the rulers of any society is to disbelieve, ferociously, in any other possiblities. Questons of duty, morality, are not compelling in themselves. But the question of desirability of the possibilities is.

Or, to phrase it another way, stories about the failure in duty to fly by flapping your arms, or about the heartsick yearning for a four-sided triangle, are absurd.

Re The Shadow: Roy is a scientist too. Seeing McKellen and Curry as Anglo-Saxons instead of scientists is exactly the same as seeing Roy as an Asian instead of a scientist, even though his scientific knowledge is helpful. Jonathan Winters and Peter Boyle do not fare much better than the scientist characters, by the way. Your arguments are getting unhinged. Fortunately, the movie wasn’t successful, so it isn’t a compelling topic for discussion.

I’m not wholly sure what you mean here, I confess, talking of deontic and boulomiac stances being written “as” or “in” alethic/epistemic modalities. Literally, you’re saying that judgements of duty or desire written into the narrative are only pertinent, only matters of concern, when expressed as/in judgements of factuality or possibility. Which somehow means they are not modalities, but stances, QED!

I think you may be misunderstanding the fact that alethic and epistemic modalities are also stances, not the literal factuality or possibility of events described in narrative but judgements thereof written into the narrative and read out of it. They are part of the import of articulations, not truth-states of propositions.

So, in terms of the actual model, what you’re saying here doesn’t really make sense: X type of judgement (deontic/boulomaic) is only worth paying attention to when it’s articulated as Y type of judgement (epistemic/alethic); therefore an articulation of X type of judgement is not an articulation of a type of judgement at all (a narrative modality), but rather… um… an articulation of a type of judgement (a stance)!

Maybe my explanation of alethic and epistemic modalities is less clear than it could be, in which case, mea culpa. But in so far as I think I have an idea what you’re driving at, that confusion of epistemic/alethic stance/modality with truth-values seems to be further confounded by assumptions that are just plain wrong.

I mean, I take it when you say “written as” you’re referring to the tendency for English to overload modal auxiliary verbs, such that some — e.g. will, should, must — are used to articulate one type of judgement here, another there, yes? So:

“You must do what you’re told.” (deontic)

“I simply must taste those hors d’ouvres!” (boulomaic)

“To taste the hors d’ouvres, you must put them in your mouth.” (alethic)

“I would that thy father were not my sworn foe!” (boulomaic)

“But I will not let him come betwixt us!” (epistemic)

And so on.

In those examples, we see words like “will”/”would” being used to articulate epistemic judgements here, boulomaic judgements there, words like “must” being used to articulate alethic judgements here, deontic judgements there.

Now, I take it that, on the basis of this, you’re dismissing the deontic and boulomaic usages as secondary, as exaptations. You seem to be assuming that in order to express such stances (judgements of desire and duty) we’re co-opting the terminology of epistemic and alethic modalities (judgements of factuality and possibility.) Yes?

So if I say, “I would that thy father were not my sworn foe!” this is me adopting the phraseology of epistemic judgement to articulate a boulomaic judgement.

The reality is actually quite the opposite. If you examine the etymology of those modal auxiliary verbs, you’ll find that the boulomaic and deontic usages are largely the base usage, with the alethic and epistemic usages developments from that.

If you think that an epistemic use of “will” in a statement like “X will happen,” for example, is self-evidently the starting point from which archaic boulomaic usages such as “I will it not,” develop, this is arse-backwards. The word “will” is derived from wyllan, meaning to wish, rooted in Indo-European wel-, meaning to be pleasing. The epistemic use develops out of the boulomaic use.

The words “shall” and “should” meanwhile derive from skal, meaning to owe. Which is to say, the deontic usage, the use of the word to articulate obligation, is the basic function. It’s only that its use in the first person, “I shall,” becomes promissory, thereby articulating an epistemic judgement of future events happening (i.e. because it is my duty to make it so.)

How about “must”? Surely “must” must be at heart a judgement of hard facts and graven barriers of possibility! Sorry, nope. Here we’re dealing with one tense of the term which has, as its other forms, “may,” “might,” “mote.” The base meaning? To be allowed. In other words, the primary usage is again deontic, a judgement of what is mandatory, discretional, permissable or forbidden. The notion of theoretical possibility is (quite logically) being articulated in the language of obligation.

And if you’re thinking, “But this cannot be!” you should know that such an alethic use of “can” is derived from its epistemic use, the word having its roots in cunnan meaning to know (how.) That is to say, in its original use “can” was cognate with the word “ken” as used in Scots — in, for example, “Ah ken how it works.” The phrase, “I can” is not an articulation of possibility originally, (“X is theoretically achievable by me,”) but rather an articulation of factuality, (“I have the skill of achieving X.”)

The point is that if it actually mattered here how the modalities are articulated, if we were seeking to discount one type of modality as “not a proper modality” because we turn to the language of other types in order to express it… well, it would be the alethic and epistemic modalities that suffer. Why one would even want to impose such sophistic nonsense on the notion of modality, I have no idea. The fact remains that modality falls into four broad types, that an articulation can have one of four types of stance written into it or read out of it: epistemic; alethic; deontic; boulomaic.

And, to be honest, casting it as Anglo-Saxon, I have to say, along with the rest of those questions, rather comes off as denial: “But it can’t be racism! See? Aren’t these white characters equally victims of prejudice… and for being white?”

You offer this, I mean, in the context of challenges that: well, surely Shiwan Khan’s antagonist status makes him distinct from other Asians — as if this distinction mattered, as if making a murderous Mandingo the antagonist in a movie where all other blacks are Comedy Negros somehow proves you’re not abjecting; and also, well, one couldn’t possibly imagine any other option — which coming from an author would basically just be an appeal of helplessness, that “the story made me do it.”

In that context, I mean, focusing on Curry and McKellan as “Anglo-Saxon” rather than scientists… it’s rather like pointing up the “Anglo-Saxon” nature of two rampantly homophobic stereotypes when someone highlights the fact that a movie with a mob of Mandingos raping white women is abjecting blacks.

Not sure what scene you think I was suggesting in my thought experiment; it wasn’t that. Also: thought experiment. Not “Here’s how they should’ve had the story go.”

Did making Shiwan Khan a stand-in for Genghis Khan, a plausible villain in his own right, and showing his backstory have any aim other than diferentiating him from other Asians?

There is no showing of backstory for Khan, but distinctness from “other Asians” can be presumed, those “other Asians” all being, as individuals, distinct from each other… unless one is dealing not with the foreign in “other Asians” but a fakery of it — “Other(ed) Asians.” In which case, characters of that class will fall into one of a set of stereotypes, as Khan does.

Do Tim Curry’s and Ian McKellen’s characters show abjection of Anglo-Saxons?

Yes and no. They’re mainly products of the abjection of intellectuals: on the one hand projecting cowardice and avarice, lack of “backbone” (Shadow as Un-Self, as Other,) the inverse of the anti-intellectual moral injunctions of the “jock” ethos; on the other disempowering with comic absent-mindedness, rendering safe by showing as ineffectual. But the accents are signifiers of the “sophistication” projected onto Europeans, so the movie is piggy-backing off that abjection too.

If not, how is Roy’s bumbling and fear different?

It is, as I say, but Roy’s bumbling and fear is different, as one would expect — (“different markers map to different meanings, different stances to the different abject groups.”) Where the intellectual can be rendered bumbling but not cowardly and qualify as positive, Roy is established as both at the start. Though “bumbling” is not the best word for his ineffectuality; it’s more a matter of going into a silly flap in the face of the unknown. His brand of comic coward rather parallels the bug-eyed Comedy Negro sidekick as evidenced in Charlie Chan movies, to pick one example.

How could the show create a villain with similar but possibly greater powers without an Asian villain?

Easily. Create a villain with similar but possibly greater powers who is not Asian.

Posit yet another mystical source, thereby straining willing suspension of disbelief even more?

The “power to cloud men’s minds” is posited as a skill that can be learned, that can be taught. If one accepts this fanciful chimera of psychic powers itself, one is accepting it as a conceit of How the World Really Works (this fictive world, that is.) Given that the latent capacity is apparently universal, it is less of a strain to suspension of disbelief to imagine the arcane mystery of uber-mesmerism in which that potential is unleashed common across cultures — like writing, say.

The Ying Ko backstory so far as I know was invented for the movie. I suspect the critical reading of Cranston as oppressor was an uncomfortable one responsible for the relative unpopularity of the movie. It’s hard to see what the narrative point of the Ying Ko character was other than to add a critical viewpoint. In any event, Cranston shouldn’t be shown as dreaming Shiwan Khan’s dream. It might have been better to show Cranston’s face ripped off to reveal Ying Ko’s, unless it couldn’t be made to have a clear and distinct visual impact.

Did making Shiwan Khan a stand-in for Genghis Khan, a plausible villain in his own right, and showing his backstory have any aim other than diferentiating him from other Asians? Do Tim Curry’s and Ian McKellen’s characters show abjection of Anglo-Saxons? If not, how is Roy’s bumbling and fear different? How could the show create a villain with similar but possibly greater powers without an Asian villain? Posit yet another mystical source, thereby straining willing suspension of disbelief even more?