Why Moralize upon It? Democratic Education through American Literature and Film

Why Moralize upon It? Democratic Education through American Literature and Film. Brian Danoff (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020).

“Why moralize upon it?” asked Herman Melville’s character Amasa Delano in “Benito Cereno” referring to the remarkable adventure in which he was a participant wherein slaves briefly took over a boat before Delano quelled the mutiny. The real Amasa Delano’s account displayed an attitude of ‘what is done is done, so why reflect on it, and imbue it with moral significance?,’ an attitude that Melville clearly problematizes. Both Melville’s character and Melville’s response will certainly find supporters in politics where some seem to excuse far too much in their sensitivity about making everything about politics and morality and others seem to find too much politics and moral concern in everything. Sometimes a cigar is a cigar and sometimes it is not. In a political context in which people’s lives can reasonably spatialize within a moral neighborhood inhabited by religio-political-moral familiars (Bishop), one side can see the other as moralizing and, therefore, politicizing all things, while the other will argue that all things are already political and moral but they represent unjust political and moral positions and, therefore, must be challenged.

Brian Danoff’s Why Moralize Upon It? Democratic Education Through American Literature and Film is a very interesting book, with a great title, which seems to emerge from conversations held across the United States and elsewhere (as though he had been sitting in the corner of a dinner party that would have happened if X and Y were still friends). The book argues that readers should moralize upon reading literature and film because such depictions of political events can demonstrate complex relations between people who are more than ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys (ie Danoff does not endorse simplistic moralizing). Rather, the novels and films analyzed have tragic figures who must be understood as bearing positive and negative aspects, even if one of these may be more evident or dominant. In addition to the moral ambiguity of the characters, the stories often present narratives in which the reader might find justifications for unsavory actions or reasons to be troubled by what appear to be ‘happy endings.’ Reflecting on the moral complexity of the characters and stories can aid citizens in a democratic polity, particularly in a time where polarization encourages cartoonized versions of adversaries who speak in bumper-sticker style tweets and operate in an essentially flat-moral manichean world. Whereas once a voter could vote along a party line and ignore the names of members of the other party, the socially mediated consumer receives curated messages of dubious quality from sources of one partisan position which are passed along by ‘friends’ and trusted sources, without ever seeing comments from the other side except in scare quotes in friendly media sources.

Novels and films present compelling stories in which readers will find characters simultaneously appealing and repulsive. Having such an understanding of humanity is important, Danoff argues, for democratic citizens. In Chapter One, Danoff offers a wonderful analysis of Melville’s “Benito Cereno” and the film Captain Philips. Interestingly, Danoff criticizes the original accounts of Captain Delano (A Narrative of Voyages of Trends), and Richard Phillips (with Stephan Talty, A Captains’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea) for being morally blind and unwilling to consider the moral compass and motivational scheme of the other. Once the real Delano discovered that the Benito Cereno had been taken over by the slave Babo, his concern was to end the rebellion and restore order to the boat. He did not moralize upon this situation and nor did he wonder whether the pre-slave rebellion order was worth restoring. Similarly, Richard Phillips’ A Captain’s Duty, which recounts how his vessel was taken hostage by Somali pirates and how he was rescued, does not linger on why Somalians might enter piracy or whether the US navy or government had any responsibility for conditions in Somalia. Melville’s account of the Benito Cereno and the film version Captain Phillips are quite different as the artistic Delano and Philips appear less savory and Babo and Muse (the Somalian leader) are not degenerates bereft of morality. Rather, each becomes a ‘captain’ in his own right. But in Melville nor Captain Phillips neither the American captains nor their adversaries appear flawless or innocent. Danoff highlights that “no character…. is simply a virtuous hero or an evil villain” (19) and this is particularly important for him as art, perhaps better or more clearly than reality, can help citizens understand moral complexity of actors, actions, and scenarios from a distance in which those citizens can consider multiple perspectives, the consequences thereof, and the possibilities of what could have been if only….

After focusing on how literature can demonstrate moral complexity, Chapters Two and Three go on to evaluate democratic literature through an analysis of Ralph Ellison’s magisterial Invisible Man and Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men, respectively. Although Chapter Two’s main purpose is to explain what readers should understand about what democratic leadership should be through Invisible Man, it is worth highlighting how the chapter is part of important scholarship (Morel 2004, Allen 2005) which recognize Ellison’s value and contributions as a political thinker. On this basis alone, the chapter (and book) is worth a read, as Ellison remains one of the most perceptive and generous interpreters of American politics. Danoff’s chapter emphasizes, primarily through negative examples, Ellison’s vision of what a democratic leader should do. First, the democratic leader should see ordinary people as capable of agency (not try to make them into something, pace Tocqueville) and should aim to make more effective the political participation of the people. Second, the democratic leader should advance goals that are in common with the people (Danoff cites Ellison’s famous Jim Crow essay before Invisible Man which contrasted a leader who told the people what they should think and one who spoke a what the people did think). Third, the leader should uphold equality in line with the founding principles of the Republic. These founding principles should be reapplied and reactivated to address the contemporary situation. Here, Ellison is very helpful because of his reading of the Declaration of Independence and his stunning introduction to the Thirtieth Anniversary of Invisible Man.

The next chapter takes up Penn Warren’s Willie Stark, a Huey Long-type character, who was designed to be someone so big and complex that there is reason to adore and despise him, and from whom the reader can divine outcomes that improve social and worsen political conditions. He is precisely the sort of morally complex character on whom readers can ruminate to come to a clearer sense of what a leader should do in a democratic polity. Danoff evaluates Stark according to the three aspects gleaned from Invisible Man and finds that Stark succeeds in but one. Stark truly works for the goals of the people: he aims to give them the things (economic rights) that they do desire. This is not like Invisible Man’s Brother Jack who insists “We do not shape our politics to the mistaken and infantile notions of the man in the street. Our job is not to ask them what they thing but to tell them” which elicits a response from the narrator “Wouldn’t be better if they called you Marse Jack?” (Ellison 472-3, cited by Danoff p.43). The narrator had asked the very question of “what’s your exact relationship to” the people and was put off that the answer was that, through the Brotherhood, Brother Jack saw the people as “raw materials, one of the raw materials to be shaped to our program.” Willie Stark is one of the people and knows its desires. But he falls short in the other two requirements that Danoff identified. In advancing the goals of the people he does not do it in a way that extends the freedom of the people to participate themselves in public affairs. Rather, they become increasingly dependent upon him and the system that he develops, which may provide services and benefits, but not without corruption and political alienation. Moreover, Stark does not ground his reasons for his actions in the founding principles of the Republic nor does he attempt to educate the people through his actions. Danoff contrasts Stark with Malcolm X and Franklin Delano Roosevelt who, he notes favorably, reapplied the founding principles of the Republic and taught their audiences while encouraging opening the public arena to their supporters.

The fourth chapter is a short analysis of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American—a story of a British journalist who kills an American friend who is involved in killing Vietnamese communists (and others) as part of a war against communists—is used as another case of moral complexity. The American is so innocent and his motives appear pure but he winds up killing innocents and seems not to think critically of how he is complicit in something terrible, in his very effort to prevent something terrible. That leads the journalist to cease to simply ‘report’ news and to ‘take a side’ (and kill his friend!).  Danoff likens this to All the King’s Men and Invisible Men in which pensive characters leave their Hamlet-like constraints and discover the need to engage in public affairs (and abandon the idea of returning to the Underground). In so doing, he kills his friend who, also, happens to be competing for the attentions of the journalist’s Vietnamese mistress. The ambiguity of who is the hero, the ‘good’ of the US government’s actions, and so on is obvious. This chapter’s comments on the American’s ignorance of US violence in Vietnam echoes Captain Phillips’ critical analysis of US complicity in the lawlessness and lack of economic opportunities in Somalia: that is, a character’s personal lack of moral reflection allows him to believe he is doing good things even when he serves as part of a larger, structural form of violence.

The book ends with a conclusion which aims to bring the lessons of the various chapter together. Danoff writes “I have argued … that novels can help to educate democratic citizens by helping them explore the kinds of thorny political questions that citizens must together render judgments upon” (107). Danoff believes that the novels examined teach readers that the educated democratic citizen must, in the end, choose the path of political engagement. Because they understand complexity, the course followed is one of modesty, less likely to utterly condemn the citizen who holds a different position. But does understanding the position of the other necessarily mean that one will be less intolerant? Does reading about complexity in literature or watching it in film translate into a change in the way one views politics? It is not hard to think of students of philosophy or literature—trained to be attuned to this sort of pluralism—who, when entering political office followed an horrifically decisionist, intolerant path? Moreover, there is the more obvious issue that a reader may simply enjoy the story and not reflect on it, let alone reflect on what is learned publicly, or do so with democratic intentions.

But what are democratic intentions? Danoff finds in Ellison a grounding set of principles—linked to the founding of the US republic—but he does not explain why a democratic leader should appeal to and reapply foundational principles, nor how to reflect when one leader’s reapplication is out-of-bounds and another’s is more correct or virtuous. In citing Roosevelt as an example, Danoff selected a leader whose appeal to founding principles in order to instantiate economic rights is not without challenge. In the conclusion, Danoff uses Abraham Lincoln as the exemplar par excellence and then favorably compares his speeches and engagement with the Founders to that of presidential candidate Joe Biden. This is problematic for many reasons. Certainly, candidate Biden appeared more moderate on the campaign trail than President Trump, but it is not clear that Biden’s understanding (or that of his voters) of the people he eventually governed involved more moral complexity than Trump and his voters. Moreover, in office, President Biden has signed many executive orders and has pursued deliberately non-moderate policies in terms of domestic expansion in spending and development of rights (regardless of whether one supports the policies, they reflect a sense of urgency and scale that is not consistent with claims of modesty). If anything, many of the most important supporters of candidate then president Biden appear largely unconcerned with grounding their claims in founding principles or documents, instead arguing that those are inherently problematic or must be altogether rejected.

However much one may think that there is common critical nature of the eras of Lincoln and Trump, Danoff never explains why understanding complexity is important for democratic citizens. A good argument could be made that understanding moral complexity and being more reflective about political engagement applies in non-democratic contexts as well. Is there something distinct about democratic polities? This is not discussed in the book though it might be worth highlighting that modern democratic polities are liberal and constitutional. Democratic polities authorize qualified majorities to write their own laws which tend to diminish the importance of foundational documents or the ability of previous generations’ governments to constrain the actual one. Liberal constitutionalism bounds majority will and constrains governments reminding contemporary democratic citizens of the limitations of the public square and the importance of the documents and principles that established such limitations. Reapplying founding principles of liberty and equality might well need consideration of precepts of constitutional boundaries, as well as those of fellowship and friendship (Schwarzenbach, Collins, Nichols), and this is something that could be drawn out further. So much of the Invisible Man’s quest is for his own identity but in the context of living with others, as much an heir of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as Dostoevsky’s Underground Man. Similarly, the opportunities and challenges of Stark’s institution-building are established in federal and state constitutions and laws, and the role of sea as an essentially law-less space is fundamental in raising the stakes of the conflict in “Benito Cereno.”

Danoff argues that democratic citizens should moralize upon politics and, certainly, citizens cannot help but understand politics with some moral character and they should not entirely eliminate moral considerations when making political judgments. Reading or watching narratives that offer a lens into other perspectives and contexts can be very helpful in being more aware of the limits of self-knowledge. But not all engage in such reflection, fewer still do it publicly, and it is not clear that such reflections will lead to a more prudential engagement with otherness or a more intransigent one (or a greater resolve to withdraw). Learning how to read might help (see Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote) and reading Danoff’s Why Moralize Upon It?, with its excellent analysis of some important books, movies, and lives, may well help concerned citizens find reason to see a world that is too often represented as hopelessly divided and polarized, as being rather different, possibly even more welcoming.

Please see the introduction to Why Moralized Upon It here.

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