Nothing Bad Will Happen - how fiction can corrupt our sense of reality by Griselda Heppel
Macbeth: unlikely to turn readers into mass murderers Today’s post may well raise a few eyebrows, coming as it does from a keen fiction writer and reader. Because I want to talk about something that’s increasingly been bothering me: the power of fiction to corrupt. I don’t mean that reading Macbeth might turn you into a mass murderer; nor am I talking about mingling fiction with history to make a better story (eg Netflix’s The Crown ) – though that habit is problematic in the way it plants events in the public’s unconscious that never took place. What’s got me going is a superb series on BBC 4 called Wild Brazil . The programmes are beautifully made, with extraordinary photography, closely following animal activity in the stunning Pantanal and wild mountain regions of Brazil, focussing on three species in particular: giant otters, coatis and capuchin monkeys. Giant otters So what’s my problem? Here’s a clue: the BBC website describes the series as ‘an...