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rainwaterspark(Related to my two previous posts.)
As a writer who has been interested in fictional depictions of trauma, mental illness, and recovery since...basically forever, this is a topic I've thought a lot about and continue to think a lot about all the time, in the context of both trauma and LGBTQIAP+ relationships (since there is always the ongoing debate about when slash ships are fetishistic).
In regards to trauma, I think there is a line, but it's hard to articulate as an objective standard. For example, how do you distinguish between "this flashback to horrific violence is gratuitous and verges on torture porn" and "failing to depict this act of violence is a sanitization of something horrible"? Either extreme is bad. I suppose the line will be highly context-dependent and differ depending on the kind of story and what that particular story is trying to achieve.
It's also hard to draw an objective line between "this scene of violence is meant to make the reader feel uncomfortable" vs. "this scene of violence is gratuitous torture porn." And there are similar situations for other contexts: "this scene of romantic intimacy is meant to feel like a window/an intrusion into an intensely private moment" vs. "this scene of romantic intimacy is fetishistic"; "this scene of a character's emotional breakdown is meant to expose the character's vulnerability in a possibly discomfitting way" vs. "this scene of a character's emotional breakdown fetishizes the character's suffering."
(Although at least as to the last example above: my tentative thesis is that when a character who is suffering is somehow infantilized by the narrative, that's when emotional suffering feels fetishistic.)
I think it's important to keep in mind that, while fetishism is a real problem that exists in fiction, not every uncomfortable scene always equals fetishism, and there are many reasons why writers can, want to, and/or should deliberately make the audience feel uncomfortable. Also, sometimes writers sink deeply into the minds of their characters and write about very private thoughts and private interpersonal moments—and those, by nature, are going to make the reader uncomfortable, yet the alternative shouldn't have to be to just avoid that kind of intensely private introspection/depiction altogether. Otherwise, writing won't have much emotional depth.
As a writer who has been interested in fictional depictions of trauma, mental illness, and recovery since...basically forever, this is a topic I've thought a lot about and continue to think a lot about all the time, in the context of both trauma and LGBTQIAP+ relationships (since there is always the ongoing debate about when slash ships are fetishistic).
In regards to trauma, I think there is a line, but it's hard to articulate as an objective standard. For example, how do you distinguish between "this flashback to horrific violence is gratuitous and verges on torture porn" and "failing to depict this act of violence is a sanitization of something horrible"? Either extreme is bad. I suppose the line will be highly context-dependent and differ depending on the kind of story and what that particular story is trying to achieve.
It's also hard to draw an objective line between "this scene of violence is meant to make the reader feel uncomfortable" vs. "this scene of violence is gratuitous torture porn." And there are similar situations for other contexts: "this scene of romantic intimacy is meant to feel like a window/an intrusion into an intensely private moment" vs. "this scene of romantic intimacy is fetishistic"; "this scene of a character's emotional breakdown is meant to expose the character's vulnerability in a possibly discomfitting way" vs. "this scene of a character's emotional breakdown fetishizes the character's suffering."
(Although at least as to the last example above: my tentative thesis is that when a character who is suffering is somehow infantilized by the narrative, that's when emotional suffering feels fetishistic.)
I think it's important to keep in mind that, while fetishism is a real problem that exists in fiction, not every uncomfortable scene always equals fetishism, and there are many reasons why writers can, want to, and/or should deliberately make the audience feel uncomfortable. Also, sometimes writers sink deeply into the minds of their characters and write about very private thoughts and private interpersonal moments—and those, by nature, are going to make the reader uncomfortable, yet the alternative shouldn't have to be to just avoid that kind of intensely private introspection/depiction altogether. Otherwise, writing won't have much emotional depth.
