Morality In James Harold's Voting Democracy Off The Island

Art ranging from many mediums such as poems, paintings, and movies convey many emotions to its audience. James Harold discusses in his article “A Moral Never-Never Land: Identifying with Tony Soprano” however much a character, such as Tony Soprano, can be cruel the viewer’s morality isn't affected due to the presence of many possible perspectives that are perceived. These perspectives allow any form of art to be interpreted in however the audience wants. Contrary to this Francine Prose in her article “Voting Democracy off the Island” discusses how television is affecting the morality through reality t.v. shows and how this, in the end, is having an effect on democracy. Both of these articles with their conflicting ideals of morality portrayed

Plato, the famous and prestigious philosopher, believed that “poetry evokes strong emotion in ways that could undermine social stability.”(18 Harold) This social instability is synonymous to the human morality that Harold is discussing, inadvertently plato is proclaiming that human morality is directly affected by a work of art such as poetry. Harold then takes an excerpt from Plato: “poetry was supposed to be dangerous because it can lead us to sympathize with a fictional character, and thus the feelings of the fictional characters come to infect the audience.”(19) He uses this excerpt in his article to describe the simple outlook and perspective by relating only to one character which in a reality with many perspectives a change of morality would be futile. To further build upon this Harold states how “Some of the main characters of The Sopranos who are quite sympathetic are not gangsters and are pretty good people.”(21) Harold, unlike Plato, sees these different characters as chance to be presented with a range of personalities that one can relate to. By having these different personalities the main character Tony isn't the only person someone can identify with, therefore opening up the possibility with identifying with different characters who have good intentions and similar morals. Harold uses this to argue that by

Prose believes that watching television programs “subtly, or not so subtly, affect the views and values of the audiences that tune in week after week.”(26) Her theory according to Harold would be misled as he would argue perspective. Prose also states how “Once you’ve absorbed and assimilated…who dares approach a pretty girl.”(26) Harold would argue against this by proclaiming this is very one sided and naive because of how Proses argument leads up to ineffective negative statements that she uses to argue her