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6/20/2025, 9:20:02 PM
>>279837608
Subjectivity is really rare in premodern stories. Characters are usually stand ins for concepts or institutions to the point their actions don’t really need to be articulated by reference to their own preferences or internal monologues. I’m sure theres a better way to explain this, but if you’ve read old epics etc you know what I mean. People are possessed by emotions, they don’t have them, people pretty invariably represent and stand for whatever concept or civic / religious function they are identified with, this is obviously especially true with eastern stuff where individual expression was less historically important. But yes, the monkey king is a representation of religious practices, he isn’t really a person or a character and his motives don’t need to be explained to us in the ways we would expect today. I often wonder if a return to this kind of story telling would be entertaining for people, or if it’s just too alien to the very atomised and subjective world we live in now
Subjectivity is really rare in premodern stories. Characters are usually stand ins for concepts or institutions to the point their actions don’t really need to be articulated by reference to their own preferences or internal monologues. I’m sure theres a better way to explain this, but if you’ve read old epics etc you know what I mean. People are possessed by emotions, they don’t have them, people pretty invariably represent and stand for whatever concept or civic / religious function they are identified with, this is obviously especially true with eastern stuff where individual expression was less historically important. But yes, the monkey king is a representation of religious practices, he isn’t really a person or a character and his motives don’t need to be explained to us in the ways we would expect today. I often wonder if a return to this kind of story telling would be entertaining for people, or if it’s just too alien to the very atomised and subjective world we live in now
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