That’s one of my all-time favorite phrases, from one of my all-time favorite poems. Written by Emily Dickinson, the whole thing goes like this:
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
It’s been running around in my head, well, for decades, really, but lately, it’s been more insistent. A command bouncing around the inside of my skull: Tell It Slant.
I don’t think I’m breaking new ground to say that it’s a dangerous and wild time to be a storyteller of just about any kind. Doubly so to be a storyteller from a minoritized or historically oppressed (and/or both) demographic in our current culture. I don’t think there’s been a more complicated era for writing since the Red Scare of the ‘50s.
On one side, there’s never been more ways to reach more of an audience that’s more on board for the most diverse stories possible. The “monoculture,” dominated by straight white men, started to crumble in the 1980s and now people want to see their lives reflected in the stories they consume. Not just their mere existence, but the realities they live, the pains and hurts they’ve felt, the joys they’ve experienced. Despite more than a decade of anonymous internet trolls screeching “Go woke and go broke,” time and again audiences have shown up for authentic stories that reflect and validate their lived experiences. Not just that, but, often, the authenticity of those stories crosses racial and cultural boundaries and become a shared experience. The audience craves the new, the original, the diverse, the unexpected.
But, on the other side, there hasn’t been a more hostile corporate and political environment for diverse storytellers. The second Trump election has unleashed a wave of angry, racist, misogynist rhetoric, backed up by a government hell-bent on repealing every social advance since 1900. Corporate consolidation has put the majority of traditional media and social media companies in the hands of a small cadre of billionaires who range from enthusiastically on board with the dismantling of the 20th century to cowering in fear of a president who delights in punishing his “enemies” (i.e. literally anyone who tells him no for any reason). The media landscape has reflected that. Nearly every TV show with a Black lead has been canceled in the last year. There were already very few shows with female leads and most of those have been shunted aside. Meanwhile, the parade of Taylor Sheridan shows about affluent, cowboy-cosplaying white folks never even slows. The word from the c-suites is that people want “red meat, mainstream, comfort food.”
One of the most popular shows of the last year was about queer hockey players, but that’s only spawned a rash of shows about sports. There are no less than three different NASCAR shows in various stages of development across the streaming platforms. Despite hearing over and over that people don’t want shows set in Los Angeles or New York City or involving the entertainment industry, somehow shows about the entertainment industry, set in New York City or Los Angeles, keep winning award after award.
Even in the most utopian universe possible, the Star Trek franchise, the shows not led by white men have struggled and all but disappeared. Talk about strange new worlds where
Hollywood always learns the wrong lessons from everything. That makes the life of someone who is trying to write stories that matter and also sell very, very difficult.
I’m a genre writer, writing primarily in science fiction or fantasy, so that gives me some leeway. That’s where Emily Dickinson comes in handy. It is literally my job to tell it slant. To find a spin on a classic trope that can resonate with today’s audiences. To find a metaphor or allegory for racism, discrimination, misogyny (or all of the above) that can kind of sneak past their radar.
But, in a time like this, when people are literally dying in the streets to protect their neighbors, when every day, some right is being rolled back from some vulnerable community, trying to be clever doesn’t feel like enough. Especially since so many people in this country are determined to take the wrong lessons anyway.
Why anyone would want to cosplay as Homelander from The Boys? Darth Vader…okay…ish. But Homelander is a terrifying monster and that people wanted to walk around a convention acting like him is even more terrifying. Lots of people play villains, delight in dressing up as vampires and zombies and werewolves, but that’s somehow different than a walking, talking embodiment of the American Nazi. Watching the most recent seasons of The Boys, it feels like the writers have pushed the satire further and further to really drive home who the actual bad guys are and why. And still they’re lagging behind our reality.
It’s a bit of a bind, right? You want to tell the truth, you want to hold a mirror up to nature, you want to speak truth to power, but you also want your message to be heard, to be seen by the people who need to see it. And also, maybe, on occasion, pay your bills. Sometimes it feels like every compromise is a step too far back, an unrecoverable loss of ground, a backslide.
Even at in the best of times, as a Black writer in a field constrained by a lot of systemic racism, my watchword was always “pick your battles.” You won’t win every one, so find those hills to die on and dig in. But now, it feels like every battle is a pyrrhic victory at best.
Then again, there’s the words of Gimli, son of Gloin: “Certainty of death? Small chance of victory? What are we waiting for?” Some battles are worth losing. Some battles just need to be fought. That doesn’t mean we fight them stupidly, just running across the minefield into the enemy’s spears. We run at them slant and hope for the best.
So tell all the truth. Just tell it slant.