Stephen Kink, I love you.
By Jesus Fuck (R.L.Angus)
Oh, Critics ... (Sigh ... Trigger Warning ... TLDR NSFW rant ahead)
Violence in art (any kind of art) is just as common as sex. It is far less common than criticism, accusations of the wrongness of the creator, imposing one's own (slanderous) view of the intentions of the creator, opinions regarding the validity or necessity of the use of those devices, or even the method in which it was used. Your opinion, as much as your offendededness, are irrelevant.
The "Critic" doesn't get that a character being a dick isn't the writer being a dick. Fiction is not reality, doesn't reflect reality, and doesn't even need to be a commentary on reality. Context matters. Your opinions and beliefs don't.
Is the inclusion of a thing that you don't personally like "necessary" or "relevant" to the subject itself? Well, it got your attention, it made you wince, and demanded your yelpful kneejerk commentary, opinion, criticism, or attack (all of which, as I see it, are far more offensive than the actual art itself) ... but where you are wrong is in that it is not an ACTION taken by the author, just as it is not a CONFESSION of the author's questionable behaviour or beliefs, but an element which builds the story, which develops the character, which leads the audience's perceptions about why the characters behave how they do, and shapes who they are, the decisions they make, and have made, and how it affects the inner world, the inner spirit of those people, and the overall color of the story itself.
Just because you don't personally like it, agree with it, or that it doesn't reflect your morality, doesn't mean that it is anything mroe than FICTION. It did what it was MEANT to do, and that is to command your attention, make you (and everyone else) consider whether or not it is right or wrong, acceptable behaviour or not, and to give you pause ... but NOT to "CELEBRATE" that behaviour, nor to "NORMALIZE" it in culture, nor even to "Tittulate". It references situations that ACTUALLY happen to ACTUAL people in the ACTUAL world ... or not ... that's why it's FICTION. Whether or not it happened to you, or whether or not it triggers you, or whether or not you take joy in it, or don't like it, or hate it, or have opinions against it, DOES NOT MATTER. What matters is that YOU ... the READER ... are THINKING about it.
It's GOOD that you have an opinion. It's NOT good that you are attacking the writer instead of the actions or activities portrayed. Shame on YOU. Criticism need be focused IN CONTEXT, not in your personal little universe of insubstantial opinions and beliefs. (Id Est, if you don't want to have such thoughts, do not read this kind of material. Simple solution.)
That said, the attacks I've read lately towards Stephen King, specific to whether or not his little pubescent gang-bang scene was necessary, and insistance that it reflects the character and personal activities and beliefs of the author's own REAL WORLD life, is absolutely REPULSIVE. It's slanderous. And it's hilarious.
From me, to you, not that you'll listen, nor that it'll change your illogical and disfunctional delusions of how ART works -- CONTEXT is EVERYTHING. Stephen King is a HORROR WRITER ... and part of his GENIUS in that genre of FICTION is that the ordinary people themselves are usually far more horrific than the monsters and situations that happen to them. NORMAL PEOPLE ARE MONSTEROUS, or at least, capable of monsterous things, has been my takeaway. INESCAPABLE AND UNFAIR BAD SHIT HAPPENS, is another. And yet another is, GOOD PEOPLE ARE OFTEN FAR MORE EVIL THAN CRIMINALS AND DEVILS.
Context is EVERYTHING. My take? Criticism, in my opinion, is usually not very deeply reasoned. It's not usually very deeply considered. It's, as often as not, inarticulate and framed in one's own paradigm of haughty self important moralism. And it's usually incredibly biased towards such criminal activities as censorship and totalitarianism brutually and violently imposed upon the freedoms of others. (Hey, wait, isn't that what CRITICS what, is freedom to criticise? Oops ... the problem with freedom is that it's NOT just for YOU ... it's for EVERYONE.)
But who am I kidding? Critics will ride those coat-tails of social signaling all they like, it doesn't really tell us anything more than whom to avoid inviting to social functions -- and especially whom NOT to fuck at the next gang bang.