“Popular literature invites the audience to find essential truths”

The Affirmative

Second speaker – Popular Contemporary Literature

The essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations. Good morning chairperson, opposition, audience and adjudicator… Popular literature invites the audience to find essential truths. This is, as established, our moot today. Samantha, our first speaker has discussed with you the essential truths that the audiences of popular traditional literature have been invited to find. I will be presenting my argument based around Contemporary popular literature.

Before I discuss my points, I would like to point out a few moments in the opposition’s argument that I felt were futile. While the negative team have told you that we have nothing to gain but momentary entertainment from reality T.V shows like Love Island, they are wrong. They fail to realize that Love Island and the absurdity of these ‘reality’ T.V shows is exactly how they invite the finding of essential truths. They spoke of fairy tales and the lies they present to us, in order to argue that the moot is untrue. However, the moot does not discuss the presentation of truths. It discusses the way literature that is known and appreciated by many ENCOURAGE us to FIND truth. Which both fairy tales and reality TV shows do, through their presentation of lies. Therefore their use of these pieces of literature only negate their argument. -as they clearly have misunderstood what it means to invite an audience to find essential truths.

I’d like to initially draw your attention back to the word “invites”. How does a piece of literature, or in fact anything or one invite someone to do something or to find truth? Ask, bid, summon, request, call- all synonyms of invite. Popular literature by its very nature invites its readers to find essential truths. It does not say ‘this is the truth’, however in presenting these falsities, it leads its audience -TO FIND- the truth. Much of Popular contemporary literature is based and often reliant upon facades rather than truth but through what it does say about humans, it asks, bids, summons, requests and calls them to find truth for themselves. Popularity itself is revealing of what we are lacking, what we are hiding from and what we are scared of. The fact that we desire to consume this literature as a collective shows us what we want and need. Aristotle was of the belief that “the essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations”, to lead its readers to essential truths through facades and entertainment. The impossible combinations, the fake-ness of popular literature- and what the negative team will tell you is meaningless, only a vehicle for escapism- are what invite it’s readers to find what they are lacking, to recognize the truth.

For example, Love Island, a piece of contemporary literature that many of us consume- in fact 4.8 million of us watched just the first episode of the 2020 season- sets up unrealistic standards and and does not reflect the reality love and dating. Yet simply in existing, it reveals much about humanity, it’s an example of our desperation for love and sex, our infatuation with appearance. Our misplaced values. Through watching the show, its consumers are invited to realize the vanity in human nature and remind themselves too of their own potential weakness to it. This is a tale recognizable in every corner of human story telling. The first Love Island only had two contestants and if you ask me, it’s been a hit. The most popular story ever told as well as a story from which the essential truths of thousands of years were born, was a match making competition between a man named Adam and a woman named Eve. Love Island’s popularity is linked directly to it’s roots in the Garden of Eden. There have been countless contemporary remakes of this imagined story, Paradise Lost by John Milton, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and now Love Island. They’re all popular pieces of literature that tell tales that differ from our everyday lives, have a little bit of unreal in them, and therefore have all had an influence on their audience’s perception and their pursuit of truth. The opposition may tell you that a piece of popular literature like this supports their negative stance. It only weakens it.

“I don’t want realism I want magic.” And don’t we all. This was iconically coined by America’s most popular southern belle, from its most popular 20th century play and tragedy by Tennessee Williams. A Streetcar Named Desire is a direct representation of how we are made to find essential truth through popular literature and it’s illusions. It is a play filled with magic, symbolism and Aristotle’s impossible combinations. Blanche doesn’t want the truth and she lives on fantasies yet in doing so and in saying this very line, she presents this recognizable and POPULAR desire for illusion. She invites the audience to understand the truth of our fear of reality.

Thus, what is popular is often fake and what is fake, often shows us what is real. And what is real- and presented through art- always makes us realize some form of truth about ourselves.

My next point today is a discussion of popular literature as escapism. While you may assume that popular literature differs from artistic literature, –there is no possible way of distinguishing them as two things unalike. Escapist fiction is defined as “fiction that provides a psychological escape from thoughts of everyday life by immersing the reader in exotic situations or activities.”. Let me remind you of our studies in English this year; the power of the tragedy lies in the way its audience is removed from it yet in this removal are taught. Tragedy is escapism. Fairy tales are escapism. Love Island and Black Swan are escapism. Popular literature removes it’s audience in order to allow them to see from an external point of view, what they would not be able to see otherwise. Tragedy is the greatest form of escapism and from it the most essential truths are found. We are taken out of ourselves and our own lives, presented with something both realistic and horrifying, and are warned of our flaws so that we do not destroy ourselves. What truth could be more essential than the realization of humanity’s greatest faults and how to better them? We know this. So it could not possibly be argued that escapism and reality are two different things. That popularity and truth do not align. We crave to understand ourselves. We crave to see ourselves. And so the literature that we love is the literature that makes us respond and find some human truth.

Leaders Reply

Today we have debated the moot that Popular literature invites its audience to find essential truths and we, the affirmative team have proven to you with certainty that this is true.

Samantha proved our affirmative stance by discussing three traditional pieces of undeniably popular literature that have been used and reused for centuries to lead its readers to find essential truths, Macbeth, The Great Gatsby and To Kill A Mockingbird. She examined the ways in which these books —. I spoke to you about the true definition of inviting an audience to find truth and how the literature that is most popular by its false or escapist nature exposes us to the possibility of finding truth. Hannah, our third speaker affirmed the moot by

Our opposition has tried to discuss with you why the moot is incorrect by touching on the way fairy tales tell us that women are weak and Love Island is silly.

Liv

Campbell

– – – They have failed however to recognize that —–CLASH

Conclude

*REBUT – Banned books – TKAM- Harper Lee, Of Mice and Men- John Steinbeck (American classics), The Handmaids Tale – Margaret Atwood. ALL ASTOUNDING TRUTH. HP – JK Rowling, witchcraft- even in the late 20th century. – FEAR . Fear does not mean lies.