May 28, 2018
Artistic endeavors in all of their forms – especially literature, theater, and cinema – tell stories of people struggling with the problems in their lives. It is in this way that art most closely mirrors life. And since the most important problems in our lives are wicked, it is logical that art addresses those that are wicked as well. And since wicked problems are complex, messy, and filled with conflict, it is no surprise that literature, theatre and cinema present stories that are also complex, messy and filled with conflict, athough hopefully on a more understandable and manageable scale. When struggling with human problems, whether in life or art, reality or fantasy, people are required to make choices. And making choices around wicked problems is itself problematical: People resist making difficult choices, or, acting prematurely, often make bad ones. People are frequently unprepared or unready to choose, and/or the choices that are open to them are either unpleasant, unsatisfying or counterproductive, none of which are wholly satisfying.
By examining a definition of wicked problems that appears in How Can I Fix It: An Educational Road Map (2001) by educational reformer Larry Cuban, we can gain a greater understanding of why wicked problems are ubiquitous and challenging:
“Wicked problems are ill-defined, ambiguous, complicated,inter-connected situations packed with potential conflict…wicked problems arise when people compete for limited resources…hold conflicting values…and wrestle with diverse expectationsabout what [individuals] should be doing. These complicated,entangled situations produce conflict within…between..and among [people], within the organizations, and among organizations. Unlike tame problems, wicked problems cannot be solved. Although wickedproblems can be managed, they cannot be solved. They are insoluble.” (10)
Among the benefits that art offers us is the opportunity to stand aside from our own lives for a time and, in the 250 pages of a novel or the two hours in a darkened theater, watch the characters grapple with diverse and conflicting expectations, struggle with ambiguity, wrestle with conflict, experience a clash of values, and compete for limited resources, all of which we can recognize as present in our own lives. The experience of watching people like ourselves struggle with problems that are similar to our own helps us understand that such problems are universal. After attending a performance of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, playwright David Mamet went backstage to speak to the author. “Arthur,” Mamet said, “it’s the oddest thing but in the scene between Biff and Willy, it was as if I was listening to a play about my own relationship with my father. I went on a bit,” wrote Mamet in a tribute to Miller published in The New York Times after his death in 2005, “and I stopped. I saw a distracted smile on Miller’s face. Of course,” thought Mamet. “He’s not only heard this comment thousands of times, he has probably heard it from every man who ever saw the play.”
Making the Impossible Possible
Art makes possible what is impossible in life: To be present at the beginning, the middle, and the end of people’s struggles with messy, complex, intractable problems; to watch as they are surprised to learn that such problems can emerge from what seem to be innocent interactions with others; to be witnesses as they make mistakes and missteps and watch as these grow from minor misunderstandings and then compound themselves inexorably into serious problems which, if unaddressed, threaten not only their relationships but even their lives; and to realize that even though the novel or the movie or the play ends, the problems never do.
Reading novels, attending the theater, and watching movies offer us a unique opportunity to watch others struggle with the issues and themes that are at the center of all our lives: love, intimacy, betrayal, understanding, respect, fairness, ambition, forgiveness, failure, abuse, manipulation, exploitation and so on, – and which, whether handled poorly or not at all, often result in the emergence of wicked problems. By getting beyond the entertainment value of the novel or movie or play and paying attention to what the characters are struggling with and how they are challenged, and especially to their weaknesses and flaws, (of which we may be more aware than are they) and then following them as they make their best efforts to escape from the traps they may have been complicit in setting, we are offered the opportunity to gain an understanding into the nature of our own problems and the different ways of dealing with them that would be difficult if not impossible to learn in any other way.